Alive from Off Center

"Postcards" is a "witty, twisted tale of romance on the road and on the rocks." It chronicles the story of Fred and Janet, a couple separated by his business trip, who conduct their relationship through the mail. While reading the postcards, the actors appear in front of various video representations of domestic and roadside settings.

This edition presents a documentary about the ancient Hawaiian art of hula, a dance practiced since the early Polynesians arrived in the islands around 500 A.D. Beginning with a brief overview of the history of hula and definitions of Hawaiian hula terminology, this program focuses on interviews with, and performance footage of, the "kumu hula" (master teachers), who have been largely responsible for keeping this art alive through the centuries, and who express strong feelings about the primary importance of the hula tradition in maintaining a unique and vital Hawaiian culture. It is explained that each kumu hula leads a "halau" (school of dancers), and these halau fall into two major styles of hula currently danced: "kahiko" (ancient hula), a mixture of dance and chants, featuring traditional Hawaiian percussive instruments; and "'auana" (modern hula) modern dancing and singing with western instruments. Performance highlights of these two forms are contrasted to illustrate the differences. Included are interviews with and/or footage of the following kuma hula: Aloha Dalire, Pua Kanahele, Nalani Kanaka'ole, George Na'ope, Charles and Nina Maxwell, Frank K. Hewitt. Also included is the following: footage of the various halau dancing at hula festivals and in pieces performed specifically for this program, including "animal dances" from three islands -- Elaine Kaopuiki's "turtle dance" from Lana'i, John Kaimikaua's "dog dance" from Moloka'i, and Nina Maxwell's "lizard dance" from Maui; and footage of the movie "Waikiki Wedding" (1937), with Bing Crosby and Shirley Ross, for which Louise Leiomalama Beamer served as dance and language advisor.

The first half of this program investigates the club scene and the types of music and dance associated with it. Various unidentified disc jockeys discuss house music and the development of hip hop and voguing while dancers demonstrate their techniques. In addition, a variety of drag queens participate in a voguing ball, a competition in which the men present exaggerated versions of fashion models. In the program's second half, members of The Doug Elkins Dance Company dance along the streets of New York City, seemingly oblivious to the traffic and pedestrians around them.

This program features a selection of five short film and video pieces from around the world, presenting music and images unique to each culture. The videos are as follows: "Kneeplay" ("Kniespiel"), a rhythmic piece from West Germany involving men in lederhosen who play wooden spoons on their knees and stomp their feet, edited in time to a pulsing beat; "Hammer," a piece from the U.S., which begins with a slow gospel song about a slave fleeing from bondage, coupled with solemn images of the black experience in America, and shifts to a driving rap interpretation of the song illustrated with images of defiance and joy; "Dhikr," from Yugoslavia, features intercut images of a meeting of chanting Islamic dervishes; "Living Eastern European Animals," from Hungary, presents images of various separate herds of animals which break through their fence enclosures, join as one mixed group, and move through an empty city towards a bridge at sunset; "The Shepherd" ("O Pastor"), from Mozambique, tells the story of a poor shepherd who falls in love with a girl from town whose well-to-do father forbids their engagement. Includes a promo for the upcoming season of this series.

This program explores Butoh, an avant-garde dance movement that challenges the taboos of modern Japan. Mark Holborn describes this subversive form of dance theater as originating in the sixties; rooted deeply in the archaic traditions of ancient Japanese myths, folk stories, and demons; and utilizing violent language and anguished and sexually explicit imagery. Holborn further chronicles the creation of the movement by two artists, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Akaji Maro, who formed the group Dai Rakuda Kan to add drama and enlarge the spectacle of Butoh, characterizes the dance movement as drawing strength from traditional Japanese culture and letting the body speak for itself, thereby rejecting the superficiality of everyday life. After a performance by Dai Rakuda Kan of tormented, frenzied groupings of individuals, Maro further comments on the role of Butoh as one of exploring national identity in a world of hybrid cultures. Next, Yoko Ashikawa, Hijikata's principal dancer and director of her own group, Hakutaboh, is shown advising her dancers in their dramatic interpretations. In the final segment, Isamu Ohsuga, who left Dai Rakuda Kan in order to form Byakko Sha in 1980, talks about the aftermath of the bombing of his home in Hiroshima, which leads to clips of his troupe's performance of "Civil Wars" and "Tama Jari Hi Me."

This program presents a series of spoken performances of writings dealing with frustration and passion. In the first segment, "Living in Flames," Todd Alcott walks about the city expressing his feelings of frustration and hypersensitivity. In "Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet," Jo Carson explains that she has combined every possible mixture of words to write every phrase ever written, and in "The Day I Married" Carson dispenses her mother's advice on making potato salad and describes its moral component. Chris Durang and Kristine Nielsen discuss global warming and a complex theory on the psychoanalysis of fire in "Under Duress with Durang," Rinde Eckert sings in French about passionate emotions as English translations are projected across his body in "L'Enfant Ardent," Robert Joy recites in specific detail the actions involved in lighting a cigar in "Time and Again," and Fred Curchack dons a variety of masks and voices to recite passages from Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

This program explores performance artist Douglas Dunn's version of the way in which dancers have stepped their way through history. Dunn's theme here is that man has evolved through dance rather than through the physiological routes proposed by archeologists. Dunn begins by emerging from the mud prehistorically, does an interpretative dance to music of the English Renaissance, rises up from beneath a large drop cloth, walks and poses through a paint-splattered world, dances in aviator attire amid the clouds to the aria "Nessun Dorma" from the opera "Turandot," chants in a non-language while focusing on certain parts of his body, moves to Baroque cello music in quasi-period garb, talks about knowledge gleaned from fossil records, dances to a Mozart piano score, and closes the program with a dance to a traditional Hawaiian song while an English translation is spoken.

An adaptation of Jim Cartwright's stage play directed by Alan Clarke, "Road" is a raw contemporary drama set in working-class northern England which reflects the cross-generational rage of the disengaged and unemployed. Progressing through a series of scenes depicting familial arguments and longing soliloquies -- sometimes spoken directly to the camera -- by embittered hopeless people who are nostalgic for the past, this drama climaxes in the encounter between a quartet of emotionally-wounded adults who meet at a run-down dance hall. Hoping to liberate themselves from their frustrations and listlessness, the foursome become intoxicated, listen to Otis Redding music, and rant about their inconsolable bitterness in a desperate attempt to unearth a modicum of hope for the future.