Opening Season at the Fisher Center
by Cynthia Owen Philip

Like Galatea of ancient myth, the Richard B. Fisher Performing Arts Center has been brought to life. The Pygmalions of Bard College* have achieved their Olympian goals. The celebratory opening of the Center in late April and early May was proof of it.

I could attend only five of the seven compelling programs that comprised the event--the first night gala, an evening of contemporary music by Bard faculty, a new version of Racine's Phèdre, Merce Cummingham's dance company and the Charles Mingus orchestra--but they were more than enough to convince me that we have, in our midst, a state-of-the-art performance center that will bring us joy and extend our horizons year after year.

At first glance, the chaste, intimate interiors of both the Sosnoff Theater--the elegant 900-seat auditorium made of poured concrete and blond wood, and Theater Two, a 200-seat black box--seem at odds with the sweeping freeform stainless steel roofs that are architect Frank Gehry's signature idiom. That is not the case. Those undulating, light-reflecting roofs proclaim the spirit of the theaters. In both spaces, music and word wrap around each person in the audience with an immediacy that makes the soul soar. When the giant cymbals came crashing over the huge orchestra in the opening night's Third Symphony by Gustav Mahler, every fiber in my being said Wow!

The following evening was devoted to recent compositions of five teachers at Bard. Each was entirely different from the other, each astonishing. Harold Faberman evoked early Hudson River Valley scenes with a quartet of two pianos and two percussionists; Kyle Gann's work, derived from his study of Hopi, Zuni, and Pueblo Indian musics, was presented by Da Capo Chamber Players--cello, flute, clarinet, violin and piano; Joan Tower's quartet--she had wanted to call it White Heat but was persuaded to title it Incandescent--was performed by The Emerson String Quartet; Thurman Barker played an extraordinary array of drums and was accompanied by trumpet, bass guitar, tenor saxophone and piano in his compositions about time--"Quality," "Obsession" and "Time Factor"; Richard Teitelbaum offered scenes from Z'vi, his opera in progress that combined voice--a superb cantor--with clarinet, ney, surna, percussion, oud and Teitlebaum himself on the keyboard and computer. As you can easily imagine, with those myriad sounds, the acoustics got an intense workout. They were glorious. It was, in fact, one of the most thrilling musical evenings I have ever attended. Adding to the exciting music was the knowledge that these lustrous composers are presently teaching at Bard. They are a part of our community and we will be able to hear them again.

So, too, is JoAnne Akalaitis, an independent director who is the chair of Bard's Theater Department. Her cont-emporary adaptation off Phèdre, Jean Racine's seventeenth-century tragedy of lust and betrayal, as translated bythe late Paul Schmidt, was played with searing power in the black box theater. Although Akalaitis chose what was essentially a proscenium configuration, with exciting but fairly conventional costumes, her Phèdre had such energy it was easy to imagine it played anywhere in the building inside or out, even--as Akalaitis suggested at a Pygmalion symposium--in one of the spacious bathrooms.

The second weekend featured two dance programs, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, and the Ballet Hispanico. Alas, I could not attend the latter, but I was turned head over heels by the Cunningham program. For me, "Interscape," the second of the two dances, was totally surprising and captivating. Both the decor--a collage-type painting that served as a backdrop but made its appearance first as a scrim--and the costumes were the work of famed artist Robert Rauschenberg, also long a collaborator. It is impossible to describe Cunningham's dance forms except to say that the dancers' long limbed movements encompass their entire bodies and can only be possible because they have magically attained a strong, secret inner balance. Half-godlike, half-mortal, they seem to dance two inches above the floor. As in the music, composed by the late John Cage, the avant-garde founding music director of the company, the lack of movement was as important as the movement.

Does the Sosnoff Theater work for dance as well as for music? Yes, it does. To judge by the fifteen-minute standing ovation, the other 899 people in the hall thought so, too. In addition to its spaciousness, there is less distracting sound from the foot meeting the floor after a leap than in many other dance spaces I know.

The Charles Mingus Orchestra, with guest Elvis Costello was the final evening performance. This time instead of sitting in the orchestra I had seats in the pit--that is, the first few rows that when removed and uncovered reveal the orchestra pit that will be used for opera and full scale ballet. It was a great location for the semi-cabaret style program. You caught all the winks, nods and shoulder shrugs among the musicians and although it was a little difficult to catch all the complicated words issuing from Costello--Mingus's, Joni Mitchell's and his own--it didn't matter because he uses his wonderfully versatile voice as if it were an instrument in the orchestra and that was what mattered.

There is no question in my mind that, over these two weekends, the Richard B. Fisher Performing Art Center lived up to its promise as a first-rate performance space. Will it continue to do so? Yes. It has the flexibility to meet virtually every challenge. For the next few months it will be gone over again by the architects and engineers. Then in August it will receive a second test. At the end of July and into August we will have "SummerScape"--a vastly expanded Bard Music Festival which this year focuses on the Czech composer Leos Janàcek. The programs will bring three operas: Janàcek's Osud (Fate) in its American premiere directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, with set designs by architect Frank Gehry--a first for him--to the Sosnoff Theater; Don Juan in Prague starring avant-garde violinist, singer and film star Czech gypsy Iva Bittova to Theater Two; and a puppet adaptation of Janàcek's The Cunning Little Vixen to Theater Two for family noontime performances and to the Dance Studio for Nightscape cabaret performances. The great Russian theater directors Kama Ginkas and Henrietta Ostroskaya will present plays in Theater Two and the Resnick Theater Studio. A Czech film festival and the Bard Music Festival concerts will take place in the Sosnoff Theater. In short: another thorough workout for the performance center. I can't wait to go.

But, as President Botstein stressed in his closing remarks this spring, the main purpose of the Center is to provide long needed space for the theater and drama departments of the college. Standing as a statement of the importance of the performing arts to a liberal arts college, its reason for being is educational. When the students return in the autumn, they will become the dominating presence at the Center. This is not only good news for them, but for all of us. It means that their excellent productions, which have always been open to the public will take place in these glorious new spaces. As in the past, they will be free. There will also be professional performances--exactly what and how many are still in the works--but I've been assured the every effort will be made to keep tickets in an affordable range. .

Inside as well as outside, the Richard B. Fisher Performing Art Center at Bard is a building for every hour of the day and for all seasons. We are extraordinarily lucky that it has become a part of our community.