Term immortality

By John Harding
Posted: September 1, 2010

Hollywood-style fame is heady stuff that can last a lifetime. I don’t mean Brando and Monroe, either. Even a few humble years in the media spotlight are apparently enough to gain some a form of “term immortality.”

That was driven home to me again last week when I was in the midst of reviewing the early ’60s TV series “Thriller” on DVD and up popped the sweet, sunny face of Terry Burnham.
Terry Burnham was the first movie star I ever knew personally. She was a couple of years behind me at Bancroft Jr. High in Lakewood, Calif., and by the time she joined me at Lakewood High, I was writing for the school paper and so I asked her to do a sit-down interview.
Lakewood was a bedroom community only an hour from the Hollywood studios, and in 10th grade, Terry was already a veteran of the system. She had played Lana Turner’s younger daughter in “Imitation of Life,” and showed up fairly regularly on TV in episodes of everything from “Wagon Train” to a famous installment of “The Twilight Zone” called “Nightmare As a Child.”

Terry Burnham in ‘Nightmare as a Child’

Terry impressed me as self-composed, confident and easy to laugh. I could see why casting directors would be impressed with her. She was much more mature than the usual 10th-grader, but with none of that put-on sweetness of other professional kid actors.

Her self-confidence didn’t endear her to her peers at Lakewood High. I remember her getting up and singing at some spontaneous lunch hour talent show, belting out “Volare” but only hitting the correct notes about half the time. Kids can be tough critics.

Terry and I got closer when we both joined the same Long Beach summer theater. She had recently finished starring in a Walt Disney mini-series titled “For the Love of Willadean,” but professionally she was about to shoot the post-adolescent career rapids that all former child stars must ultimately face. I went off to college about the time she landed a role playing Bob Hope’s teen-aged daughter in “Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number.”
From time to time, I wondered about Terry, but I never tried to get in touch with her, and I never saw her again at the movies.
So I was wading through the “Thriller” collection and was pleasantly surprised when there she was, back in her child star prime, in the teaser for “The Mark of the Hand,” playing a sweet child accused of murder.

‘Mark of the Hand’

She was introduced by host Boris Karloff as “Mistress Terry Burnham,” and she turned up again in the series as a main character in “Fingers of Fear,” playing a too-trusting child promised a fun outing in the park by a child abductor.
I decided to Google Terry Burnham, and that’s when I learned I was hardly alone. There were literally thousands of “hits” involving her. There were lots of curious fans, wondering what had become of the sunny little actress who had taken up space for so long in their memories. Others sought autographs, or interviews about her “Twilight Zone” experience.

The inquiries all ended in the same place: Terry had pretty much vanished off the face of the Earth.
One anonymous poster claimed to have bought some of Terry’s personal photos and other items at an estate sale. That sounds awfully sad, if it’s true. Others suggested that she had married a couple of times and was living under a different name in Massachusetts or New Hampshire.

I’d like to know what became of Terry, too, but that’s not unusual for a former classmate. What’s far more phenomenal to me is the potent power that a face on a screen can continue to hold over total strangers even half a century later.

You can read my review of “Thriller” at http://www.explorehoward.com/arts/74216/thriller-series-that-made-losing-sleep-fun/

Comment on this entry • View 1 response

Catching a dancer in his leap to freedom

By Carolyn Kelemen
Posted: August 25, 2010

In his 2003 autobiography “Mao’s Last Dancer,” Li Cunxin told the incredible real-life story of his boyhood in China and his burning desire to make it to the top of the dance world. To do that, he had to make the life-changing decision to defect and leave behind his family and everything he knew in life in order to be free to dance anywhere his talent took him.

The film version of “Mao’s Last Dancer” earned accolades at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival earlier this year, and it has now arrived locally. I saw it at a recent screening in Bethesda that was packed with dance fans.

Like the memoir, the film focuses on young Li Cunxin  (pronounced “lee schwin sing”), the sixth of seven sons born to peasants who supported the regime of Mao Tse Tung. Despite the harsh reality of his life, he was full of love and hope — a point perhaps overstated in the film.

His story unfolds slowly, until one day his fate is cast when an official delegation arrives at Li’s little school to find suitable children to train for dance and acrobatics at the Beijing Dance Academy. His teachers endorse the 11-year-old Li, adorably portrayed by Wen Bin Huang as a child and by Chengwu Guo as a teen-ager.

And so begins the journey of a boy who is blindly thrown into the rigorous world of  classical ballet training. Like Mikhail Baryshnikov, who is glimpsed in an old clip from his Russian dance days, Li never quits believing in himself nor his teachers.

In 1978, Li was chosen to participate in a cultural exchange program with the Houston Ballet. The movie is at its best addressing what it was like for a young Chinese dancer to perform in America for the first time.

The dancer was greatly affected by his experience in Texas, which was a stark contrast to his life in China. He seems baffled at the excessive spending, and comments how his father’s yearly earnings amounted to less than one night’s tip at a lavish restaurant.

In other ways, the film leaves the audience with many questions. Who really was responsible for facilitating Li’s defection? Was it the Chinese government or George H. W. Bush, former U.S. ambassador to China? Did the wealthy patrons of Houston play a role in helping Li secure his freedom, and what part in it all was played by Houston Ballet director Ben Stevenson, who appreciated Li’s gifts even before he saw him dance on stage?

At the end of his Texas engagement, Li chose to defect. He fell in love and that gave him the strength to face a dramatic stand-off in the Chinese Consulate. In the end, he remained with the Houston Ballet and became one of the world’s top male dancers.

Li Cunxin in the Houston Ballet’s “Firebird”

During a late scene in the film in which  the ballet star is finally reunited with his parents, there was hardly a dry eye in the theater.

The film brought back so many memories of the dancer, whom I interviewed in 1986 on the steps of the Kennedy Center’s Opera House during an engagement by the Houston Ballet.

Why didn’t I ask him about his extraordinary life, his determination, courage, dedication to dance, and especially his love of family? Or the beauty of his remote village in the Shandong Province in China?

Instead, we talked about his role in “Sleeping Beauty,” one of the ballets scheduled for that visit. Li shared his excitement about visiting New York City and Washington, D.C., and he beamed when someone described him as the “Chinese Baryshnikov.”

Thinking back to that interview and to the newspaper articles, the foremost question should have been what did he think his defection meant to others still in China longing for their own chance at artistic freedom?

“Mao’s Last Dancer” offers many terrific dance scenes, especially those set after dark in the studio. Without trick photography or superimposed images, a Royal Ballet star Chi Cao (making his film debut as the adult Li Cunxin) pulls off multiple turns and seemingly impossible splits in the air.

When the film sticks to dance, it’s lovely, especially those highlighting the Australian Ballet, where Li Cunxin performed with his wife, Mary McKendry (beautifully played in the film by ballerina Camilla Vergotis).

Today, Li Cunxin and Mary McKendry live in Melbourne, Australia with their three children and all of their memories of faraway lands and the dreams that came true.

You can watch the trailer for “Mao’s Last Dancer” at www.maoslastdancer-movie.com.

Comment on this entry • View 1 response

A bow to Bob

By Mike Giuliano
Posted: August 22, 2010

The death of Bob Russell on Aug. 19 is a sad loss for the theater scene in Howard County and beyond. His prolific work as a producer, director and actor for more than 40 years helped make that scene what it is today.

Among the local groups with which Bob was affiliated were the Columbia Community Players, Howard Community College and the Columbia Festival of the Arts.

Bob Russell by Heather D’Amore

As if this self-employed writer, editor and publisher’s Howard County theatrical activity weren’t enough, he also had a deep connection to one of the most active community theaters in Baltimore City. In 2000, he and Towson attorney and actor Jonathan Claiborne purchased the Audrey Herman SpotlightersTheatre.

Although the ownership and management status of that theater subsequently changed, Bob had a lot to do with ensuring its survival in the period immediately following the death of founder Audrey Herman; and he continued to direct there and otherwise take an interest in it.

Indeed, the actor playing the title character in “Hammarskjold,” which is Spotlighters’ entry in this summer’s Baltimore Playwrights Festival, used his playbill biography to dedicate his performance to Bob.

“Hammarskjold” runs through Aug. 29 and so there is a palpable sense of actors dedicating themselves to Bob’s memory.

Besides being such a visible force on theater stages in the area, the Columbia resident was known to generations of students as a longtime adjunct faculty memberteaching public speaking and humanities courses at Howard Community College. And even people who never encountered him on stage or in the classroom doubtless saw him in costume at public appearances that ranged from playing Santa Claus in a TV commercial to impersonating Ben Franklin at civic events.

Comment on this entry • View all 5 responses

Well-traveled Rep

By Mike Giuliano
Posted: August 18, 2010

The season-opening play at Rep Stage amounts to making a return trip to a country where you had a nice vacation years ago.

Local audiences certainly had multiple opportunities to take that stage trip to Giles Havergal’s “Travels With My Aunt” in the late ’90s. His adaptation of Graham Greene’s 1969 comic novel  was staged at Howard Community College in 1997 (also by Rep Stage), and then by Baltimore’s Centerstage in 1998.

Rep Stage’s upcoming revival stars Bill Largess, Lawrence Redmond, Nigel Reed and Michael Russotto. Largess and Reed starred in the original Rep Stage production; and the director of that 1997 production, Kasi Campbell, gets to direct it again.

One reason this play continues to attract theater people is that it’s filled with ripe opportunities for actors. Four actors get to play 26 characters in the course of a deliberately rambling story about the adventures of a timid bank clerk and his aunt.

Perhaps the question for any longtime Rep Stage follower is whether you’re personally looking forward to seeing it again so soon?

Feel free to share your memories of the original production and your feelings about its being offered again 13 years later.

“Travels With My Aunt” runs Aug. 25- Sept. 12 in the Studio Theatre in the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center at Howard Community College, at 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway in Columbia. Tickets are $16-$30; student tickets with ID are $12. For more information, call 410-772-4900 or go to www.repstage.org.

Comment on this entry • View 1 response

Getting into training

By Carolyn Kelemen
Posted: August 16, 2010

A dancer’s training never ceases. Now is the time when dancers – both serious students and those who enjoy dance as an aesthetic exercise – seek the specialists to lead them through the rituals of stretches, extensions and all the necessary combinations of leaps and jumps.

This fall, there’s another long list of classes and dance studios vying for aspiring dancers in everything from Columbia Community Center brochures to newspaper ads and teacher handouts. My advice is this: Plan to spend some time checking out the dance scene in Howard County. Watch classes, try out a barre, have a go at a trial session.

Remember that a good ballerina does not necessarily make a good teacher, and inexpensive classes (often grouped in package deals) are not always the best deal.

Generally, classes cost $10-$15 for a 60-90 minute lesson, but I pay more in Washington and hear the cost is up to $25 in New York. Classes are always cheaper if you register for a semester or a 10-week session.

The Maryland Council for Dance (originally located at Slayton House in the Village of Wilde Lake and now an active force on the Web and Facebook) is a good source for up-to-date information.

The Dance Catalog gives a complete guide to today’s world of dance and you can find it free on the Web. Washington’s Danceview is another valuable resource.

In Howard County, the class offerings cover a broad range of interests and dance ability levels for all ages. Community centers have scheduled classes in African dance, belly dance, tap, jazz, modern, creative movement, ballet, pointe and liturgical. In the social dance area, there is ballroom, international folk dance, Irish, Hula, Scottish, Caribbean and good old American square dancing.

Judy Templeton is a master of dance potpourri, including auditioning guidelines, TV tips, and her popular Musical Theatrix classes at Slayton House.

One budget-conscious tip: At Howard Community College you can register for a 17-week session (two classes per week) for the price of two credits plus a small fee – it averages out to be $5 a class!

Nothing beats a dance class for offering the participant fun, exercise and physical-mental challenges. From this list of local possibilities, there’s got to be something for every body.

Meet the masters

Taking a class with a professional dancer is a rare treat in this area, and neither driving rain, nor the fact that I was three times as old (and in some cases four) as the other students could dampen my enthusiasm for American Ballet Theater’s Katherine Williams, currently in residency at Columbia’s Ballet Royale Institute of Maryland.

Katy is a doll. We’ve watched her grow from a teenage ballerina under the tutelage of director Donna Pidel to a full-fledged ABT star, especially in contemporary works like Paul Taylor’s “Airs” and “Company B.”

Williams teaches a guest series open to high school and college students and adults in the intermediate and advanced categories. Evening technique classes are held at the Red Branch Road studio now through Friday, Aug. 27, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. The fee is $20. Call 410-997-8443.

And check out newcomer-to-the-dance-scene Ronica Phillips at Slayton House. The dance impresario has invited master Salsa dance teacher Jonathan Tejeda from the Dominican Republic to demonstrate his talent at the Wilde Lake Village Center Tuesday, Aug. 17 and Wednesday, Sept. 1, from 6 to 10 p.m. The cost is $10 for the first session and $12 for the second. Tejeda’ associate Ronald Rios will also be part of the festivities. Send an e-mail to rosasderonica@yahoo.com.

Check out Studio Inspire instructor Adrienne Latanishen in an upcoming performance presented by The Collective, voted Baltimore’s “Best Dance Company” in 2009. The program called “POP ART” will take place at the Creative Alliance this Friday, Aug. 20 at 8 p.m.  For ticket information, call 410-276-1651. For details on her classes at the Columbia studio, go to www.studioinspire.net. 

Comment on this entry • View all 3 responses