Each week, arts writer Meredith Moss shares information about the people and events making arts news in our region.
If you have news you would like to share, please contact Meredith: MMoss@coxohio.com
Please include a daytime phone number and a photo when available.
If you’re fascinated by the history of fashion and love beautiful design, you won’t want to miss the special exhibit currently at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
“High Style: Twentieth Century Masterworks from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection” features garments and accessories created by some of the most influential European and American designers. The Brooklyn collection is now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York.
The show focuses on the evolution of fashion and the fashion industry from 1900 to 1980. It’s beautifully done and includes 65 dramatic mannequins wearing elegant gowns. You’ll also see amazing handmade shoes from the flapper era when hemlines were short and footwear more visible. And fashionable bedroom slippers worn when entertaining at home during the ’30s and ’40s.
Highlights include Elsa Schiaparelli’s 1938 surrealist necklace of brightly colored tin insects and her evening jacket that featured celestial iconography including the Big Dipper. (Turns out her uncle was an astronomer.) There’s one of Coco Chanel’s famous “little black dresses” and gowns by Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy and Halston. A large gallery is devoted to American couturier Charles James. We loved the seeing the gown Ava Gardner wore in the film “Barefoot Contessa” and one worn by Gypsy Rose Lee.
Organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, this exhibition was originally on view at the Brooklyn Museum in 2010, and was curated by Jan Glier Reeder, consulting curator for the Brooklyn Collection at The Costume Institute. It was on view at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, but Cincy’s museum is the only other venue. Admission to the exhibition is free and the exhibit closes on Jan. 24.
At 12:30 p.m. on Saturday. Jan 23, a free program specifically designed for adults with developmental disabilities and their caregivers is scheduled. The multisensory exploration of art from the museum’s permanent collection and special exhibitions will be followed by art-making projects. Reservations are required for this special event.
The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday – Sunday. There’s a coffee bar and a nice cafe. For more information: Cincinnatiartmuseum.org
Dayton’s Nate Cooper to appear on Broadway
Nate Cooper, best known locally as a member of the dance troupe Rhythm in Shoes, has been cast in Cirque du Soleil’s “Paramour,” the organization’s first production created specifically for Broadway.
The 38-member cast, according to a BroadwayWorld announcement, will include actors, dancers, and renowned aerialists, acrobats, and circus arts performers covering the disciplines of aerial strap artists, Chinese pole, contortion, juggling, Russian beam, teeterboard, tumbling, trampoline, trapeze, and many others. Cast members and the creative team are from 13 different countries and five continents.
Cooper, the son of talented dancer/singer Sharon Leahy and stepson of singer/musician Rick Good, is a physical comedian who is also an acrobat and juggler and appeared in the Cirque Las Vegas show, “The Beatles Love.”
Local filmmaker David Sherman, a friend of Cooper’s, saw him perform in Vegas. “He can do things with wheels no one else can do!” Sherman said. “He was the ‘Fool on the Hill.’ ”
The Broadway show will begin previews on Saturday, April 16, and open on Broadway on Wednesday, May 25, at the Lyric Theatre. The idea is to mix traditional Broadway elements such as a love story, live musicians and actors, with Cirque acrobatics. We’ll keep you posted.
Hamilton native in national tour of “Wizard of Oz”
Randy Charleville, the Hamilton native who appeared most recently in “Flashdance, the Musical” at the Schuster Center, is returning to our area this week as Uncle Henry in a new stage adaptation of “Wizard of Oz.”
The show, developed from the MGM screenplay, will play Clowes Memorial Hall in Indianapolis from Jan. 13-17. It includes both Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg songs from the film and some new songs by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Randy, who attended both Wright State University and Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, told me he got his theatrical start as one of the three little pigs in the kindergarten play at Van Buren Elementary School in Hamilton. He said his claim to fame in Hamilton was playing the leading role of Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” in the senior play at Hamilton High School.
Over the years, he also sang in the choir and “did every imaginable kind of theater, music and dance in all areas of Hamilton, Dayton and Cincinnati. He credits the training he received at CCM and Wright State with preparing him to head for New York.
“Growing up with Midwest sensibilities helps keep you grounded when you move to a big city,” Charleville told me. He has also worked in television and film and now lives near Times Square. When he toured with “Phantom of the Opera,” the show was in South America for six months.
“I’m very glad I grew up with Midwestern sensibilities and values — after 25 years in New York, I still hold the door open for a woman and say ‘thank you’ and ‘hi’ to everyone,” Charleville said.
He’s hoping friends and family from our area will come to Indy to see him perform. Tickets are on sale online at BroadwayinIndianapolis.com, or by phone at 800-982-2787.
Adult Spelling Bee will take place tonight.
The adult spelling bee we wrote about last week is slated to take place tonight in Yellow Springs at The Emporium, 233 Xenia Ave.
Slots are still open if you’d like to spell, and you can also just show up as an observer. Doors open at 6 p.m.; spelling starts at 7 p.m. For more information, call (248) 894-6988.
DVAC showcases large-scale drawings
Four Midwest artists working in charcoal, graphite, painted wood and Plexiglas will be featured at a new exhibit that opens this week at the Dayton Visual Arts Center.
The artists featured in the “Gesture Control” show are Wesley Berg, Tyler Bohm, William Potter and Shelby Shadwell. The exhibition, which opens Jan 15 and runs through Feb. 27, is curated by Patrick Mauk, DVAC’s Gallery Manager.
“Drawing is one of the oldest and most respected expressive technical skills,” says Mauk. “It’s the beginning of the creative process, from cavemen to contemporary art. Drawing has significance throughout art history as a means of capturing a moment, conveying a place in time or showing physical movement or spiritual essence.”
The Opening Reception is free and open to the public and will be held from 6-8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 15. A Gallery Talk, featuring lectures and Q&As with the four featured artists, will be held at 6:15 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 25, at the gallery, located at 118 N. Jefferson St. in downtown Dayton.
Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and admission is free.
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