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Happy birthday, Woody!

by Frances Marion Platt
April 1, 2016
in Entertainment, Stage & Screen
0
Vanaver Caravan’s Dust Storm Disaster (photo by Lois Greenfield)

Here in the Hudson Valley, we have a tendency to get so caught up in counting the passing birthdays of our seemingly indestructible folk-hero-in-residence, Pete Seeger, that this year’s centennial of the birth of the late great Woody Guthrie might have just slipped past us unnoticed. Luckily, the Vanaver Caravan is making sure that we don’t forget such an important cultural milestone.

For several years now, the Rosendale-based world music and dance company has been performing an extravaganza of works by Woody Guthrie under the title Pastures of Plenty. Livia Drapkin Vanaver’s choreography for the program was commissioned by Guthrie’s daughter Nora, a close friend of Livia’s since their college days at New York University. “My parents always talked about doing a show like this, together,” Nora Guthrie has said. “My mother, Marjorie Mazia, was a dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, and my Dad often accompanied and played for folk dance parties and modern dance performances. As a matter of fact, my parents fell in love rehearsing one of these shows!”

Over four decades have passed since Woody succumbed to Huntington’s chorea, but his legacy remains undimmed, and the Vanavers’ tribute piece serves as an excellent and timely reminder of how much of the genre now known as Americana – not to mention protest music – is grounded in Guthrie’s body of work. The production has been making the rounds of venues throughout the region in this centennial year, including an August performance at the Downtown Dance Festival in New York City’s Battery Park that earned kudos from New York Times reviewer Alastair Macaulay, a Brit who admits to being a curmudgeon about American folk music. “I arrived at this Guthrie tribute ready to resist or condescend,” he wrote. “Instead I was quickly overwhelmed; my eyes repeatedly filled with tears.”

Ready to marvel at the energetic clogging, leaping and twirling of the spectacular Caravan dancers, accompanied by Bill Vanaver’s virtuoso renditions of many of Guthrie’s best-beloved songs? There will be a great local opportunity to catch the Vanaver Caravan in Pastures of Plenty this coming Saturday, November 3 beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Parker Theatre on the SUNY-New Paltz campus. Tickets purchased in advance cost $25 for general admission, $20 for Unison members and $15 for students and children; $2 more at the door. To purchase, call the Unison Arts & Learning Center at (845) 255-1559 or visit https://unisonarts.secure.force.com/ticket#sections_a0FU0000001SMmzMAG. Resistance is useless!

The Vanaver Caravan performs its Woody Guthrie tribute, Pastures of Plenty, at the Parker Theatre at SUNY-New Paltz on Saturday, November 3 at 7:30 p.m. Advance tickets cost $25 general admission, $20 for Unison members, $15 for students and children and $2 more at the door. Call Unison at (845) 255-1559 or visit https://unisonarts.secure.force.com/ticket#sections_a0FU0000001SMmzMAG to purchase.

Join the family! Grab a free month of HV1 from the folks who have brought you substantive local news since 1972. We made it 50 years thanks to support from readers like you. Help us keep real journalism alive.
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher

Frances Marion Platt

Frances Marion Platt has been a feature writer (and copyeditor) for Ulster Publishing since 1994, under both her own name and the nom de plume Zhemyna Jurate. Her reporting beats include Gardiner and Rosendale, the arts and a bit of local history. In 2011 she took up Syd M’s mantle as film reviewer for Alm@nac Weekly, and she hopes to return to doing more of that as HV1 recovers from the shock of COVID-19. A Queens native, Platt moved to New Paltz in 1971 to earn a BA in English and minor in Linguistics at SUNY. Her first writing/editing gig was with the Ulster County Artist magazine. In the 1980s she was assistant editor of The Independent Film and Video Monthly for five years, attended Heartwood Owner/Builder School, designed and built a timberframe house in Gardiner. Her son Evan Pallor was born in 1995. Alternating with her journalism career, she spent many years doing development work – mainly grantwriting – for a variety of not-for-profit organizations, including six years at Scenic Hudson. She currently lives in Kingston.

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