October 6, 2005
Meany’s ‘Blueprint of a Lady’ spotlights Billie Holiday
The UW’s World Dance Series begins a new season with Blueprint of a Lady: The Once and Future Life of Billie Holiday, a multi-arts performance piece based upon the life and legacy of the late jazz vocalist Billie Holiday.
Conceived by Nnenna Freelon, with vocals by Nnenna Freelon and choreography by Ronald K. Brown, Blueprint uses the lexicon of jazz to tell a story of triumph and redemption. Just as Billie Holiday created stories with subtle vocal shifts and phrasing like a horn, so Ron Brown creates a soulful language with movement. The structure of the piece is influenced by the jazz musical style in that the two art forms — music and dance—are designed to flow as one story, subtly shifting between the body, the eye, the ear, and the heart. Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 13–15 in Meany Theater.
Some of the songs included in the show are I Didn’t Know What Time It Was, by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart; God Bless the Child, by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr; Taint Nobody’s Business if I Do by Porter Grainger and E. Robbins; and All of Me, by Seymour Simon and Gerald Marks.
Tickets are $40 and are available at the UW Arts Ticket Office, 206-543-4880, as well as online at www.uwworldseries.org. Ticketholders are invited to the Meany Hall west lobby at 7:15 p.m. on performance evenings for a brief lecture.
In conjunction with the show, there will be a free public forum entitled “Race and Justice Through the Eyes of Artists: Conversations about Billie Holiday,” at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, 104 17th Avenue South, on Wednesday, Oct. 12.
