The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 31

9 vr- yrt -i-tt i -r r- tr rr: The VANCOUVER SUN: Fri July 3. 3J Lively Art -v 4 dancers in rehearsal on the files Alex Wm Stunning photography creates a superbly decorated collage MacGillivray Editor mmmmmmmtmmmi 19 lei viuyfiA- jo. WARREN BEATTV, JULIE CHRISTIE AX WYMAN Sua peace Critic There'i do business like show business Ballet Horiiont- Vancouver's new professional ballet company, was booked to present a performance of its new abstract ballet. Spectrum, at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Thursday at noon. Announcements were made.

An audience gathered. But there was the problem of the floor. Waxed tiles are not exactly the best surface for dancers in pointe shoes t-unless they are deliberately looking for broken limbs and twisted ankles. But the show must go on. So while the audience waited, adjustments were made to the floor.

Sticky soft drinks were poured on it to take away the slippery shine. Everything was carefully brushed and wiped, Bosin Was sprinkled. The dancers made an experimental pirouette or two. Finally after company artistic director Morley Wiseman, never one to miss promotional opportunity, had slipped in a quick plea for someone to buy the company a portable dancing surface for J700 we were ready. Not the most auspicious of circumstances, then but everyone made the very best of It, and the audience of about 200 (with more turned away at the door through lack of space) responded enthusiastically.

Spectrum is an abstract ballet choreographed by Wiseman to the Four last Songs of Richard Strauss. Thursday's presentation was, as Wiseman explaned, strictly a rehearsal) and it would perhaps be unfair to dwell on the performance itself there was a certain evident tension, a strain, that the floor must have imposed though the four BH dancers are professionals enough to be able to carry it all off with reasonable aplomb. But the dance remains the dance, and there is about it a distinct choreographic aridity. Movement ideas are stretched and padded beyond justification. Feats of technical wonderment are inserted at what seem almost random points.

Little attentiun seems to have been paid to music or mood, beyond a certain suggestion of yearning, of reaching and needing and stretching. Still, this Is Wiseman's first venture into lengthy abstract choreography, and the dancers appear to have it more in their blood than they did on the two previous occasions 1 saw it: it flows from them more easily, sits on them better. It will be seen again in their anniver-say program at the Queen Elizabeth Playhouse, Sept. 18, complete with new sets and lighting, perhaps under full-scale production conditions, new qualities may make themselves -4, 4 mux As VA 1 3 vw BOB WAKEFORD into it. And since one is expected to look at it for just over two hours, this technique of distraction flaws the efforts of all the artists involved.

Though there Is a great deal of artistry still in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, there also is considerable pretentiousness. And the occasional excitement that is promised never is fulfilled. Julie Christie is the most exciting thing in the film, and for the first time displays acting ability in a character part that nobody else has called on her to do. It is regrettable, though, that her London fish-wife accent tough enough to unravel under the most advantageous conditions is drowned in a polluted soundtrack.

The same sad fate happens to Beatty, who outshines his co-star with his versatility. His flair for humor that won for him The Only Game in Town is his ace card in McCabe and Mrs. Miller. But he would have done belter had he known whose rules he was supposed to play by. Nevertheless, and in spite of loo much guttural mumbling like Arte Johnson's Dirty Old Man in TV's Laugh-In, Beatty gives the part of McCabe a distinctive interpretation that he obviously developed without much help from the sketchy script.

In the cinematography Altman and By LES EDM AN Sun Movie Critic Canadian poet Leonard Cohen sings three songs for McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and in them there is more story than there is in the en- tire Robert Altaian film that opened Thursday night, with every seat of The Capitol Theatre filled for a Playhouse Theatre Guild benefit. Locally, the initial interest is that the movie was shot last winter in West Vancouver and Squamish, but it is going to take more than the stunning and scenic photography of Vilmos Zaigimond and the presence of local actors on the screen to sustain audiences even here. And unfortunately, even with varying degrees of performance and the drawing power of stars Warrea Beatty and Julie Christie, McCabe and Mrs. Miller doesn't have much else.

Altman, who delivered a broadside against war in A and peppered murder victims with bird droppings to -express his contempt in Brewster McCloud. rode shotgun on McCabe and Mrs. Miller and aimed to make it another different kind of motion picture. Into bis sights he got what should have been as realistic a drama as he has yet attempted, with romance, greed, and human frailties the ingredients to hold it together. But for some reason he has scattered the story and instead of heights and depths of suspenseful entertainment and penetrating personality studies Altman has levelled the plot, removing from it most recognizable points of interest that are de rigeur for even the most unconventional film.

Basically McCabe and Mrs. Miller are two strangers who meet briefly, establish rapport, develop a relationship and then pass on their obsession with other things more important than what they mean to each other. Getting to know them McCabe, the gambling man, and Mrs. Miller, the opium-smoking madam of his brothel should have been the crux of the film. But it seems Altman was more concerned with presenting an all-round por- trait of what people were like in the rugged west at the turn-of-the-century, so Beatty as McCabe and Miss Christie as Mrs.

Miller show up only as minor attractions as part of a colorful and superbly decorated collage. There are suggestions of perspective in the picture, but then sudden shifts as it takes off on a new tangent with Alt-man trying to crowd as much as he can Viola stars By LLOYD H. DYKK With the relative dearth of music that 1 traditionally attends the summer months in Vancouver, the six-part series of Thursday concerts at the University of B.C., presented jointly by the music department and the summer session association, is a welcome void-filler. The series of free concerts began Thursday night in the music building with a viola-piano recital featuring faculty members Hans-Karl Pill and Frances Adaskin. Plltz, who himself is the host and moderator for the series, presented a genial preamble to the program, pointing out the need for the violist to resort to transcriptions, since there is really not much concert material available for that instrument.

I'm afraid I couldn't adjust complete Jack Wasserman in first of concert series David Donnelly Photo at Thursday premiere Zsigimond have achieved an aged in-film effect that establishes the period, with superb contributions from production designer Leon Erickson and art directors Philip Thomas and Al Localelli. But again an obsession with antiques like an early juke box and a puffing steam engine slows down what action there is. At the same time the stress on realism in sound with so much of the dialogue being thrown away in the background is enough to make you turn on your hearing aid full blast if you have one, or send you out tq get one if you don't have one. I'll buy the arguments of such an honorable critic as the New Yorker's Pauline Kael that it isn't necessary to hear everything that's said on the screen, because in real life you catch only snatches of conversation anyway. But when you can't hear what you're supposed to hear, then there's something wrong.

There are too many locals with vocal parts in McCabe and Mrs. Miller to single any of them out for special mention. Very few were there just to decorate the set or fill the screen. Most of them served a valuable purpose, although too often called on to engage in vulgarities that served no purpose other than to get laughs. the viola's very vulnerable sound territory.

The shortest piece on the program was, in my opinion, the soundest and most consistent artistic achievement the Suite for Viola and Piano by UBC faculty member-composer Elliot Weis-garher. The brief, three-sectioned suite derives its essence from Weisgarber's experience of Japan. Minimal in make-up and more tightly wrought than it at first appears, it consists of a series of fine and varied musical brush-strokes adroitly and imaginatively manipulated into a picture of ineffable poetic delicacy. The duo ended the program with dynamic interplay, if not the most precise technique, with Ernest Bloch's emotionally ardent, rhapsodic Suite for Viola and Piano, written in 1918. Next week, the Purceil Quartet, 8 p.m.

rather than make the move to Toronto, which he'd resisted for nearly a year. When Lawson became Canadian director it was freely speculated that he would be named an International vice-president, making him a member of the top Teamsters council. Over and above the understandable personal ambition, Lawson has king held the view that the Canadian teamsters were entitled to representation on the international executive board because their membership justified the union's claim to international status. A sizeable clement among the union's young Turks supported the view and the word was that Lawson would be on the slate when the board was expanded at the current convention. Several weeks ago there was 1 shift of gears, The word was that two new seals on the board would go to Americans and the Canadians would have to wait until a scat became vacant through the retirement of an incumbent.

Lawson took the stand that Canada wasn't just another area in the Teamster sphere, but an Independent country. As such it was entitled to full-fledged representation. Besides personal conviction, there was the obvious pressure of mounting Canadian nationalism among trade unionists. As a member of the union's constitution committee Lawson W8s in Miami for several weeks before the convention. Word filtered back that he'd virtually placed his career on the line.

A Canadian had tq become ail International Vice-president at the convention. It doesn't take much to figure out what his options were. If he made his pilch and failed he would almost certainly be required to resign as Canadian director. That's the battle that's been going on behind the scenes for some time now. WASbERMANIA You're an old timer if you can remember the good old days before pollution, when the fish smelted worse than the water.

1 tA I Bob is getting steam up for centennial pageant TV producer sees relief from breaks Television dramas without advertising breaks are just around the corner, says Philip Keatiey, executive producer of CBC television drama. The dramas, instead of being sent over the airwaves, will be recorded on videotape cassettes which the viewer can play on his home television at his leisure. "These videotape cassettes, which would be rented or purchased, would change the nature of TV drama because viewers would not be prepared to rent programs with commercials," said Keatiey this week at one of a talk series sponsored by the Vancouver Little Theatre Association. "The problem of commercial TV Is that the pressures are as strong from the sponsors as they are from the audience, and the producer is always in the middle. "Sometimes he bows to one, sometimes to the other," said Keatiey, who is noted for his production of The Manipulators and Cariboo Country series.

The power of the sponsor is clearly shown by the nationwide $166 million annual CBC budget. A third of the budget is provided by the federal government, the remainder is earned from the commercial sponsors, he said. Keatiey said a CBC pilot project in the field of videotape involved the production of a Canadian version of the American children's program Sesame Street for the remote Indian reserves in ths-North. The object was to prepare preschoolers for the white middle class curricula that confronts them in Grade 1. Keatiey believes the future success of any medium will depend on the making of special choices of subject matter.

"Our bid must he to take those things which are uniquely our own, such as the Cariboo country, and create a sense of our place, our time, pur province," Keatiey said. CALLBOARD A roller skating party will be sponsored by the Coquitlam Youth Council tonight at 8 in the Coquitlam Sports Centre Further Information may be obtained by calling 039-9264. A six-week residential language program begins this week at the University of B.C. for lit French-speaking students from Quebec and 37 English-speaking students from across Canada. This is the third summer UBC'a Centre for Continuing Education has offered this program.

There are 13 English instructors, three French instructors and 17 group leaders who work informally with small groups. ly to the viola's taking the place of the cello fur which Beethoven originally wrote his Sonata Op. 6. No. 1.

Perhaps it is to my disadvantage that past listenings have got the cello's sound irretrievably in my ear, but it seems there is evidence that the sonata was devised to exploit the cello's native sound. At any rale, there is a decided loss of authority and resonance in the transcription; think it would have been more interesting instead to hear Beethoven's only work for viola, the almost never performed Notlurno, Stylistically, Pills carried off the sonata quite well, even though one might have wished for firmer intonation; the piano is really the dominant partner in this work and Frances Adaskin took full advantage of her opportunity for technical display without once infringing upon youthful executive who was a key figure in the attempt to push the original Arbutus development, scheme. B.C. operations of the real estate giant are now being managed by Philip Boname The wine expert writing in Dick Mac-Lean's Guide under a chick's name is really a guy in the Vancouver office of a national advertising agency. A typographical transvestite? McKim Benton and Bowles grabbed the Simpsons-Sears broadcasting advertising account.

HITHER JV YAWN Senator Ed Lawsnn, the Canadian Teamsters chief, Is undergoing tests in Miami's Mt. Sinai Hospital today while neurologists attempt to discover the cause of the mysterious ailment that landed him in the emergency ward the day the union was voting to make him an international vice-president. At the risk of getting dinged for practising medicine without a licence, I'd speculate at lung range that the medics wil) eventually write off the strange attack as "tension." Although nothing ever seems to bother Senator Super Cool, it's possible that he was finally felled by the pressure of an ever increasing work load, complicated by the fact that he's just gone through the toughest battles he's faced since he came out of Kilimat to win the presidency of Joint Council 36 at the age of 85. Lawson has been gaining more and more ground within the Teamster organ- izalion ever since he first attracted at-. i tention as an articulate spokesman for the group of dissident "nuts" who voted against Jimmy Hoffa in Hoffa's overwhelmingly successful initial hid of the International presidency.

Over the years he acquired a position of influence out of all proportion to the minuscule membership he represented in Western Canada. In fact several dozen Joint Council's have more members than all the Teamsters membership in Canada combined. A measure of that Influence was the fact that the International agreed to allow him to run the Canadian operation Dan Scott Photo with engine for pageant built for the Parade of Roses at Pasadena last January. This won him the International prize, but prizes aren't anything new in his life', lie ias won awards In 50 of the 58 parades his floats have appeared in, But he admits the coach was a triumph of Ingenuity. In the Parade of Boses everything has to be covered with some organic material.

"You lose points If you leave so, much as a piece of baling wire exposed," he said. And anyone who hasn't built a royal coach recently wouldn't believe the difficulties involved. For Instance, the rich oil paintings on the doors had to be covered in materials 'of similar color. Bob accomplished this by using black' pepper, yellow mustard, polished rice, unpolished rice, pre-cooked rice (all are different shades), tea leaves, gladiola petals for the gilt, and poinseltia petals for the red plush. But these artistic touches are just the icing on the cake.

The basic work, the forms, are made by mixing, matching, carving, and stick-: ing styrofoam, fibreglass, styrene, glue, rein and other assorted goop. With these ingredients Bob can come up with 2,700 feet of decoration for the i rumpus room of a Vancouver homeowner or a five-fnqt wide-eyed doll for Union Oil pf California not forgetting Dancer, Prancer, Dnnner and Bblzen fur a North Pule resident. How long docs he take to fill these orders? 1 "If they want it In twq weeks, well, It takes twq weeks. If they want it In two "months, well, it's gonna be two months," he said. "But remember, we're not artists, we're not designers.

We just make what-ever's needed." A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE Not everybody will have to pay Premier Bennett's tax on hotel rooms, Georgia hotel manager Bob MacCauley discovered the hard way. After a visit from the Canadian Wheal Board the hotel sent its Invoice in the usual manner. Back came a letter: "provincial Sales taxes do not apply to the Canadian Wheat Board except to the extent provided in the Crown Corporations (Provincial) taxes and Fees Act, 1964 65 Statutes of Canada, Chapt. 11. Under section 3 (a) of Dial Act, the Canadian Wheat Board is liable to pay provincial sales tax on goods pur-; chased by It; hut not on services, labor charges of rentals.

The Amount of tax included in your Invoice applicable to services, labor charges or rentals has therefore been deducted." A query to the Consumer Taxation Branch in Victoria confirmed the claim. All of which means that the Canadian Wheat Board had indeed saved the sum of $1.15. The auditor general will be happy that not everybody is throwing the taxpayers' money around. i- UP 'N ITEM Upcoming Cave appearance of Milil Gaynor has been put back; to July 30 Ted Baynes of the Grosvenur Hotel has passed the word to tenants pf his newly acquired string of stores' in the 700 block Robson that the existing structure will be pulled down to make way for a row of new shups. Rob- By KATHY 1IASSABD "Don't call me an artist.

Those guys give me a pain." That's what Bob Wakcford said when interviewed in his workshop in a lane back of Broadway. So let's not. But how do you desrihe I man who can whip up a replica of anything you care tq mention or imagine? So you want a train? i i nothing. Bob already has one that is almost ready to foil at the Confederation pageant at the Empire Stadi-urn on July 20. It's nearly 100 feet long and is a H-scale model of the first train that wheeied Its way west In 1886.

Maybe it's a building you have In mind? An old. historic building? That's easy. Bob has already completed an almost life-size model of the Bird Cage Building, B.C.'s first legislative quarters. It loo will be part of the scene at the Centennial Celebration 8 backdrop for one of the many historical pageants on the program, Also adding to the clutter of the crowded workshop at present are the parts and pieces of a giant flying saucer. The pageant proposes to look forward as well as backward.

Also in the works, but pot for the celebration, are eight-foot panels making up a 50-foot bas relief depicting the gala and gory stories of Boman history. When completed these will Inspire the members of a health spa in Alaska, In puluth, Minn, and in Chicago. There's also a collection of ancient, "adzed" ceiling beams to lend an antique atmosphere tq a chic salon. And on one long wall hung over a drying rack and between sheets of i sketches, drafts and blueprints Is what remains of the 50 foot royal coach Bob sonstrasse lives! A new company called Malaspina Pipelines could be the answer to Premier Bennett's plea for a pipeline to bring natural gas to Vancouver Island Marathon Realty, the Canadian Pacific's land development division, is quietly shifting its head office from Calgary to Toronto. That means another move for Dave Monney, the A 1 i a.

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