Hidden
somewhere in our city is a great benefactor of the arts, one whose contributions in the
past five years have had an impact not only locally but internationally. This
deep-pocketed patron has quietly become a major force in the creation of new
work, commissioning pieces from some of the world’s premier composers,
musicians, and dance/theatre artists. Can you find this figure?
Nope, he’s not in Westlake Hills. Sorry, not along High-Tech Row, either.
Would you believe Longhorn-land?
That’s right. Our grand patron resides on the 40 Acres, in Burnt Orange Eden,
in that blocky brown complex just north of Royal-Memorial Stadium. In fact, it
is that blocky brown complex. The University of Texas Performing Arts
Center, aka the PAC, is the shadowy supporter. Under the guidance of
director Pebbles Wadsworth, who came to UT from the UCLA Center for the Arts in
1992, the PAC has begun regularly commissioning new works. In less than five
years, it has already been responsible for a half-dozen commissions, from the
likes of Bill T. Jones, Joshua Bell, and the Cleveland String Quartet.
Wadsworth is decidedly matter of fact in explaining the philosophy behind the
PAC’s entry into the world of arts commissions. “I happen to think that art
needs patrons,” she says. “Art has always had patrons, and the patrons of the
present and the future — at least in my lifetime — are going to be your major
public institutions. A university, by its very nature, educates and teaches
people the joy of learning, so I feel that it’s the responsibility of a
university to be a patron of the arts. I feel very strongly about it.” The
words come out softly, almost in a whisper, but the conviction behind
Wadsworth’s statement comes through loud and clear.
When Wadsworth came to Austin, the PAC was still purely a presenting house.
And that struck her as odd: “Of any university campus I’d been on, the
University of Texas had the best facilities to produce, and nothing had ever
been produced here. No professional production. The only works UT had created
— and I don’t mean `only’ in a pejorative sense — had been the student
productions.” But in the early Nineties, two key players at the university were
ready to change that. Bill Cunningham, then UT President, and Jon Whitmore,
then Dean of the College of Fine Arts, realized, says Wadsworth, “that their
facilities were built to create works. They understood what we had worked hard
at UCLA to build, and they understood the value of commissioning, and I believe
that’s one of the reasons I was hired.
“Since I’ve come, we’ve done a lot of commissioning: dance companies, American
composers. We’ve done it somewhat quietly, but we’re building up to producing
our own work. Pina was an integral step of this.”
Pina is Pina Bausch, the German artist whose Tanztheater Wuppertal dazzled
audiences at the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles and who has been
called “the most influential choreographer working in Europe today.” The PAC
joined forces with three other arts and educational institutions in the western
United States to commission a new work from Bausch, her first ever to be
created outside Europe. It was not an easy commission. Wadsworth suggests that
these American institutions spent the better part of a decade wooing the
choreographer and convincing her of the validity of the project. Nor was it an
inexpensive commission. The total cost for the piece was $1.2 million, much
more than any one institution — or even any three institutions — could
afford. “I don’t believe that Pina would have happened if UT had not gotten
into this program,” observes Wadsworth, “because it needed those four partners,
and there wasn’t a fourth partner without UT.”
With UT, the project went forward, and Bausch came to the U.S. to create
Nur Du, translated from the German, “Only You.” The title comes from an
American song — the Platters’ 1955 pop single –and indeed the work is
Bausch’s riff on America, or at least Los Angeles, the city in which most of
the piece was developed. Earlier this year, the artist and her company spent
time in L.A., absorbing as much of the city as they could and regurgitating
some sense of what they experienced into the piece. The finished product — all
170 scenes of it, give or take a few — includes a baseball player, a
cheerleader, Hollywood one-liners, boxing and karate moves, a miniature paper
house set on fire, a man in a fox loincloth giving makeovers to a line of
seated women, a grove of giant redwood trees, a life-size whale suspended in
the air, and much, much more, three hours’ worth. So far, the work has played
at each of the other three participating institutions. Next Tuesday, Nur
Du comes to Austin for one performance, the final one in this country.
Discovering how institutions coordinate a major project like Nur Du was
one of the most significant aspects to the Bausch commission. According to
Wadsworth, “The experiment with Pina was not just the challenge of having Pina,
who had never done anything like this, do something like this. It was to get
institutions who may be rivals in football to join together in the arts. The
whole experiment of commissioning Pina together, fundraising together,
marketing together, has been real challenging. We’ve done a lot of it right,
we’ve made some mistakes, and we’ve learned from it. In terms of a mistake, we
all said we’d fundraise separately and put it all in a pot. Well, that meant
nobody really was in charge of it, and other things on each campus got more
attention. In retrospect, I wish we or one of the other institutions had said,
`Okay, I will be in charge of fundraising.'” But Wadsworth says she’ll know
that next time. And she is certain there will be a next time. “I think that the
real future for commissions is partnerships, be it with another educational
institution or other entity. I think partnerships are necessary.” Certainly, in
coming up with a million dollars they are.
Making the leap from making no commissions to taking part in the historic
Bausch commission in less than five years seems an extraordinary leap.
Wadsworth won’t take the credit for it, though. “I was real lucky,” she claims.
“I always, always was supported. Again, the administration really understood.
It was harder to explain to the bureaucrats of the system what a commission was
because they didn’t understand what you’re buying. And they also didn’t
understand giving money before you get a service. “You mean you’re gonna pay
for something that doesn’t even exist?” So that took a lot of education.
“I think the biggest challenge was having artists want to be commissioned by
someone they’d never heard of. This facility was a very well-kept secret.”
Fortunately, Wadsworth had made friends of many of the artists who had come to
UCLA during her time there, and on that basis she was able to persuade some of
them to visit Austin. She says, “I’d be saying, `Would you just come down and
look, and meet the faculty and meet the students? You’ll be blown away.’ And
they were, and then they’d want to come do something. The second somebody sets
foot on this campus and sees these facilities, I don’t have to open the map
again. When [Mikhail] Baryshnikov and Twyla [Tharp] toured, they only came to
four or five cities, and Austin was one of them. Well, that was sort of due to
friendships. Now, Twyla is doing another limited tour next year, and having
danced here, she’s saying, `Hey, honey, I want to go to that theatre!’ It just
took a few of those, and now we’re on the map and people are seeking us out.”
The PAC’s first commission was to choreographer Bill T. Jones. Unfortunately,
the PAC was unable to present the piece it had commissioned because of a
scheduling conflict with the facility and Jones’ tour. That was followed by a
commission to another choreographer, Susan Marshall, which resulted in what
Wadsworth calls “our first major piece.” Marshall came to Austin for a month’s
residency, during which she developed the piece, Spectators at an Event.
The work involved students and dancers from the community and was presented at
the PAC in September 1994, after which it was presented in New York. From this
point, the PAC was on its way as a commissioning force, soliciting work from
Joshua Bell, the Cleveland String Quartet, Paco De Lucia, and, of course, Pina
Bausch.
From the beginning, an integral aspect of the PAC commissions was the
participation of UT students and members of the Austin community in the
development process. Wadsworth slips back into her soft but passionate voice:
“I feel that at any university that teaches the arts, especially of this
magnitude, students need — need, need, need, even more than need
— to learn their art form by watching the process of art being made by the
best professional artists. So when we commission, it is absolutely necessary
that those artists work with the community, both in and outside the university.
Pina never had before, and that was a real stumbling block with her. Pina
doesn’t have any open rehearsals. But our students were let in.”
And, Wadsworth notes proudly, it was the right thing that they were. “Last
week, we had the Dean’s Advisory Council, which is this sort of donor group,”
she recounts, “and one of the students from Art and Art History spoke. He was
documenting the process, and he stood up and said, `The most important part of
my education will have been experiencing the process of watching Pina Bausch
work. I now not only see the world differently, but I approach my own life
differently.’ And I went, `Bingo! That’s it!’ If the students are only watching
their own processes, it’s a very peculiar educational system.
“When I got here, maybe five percent of our artists worked with our students.
The Performing Arts Center was an entity to itself. Our job was to make it a
hub, a resource to the college. Now, over 92% of our artists who come to the
Performing Arts Center work with our students and work with people in the
community. There’s an occasional artist who’s just flying in and flying out
real quickly, but the bulk of our artists do workshops and master classes with
all our students. And they do work with kids in the community, because I feel
that the first time you expose a child to the arts it should be the best art
that you can expose them to. So we send them out into the schools or bring the
kids here, and we send them to hospitals and places where people can’t get to
the arts and music.
“And when they go, most of the artists say, `Thank you.’ Because a workshop, a
master class, a residency, is a two-way thing: the students are learning and
the artists are learning. It’s a wonderful thing. Most of the artists will say
that was the most fun part of their visit. When Mr. [Itzhak] Perlman came, he
played with the UT Symphony, which he doesn’t do. He does not play with school
symphonies. I had sent him a tape and said, `All you have to do is promise me
you’ll listen to it.’ He listened to it and said, `It is not a school
orchestra. It’s an orchestra, and I would be honored to play with them.’ When
we brought him to the first rehearsal, he said, `I’m just going to stay through
my part of the rehearsal.’ But he stayed through the entire thing. And you
could see at the performance — he is not known for his jolly demeanor — it
revitalized him. Totally.
“So, yes, we do have stipulations. We are here, first and foremost, to teach.
Otherwise, the university should not have a performing arts center. Let
somebody else run it and have it be a commercial house. If they’re going to
have it, they should be teaching and using the best at every level. And making
commissions.”
This article appears in October 18 • 1996 and October 18 • 1996 (Cover).