By Annie Holub
Arizona Daily Wildcat
May 13, 1998

When it rains, it pours

Culture saturation is bliss. Think about when you go to a big city, like New York or Chicago - you are overwhelmed with the amount of things to do. Broadway shows, museums, dance performances, symphonies - culture seeps out of the sidewalks on every street corner, lurking ominously between Starbucks and Bath & Body Works.

UApresents is Tucson's big-city-culture equivalent; the guys in the Main Gate Center give us the classical music, theater, dance and artistic performances that make our desert existence all the more enhanced. Reading through the 1998-99 season listing should give you a nagging feeling that you should be getting out the galoshes, parkas and umbrellas, because it's gonna be a soaker.

"Living in America," the season's theme, brings together modern innovative performers and international classics, along with multicultural themes- a smorgasbord of global artisans.

The new Desert Diamond Casino Broadway Series promises a dizzying ensemble of Broadway musicals that will be filling Centennial Hall with their combined voices, starting with "Big" in September, continuing with "The King and I" in October, the high-profile "Rent" in November, "Fiddler on the Roof" in February, and the gem of Broadway, "Les Miserables," in March. You'll love each and every one. They're better than "Cats." They're better than "E.T." You'll want to see them again and again.

On the World Stage (it's still Centennial Hall - they just have different names for the ever versatile stage) will be Brazilian pop sensation Marisa Monte in November, mystic Turkish dancers The Whirling Dervishes in October, and West African dance troupe Le Ballet National Du Senegal, also in October. The Chieftans, an Irish musical group who have been named by the Irish Government as their Musical Ambassadors to the world, will be coming through in April.

For four years now, UAPresents has brought us a series of performances under the banner of the Millennium Project, which was created with the intention of thoroughly educating people through performances of such issue-wrought art as Tim Miller's "Shirts and Skin" in this past season, and also through artist residencies, workshops and discussions. This year's theme is "Women's Voices, Women's Visions;" four powerful female dance companies, and opera diva Denyce Graves, will be participating in outreach activities during January, expressing their insights into the nature of women and art in conjunction with their performances.

As if all that wasn't exciting enough, there's still more: The Flying Karamazov Brothers, who mix hip-hop and ballet with cardboard-box drumming, will be juggling and goofing off on stage in early April.

Mexico's Teatro Tinglado, in association with The Jim Henson Festival of Puppet Theater will be showing us that puppet shows aren't just for kids anymore with "The Repugnant Story of Clotario Demoniax." The story is of a crazed man who kills his best friend to get a woman whom he doesn't even love. Sounds tragic, but The New York Times called it "wickedly funny" - really, how could a puppet show be anything but?

As always, the classical music series brings to Tucson some of the best contemporary artists of the old music schools. Kronos Quartet return for two shows in January, one at Centennial Hall and the other at Scottish Rite Cathedral downtown, featuring selections from their new program, Early Music. Kronos, by far one of the most challenging modern chamber quartets, will also be celebrating their 25th anniversary with new works commissioned for the tour.

Philip Glass will also be returning to Tucson with his Ensemble to perform "Monsters of Grace," a multimedia menagerie with an English libretto, based on poetry by a 13th-century Persian mystic, Jelaluddin Rumi.

And if that's still not enough to help you spew out intellectually-soaked digressions on the roles of ancient art recycled into modern contexts, yet another celebrity will be making yet another pilgrimage to Tucson: Wynton Marsalis will be back to perform "America in Rhythm and Tune: The Ellington Centennial." It's been 100 years since the legendary Duke was born, and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra will be giving a jazz history lesson in March. Also in the jazz series are Faddis, Hampton and Heath, three be-bop main men backed up by three more sidemen who summon from the grave the likes of jazz deities such as Dizzy Gillespie.

The 1998-99 UApresents season offers more than 35 events in all, to sufficiently culturally update the population of Tucson. Students can still purchase tickets and subscriptions to most shows for half price, as long as you have your CatCard or some other college's form of regulatory identification control. (Some of the more high profile shows, including Rent and Les Miserables, offer a limited number of discounted student tickets for certain performances only.)

It all begins with "Big," a musical that is actually based on that Tom Hanks movie from back in the '80s about a kid who wishes to be a grown-up and gets more than he bargains for, Sept. 26. It seems to be an apt show to begin with; the season really is going to be big.

And if too much culture gets to be just too much, don't worry - Penn and Teller are coming to save and debase the day with their trademark cruel tricks Nov. 4. No kidding.