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Woman Thanks IAC for Funding 'MOJO'
letter submited by Elizabeth Cummings, Iowa City
In case it hasn’t occurred to you yet, the arts are important. Let me frame this for you:
I
am a technologically-challenged technical writer, working a joyless job in a colorless
cubicle among squares, bores, and dullards (excluding, of course, my esteemed
colleagues who are reading this—and those they tell) in a department of
a division of a company that is part of a questionable conglomeration based in
a far-away land.
When
Juan Marcos—one of few co-workers who breaks the effete-and-impudent employee
mold— returned from a trip to his native Argentina last year and stopped
by my cube to chat, I spun around in the ergonomically correct office chair I
have yet to understand how to use, all ears. Among other things, he told me of
the video footage his wife Nora took of professional dancers, tangoing in the
streets. He mentioned something about her hope to get funding from the Iowa Arts
Council. Since funding would mean I could pull away from the blue glow of a monitor
and see this footage along with real-life fancy footwork, I hoped she would, too.
Months passed, including many a one in which the drab of my office interior blended with that of yet another snowless and still Iowa winter.
Then
spring arrived, with magnolias, red bud, and leaves bursting forth in a welcome
show of much color and movement—not unlike that of the performance of Tango
Variations and the Iowa Waltz, on the dance-floor-turned-stage of Arts a
la Carte, the cozy performing arts and exercise studio attached to Old Brick,
here in Iowa City.
There, lead performers Nora Garda and Mark McCusker, along with their colleagues and friends, Deanne Wortman, Alan Swanson, Carol Johnk, Riley McCusker, and Juan, put on this MOvement JOy division of Habeas Corpus (a.k.a., MOJO) production, supported by the Iowa Arts Council.
For less than $10 each, my husband and I saw film clips of professional dancers—in the studio, on the ballroom floor, and in the streets of Argentina, and I learned of, heard, and saw put into motion the "Iowa Waltz," composed and sung by Greg Brown. Arguably best of all, though, was a comedy routine very much based on the life and times of two local residents—one a chemist, the other, an artist—both drawn by the pull of dance and committed to pulling off the choreographed, educational and punchline-packed performance that is Tango Variations and the Iowa Waltz—even if it killed them—or at least, killed Anti-Diva Mark-the-Aesthete’s sense of fashion and color coordination.
Nora, Mark, et al., thank you for breathing life into what had been too many months of a lifeless Iowa City existence—and to the Iowa Arts Council, for making it possible.
Viva the Arts! Support the Arts!
Signed,
Elizabeth Cummings, Iowa City
