Miss Ann - Arts Hall of Fame
Scott Nilsson
Miss Ann / Arts Hall of Fame
Miss Ann’s inauguration into the Columbia Arts Hall of Fame at the inaugural ceremony last Friday went wonderfully. Naomi Calvert spoke for Miss Ann, and she looked and sounded exactly as she did thirty-five year ago. Of the other five inductees, I knew four and had studied under two others: my choral director and the music director of Oliver! - Arpad Darazs, and acting teacher and coach, Mary Lou Kramer. Cynthia Gilliam spoke for Mary Lou and Dr. Saunders (Leslie Saunder’s dad) spoke for Jack Kraft (founder of the art museum, and another inductee). The other two inductees were Edmund Yaghjian of the USC art department (my mother studied with him), and photographer Richard Roberts. Miss Ann’s son, Philip Bardin, looked wonderful, as did Carol Saunders, Cynthia, Ursula Swartz, Tinka Tieman and Henry Everett (who also drove over from Atlanta – unfortunately, Henry and I only seem to cross paths here about once every ten years or so…). I also got to stop and see Mimi Wortham for a couple hours at ETV: she looked great, and her work for the knowitall.org children’s website for ETV continues to rake in kudos. Also went by the Carolina Ballet/CMFA offices and got the grand tour from Mimi Worrell (thank you!) – who also looked great; they’re expanding the studios there, and they had FOUR TEENAGE BOYS in classes (of the forty or fifty dance studios in metro Atlanta, some of which are actually really good – I think only the Atlanta Ballet has that many young male dancers in training… I don’t know what CB is doing, but it’s working). It was really wonderful to see everyone…..
A while back, Anne Richardson suggested maybe next year for a reunion….
Please don’t let me be the only person to use this forum to send updates and say “hi” to everyone. If you send a email to Origin...@googlegroups.com – it will go to everyone!
Our news: RDA Nationals, dance photography and the informal Studio 54 Reunion
We’re working with dance photographer Keiko Guest, who has asked us to gradually take over the commercial end of her photography business as she shifts her focus to her fine art photography. Some of our photographs (dance and waterfalls, mostly) have been used for books, magazines and programs – so we’ve been ‘dabbling’ in this for many years – but this different by an order of magnitude… For three straight months, we shoot seven days a week from between 6 to 9 AM to between 8 PM and 2 AM the next day… long days. Sunday we shot, edited, printed and release 150 packages in 11 hours; the heaviest day of the season is 18 hours, when we do 200 packages; Kris did 95% of the shooting last Sunday (Kristy’s third day of shooting for Keiko) – and both Keiko and the clients loved her work. My Photoshop work continues to ramp up in breadth and speed (my end of this commercial work – we’ll reverse roles to our normal respective preferred skills… I love shooting and Kris loves Photoshop editing… for the balance of our photographic work – performances and art dance photography), but the speed will be the biggest challenge; Tory has a hard time keeping up with Keiko, and he is exceptionally fast and gifted – so I’ll be working very hard to make the production levels this requires. Our professional relationship with Keiko and Tory continues to strengthen (we’re very close friends), and they are now introducing us to all clients as the photographers that will be replacing them next year. Keiko and Tory saw the culled (top twenty or so) dance photos I took of Kris in Florida three weeks ago – and were both very impressed. We shot in ruins, on the beach, on the inter-coastal waterway, etc. Keiko – who is one of the best dance photographers in the country – said my shots were as good as anything she would have taken… Keiko is not given to hyperbole, so I was very happy.
RDA Nationals
Kristy will only be working in photography on the weekends the next couple years, as she continues to teach ballet full time. Beyond that, regardless of her primary commitment, she will continue her work in choreography and teaching workshops and master classes. Kristy’s commissioned work, Apolysis, was very well received at RDA nationals in Pittsburgh – she has received many kudos the past few days from company owners that were present. Close to a hundred companies participated with five nights of performances of three hours per night, with eight minutes allotted for each work. Kris’ work evidently made a strong impression, which was wonderful. A lady whose dance company we shot for Sunday had seen it and said she wanted to hire Kristy to choreograph for her. Keiko Guest (the photographer we’re working with) also asked her last week if she’d consider choreographing something for the gala opening of her fine art photography show in July (the 16 year old nephew of Keiko’s fiancée, Tory Poarch, composed a piece of music that the founder of Windam Hill Records released on CD two months ago – and Kris will probably use that… it’s beautiful). Kris is also negotiating with a studio that wants to hire her to direct their whole ballet program… so things are hopping.
The Studio 54 Reunion
Melanie Person emailed me from NY this morning (we got to see her for a wonderful evening in March when she was in Atlanta auditioning for the Ailey School) because there was a reunion of sorts in New York last Monday for a photo shoot at New York Magazine, and she spotted it. I’m sorry for not calling Melanie, Donna Drake or anyone else – but I took a late-night flight up Sunday night and spent all Monday at a studio on the lower West Side – and then left before dawn Tuesday… there just wasn’t time (we were shooting on Sunday and Tuesday in Atlanta). The article I flew up to New York last week to be photographed came out this Monday, with an excerpt of the video shot during the ‘reunion” - http://nymag.com/news/features/31276/ It is in this week’s issue of New York Magazine. It’s probably neither positive or negative for me on the whole, and it wasn’t what I wrote and emailed them, not wholly what I said when I was interviewed there, and certainly not what I would have written – but as Kristy explained to me this morning when I read all this – you answer questions, and then they say what they want… I really knew this, I had just never experienced it first-hand before. A boyfriend of Kristy’s in arts high school had done some nude art that was disallowed from a prominent school art show – which of course peaked the interest of the Houston Chronicle; they dispatched a reporter who promptly manipulated Dietrich’s answers to ‘paint’ a titillating portrait of a teen art student dabbling in the nether regions of the prurient interests of nude bondage-and-discipline – nonsense, of course, and a total misrepresentation. It is not that they outright lie or fabricate, they just rearrange, accent and highlight things to spin everything to support whatever the focus is of story they’ve decided to tell. They omitted that I was promoted to Assistant Manager after 5 months, and to the Front several months later; they simplified my description of what I’m doing now to “Small Business Owner”; they made it sound like I fled New York changed my name because of the bust at Studio 54 – or to keep folks at Clairmont/Briarcliff (the senior ministry I worked at) from knowing I had worked at the dreaded Studio 54… rubbish, of course (and NYMag knew better: they had the back-story in writing and in my interview in New York); and, they made it sound like I left COI to buy into the photo business – also not accurate. On the whole, it’s neither wholly accurate or inaccurate: it appears they carve their available interviewee pool into those they’re going to treat royally (in this case, the top dogs: Ian, Michael, Carmine and Joanne got glowing coverage); those they’re going to treat well (Chuck, Myra, Scott Bromley and Scott Taylor); those they’re going to cook – in this case, poor Mark Benecke and Lenny (now “Miestorm” – who is actually ‘cooked’); and, oddly enough, I think I got fairly neutral treatment – neither positive nor negative. I certainly learned a lot more about how the press works last week… On the other hand, they included a couple of my stories that they were taping – and I’m hoping they will give us copies of the whole tape…
Video: http://nymag.com/news/features/31276/ (for anyone who hasn’t seen my in years, I’m in the gold-umber shirt – hugging the former head of security near the beginning of the video – and I tell the story about Rollerina and later about the Warhol we got as an invitation to a party Halston threw for the staff at the end of the first renovation)
Article: http://nymag.com/news/features/31277/
10. SCOTT NILSSON, 49
Then: Busboy. A
ballet student at NYU, he’d arrived at Penn Station for the first time to
be greeted by a man in a wedding dress, on roller skates, wearing a tiara, and
carrying a fairy wand. “He smiled and blessed me on the way by.”
When Bitterman (Scott’s last name then) got a job busing tables at Studio
a few months later, he became friends with Rollerina, who was a club regular,
and, rumor had it, a stockbroker. Nilsson also met his future (ex) wife on the
Studio dance floor.
Now:
Small-Business Owner. After Studio was busted, he left the city
altogether, moving to Atlanta with his wife to run a nonprofit Baptist
ministry, and changed his last name. “By about 1984, it was very hard to
stay in touch,” he says. “You would catch up for two minutes and
then you’d find out about all the people who had died. I stopped
calling.” He and his wife divorced in 1988. In 2001 he remarried, to a 29-year-old
choreographer. Recently he had an epiphany: “I’ve got about 30
years left, and if I’m going to try something different, it’s got
to be now.” So he left the nonprofit to buy into a photography business
that specializes in shooting dancers.
The Press… God Bless them. Redux with inserts:
10. SCOTT NILSSON, 49
Then: Busboy {Assistant Manager, and at the Front} A ballet student at NYU,
he’d arrived at Penn Station for the first time to be greeted by a man in
a wedding dress, on roller skates, wearing a tiara, and carrying a fairy wand.
“He smiled and blessed me on the way by.” When Bitterman
(Scott’s last name then) got a job busing tables at Studio a few months
later, he became friends with Rollerina, who was a club regular, and, rumor had
it, a stockbroker. Nilsson also met his future (ex) wife on the Studio dance
floor.
Now:
Small-Business Owner After Studio was busted, he left the
city altogether, {Yes, but not for another year, plus… they made it sound like
I fled… after the bust, I worked for the club for another nine months,
for a time as Assistant Manager and then at the Front - then ran a restaurant
on the Upper West Side for another several months – then renovated a
150-year old, hand built house into a commercial greenhouse in toney South
Salem… not exactly in flight} moving to Atlanta
with his wife to run a nonprofit Baptist ministry {again, not ‘to run’
– and not immediately even to work at – they simplify everything},
and changed his last name. {the
proximity in this sentence made it sound as though I fled and changed my name
to avoid the connection – dramatic to be sure, but preposterous}
“By about 1984, it was very hard to stay in touch,”
he says. “You would catch up for two minutes and then you’d find
out about all the people who had died. I stopped calling.” He and his
wife divorced in 1988. In 2001 he remarried, to a 29-year-old choreographer.
Recently he had an epiphany: “I’ve got about 30 years left, and if
I’m going to try something different, it’s got to be now.” {a simplified extract, but not inaccurate}
So he left the nonprofit to buy into a photography business that specializes in
shooting dancers. {once again, reality must fit in a short
sentence – something I’ve never been very good at – and while
partially true, this isn’t wholly factual; this isn’t why I left
the ministry, and we aren’t “buying” in – the phrase I
used, which they struggled with because they re-asked me the same question
several times in several different ways, was “we’re partnering
into…” And then, they write what they want.}
I don’t regret going up for this: it was good to see everyone. I feel very badly for Mark Benecke, and I’d feel badly for Lenny – but he is actually too cooked to comprehend (he’s a well-heeled and educated kid from a good family that totally derailed; I feel very badly for his parents). Another writer is pitching an article to Upstage Magazine that will have a lot more content – he sent me several pages of interview questions.
Hope everyone is doing great, and to be able to talk/catch up/visit with more friends and family soon… sometime after mid-July (this won’t let up until after the fine art show on July 14th).
Philip and Allen: thanks so much for letting us know about the recognition for Miss Ann – it was wonderful to be there.
Sending much love and big hugs to everyone –
Reunion in 2008…?
- Scott (& Kristy)