Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 73

F2 CALGARY HERALD BAN Fit, January 19, 1990 SCENE Martin (Continued) theatre is '40s and '50s contemporary by such Southern playwrights as Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner. He considers light comedy the most difficult challenge for an actor. He also enjoys variety in terms of location and in terms of character. This week Martin is appearing as two quite different murder suspects on two TV shows a Perry Mason movie of the week called The Case of the Poison Pen that will air in Calgary tonight and an episode of Murder She Wrote that will he seen Sunday evening (both shows are on 4, 5). "You can also catch me twice a night on Hill Street Blues if you are an insomniac or a speed freak." he notes.

Martin, who was partly drawn to appear at Stage West by the chance to work for two months straight, says he's had enough roles to be comfortably off since the end of his days as LaRue. But he wouldn't say no to another series. If Stephen Bochco (who created Hill Street and the current hit L. A. Law) were to offer him a another major role, "I'd be there in five seconds." says Martin.

"I'm a young man. Another television series would be fine for me." he muses. But Martin isn't worried about the future. "It's not for me to say how an opportunity is going to come to me." he says. "It's just for me to say that it will." BILOXI BLUES at Stage West, starting Tuesday.

Query brings dancer full circle to her art 1 GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATIONS BEST MOTION PICTURE -(Musical or Comedy)- I BEST BEST ACTOR or Comedv Morgan Freeman ACTRESS or Comedy) -Jessica Tandy The ComedvThatYVtf) A Pulitzer Wze. tllflltll- liiilliltif sssittlslSSs jlBfe jjjj WARNER BROS COMPANY MORGAN FREEMAN JESSICA T.ANDY DAN AYKROYD "DRIVING MISS DAISY" PATTI l.l'PONE ESTHER ROLLE K15t JAKE EBERTS HANS ZIMMER VSSKSi DAVID BROWN ALFRED UHRY RICHARD D. ZANUCK FINI ZANUCK BERESF0RD PARENTAL GUIDANCE. NO PASSES FOR THIS ENGAGEMENT. Eves.

7:00 9:15. Sat. Sun. at 2:30. JO LECHAY: Passing her concerns along on-stage iwoiftiMsns 8Efl(gj5 IU891 i than the hula or African dance or Javanese dance, all of which can be extremely sophisticated." In her performances.

Lechay has never tried to suggest that she is ethereal, preferring to celebrate through movement her connection to the earth. She also likes to show her audience dance as she sees it. warts and all. Patrons of Affamee should expect to hear a lot of heavy breathing. "Ballet dancers will not show you that they're working hard.

The whole point is to show how effortless it is, and of course they're working like dogs they've got to be incredibly strong, they've got to be incredibly well-trained. So I prefer to let all that hang out." Rather than answering questions. Affamee poses them, says Lechay. The audience is free to offer its comments during the performance and afterward, in the discussions conducted following each show. The choreographer says the By Kate Zimmerman (Herald writer) Several years ago choreographer Jo Lechay decided she was tired of performing "pretty" pieces in a world full of famine, murder, torture and social injustice.

-The 53-year-old artistic director of Montreal's Creation Isis wanted to make a difference. "I felt the need to become involved politically in my work," she says. Lechay considered giving up dance and offering her services to a food bank or AIDS patients. And she found herself wondering: How does one justify being an artist in a society that is so troubled? The question brought her full circle back to her art. "I realized, finally, that yes I really am a performer, and that's what I do best.

And while a lot of people can work in food banks, maybe not everybody can go onstage and pass along a concern hich will touch a lot of people." So Lechay took on the challenge of creating a solo dancework that would raise the very questions that had been troubling her. Determined not to be preachy, she decided to tackle her subject in an entertaining fashion that would not oppress her audience. As Lechay worked with her directorchoreographer husband Eugene Lion on Affamee (meaning "want" or which comes to Dancers' Studio West in French and English versions next week, she found humor was a useful tool. She and Lion also decided to use a spoken text throughout (in some cities the work has been billed as and they designed movement that was alternately vigorous, sensual and delicate in rtone. Lechay describes her style, honed over 30 years of performing, as an unorthodox of dance inspired by traditions from all over the world, including the martial art aikido.

Though her training encompassed classical as well as modern dance. Lechay rejects the traditions of ballet. "One forgets that ballet is simply another ethnic form that happened to have developed in the courts of Europe at a certain period," she says. "But it's no more a better type of dancing Director lives his movies By Ina Warren (Canadian Press) Australia. Now there's a movie title that would do Crocodile Dundee proud.

But it's already been plucked by Jean-Jacques Andrien, a Belgian film-maker with a curious link to Down Under. Starring Jeremy Irons and the stunning French actress Fanny Ardant. Australia is a slow-paced hut oddly fascinating movie which hinges on the dramatic shifts in the international wool trade following the Second -World War. The year is 1955 and Edouard (Irons), a widowed wool -dealer in southern Australia, is called back to Belgium, to a country and family he has not seen in 17 years, to save the 'dying family wool business. What follows is a clash of values between Old World bourgeoisie and a New World entrepreneur, as well as the "Painful emotional journey of Pierson, who for mysterious reasons has never told his family about his 12-year-old daughter in Australia.

A competition entry at the Venice Film Festival (where some Italian critics complained it had too much talk and not enough sex), the French- language movie has just opened in Quebec, where Andrien was interviewed. fn-V OF THE YEAR'S 10 BEST Canadian Press production's message is by no means aimed solely at artists. She has had all kinds of people come up to her after the show (which has toured Europe and across Canada) to share their concerns about the morality of slogging along with their lives in spite of the calamities happening around them. "A person who is a computer operator said to me a few days (after seeing Affamee) that he was then moved to write an article in a computer magazine about the ethics of computer operating." she says. "So it touches all walks of life." Tickets to Affamee may be reserved by calling 264-2689.

AFFAMEE, presented by Creation Isis at Dancers' Studio West's Studio Theatre next Thursday-Saturday. Friday's show is in French. The Studio Theatre is at 1892 14A St. S.E. inside the Carling-O'Keefe brewery grounds.

locations. "That way the story is born in its place and the characters begin to come to life for me." Yet, the original inspiration for Australia was his schoolboy's memory of the cigar bands he collected in his home town of Verviers, the Belgian city once renowned as the wool capital of the world. "Other boys collected stamps, but my family lived over the wool exchange, so every day after school I'd pick up the cigar bands left after trading. I had scrapbooks full of them from New Zealand, the United States, Argentina, South Africa and of course, Australia 80 per cent of the wool manufactured in Verviers came from Australia." One could argue that Andrien's film might have been-called Belgium, instead of Astralia. as most of the action takes place in that damp grey climate.

But Andrien explains: "For Europeans, Australia is as much a dream as a place. For us," he says with a sigh, "it's the last Utopia on Earth." SNEAK PREVIEWS -Mike Clark, USA TODAY SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER -Peter Coddard, TORONTO STAR -Rita Kempley, WASHINGTON POST LANGE IS FLAWLESS. THE 10 BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR" -Mike Clark, USA TODAY JESSICA LANGE IS CAPTIVATING. BOX' WILL HOLD YOU SPELLBOUND." ANDRIEN: Australia is his newest.film ONE PARENTAL GUIDANCE: MATURE Tirol -Jeffrey Lyons, Michael Sragow, JESSICA ONE OF 'MUSIC Rex Reed, AT THE MOVIES -as mm Poised over a demitasse of strong coffee, the pale, intellectual-looking Belgian doesn't immediately strike one as the sort to be interested in doings Down Under. But appearances are definitely deceiving.

Andrien is a lively, adventurous spirit who lives his films. He spent six months in a Berber village in Tunisia to find the inspiration for his award-winning 1975 movie The Son of Amr is Dead. And for his 1981 classic, The Endless Land of Alexis Droeven, he spent three years living among Belgian farmrs. In the case of Australia, the 45-year-old film-maker spent several months visiting sheep stations in the southern and western territories. "I don't know if I can continue like this." he notes with a laugh, "because it takes up so much time." His approach to writing a script, he explains, is to talk to the local people and to take hundreds of photographs of T7nif4i 3Z3IIE THEME; NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN.

NO PASSES FOR THIS ENGAGEMENT. arms Eves. 7:00 9:30. Sat. Sun.

at 1:45. SB Dally at 2:00, 4:30, 7:00 9:30. Eves. 7:00 9:30. Sun.

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