Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 173

East and West to meet at Nile arts festival By Amei Wallach Newsday Cultural Affairs Specialist Handel's Water Music will be played on a barge that plies the Nile. At Luxor Temple, in the imperial capital of Egypt's ancient Pharoahs, a bonfire will be lit and contemporary dancers will perform time-honored dances before it. Musicians like jazz great Dizzy Gillespie and dancers like Twyla Tharp will join with the Yale Repertory Theater, the Young Vic Company of London and the National Theatre of Egypt to fill the temples and streets of Luxor with their own sights and sounds. From Oct. 15 through Oct.

28, the first annual Festival of The Nile will take place in Luxor, Egypt, it was announced yesterday. The idea for the performing arts festival came from the Egyptian government and Michael Sisk, an American theater director and international arts festival coordinator. For the past three years, with the help of about $50,000 in seed grants from the US Information Agency, the Ford Foundation, the government of Egypt and private funds, Sisk has been developing the idea into, in his words, "a program will provide a serious comparison of varying artistic expressions built around contrasting traditions of East and West, ancient and modern, classical and folk. "Egypt, of course is the legendary mother of our culture," he said, explaining the choice of site after the press conference at Manhattan's Lotus Club, 5 E. 66th St.

"Today in Egypt, performance, theater, music and dance are not separated from life." In the villages, he said, those expressions celebrate the harvest, marriage or just plain happiness. more and more Egypt is again occupying the position of the crossroads of civilization," said Sisk. Sisk is now official president of the newly formed Nile Festival Foundation and director of the festival. A simultaneous' announcement of the festival was made in Cairo yesterday by Abdel Moneim El Sawi, Egyptian minister of culture and information. So far, plans for the two-week festival are only two-thirds finalized, but in addition to the groups already mentioned, featured performers will be: The Manhattan Quartet, The Orchestra of the Conservatoire of Cairo, violinist Erick Friedman and a stillto-be-announced major European Ballet Company.

Twyla Tharp and Dizzy Gillespie will perform along the Nile. The lad from Goose Creek takes his chances By Bob Thomas The Associated Press Gary Busey is a rangy Goose Creek, Texas lad whose hour in show business seems to have arrived. He has the title role in Columbia Pictures' "The Buddy Holly Story," portraying the brief life and singing the influential music of the rock and roll pioneer. The film opened last Friday and Busey's performance was widely praised. And he also is costarring with Jan-Michael Vincent and William Katt in Warner Brothers' "Big Wednesday," John Milius's fond reminiscence of his surfing years, which opens locally tomorrow.

When I first met Busey, he came along on an interview with Kris Kristofferson, and he seemed 1978 like one of the tribe of hangers-on around rock stars. Wrong impression. Busey played a role in "A Star Is Born" and has toured as drummer with Si JULY man. Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge, but he is his own He is also something of a dynamo. He talks nonTHURSDAY, stop, came Creek career and in easy and he the to is past me," full of in he year.

Tulsa, wonder said. 'The "I at where was the Buddy they born changes Holly in loved in Story' Goose Hol- his grew up ly's music. His were the first records I bought as a NEWSDAY, kid, cording "One along the thing with songs I Little live, insisted not on Richard doing in the and them Elvis picture pre-recorded was Presley. rethe way it's done in most movies. I think it worked out fine.

came 'Big and I was surfing 25-foot waves. I've faced thousands of people at rock concerts, I've acted on the stage with luminaries, I played football for eight years in Oklahoma, but I never faced anything like Busey was surprised that Milius chose him as one of the trio of clean-cut surfers- "I was playing a hippie in 'Straight and somehow he saw through the fat and the long, greasy hair." The actor admitted, "When I first tried on the wet suit, I looked like a potato in a leotard." That soon changed. Milius sent him to a physical culturist, and within three weeks Busey had dropped from 195 to 160 pounds, his waistline shrinking from 37 to 31 inches. Jan-Michael Vincent and William Katt are Californians and longtime surfers. Busey speaks in Oklahoma tones and was a stranger to the waves.

Milius rewrote the script to make Busey's character a transplanted Oklahoman, and he sent the actor to learn surfing from a master. That was Gerry Lopez, a half-Japanese, halfCuban Hawaiian who lives on a mountaintop in. Maui, the better to spy the rising surf on the island. "Jan-Michael and I lived with him for three weeks," Busey recalled. "We slept on the floor, and Gerry got us up at dawn just so we could see the sunrise.

Then we ground beans for coffee, did pushups and other exercises, then started looking for surf." Busey recalled his first day in the water: waves were 8-feet high, and you could hear the boards snap as they broke in the surf." The lessons were fast and bruising, but by shooting time, Busey looked and surfed like a veteran. He even took part in the climactic sequence at Oahu's Sunset Beach, where the waves mounted to 25 it happened on a Wednesday." Next, Busey plans to star in "Harold," a modern re-creation of a Harold Lloyd comedy. "I'm taking a chance," he admitted, "but I also took chances with 'Buddy Holly' and 25-foot waves. I figure that the guy who takes the biggest chances gets the biggest compensation." Gary Busey as Buddy Holly NYU closing Town Hall tomorrow Town Hall will close its doors tomorrow and its owner, New York University, will turn the building over to the Town Hall Foundation, the fund-raising organization for the landmark Manhattan concert hall. In a joint announcment, NYU president John C.

Sawhill and New York University Club president Stanley C. Lesser said that the transfer will become effective Aug. 31. The club occupies space in the West 43rd Street building and has a lease which extends for several more years. In the statement, Sawhill said that the university "deeply regrets that it is unable to maintain this valuable cultural resource and sincerely hopes that the Town Hall Foundation, and the NYU Club will be successful in their endeavors to find an organization to operate the concert facilities in Town Hall." The acoustically-praised hall succumbed to competition from Lincoln Center as well as the declining atmosphere of the Times Square area.

The university acquired Town Hall in 1958 as a gift and since that time has accumulated a rising deficit in operating costs, which this year totalled more than $150,000. Though most of Town Hall's administrative staff has been let go, a handful will remain through Aug. 31 to clean up details. A small work force will also remain permanently to maintain the building, a university spokesman said. Despite the closing, Lesser said yesterday that he was hopeful that the hall would eventually become active again.

"We're still discussing possibilities with various Lesser said. In response to a question, he said that there is absolutely no chance that the auditorium would be destroyed or converted for some other use. -Bill Kaufman.