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Show Artistic headquarters BaUet company settles in Cedar '" 5f 'vT ' . 2 ' grossly misunderstood word, having been bandied around with such promiscuity, is what keeps man human. And art gives man the medium through which he can express his ability to be uplifted, transformed. "Yet we feel shoddy and old fashioned in our earnestness, ear-nestness, our idealism, in our belief in the nobility and perfectibility of the human spirit. And when asked about love, we wither in the scalding ridicule we hear coming from the King's courtiers," she has written in an unpublihsed paper. "In this denial of love we betray all that is worth saving in man. "If we lose the ability to care, to feel deeply, to combine intellect with emotion, to feel a kinship with all nature and a respect for life, we are doomed." "I feel that art has always been man's greatest source of inspiration. . . and I feel that modern art today has alienated man," she added in the Monday interview. In fact, she said that dance is probably one of the forms of art that alienated man so much. Artists no longer CEDAR CITY "In the worship of the machine and science we have become drugged with in-tellectualism, in-tellectualism, denying that in us which is of the spirit. And so we stand by and let modern art, official organ for the 'profound an-tihumanism,' an-tihumanism,' proclaim that man is evil, life chaotic and brutal, and we are all trapped in the human predicament, without hope." The words of Burch Mann, founder of the American Folk Ballet, are refreshing to most non-artists, especially when they learn they were spoken by an artist. But then again, Mann is not your normal artist, and it is because of this that she has moved the artistic and educational headquarters of this world-renowned dance company to Cedar City and Southern Utah State College. "I feel that by coming into an isolated area, you can create some things you could not do in a developed area," she told the Record in an interview Monday. . She continued that such is not available or possible in Hollywood or most of the commercial "art" centers of the world. In these centers the bottom line has become profit, which is destroying America and making its people mediocre. It is profit that is killing the "art spirit" that is within everyone, and it is "the art spirit that keeps the commonest com-monest man from being mediocre." "There are very few people interested in art in Hollywood," she continued. "Hopefully here we can really create a community of dance-conscious people who can enjoy their art." The problem with modern art, she said, is "the naked king syndrome." Everybody but the king's courtiers can see that the king is naked, but the crafty tailor has convinced him otherwise, and no one dares tell him for fear of being labeled unwise. Thus it is with much of today's art. The children of the average man can tell there is nothing to it, but the "elite," the "intellectuals" dare not admit that they can't see the arts and tell the king that he is unabashedly naked. Mann insists that art must reflect other qualities of man than only those reflected in the past century through phases of realism, naturalism, exitentialism, cubism and many other school of thought. In fact she says that the one major ingrediant missing anymore from art is love. "The trouble with modern art that sees man as depraved, nature as malevolent, comes from the inability to love. Love, that The American Folk Ballet consider that pehaps art is not art if no one else participates par-ticipates in some way. As one of many examples, she gives Andy Worhol, a popular conceptual artist, famous for such paintings as his still life of a Campbell's soup can. "He is only doing his thing. He is an irresponsible artist. He is doing only his own thing." She also names Pablo Picasso, who she insists drifted "away from man, and finally no longer sought the complete human being at all. He was not interested; he had lost the faculty of seeing things as whole. In his eager quest, he tore off layer after layer. So, what should art be? It is simple she said. All of us have the "art spirit" born within us, right down to the housewife who organizes her home. "Art," she concludes, "is that which makes us sensitive to be aware of those things that are beautiful and sensitive." |