(upbeat music) Up next on State of the Arts, Arizona's Bollywood Fusion dance team, costume design for the theater, and the life of a luthier.

Stay tuned for these stories and more on State of the Arts.

Hello and welcome, I'm Mary Paul.

On this week's show, we're looking at live performance art from the stage to the work behind the scenes.

First in the spotlight, Om Shanti is the University of Arizona's one of a kind dance team that combines classical Indian dances with a contemporary twist.

This once small ragtag group of students looking for a sense of community has transformed into a nationally- competitive award-winning dance team, sharing their cultural expression along the way.

There's a dance style for every emotion.

Like whichever emotion you're feeling, you can be able to express that through dance.

(music) So Om Shanti is a Bollywood fusion dance team that celebrates culture from South Asia, and it fuses it with Western dance styles like contemporary hip hop.

Om Shanti, Om Shanti, Om Shanti!

We also celebrate our classical elements of India, so we perform Kathak, Paranatam, and we try to incorporate those as much as we can, and we also use dance styles from the South of India, so mas, kuthu, those are your energetic, really fun masala-y dance styles.

So we try to incorporate all five, six styles in our comp pieces or wherever we go and perform out to the world.

Growing up, I've seen movies with Bollywood dance teams.

I've heard of people going to bigger colleges that have Bollywood dance teams, but Tucson doesn't really have an Indian community like that, so that we were able to find a community within such a small group was such a huge thing.

I'm excited to see the updates that we've done to the choreo.

We always dance to tell a story to our audience.

It's either a story of our rich heritage or it's very lyric based on the songs that we're performing to.

Either way, we perform for kind of a storytelling aspect, and I think that that makes it really special.

I feel like we need to clean that part up a little bit because the gaps between agents was looking odd and it was not in sync.

We try to perform in communities on campus, off campus, and now we've been competing nationally.

And our main objective is to bring the community together and educate people who may not be aware of the plethora of styles that India and other South Asian countries have to offer.

South Asian dance styles aren't very mainstream, especially at a predominantly white university.

So we get to showcase our heritage to people who have quite literally never seen things like this.

And so that makes me feel very proud and like we're making an impact, not just to students watching us, but to the actual university itself.

We started and it was such a small team.

And so now we're nationally doing this and it was something we dreamed about when I first started.

Good morning.

What time is it?

It is 6:45.

In Santa Barbara, we're about to go for prop setup.

New York.

(inaudible catter) It's so easy for me.

I love people coming up to us and asking us, hey, like what are you performing?

And we get to open a whole nother door for them to watch Bollywood movies or listen to music.

It's honestly amazing.

Going to competition and seeing like hundreds of other people and so many different teams across the US all come together for their love of dance, their love of the community was such an amazing, beautiful thing.

And it gets just bigger and bigger every single time.

I love that we get to spread the message of our dance and our love for our culture, not just to Indian people, but to like the whole community as well.

How I am right now is because of dance.

That was my outlet that I needed to be able to dance and that was my outlet that I needed to express myself where I couldn't academically or in a clinical environment.

So I think that's what I took from dance.

And that's what kind of keeps me going with dance is it's not just a hobby, it's a passion that I can't ever leave.

To my current members and any future members of Om Shanti, I wish and I hope you have the same love for dance and the same respect for dance and culture as I have as my fellow members and my fellow leadership has that you guys promote and propagate the team just forward.

It goes up and up and up after this.

So I genuinely do hope that you guys feel the same love that I have grown to feel for this team and keep pushing the team forward.

We've come so far and this guy's the limit.

Just be Om Shanti.

(performance audio) "Don't worry, that's why I have this."

Now we take a look at costume design where character, history and emotion are translated into fabric, texture and form.

Costume production is a deeply technical process, one that merges craftsmanship with mentorship.

In this story, we meet Southern Arizona costume designers who over the years have worked with the Gaslight Theater, Old Tucson and University of Arizona School of Theater, Film and Television as they've perfected their craft.

There's so little magic in the world, especially now.

It's a hard time to be alive and a hard time to be happy.

I had a professor in undergraduate school that called the theater the temple.

And I always think of it like that.

I still get chills when I walk in theaters because magic happens there that can't happen anywhere else.

We suspend our disbelief and we believe these characters that come to life and it's a communal thing.

There's so little opportunity for us to come together and share an experience anymore.

So to me, that's still kind of magic.

Ready for set.

Okay.

Awesome.

Freshman year, we went to see a Shakespearean play, "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and it was done as a woodcut.

And it was like the light bulb went off and it was like, oh my God, this is what I'm gonna do for a living.

Oh God, that's nice Renee.

I have not had a linear career path but that's something I always share with my students also that if you're an artist, everything that you do in your life informs who you are as an artist.

So nothing you do is a wasted time.

For a number of years, I was a professional dancer.

In between seasons when I was dancing, I worked in costume shops because I knew how to sew.

When I sort of like aged out of dancing, I went back to grad school, got a degree in costume production and then that's what I've been doing since then.

I had a guidance counselor in high school who told me that I could never have a career in theater so I should choose something more realistic.

So I believed her and I went into graphic design.

I saw how much fun the theater kids were having and I decided I'm just gonna do what I really, really wanna do.

My dream was to work on Broadway.

So I took my little measly resume and I said, okay, I'm gonna do this.

Ray Diffen stage clothes hired me as a stitcher.

So I got my foot in the door.

I've worked with Maryann for 30 some years.

Big chunk of my life.

She has been costuming me on stage, making me everything from a crab.

I played Countess Crustacia at the Gaslight to Tallulah Bankhead at the Invisible Theater and everything in between.

When I think about Maryann, she just doesn't teach skills.

She teaches possibilities.

She opened my eyes.

The same person who can sew a tutu can sew a spacesuit.

For the Invisible Theater, Maryann was a resident costume designer.

So we collaborated brilliantly.

But beyond that, what she saw on the stage, I trust her implicitly.

In addition, she worked with a conversation with Edith Head because she made some of the costumes and she taught me things from a costume designer's point of view that I can incorporate so that people truly believe I'm a designer when I portray the legendary Edith Head.

Working together here at the Gaslight Theater for about 10, 11 years, that's when we started really getting into the whole theater.

I've been sewing since I was really young.

Same with Maryann.

You have to have a passion for it because it's not the simplest career.

It's not the highest paid career.

The people that I know like Maryann, that do it, they have the same passion otherwise.

And the film work and stuff and theater work, it's difficult.

You're the first one in, the last one out all the time.

And the last one mentioned and the least appreciated.

We're the little behind the scenes, and the visual, kind of like the text.

Except they seem to get a little bit more recognition because they're on the stage.

We're literally behind the scenes.

We just, you know, people forget about us till they need us.

And then it's like, oh yeah, you guys.

When you're working on a play, it's a lot of collaborating with the other people on the production team.

There's finishers, stitchers, drapers, first hands, and then what, a shopper, costume shopper.

The costume designer comes in.

And also working with the actors to discover how they are progressing their character.

That's why I love working what I do too, because we're telling that story.

A good costume does a number of things.

It defines the character.

The costume allows them to do everything that they need to do in the performance.

As far as like freedom of movement, quick changes or anything like that.

It just supports the performance and it supports the performer.

This deck of cards is called the bicycle deck.

That led me to researching bicycles.

This was the beginning of the women's movement and the bicycle helped project it forward.

So I ended up using all different bicycle parts.

I chose blue because I was trying to mimic the blue card.

The second deck during World War II was called the escape deck.

When you immerse it in water, it opens up to a map of different parts of Europe.

I decided to do that with this.

When you look at the inside of the jacket, it looks like a normal lining.

When you open it up, it becomes the women's movement on a bicycle route.

It starts out March 31st, 1776 with Abigail Adams' letter to John Adams.

That's when they were writing the Constitution.

In 1963, Congress passes the Equal Pay Act.

Then in 1973, there was Roe v. Wade and it was a woman's right to safe and legal abortion.

We all know where that is now.

August 26th, 1920, 19th Amendment passes.

Women are given the right to vote right there.

And then of course, we have January 2020 that Kamala Harris is the first female vice president of the United States.

And then I put this decoration on here too because every time we try to move forward in freedom or anything, as we go forward two steps back, it's never a straight line.

It's always a zigzag.

Most importantly is you have to be willing to develop trust in yourself as an artist first and know that your art and your feelings and your thoughts have value.

It's hard for young people.

We develop that as we grow older.

There is no specific channel to follow.

It's something you have to try like anything in life.

And then you learn the skills you need to be successful.

You don't have to come in with those skills.

And you gotta go with your heart.

You gotta go with that passion of what drives you.

And you know what?

It will, it really will.

That's what drove me.

Tony Whitford works as a luthier.

In his shop in Virginia, raw materials are transformed by his artistry and imagination into high quality custom guitars.

And wood begins its journey that eventually ends in music at the hands of skilled musicians from across the globe.

(woodworking sounds) I love everything about guitars, the way they make music and the way they look.

And when I was younger, I got into building things out of wood.

(upbeat music) One day I was looking at the guitar that I had and I was playing it and I realized this thing is made out of wood.

Every piece of this thing is made out of wood.

And I think I can make one of these.

So the time went by and I stuck in my head and I kept thinking one day I would like to build guitars.

And finally I got to a place in my life where I could build guitars because I had a place to do it.

I had the right tools to do it.

And so I just decided now is the time I'm gonna do it.

I'm just gonna start building guitars.

I told my wife I'm going to build custom guitars.

The magic of working with wood is you have to imagine that this piece of wood that you have in front of you, you've chosen this piece of wood for one reason or another because of the ease of its, the ability, the ease that it lends toward making things or the beauty of it.

You're just fascinated by the beauty of this piece of wood.

And then you look further into it and you see that this piece of wood, you have to know that this thing was growing in a forest one day.

And so you've taken something that was alive, growing in a forest, and you've created something that's very functional and is art and makes music.

Wood to me is just a fascinating media that art can be created with.

What I think sets our guitars apart from other guitars in the marketplace is the one-on-one personal touch that we give to each guitar.

You can buy a number of guitars that are all great guitars hanging on shelves and hanging on hooks in music stores.

But those guitars have been decided that this is what that guitar will be for you.

But as you progress as a guitarist, as a person who wants something a little more, you're gonna want something that has your own personal touch on it.

Something that plays the way you think it should play, not the neck that some other guitar company wanted you to have.

So we sit down with each player and we talk to them about what it is that they want.

And we listen to what they say.

And that may be something that they want to have on their custom build.

Custom inlay, something that speaks their voice out apart from the music.

The color, the touch of the guitar, and most importantly, the way it feels in their hands.

We make sure that that comes across in each one of our guitars.

(hammerming) Most of the challenges come in guitar builds from the wood that we choose to use.

Not all pieces of wood lend themselves well to just being shaped any way you would like for it to be.

You have to wrestle it into submission, so to speak.

Cross grain structure in the material that won't file right or it won't sand right and it won't cut right, or it'll warp out of shape as soon as you cut it and you have to start over.

So generally it's the wood itself and the materials itself that create the tension in building.

My experience playing a worth guitar, Tony's got a great attention to detail.

He picks up, he's got his own thing going on, but there's also some things that are kind of a nod back to other manufacturers and just other luthiers and other things that people have done making guitars.

I like the, it's got a little volute back here.

I like that.

Some guys hate that, some guys hate that, but I like that on the back of the guitar.

Yeah, it's just a great instrument.

I mean, the thing that he did for me, I kind of wanted something a little more bare bones than what he normally does.

He builds some guitars with some beautiful tops and beautiful figuring of the wood.

I just went with a gold top thing to keep it a little understated, but it's definitely, it's a workhorse guitar.

I mean, it sounds great and like I said, it sustains.

It's got an amazing sustain.

I'm not gonna do the 'Spinal Tap' thing because I'm sure every guitar player you're talking to is gonna say, it's a sustain.

When I was a child, I had a little bit of a rough childhood, much like a lot of other people did.

And I was a pretty lonely kid and I spent a lot of time by myself just trying to figure out what to do and how to be and what to be.

I was in a situation where I didn't know what to do, just like a lot of kids.

But because I discovered a guitar, because my cousin had a guitar leaning against the wall in a corner covered in dirt, covered in dust, and he allowed me to take it home with me and pluck on it and figure out what to do with it, I had something now to focus on.

Because the guitar was there, all of a sudden I wasn't lonely anymore and all of a sudden I had music now and I could share that music with other people and people would come and share their music with me.

Music saved my life, the guitar saved my life as far as I'm concerned.

Mark Dunn's guitar is gonna be a beautiful guitar.

It has a quilted maple top that I had that piece of wood sitting around for a long time and I knew one day I'd use it on a cool guitar.

And as soon as Mark saw it, he was like, "Oh, that's mine, that's the one I want."

I don't want him to look at it anymore.

That was the piece of mine.

So I was like, "Okay, there you go."

So that worked out well.

And we came up with a cool inlay design for him, stellar, first time we've done that and did a great pau ferro fretboard with some binding on it and he's gonna have a very, very nice guitar when it's done.

It's gonna be pretty special looking.

And of course, you know, he'll play the heck out of it, I'm sure.

(upbeat music) What is up with that?

Dude.

That's sick.

The Mark Dunn model.

Is it the Mark Dunn model?

Yep.

Wow.

The MD1.

The MD1.

That's light.

The very first stone ever.

Dude, you nailed the neck shape.

(guitar plucking) Put a lot of work into that.

The guitar is a quilted maple cap.

That I picked out?

That you picked out, yes, when you first came to the shop.

The neck is pau ferro with ebony binding, that we spoke about.

The ebony binding was your idea.

Yeah.

The pau ferro was my idea because I like it that it's not super porous and I thought it would aesthetically be cool against the purple.

Yes.

The binding is just killer.

The way that I choose the materials and the design elements in a build is obviously there's the one on one first with the artist playing the guitar.

What is it that he wants?

What are his aesthetics?

What type of wood does he like?

And we go from there.

Formulas that we use that are the old tried and true mahogany backs and maple tops.

Ebony fret boards and that type of thing that just create this great tone.

For some reason it's the ingredients and the soup that just, man, you just don't leave them out.

It's the trinity.

You know, it's the one you're cooking.

It's the carrots, the celery, the onion, the garlic.

You have to put those things in there.

And so we try to make sure that we go in the right direction as far as using the correct woods to make good tones and things like that.

But ultimately we have to listen to what the artist wants and what they're looking for.

So we go that way.

I've thought about what I do and how it touches people's lives.

When you talk about it, it sounds a little arrogant but it is something that you have to think about.

You have to think that when someone is playing an instrument that you produced, we already said that I'm part of that music.

Although all I did was create a guitar and obviously their artistry makes the music.

But I'm still a piece of that.

And so that's a big thing.

And I look down the road at that and I look at the amount of music that people make playing the guitars that I make and I love being a part of that.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) For Joshua Walker, writing poetry begins with the mundane tasks of life, taking him to weird and wild places.

From teleporting dogs to a psychic street preacher, his collection of poetry, "The Last Weird Person Awake" exemplifies Josh's dreamlike style.

(upbeat music) What my father once told me is if I had any common sense, I would have been a songwriter.

But instead, I like to do things the hard way and I don't like money that much.

I write a lot of times from the mundane.

I have poems about being in the kitchen.

They start with where I am and then they go ridiculous places.

The act of really writing poetry is to just take the idea and see where we do.

I am Joshua Walker.

I'm mostly a poet, but I also write short stories, dialogues, essays.

My book is episodic narrative poetry.

It is published by Alien Buddha Press.

It's mostly fictional, but there are elements of real people I've met.

Outside the liquor store, there's a preacher in a small group standing like they're waiting for a bus that never arrives.

The biggest challenge is probably emotional honesty.

If you're lying to yourself, you're lying to the audience and there's no point.

That and just editor feedback.

Sometimes it's rough.

I've gotten some mean comments, but I've gotten some like just really sweetheart comments.

Like one person said that their mother used to read them poetry every night and that she had passed away.

And my poem reminded them of her and that made them smile.

When you hear that, that makes your day.

(soft music) I just want people either to connect to the poetry or at least be entertained for a moment.

Because if even just, you know, four sentences can take people's mind off of it just for a minute, that's enough for me.

I spent years waiting for my life to begin.

Then one day I realized it already had.

(soft music) And that does it for this week's look at stories beyond the stage.

I hope you've enjoyed your time with us.

Until next week, I'm Mary Paul.

(soft music) (upbeat music)