Articulate

Wayfinders
Elizabeth Strout: Steady As She Goes-author Elizabeth Strout, spent decades finessing her own unique narratives, often using her own upbringing as a touchstone; Pamela Frank: Fit As A Fiddle-celebrated violinist Pamela Frank was at the height of her career when she suffered a life-altering injury; The Very Moving Rennie Harris-pioneer of hip-hop dance theater, but it took a while...
TRANSCRIPT
(soft music)
- Welcome to "Articulate," the show that explores
the useful truths that art explains so well.
I'm Jim Cotter and on this episode, wayfinders.
Before she was a Pulitzer Prize winning author,
Elizabeth Strout spent decades
finessing her own unique narratives,
often using her own upbringing as a touchstone.
- My parents came from Puritan stock.
That's an entirely different culture.
Which of course I didn't know
because I was brought up in it.
They're not particularly demonstrative.
- [Jim] The celebrated violinist, Pamela Frank
was at the height of her career
when she suffered a life altering injury.
After nearly a decade, she's playing again
but now with new found purpose.
- I was in complete agony and I just thought,
you know, just help me.
You know, and I will do what anybody says now.
- [Jim] Rennie Harris and hip hop dance grew up together.
Today the choreographer is celebrated
for the unique way he's pushed the form forward.
- It's a difference than just making a salad or soup.
You know that that's a pepper
and what the pepper's gonna do.
You know what the tomato's gonna do.
With bodies, with spirits, you know,
you don't know what you're gonna get.
- [Jim] That's all coming up on "Articulate."
(orchestral music)
(contemplative music)
Today, Elizabeth Strout is a literary powerhouse.
(contemplative music)
The author of seven novels,
six of them bestsellers, she won the Pulitzer Prize
for fiction in 2009 for her bestselling collection
of linked short stories, "Olive Kitteridge."
in 2014, it was turned into
an Emmy Award winning HBO miniseries.
And in 2019, the book's hugely popular sequel,
"Olive, Again" reunited readers with beloved characters.
So it's a good thing that Strout didn't give up
when she failed to get published by age 30
or even 40.
Her debut novel, "Amy and Isabelle" came out in 1998
when she was 42.
Many were surprised by her success,
but not her daughter, Serena.
- She had grown up, you know,
eating her breakfast off the tops of manuscripts.
She just always believed I was a writer.
She'd come home from school when she was really little
and she'd say, "Did you get an agent yet, Mommy?"
And I'd say, "No," and she'd say, "Oh, you will."
and she just believed in me.
It was very interesting and so sweet.
- [Jim] Despite her relationship with her own daughter,
Strout's stories often revolve
around strained parent-child relationships.
Her characters face
and work through discord and estrangement.
They get knocked sideways by events that test
or reveal their love.
In 2016's "My Name Is Lucy Barton" for example,
filial ties bind but also cut.
- Or called to me,
and when I called them it was always hard.
I felt I heard in their voices anger,
a habitual resentment,
as though they were silently saying
you are not one of us.
As though I had betrayed them by leaving them.
I suppose I had.
- [Jim] Elizabeth Strout was raised in rural Maine
by parents she has described as skeptical of pleasure,
true to their Puritan roots.
But encouraged by her mother,
the young Strout filled notebooks
with sharp eyed observations about daily life
in small town New England.
She was interested not only in outward appearances,
but in the hidden, inner lives
of the people she encountered.
- It is just about one of my earliest memories
of just watching.
Just watching people.
We didn't have a television,
we lived in a very isolated areas,
both in New Hampshire and in Maine.
So my sense of observing people goes back so far.
And it's not just observing them,
it's like I will look at somebody and think,
oh what does it physically feel like
to be in that pair of jeans?
You know?
So I've done that for so many years
that it's what my imagination does.
- [Jim] But putting her imagination to work
for money seemed at first unimaginable.
After getting an English degree from Bates College
in Maine, Strout spent a few years bouncing around
from waitress jobs, to temp work.
She even played piano in a bar.
Then she decided she wanted to be a legal aide attorney.
But almost as soon as she tried it,
she learned that practicing law was not for her.
So she got married, had her daughter
and for the next 16 years juggled fiction and family life.
Teaching at a community college while continuing
to quietly but doggedly write her own stories.
Strout and her husband would eventually part,
but still she says their union fundamentally changed
her understanding of relationships.
- My parents came from Puritan stock.
That's an entirely different culture.
Which of course I didn't know
because I was brought up in it.
They're not particularly demonstrative,
there's not a lot of,
- Hugging and.
- Hugging or kissing or anything like that.
And then my first husband was Jewish.
And it was amazing.
It was like a whole barn door had fallen off
and I realized, wow!
You know there's this whole world out there.
Because they would talk about anything.
And they would hug and kiss and my father-in-law
would kiss my husband when he first saw him.
You know, it was just an entirely different culture
and it was so amazing to me.
And that's much more how my daughter has been raised.
- Was it frightening to you
or was it exciting to you, or both?
- Both.
At the beginning it was a little frightening.
Because I'd just never seen anything like it in my life.
And as time went on, I realized
this is a wonderful thing that's happened to me.
To be allowed to see this.
- Today, Elizabeth Strout lives with her husband,
James Tierney in New York City and in Maine.
The quiet seclusion of her home state
has always been her sanctuary.
She goes there to drop in on her old friends,
both real and imagined.
Because these characters feel so real to me,
- Yeah.
- I'm actually very interested in how real they feel to you.
- Oh they're so real to me.
- [Jim] Like relatives?
- Probably closer.
- [Jim] Really?
- Yeah.
- Wow.
So therefore, do you miss them when they're written?
- Yes.
- Do their stories go on after you've written them?
- Sometimes they do.
And sometimes they don't.
Sometimes they're gone.
- Is that just because they,
- Because I love them, I just,
(laughs)
- [Jim] Really you have to bring them.
- I'm like oh yeah, let's you know,
let's see what they're up to.
- And when they came out,
then they still had been sitting there.
- Yeah, waiting.
(laughing) - Right, right.
It's interesting.
- Yeah, it is.
It's very interesting.
But, you know, I don't know ahead of,
I mean, I don't know until I do it
that they're gonna show up again.
And then I realize, oh yeah.
Absolutely, let's go.
- [Jim] Olive Kitteridge for one, insisted on an encore.
Strout's seventh novel, "Olive, Again" received rave reviews
and spent weeks in the upper regions
of the bestseller charts.
Now 64, Elizabeth Strout is today still faithful
to her Puritan roots.
Keeping her head down while marching steadily on
into her next chapter.
(soft music)
("Bach Sonata for Violin in C minor")
At the turn of the last century,
Pamela Frank was one of the brightest stars
in the classical firmament.
Earning rave reviews performing
with the world's greatest orchestras
and amassing a legion of loyal fans.
At age 32 she became the recipient
of one of classical music's highest honors.
But then, in 2001, the music stopped.
After hurting her hand in a household accident,
a botched acupuncture treatment made things worse.
- And so, I basically looked like a stroke victim.
My ulnar nerve had been injured.
(laughs)
I couldn't use this side for six months.
I couldn't drive, I couldn't write,
I couldn't do it, let alone play the violin.
Forget it, I couldn't hold anything.
- [Jim] Sidelined from performing,
Frank discovered how she could still be a musician
without picking up an instrument.
This revelation changed both how she thought about
and taught music.
- The thing that I hope to help my students the most with
is how to practice less and better.
People spend five, six, eight, 10 hours a day
in a practice room learning notes
but they're not thinking.
I'm trying to get them to think and therefore
to practice what matters.
Which is what are they saying,
not how are they playing.
- [Jim] But Frank missed performing.
So much so that she'd often play through the pain.
Until, in 2012 she suffered another debilitating injury.
This time to her neck.
- I was in complete agony
and I just thought, you know, just help me.
And I will do what anybody says now.
(mournful violin music)
- [Jim] It was then that she heard about Howard Nelson,
a physical therapist known for his pragmatic approach.
Helping patients change their pattern of movement
and posture to promote healthy, sustainable alignment.
- It was an empowering thought.
It was an empowering idea,
that you could actually influence
how your body works and feels.
And if you can harm yourself, you can also help yourself.
- [Jim] But at the time of their first appointment,
Frank was feeling anything but empowered.
Howard Nelson still remembers
the day they met eight years ago.
- She walks in the room
and she's got a cervical collar on
and she's cold and clammy.
And is very freaked out about doing anything
because the doctor had said
she probably would need surgical fusion of your neck.
- [Jim] But it never came to that.
Nelson put her firmly on the road to recovery
by altering the way she held her violin
and moved her body as she played.
It was a steep re-learning curve
but she says she was able and willing to climb it
because making music is all she's ever known.
It's in her DNA.
Her parents, Lilian Kallir and Claude Frank,
were both celebrated concert pianists.
- Oh, I think I was spoiled, genetically.
Nature and nurture, actually,
because they would always just be talking about
what the music means.
And it wasn't in any kind of academic, cerebral way.
It was just, they were always searching for more
and more content.
You know, when they would just talk about music
between themselves, and my father, of course,
he was so reverent of the composers.
He thought this was like God.
I know that he felt that he was the vehicle.
He was the middle man between the composer
and the listener.
And so he was totally selfless in that way.
And I think he accomplished that goal.
- [Jim] Throughout her early life,
Frank performed often with her dad,
and later they would record together.
When she got hurt, she found a silver lining
in the hiatus because it gave her more time
to spend with him and with her mother
in their final years.
But Frank too needed someone to lean on
and she soon came to rely on Howard Nelson.
Not only for physical therapy,
but more and more for friendship.
Nelson, who as a teenager
was a nationally ranked tennis player,
spent most of his life working with atheletes
and had no experience with classical musicians.
So Frank took him to concerts
where he could analyze performers' movements
and refine his approach to her treatment.
They'd debrief over dinners.
For five months it was all very business like
until it became something more.
("I'll Be Seeing You")
- He went to visit his mother in Florida
and he said something very uncharacteristic of him.
He said, "I think I'm gonna miss you."
And I thought about it for a second,
"Yeah, I think I'm gonna miss you too."
- [Jim] While he was in Florida,
serendipity brought Nelson's feelings to the fore.
- She texted me a picture of the moon
while I was looking at the moon
and we both realized that we were looking at the same thing
from New York and Florida.
And that was sort of a big moment of connection.
But when I got back to New York
I said let's meet for, let's go out to dinner.
And we went out to Pisticci in upper Manhattan
and we had some food or a drink
and I went over to the bench next to her
and I just said, "I love you,"
and I gave her a kiss at that moment
on the bench at this restaurant.
- The thing about Howard is that
it just seemed like he was in my life all along somehow
and it just took a long time to find him.
There was a rightness about him,
a familiarity about him almost immediately.
I mean it was just a different level
of comfort and trust that I had with him.
And I mean, of course I joke that, you know,
anybody that gets you back to playing you better marry
because that's the, you know.
But that ends up sounding like it's a gift to him.
You know, to marry him, it's not that.
I mean, he gave me my life back
and we happen to love each other.
- [Jim] Five years into their marriage,
Pam and Howard are now also partners in a venture
that helps others understand
how it's possible to make great music
without damaging the body.
- I think working together is exponentially fantastic
for me because when we look at a musician,
I mean yes, the analysis
is a big thing that we have in common.
But you see things in people that nobody does.
- How do you think you complement each other?
Conversely, what are the things you think
that she puts up with from you?
(laughs)
- I think we're perfect for each other
in the sense that I'm really fast about everything.
Fast thinking, fast speaking, fast acting,
I wanna get things done as quickly as possible
and not necessarily to the best that they can be
but just things need to be done.
But I think fast and speak fast
and expect speed from everybody.
And you are incredibly methodical
and you take your time and you think things through.
You don't do anything irrationally.
And you always say speed kills.
- That's a great answer, because,
no because I need to speed up.
- No you don't.
- I think I do.
- He's just asking for compliments.
- And you need to slow down.
- Yes and that is true.
- Not big problems then?
- No, not big problems.
Are they?
- No, no.
♪ I find you in the morning sun ♪
♪ And when the night is new
♪ I'll be looking at the moon
♪ But I'll be seeing you
(soft music)
♪ Life is an eternal line
♪ It's what I want
♪ It's what I want, it's what I want, it's what I want ♪
- [Jim] Some people learn to dance.
Others, like Rennie Harris, pioneer of hip hop dance,
are born to it.
♪ It's what I want, it's what I want, it's what I want ♪
♪ Yeah
♪ God
♪ Do do do do, do do do do
♪ You are the strong and you are mighty ♪
- [Jim] Harris grew up in north Philadelphia
in the 1970s.
And from the very beginning he was constantly in motion.
- My mom would used to say, "Turn off that radio!"
It'd be like 6:30 in the morning,
I'd turn on the radio, start dancing,
dance into the bathroom, come back, you know.
Or I'm at the table, I'm dancing.
My mom would like, smack me
'cause I'm trying to animate what water
with a glass of water without trying to spill it.
You know, trying to.
And so, like, it's really a part of your day to day,
like, for those who are are like, who love,
who are just like (sighs)
for some reason we just have to move.
- You are a dancer, you don't just dance.
- Right, exactly.
- [Jim] Harris, the oldest of seven,
was raised in a Catholic home
and studied briefly for the priesthood.
But ultimately, religion didn't call to him
as powerfully as movement.
For him, dance binds body and spirit.
It has a unique power to heal.
At age 12, Harris formed his first dance group
with his brother and a friend
to compete in a church talent show.
By age 15, he had founded The Step Masters
and a popping crew called The Scatter Boys
who would go on to perform with the who's-who
of 1980s hip hop acts.
Including Salt 'N Pepa, Run-D.M.C.,
and Grandmaster Flash.
When he was passed over for the movie "Krush Groove,"
the last in a string of popular films
about street dancing, a discouraged Harris
headed back home.
In 1991, after a year of scraping by,
a Philadelphia based dance company
offered him $1500 to create a work
that would premier the following year.
He still remembers getting that call
from Michael Pedretti from Movement Theater International.
- It was the first time someone offered me
money ahead of time, a year before the gig.
And I told him, I said, "Hey man,
"I might not be here."
I said, you know.
He said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "Well, they just had a shoot out
"right out side of my room at my house.
"I could be not here."
I said, "Well, I'll take your money
"and I don't know if I'll show up
"but if I show up, we'll do it."
And so he gave me half the money,
and I was like, I showed up
and the company was born from that moment.
- [Jim] Today, Harris's touring company,
Pure Movement and his youth spinoff Rhaw,
short for Rennie Harris's Awe-inspiring Works
have been thriving for more than 25 years,
performing across the world,
in Europe, Asia, Africa, and beyond.
Major dance companies around the US
have also commissioned work from him.
Harris develops each piece on site,
based on the town at hand.
But since so much comes together organically
in rehearsals, it's often impossible for him
to make, let alone communicate the master plan.
- Almost every project that I've done,
whether with my company or another company,
I've always heard whispers of,
"I don't think he knows what he's doing."
And, you know, it used to hurt my feelings
but then I kinda got over it
because yeah, that's the part that you're expecting me
to create expression via a formula.
I don't approach it that way.
It's a difference than just, you know,
making a salad or soup.
You know that that's a pepper
and what the pepper's gonna do.
You know what the tomato's gonna do.
With bodies or spirits, you know,
you don't know what you're gonna get.
All right guys, we're back.
- So when it comes to like,
a normal recipe for what a choreographer
would normally do, their normal process,
Rennie just takes that recipe
and he just rips it all up
and scatter it all around.
And say okay, let me see what I can get outta this.
He trusts the dancers, and we trust him.
- Rennie allows for people to be themselves.
To be the individual.
So for me, I'm a breaker, I'm a complete b-boy.
I know how to different styles,
but he allows me to be me and shine as me
throughout his work.
- You gotta be willing to take it somewhere.
And he trusts that you can do it.
It's just that you also have to believe in him
and believe in his vision
and believe in yourself at the same time.
- [Jim] In the past few years, Rennie Harris
has had to learn to trust his dancers more than ever.
Now in his mid 50s, the choreographer
has had both his hips replaced.
He just can't move the way he used to.
- I can't really actually demonstrate the movement.
I have to, like convey the movement
to the dancer and like,
slowly process them through this movement.
So in that way, I don't know if the body
was sort of betraying me,
but sorta going through a transition to say okay,
I need to slow you down
and let's see what you, you know.
Let's hone the practice, let's hone what it is
that you're doing in a whole other way.
I feel like I have a completely different insight now.
- [Jim] And for many of his dancers,
Harris's work hits close to home.
His dances delve into the social,
the political, the personal.
Everything he brings to the stage an honest representation
of his own experiences and observations.
And this authenticity is what makes his dancers,
including eight year company veteran, Phil Cuttino Jr.
trust Harris's vision.
In 2019's "A Day In The Life," Cuttino closes the show
in a duet about two brothers
who, while hanging out in their own neighborhood,
become involved in a violent altercation
with the police.
It ends when a cop shoots Cotino's character dead.
(wailing music)
- The reason why that piece is so important to me
is because I got shot before, like.
It wasn't by a cop, but it was like,
through crazy street violence and all that type stuff.
So, it was just crazy to really see
all of these different dynamics
and ways of, he's being my real reality.
And to have to die on stage in front of like,
hundreds and hundreds of people sometimes,
that stuff is crazy.
To really like, live that moment,
and really like, tell that story
and help people understand.
(mournful music)
- [Jim] Harris has always been driven
by a desire to help people understand
both themselves and others.
To find catharsis
by pouring his deepest emotions into dance.
- Work is actually a relief
to get the thought out, process,
and then to watch it morph in the body to say,
you know, there's still breath in what you're saying.
I put this pain in this body
but that pain is not really radiating the pain
I'm really feeling, but it also there's a pain
and I begin to see the beauty in that pain,
the humanity in the pain
that I'm putting into the body, right?
And so then that effects me in a whole other way.
Like, it's almost, it kind of releases me
from that thing.
- [Jim] Present at its birth,
Rennie Harris continues to create dance
that reflects his life, the communities that shaped him
and the evolution of hip hop
from the street into an international cultural phenomenon.
(percussive music)
(cheering)
(soft music)
For more "Articulate" find us on social media
or at our website, articulateshow.org.
On the next "Articulate," the award winning author
Maaza Mengiste writes of an Ethiopian home
she left behind, dismounting preconceptions
and bringing to light some of that country's rich past.
- Fiction tells a truth that history cannot.
And I grabbed on to that.
And I had that on a sticky note
on my computer for those moments when I wavered.
- [Jim] Once a wanderer pursuing creative endeavors,
Dick Boak followed his instincts
and created a role for himself in the evolution
of the Martin guitar company.
All the while
becoming an ever more skillful artisan himself.
The internationally renowned Scottish violinist,
Nicola Benedetti was cast into the spotlight
at a very young age
and struggled growing up in the public eye.
Now in her 30s, she reflects on those years
as necessary growing pains.
I'm Jim Cotter.
Join us for the next "Articulate."
(upbeat orchestral music)
- [Announcer] "Articulate" with Jim Cotter
is made possible with generous funding
from the Neubauer Family Foundation.
(exciting music)