On Demand
Survival Kit Archive
January 2004
Mark Morris
Sunday, January 25, 2004
Mark Morris has spent the past 20 years or so living a nomadic existence, touring the world with his dance company. Long considered one of this country’s most innovative choreographers, he has created over 90 dances for his own company, as well as dozens of commissioned operas and ballets for other groups, and his combination of humour and emotional depth has been equally popular with audiences and critics. Now, just as the Mark Morris Dance Group is settling into its new permanent home in Brooklyn, I’ve asked him to uproot himself once again for an extended stay in an isolated cabin in the woods. Let’s discover what he would consider essential to his cultural survival for this trip.
Branford Marsalis
Sunday, January 18, 2004
Branford Marsalis grew up in the most prominent jazz family in the country, and although he’s made forays into rock (playing with Sting and the Grateful Dead), hip-hop (with his band Buckshot LeFonque), classical music, film scores and TV (as musical director of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno), he keeps returning to his jazz roots. In his recent CDs Footsteps of Our Fathers and Romare Bearden Revealed the saxophonist pays tribute to jazz history. Let’s see what this multiple-Grammy-award winning musician has in his survival kit.
Gary Hart
Sunday, January 11, 2004
Gary Hart has put in his time in the corridors of power; he represented the state of Colorado in the U.S. Senate from 1975 to 1987, and ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 1984 and 88. After leaving elected office, he went into something of a spiritual retreat; he’s written a dozen books and earned a doctorate from Oxford University in that time. Recently he’s come back into the public eye, as co-chair of the Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, so it’s probably time for him to take another break. Let’s take a peek in his survival kit.
P.D. James
Sunday, January 04, 2004
P.D. James has set her intricately plotted mysteries in a variety of unusual locations: Death In Holy Orders took place at a theological college in a remote part of East Anglia, Devices and Desires at a nuclear power station on the Norfolk coast, Original Sin in a publishing house on the Thames, The Murder Room in a private museum near Hampstead Heath. But as far as I know Baroness James has never sent her hero, Commander Adam Dalgleish, to the Montana woods on a case. Let’s find out what she’d need for such a trip by looking into her survival kit.
