Headlines at Hopkins
News Release

Office of News and Information
Johns Hopkins University
901 South Bond Street, Suite 540
Baltimore, Maryland 21231
Phone: 443-287-9960 | Fax: 443-287-9920

March 5, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Heather Egan Stalfort
(410) 516-0341 ext. 17
hestalfort@jhu.edu


Laure Drogoul Hosts The 14Karat Cabaret
in the Bakst Theatre

Baltimore-based interdisciplinary artist Laure Drogoul will bring her performance, music, dance, film, and video series, The 14Karat Cabaret, to Evergreen Museum & Library's Bakst Theatre on Friday, March 13. Doors open at 7 p.m. Showtime is at 8 p.m.

The cabaret kicks off with the world premiere of Nancy Andrews' On a Phantom Limb (2009), a film that explores the postmodern condition through the metaphor of a bird-woman cyborg. Composer Dick Turner will give a theatrical performance of unique songs, self-accompanied on trombone. Drogoul, in her signature role of "La Hostess," will serve as the evening's emcee, along with Paul Baroody on keyboards.

Co-sponsored by Evergreen Museum & Library and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), the evening is an accompanying program to the retrospective exhibition, Follies, Predicaments, and Other Conundrums: The Works of Laure Drogoul, on view in MICA's Decker and Meyerhoff galleries through Sunday, March 15. Exhibition information is available online at www.mica.edu/drogoul.

Evergreen Museum & Library is located at 4545 N. Charles St. in Baltimore. Free on-site parking is available. Tickets are $10 for the public, $5 for members. A limited number of free seats are available for students. Seating is extremely limited; advance paid reservations are required by calling 410-516-0341. A cash beverage bar will be available prior to the performance and during intermission. Complete information is available online at www.museums.jhu.edu or by calling the museum at 410-516-0341.

Nancy Andrews

Nancy Andrews' DIY films combine live-action, documentary, puppetry, and animation forms. Her characters and stories are synthesized from various sources, including archives and historical accounts, combined with autobiographical and fictional material. Her films are reflections on contemporary culture, history, philosophy, and the self. However, at root they are personal films about life, death, and mystery.

Andrews' films have been presented by the Museum of Modern Art, Pacific Film Archive, Gene Siskel Film Center, and Ann Arbor Film Festival, among others; and are in the film collections of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art. She has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from The LEF Foundation, The Illinois State Arts Council, The Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (supported by the Jerome Foundation and New York State Council on the Arts), and National Endowment for the Arts. She is a current Guggenheim Fellow. For more information about Nancy Andrews, visit www.nancyandrews.net.

Dick Turner

The performances of Paris resident and Baltimore native Dick Turner are marked by an intense theatricality as he accompanies himself on trombone while singing to his own arrangements of songs in diverse popular styles. POPCYCLE, his ever-growing collection of unusual, often humorous, and sometimes psychologically-complex songs — including "Let's Have an Orgy," "Chinese Butterfly," "Daddy's Gun," and "Empty Pens," — were composed to represent the unending variety of the human experience, from the absurd to questions of death and the ultimate goals of our existence. For more information about Dick Turner, visit www.myspace.com/turnerdick.

Laure Drogoul (La Hostess)

Laure Drogoul is an interdisciplinary artist, cabaretist and "cobbler of situations" who lives in Baltimore. She has exhibited and performed her work nationally and internationally including Asia and Russia. Since 1989, Drogoul has been the founding director of "The 14Karat Cabaret," the performance space/cultural laboratory of Maryland Art Place, located at 218 W. Saratoga St. in Baltimore. As La Hostess and emcee of the cabaret, she has presented multi-disciplinary performances, music, film, dance, and hybrid acts of all sorts. Drogoul received a BFA from Tyler School of Art and MFA from MICA's Rinehart School of Sculpture.

The Bakst Theatre

Located in the North Wing's second floor, the space that now houses Evergreen Museum & Library's Bakst Theatre was originally a gymnasium. It was built in 1886 for Alice Whitridge and T. Harrison Garrett's three sons who were schooled at home, and later was transformed into a theater by Alice Warder and John Work Garrett. Today it is the only private theater decorated by Leon Bakst, the famed Russian set and costume designer for the Ballets Russes whom the Garretts met in Paris just before World War I. Mrs. Garrett invited Bakst to Evergreen in 1922 and the Theatre opened in May of 1923. Bakst stenciled the Theatre's walls and lobby ceiling with Russian peasant motifs. He also designed three stage sets and costumes for Mrs. Garrett to wear when she performed there. Today Evergreen Museum & Library is the only museum whose collection includes both stage sets designed by Bakst and their preliminary water color drawings.