Entertainment arts Extra
6 September 25.1986
University Daily Kansan
Passion for performing beckons teacher to opera stage
By SALLY STREFF
John Stephens, associate professor of music, worked with Cinda Swinson,
Lawrence senior, during her voice lessons yesterday in Murphy Hall.
Staff writer
Margie Chambers/KANSAN
At one point in his life, John Stephens wanted to be a football player.
That was in high school, when he was a defensive linemen on his high school team and could have played in college, he said recently.
Stephens also is a professional opera singer who performs many times throughout the year.
He remembers once when his high school football coach mentioned that he had heard Stephens could sing.
But to suggest that he gave up the chance for a football career when he decided to study opera is simply ridiculous, Stephens said.
"In retrospect, I think he was telling me, stick to singing, you have more of a chance there." Stephens said, laughing.
Stephens, an associate professor of voice at KU, can laugh without rancor. He stuck to his singing and it has brought him success in the field of opera.
He now balances a career teaching voice to KU students with a career as a professional opera singer. And he said he wouldn't trade the combination for anything.
"I don't sit and dream of being a famous singer," said Stephens, a bass. "I'm happy doing what I do."
Stephens, who is originally from St. Louis, discovered he liked to sing when he was in high school. At that point, he said, he didn't know much about opera. He liked musicals, but eventually discovered he had a potential operatic voice.
A lot of work goes into the making of an opera singer, Stephens said, as is shown by his undergraduate degree in music education from Central Methodist College, master's degree from Northwestern University and doctorate from the University of Illinois.
For example, he had to study languages in addition to music in order to understand opera.
After receiving his doctorate, he had several apprenticeships at summer opera festivals in upstate New York and then went to Europe for one year to study German opera on a Fulbright scholarship.
When he returned to the United States in 1974, he moved to New York City and enrolled in a program at Juilliard School of Music that allowed him to work professionally part time.
One of his first jobs was in a Metropolitan Opera production of Benjamin Britten's "Death in Venice."
He then embarked on a free-lance career that kept him travelling ten months of the year.
masters of the year
Most opera singers work free-lance because most U.S. opera companies do not operate full-time, he said.
But, Stephens said, "That sort of life becomes less attractive after you have a family."
Six years ago, while performing with the Lyric Opera in Kansas City, Mo., he heard about a teaching opening at KU.
After doing some soul-searching, he decided to try for the position.
Taking on the teaching job cut the number of Stephens' performances in half. He usually is gone several weeks a semester, and makes up any voice lessons that might have been missed in that time.
In the summer, he performs fulltime. This summer, he was gone for two months, working in Boston, and at two summer festivals in New York.
He keeps in touch with the opera world through his management in New York City. Though he was wary that moving to Kansas would isolate him from the opera world, that hasn't happened.
"I regard myself as a successful singer," he said. "Anyway, when I first went to New York, I decided I would be successful if I could pay the rent."
Because his reputation is well-established. Stephens usually doesn't audition for operatic parts, but receives offers from interested companies. He knows his performance schedule as much as two years in advance, he said.
Stephens said he was one of several teachers in KU's music department who performed professionally on a regular basis.
only the experiences of students but also the experiences of the faculty
Norman Paige, professor of music and director of the voice department, said Stephens was now the most professionally active voice teacher at KU.
Paige said having professors who perform professionally enriched not
"Students seem to enjoy rubbing shoulders with someone who's doing what they want to do." Paige said.
Stephens said he had hit his stride as a singer and performer the last few years and probably would do his best work in the next 10 years.
"A bass' voice doesn't mature until his mid 30s." Stephens said. "My voice will do much more what I want
it to. And in fact, there's nothing like experience."
He said he had suffered stage fright at the beginning of his career because he viewed himself as a singer and not as an actor. He had to learn to act on the spot.
But now, he prefers roles with strong acting parts, especially comedy and character roles, such as Leporello in Mozart's 'Don Giovanni', and Don Bassilio in Rossini's
"The Barber of Seville." He also enjoys performing the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and Stephen Sandheim.
Stephens said that he thought opera was becoming more popular in the United States and that some of the most exciting work was being done in smaller cities. Such companies can take more risks, be looser and more creative, he said.
Though every artist dreams of becoming the best he or she can,
Stephens said he was happy with his career as it was. The excitement of getting good reviews from important critics is exhilating. But simple love for opera keeps him interested in performing.
"I couldn't stand to be a famous singer if I did not think in my heart that I was good," he said.
"Anyway, I really don't think I want to be a famous person," he said.
Midlife Crisis Ballet stresses enjoyment
Staff writer
By PATRICIA FEENY
"For the body that has lived in look" is how Kristin Benjamin, director of the Lawrence School of Ballet, advertised her Midlife Crisis Ballet class.
The class, which is offered three times a week, teaches ballet to
adults from 20 to 50 years old. Benjamin said the class was designed to reach out to adults.
"There are all types of people in the class. Policemen, mailmen, doctors, attorneys, grad students and housewives," she said.
The class, which meets for an hour and a half each session, is
Mark Porter/KANSAN
Jeannie Blankenship, left, Lawrence resident, receives instruction from Kristin Benjamin, director of the Lawrence School of Ballet, on ballet fundamentals. Blankenship is a member of the midlife crisis ballet class that meets Wednesdays and Saturdays at the school, $205^{1/2}$ W. Eighth St.
designed to teach the fundamental aspects of ballet to people who are not as physically conditioned as a premier ballerina.
One student, Esther Owen, started dancing in 1922. She said the midlife crisis ballet class was a form of body building that controlled and modified.
"With aerobics a lot of people get out there and shake their bodies all to pieces. Ballet is the finest thing you can have." Owen said.
Benjamin said it was inspiring to see someone like Owen still dancing and loving it.
When Benjamin first formed the school's adult classes, she was concerned about enrollment.
"On the first day I looked into a studio and didn't see anyone. At first I was so disappointed that no one showed up. But then I went in to the studio and in the corner were 12 people huddled together like bunnies," she said.
She said her students have the dancing spirit, which she described as an inner confidence. She said it is what makes a dancer open his arms wide and not be afraid to expose his body.
"What I tell all my students is not to think about what is good or bad, right or wrong. Don't think about how you look. Just do it," she said.
sixteen people are enrolled in the class. She said the class members took ballet seriously and had a lot of respect for it. When the school first began, 75 percent of the students were adults.
There is a definite connection between the mental and the physical sides of ballet, she said. As an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, she would not have done as well in her class work if she had not been dancing at the same time.
She said dancers set goals, were involved in a performing art, danced to great music and improved their posture.
Benjamin, who teaches 13 classes a week at the school and takes two herself, said that overall ballet was the best way to exercise.
Benjamin moves her litle body with the poise and grace of a ballerina. When she stands her feet automatically go into first position, with her heels together and
She said graduate students took her classes for a break in their work. Ballet and other physical activities help people cope with stress.
her toes pointed apart. She wears her red hair in the traditional ballerina bun and dons tights and leotards whether in or out of class.
Benjamin's body leaves no clue that she gave birth to a boy four months ago. She said she continued dancing throughout her pregnancy. During her last month of pregnancy, which she said is usually the worst for most women, she only felt good when she was dancing.
Benjamin said she thought about putting a class together for pregnant women but she felt the turnout would be low. When she was eight months pregnant, she performed a modern dance for the Kansas Women's Art Coalition.
Benjamin said she would encourage her son, Joseph, to dance. She would like him to understand the dancing spirit and the music.
She said the male classes were hard to get off the ground because the idea of boys dancing was culturally stigmatized. Parents are afraid ballet is too feminizing, she said.
The school also offers all-male classes. Benjamin said that while the class size was small, the interest in ballet was not. Some male dancers enroll in coed classes.
The Kaw Valley Dance Theater is also directed by Benjamin. She said this fall they would perform "Viva La France, Viva La Dance," a showcase of French dances.
"Actually it develops motor skills. Ballet is very fluid. It keeps the muscles long," she said.
The Kaw Valley Dance Theater, which has 20 members, would be the first dance company to dance for Lansing State Prison.
The students of the school take dancing seriously. Some have danced with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Joffrey Ballet. One student has performed in Broadway productions of "Cats" and "A Chorus Line." Another has danced backup for Donna Sommer.
Benjamin said no dancer should limit himself to one form of dance.
She said that ballet, for her, was a primary identifying factor. Although she does perform regularly with the Kaw Valley Dance Theater, she sometimes misses the life of a full-time dancer.
"If you are an administrator, director, or teacher and life gets too complicated, that is really the only time you find yourself standing in the shadows," she said.
Young musicians perform at KU Band Day halftime
Despite rain and heat in past,
over 6,000 students to attend
By NANCY BARRE
CREATIVE INTERIOR
The football field in Memorial Stadium is big, but it will suddenly seem small when 61.000 musicians from 89 Kansas and Missouri high school bands march onto it during halftime in Saturday's football game between Kansas and Indiana State University.
Tom Stidham, assistant director of KU bands, knows just how crowded it can get because he's been organizing KU Band Day activities for the last 12 years.
On Saturday, the high school bands will travel to Lawrence. They will march in a parade at 9 a.m. down Massachusetts Street, then will go to the stadium to perform in the game's halftime show.
Stidham said there were always inherent problems in an outdoor activity involving thousands of people. Last year almost half the bands headed for home before halftime because of heavy rain, and a few years before that, dozens of band members left involuntarily — they fainted from extreme heat.
But Stidham said the benefits outweighed the problems.
"It gives a lot of kids throughout the state a chance to come and see a major college campus," he said. "Many times, it's their first visit.
"A lot of times these kids come from really small towns and they might not ever even have been out of their own county."
He said that many of the students who attended Band Day while they were in high school would join the KU Marching Band when they came to college.
Members of the KU band are designated as hosts for each high school band.
Stidham said he tried to select simple songs so that all of the bands, which have varying levels of skill and preparedness, could manage to play them.
Stidham said the combined band would play five songs at the game. The bands won't do a lot a marching though, because the field will be too crowded, he said.
"A few of the bands really work on it and really know it well," he said. "Others just pass out the music when they get here."
He said some bands practiced for weeks, and others didn't even look at the music until they arrived.
He said the unpreparedness of a few bands didn't present a big problem.
"If 6,000 people are playing, you're not going to notice if 20 mess up," he said.
He said that only the percussion section of the KU band would play during the Band Day halftime show. The rest of the KU band will play in the stands and perform the pre-game show.
"We only let our band play percussion." Stidham said. "We think it might be a catastrophe if we had 89 percussion sections playing at one time."
Stidham said that several other universities sponsored similar band day activities, but that universities with really successful football teams usually didn't have a band day.
"At Nebraska they sell out 24 games in advance, they don't have room for a band day," he said. "Places like K-State have a band day, though."
He said band day would probably never be canceled at KU. even if the football games drew more fans
"I would hope that one day they'd have to limit us to 3,000 seats, instead of 10,000 in the stadium, though," he said.
Vic Sisk, the director of the 220-member Lawrence High School Band, said the band had been preparing since last week and was ready for Saturday's show. The Lawrence High band will be the largest high school band at Band Day.
"The kids are really excited to show off their brand new uniforms." Sisk said.
"We like to go to Band Day because it lets us show off our kids, and it gives them the recognition they deserve."
Extra. extra
This is a supplement to the weekly Entertainment and Arts page. Look for the regular edition of Entertainment and Arts in tomorrow's Kansan.