SARATOGA LIVINGThe City. The Culture. The Life.

My girlfriend, Gabriella, and I pulled up to Burton Hall in Easton, NY, on what was a sunny Mother’s Day (it’s a teeny-tiny town about 30 minutes from Saratoga Springs). We’d been asked to attend a Mother’s Day Dance and Drum event hosted by Chelsie Henderson, a friend and the owner of Rural Soul Music Studio in Schuylerville, just a few miles up the road from Saratoga. However, my girlfriend and I weren’t there to dance with our mothers as you might think (they both live far away, and we’d already wished them a happy Mother’s Day). As soon as I stepped out of my car, I could hear drumming pouring out of the old hall, but it wasn’t the kind of music you’d expect from a little agricultural town just a stone’s throw from the Vermont border. It was West African drumming, djembes it sounded like (tuned, goblet-shaped drums played with the hands). I approached the open doors of the hall, and inside, more than 20 people were dancing in front of two drummers and a slender black man in colorful pants, M’bemba Bangoura, the instructor of the day’s Dance and Drum class. Chelsie saw my girlfriend and I from across the room and waved for us to join in. Gabriella pulled me into the group of dancers, and I stumbled through the steps as I prayed M’bemba didn’t pick me out for messing everything up (don’t let anybody tell you African dancing is easy).

Bangoura is the genuine article. Born in Conakry, Guinea, in West Africa, he first learned how to play the djembe and other drums at age seven. Bangoura played with the Ballet Djoliba, the National Ensemble of Guinea, and other groups there for 13 years before immigrating to New York City in 1992. “One of the first things [I noticed] when I moved to New York were that the people were very interested in African culture,” he told me. Since then, he’s recorded three albums, served as choreographer for dozens of dance companies in New York City and abroad and traveled the world giving concerts and teaching drum and dance classes to people of all ages. He was in Shenzhen, China, just the day before, giving a similar class to the one I’d clumsily stomped and sweated through (thankfully, Bangoura never called me out).

How’d someone like M’bemba Bangoura wind up in Easton? The answer is Chelsie. “My main intention is, always, building a world community,” says the 32-year-old Easton native. “I was tired of hearing ‘there’s nothing to do in this town,’ and decided to light things up.” And boy has she ever done so. Last year during the Philadelphia Orchestra season, Rural Soul offered free, pre-show workshops for visitors to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (they’re returning again this summer). The studio also hosts about four to five special events every year with master instructors from West Africa and other parts of the globe. In March alone, Rural Soul brought in two big world music acts: Irish musician Tim O’ Shea, who gave a workshop on the Bodhrán (a traditional Irish Drum), and master drummer Bolokada Conde who was featured in the IMAX movie PULSE: a Stomp Odyssey. On top of this, Rural Soul regularly offers drum and ukulele workshops/meet ups to students of all levels and ages. Private and group lessons are available in nontraditional instruments such as the djembe, doundouns and ukulele (as well as the Western standards like piano, violin, voice and guitar). Rural Soul’s located right in Downtown Schuylerville, and is housed in the Bullard Block, a large High Victorian Gothic structure built in 1881 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

Henderson was born in Easton, but was first introduced to West African music as a Music Education major at the University of Burlington. There, she was exposed to the djembe and other drums through a professional performance and teaching troupe in Vermont called Jeh Kulu. After she returned home, Chelsie, along with a grant from the Easton Library, was able to bring Jeh Kulu to perform at Burton Hall (the very hall my girlfriend and I danced at). “The place was packed with people from all over the Capital Region, and I met a lot of important area drummers and dancers that evening,” Chelsie says. That included local drummer and instructor Wayne White, who had been teaching djembe and doundouns in Albany, Troy and even at Henderson’s old studio in Greenwich, NY. Chelsie invited him to teach some classes at Rural Soul. “It turned out we had a lot more in common than an interest in West African music…and now he’s my husband,” she says. White introduced Chelsie to a network of incredible drummers and dancers, including a company down in NYC where White had once studied called Wula Drum.

There are two sides to this unique drum company. The first is production. “We don’t just go over there and buy instruments,” says Michael Markus, President of Wula Drum. The company has around 30 people working for it in Guinea, West Africa, designing and crafting djembes, doundouns and other traditional African instruments. The other side of Wula Drum is programming. The drum-makers offer all kinds of events and concerts, everything from educational classes and retreats for drum teachers to corporate team-building exercises. “It’s all based on a mission of bringing people together,” says Markus. “When we come together, we communicate, we learn about each other and that breaks down the barriers of classism or racism or any type of prejudice.” The company even does some school programs and teen outreach. Bangoura, who taught the class in Burton Hall that I attended, serves as Wula Drum’s artistic director (in addition to the 100-plus concerts and classes he gives a year).

After the Mother’s Day Dance and Drum, my girlfriend and I were covered in sweat (think of a Zumba class but with loud drums instead of big speakers). We walked over to a table where there were free refreshments and filled ourselves a couple of cups of water. Then we walked outside and sat on the steps in the sun, still panting but impressed with what we’d just seen. It’s incredible that West Africa and New York (and Alabama, if you count my home state) were able to come together here in this little hall just up the road from a dairy farm.

Rural Soul is only six years old, but it’s already brought dozens of events like this one to the Capital Region. And its future looks bright: The local studio plans to offer regular classes in Body Percussion Stepping (and possibly Irish Stepping) and a special dance from West Africa called dundun  (dancers play on a large bass drum while moving with live drumming). A women’s world-music singing group is currently being planned, and the next Young Women’s Retreat will be on Friday, June 22. These retreats, open to students ages 11-16, have been quite popular, because they include a little bit of everything: yoga and meditation, body percussion stepping, classes on homemade body-care products, painting, tea harvesting, drying and tasting, singing and ukulele playing and much more.

It’s an ambitious schedule the studio has ahead of it, but Henderson’s looking forward to it. “So much of the music that we know—bluegrass, blues, reggae, rock and roll—is rooted in West African rhythm and song,” she told me as she waited for the next class to arrive. “It’s important to me that we understand this and pay homage to the original rock and rollers.” Chelsie only had about a half an hour before people started arriving for the next event, an adult and teen African drumming class. She’d been dancing and drumming already for two hours, and she was nowhere near the end of her day. But she isn’t slowing down yet because she’s doing what she loves: bringing a little soul to the Saratoga countryside.

Ballet fans in Saratoga Springs have a lot to look forward to in the next few months. For one, the Cuban National Ballet is making its debut appearance at Saratoga Performing Arts Center on June 6-8 (SPAC’s just one of only four locations that the company’s visiting in the US). Also, author, critic and ballet expert Octavio Roca—who recently penned a feature on the history of Alicia Alonso’s masterpiece, Giselle, in saratoga living magazine— will also be appearing for the first time in Saratoga as part of three upcoming events.

“We totally hit it off,” says Elizabeth Sobol, President and CEO of SPAC, of Roca, whom she first met in Miami Beach in the late ’90s. “I already knew about him as a celebrated dance critic. But he’s got an incredible wit, incredible intellect. A real passion about dance and the arts in general.” Roca’s a force to be reckoned with in the world of ballet; born and raised in Havana to a ballet dancer, he’s had dancing in his veins for his entire life. He’s now authored several books on the subject, including Cuban Ballet, which explores the history of the premier ballet company by centering on the legendary dancer, Alicia Alonso, and is a music and dance critic for The Washington Post, The Washington Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Roca’s specialty, ballerina Alicia Alonso, will be the common thread between all three of the events. The first will be a reception, welcoming Roca to town on Tuesday, May 22, at 6:30pm at the National Museum of Dance, and will also feature a photo exhibition entitled “Alicia Alonso’s Giselle.” On May 23, there’ll be a coffee chat and press conference featuring Roca at Anne’s Washington Inn at 11am. That same evening will be the premier event, a discussion and Q&A entitled “Cuba’s Alicia-Alonso’s Giselle” led by Roca at 7pm at Skidmore College’s Dance Theater. (Alonso trained and danced in New York City’s American Ballet Theater during the ’30s and ’40s before returning to Havana in 1948 to found her own company. She was able to support the Alicia Alonso Ballet Company with almost no financial aid from the government. Over the years, the ballet company grew into its own and officially became the Ballet Nacional de Cuba in 1955.)

The best part? All these events are free. However, “free” doesn’t necessarily mean space will be available (usually the opposite). So SPAC recommends that if you want to get in on these thoughtful discussions about the artistic process in Cuba and its National Ballet then it’s best to make reservations now (visit spac.org for more details). It’s no Miami Beach, but for a couple of weeks, Saratoga Springs might just be the biggest Little Havana in the world.

 

Grammy-winning folk-rock act the Indigo Girls is headed to Skidmore College’s Zankel Center on Saturday, May 12. The duo consists of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, both raised just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and emerged in the early 1990s with hits such as “Closer to Fine,” “Galileo” and “Power of Two.” Emily and Amy are known not only for their music, but also for their strong political activism and for being a pair of openly gay celebrities since before that was a thing (they came out back in ’88 with the release of their eponymous Epic Records debut). I recently had the pleasure of talking with Ray about her more than 30 years in the music industry.

Have the Indigo Girls ever played in Saratoga. What about Caffè Lena?
Not at Caffè Lena, but we’ve played in Saratoga at SPAC and the other outdoor venues. We’ve toured a lot in that area for the last 25 years or so. But none of our family is from there. Emily was born in Connecticut, actually, and moved down to Georgia when she was around 10. We grew up together, but in essence she’s from there.

Are there places you like to go up here when you’re in town?
Typically, I try to find a biking trail or some kind of running path; that’s what I do if I have free time. Or I’ll go to a thrift store or a record store. Nothing specific. But I usually try to get nature, because we’re in the city so much. My first goal is always to find something green. [laughs] Which is not that hard up there in Upstate New York.

You and Amy have been playing and writing together for more than 30 years. Is there a secret to staying creative or keeping things fresh with a co-writer for that long?
Well, one thing is that we actually write separately from each other. So half of the material is Emily’s and half is mine. We get together and do the arrangements, and that’s when it turns into an Indigo Girls song—when we work out harmonies and what we’re gonna play, and we might move around a chorus or write a bridge, something like that. But pretty much we just write the songs separately, get together, do the arrangements and it kinda becomes its thing. And I think that creative space apart has helped us to have time to express ourselves. And some of it’s just that we have a massive respect for each other. We grew up with each other from the time we were ten years old, and our families know each other. We’ve got that community thing. It’s like the community holds your relationship in a way. And you have to respect that in some ways and honor it. Respect each other and realize what you have is greater than the sum of the parts.

You’re both politically active. How did growing up in the Deep South affect you and your politics?
[laughs] Well, for me, I’m very outspoken. I grew up with a family that was pretty conservative. We went to church three days a week. And church was really good in a lot of ways. I loved it, but in a lot of ways it was a struggle for me, when you’re gay. But I can live in the midst of people that are very different from me politically, and it doesn’t bother. I’m just used to it. In fact, it informs me, and it helps me understand why people feel the way they feel when they’re really radically different from me. And it helps me to learn to respect that, and I think that’s from growing up in a family that was a little more conservative early on. I mean, now my mom’s pretty progressive—but it took a lot of years and three gay daughters.

Wow, three?
Oh yeah. So I experienced this self-hate, internalized homophobia, trying to battle innate racism that’s all around you. It’s systemic, and you don’t even know that you’re part of that system. That’s like all my life. Four generations of people in my family are all from the South. And they turned out pretty good, I think. For the most part, a lot of my family have turned a corner and really come around from being fundamentalist and super conservative to being moderate and still conservative but very open about gay issues, which is what a lot of the country has done. I think how it affected me is that I’m super political, but I’m also very willing to listen to other people. I feel comfortable where I live, which is an extremely conservative, rural area in north Georgia. And I don’t mind it. I love nature, so I just want to be in the woods. Part of that, right now for me, is that I gotta put up with being 1 of only 20 Democrats. [laughs] You know I love my neighbors. We disagree with each other, but when there’s an ice storm we all help each other. That’s how I function in life; it helps me, though. I can find that place of dialogue that’s really important for me to be an activist, because I don’t think things are so black and white. When people are coming from a place of faith, it’d be very easy for me to belittle that or be patronizing about that, but the reality is I understand where they’re coming from. It affects me that I’m always writing from two sides of the point, and always struggling to understand where that other person’s coming from because I don’t want to discount them.

Skidmore College is more than just that co-ed institution that peeks out from a wooded area at the end of North Broadway. It’s a hot-bed of creativity and intrigue—a higher-ed institution that some of the world’s greatest minds have chosen as their place to study. How do I know this? Well, for one, I grew up with a Skidmore professor father and administrator mother. But I also spent my childhood on campus (I even went to nursery school there!), and I know how special a place it is. (Ironically, I didn’t go there myself, but had I gone there, I would’ve definitely flourished.)

OK, so their may be another university in Texas that resembles the one on North Broadway, but they can’t lay claim to the laundry list of talented artists (and at least one Miss America), who matriculated to Skidmore at some point in their lives. (Whether they graduated is another thing altogether, as you’ll soon see.) Below, I’ve rounded up the most well-known Skidmore alums and what they’re best known for.

Jon Bernthal – If you blanched through the first few seasons of AMC’s The Walking Dead like I did—nothing says “blow chunks” like watching a zombie ravenously eat at a live person’s innards in the post-dinner hours—you would’ve been mesmerized by the performance of Jon Bernthal as gritty bad-boy policeman Shane Walsh, who played the “other man” in a saucy love triangle gone post-apocalyptic. Since then, Bernthal’s landed roles in the Oscar-nominated Wolf of Wall Street; Netflix superhero series Daredevil as Frank Castle (a.k.a. The Punisher), which has since been spun-off into its own standalone series; and 2017’s Baby Driver. Bernthal attended Skidmore for a jaunt, before dropping out and joining the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia.

Nathan Barr – When I was a kid studying the cello and taking lessons from Skidmore’s cello teacher, the great Ann Alton, the college student with the lesson after mine was always Nate Barr. He was super affable, and had a big smile for me every time; after all, I was sort of being forced to learn a stringed instrument by my parents and wasn’t too happy about being there most of the time. Barr, on the other hand, made the most of his musical talent; he built a successful career in soundtracking movies and TV shows in Hollywood. Starting out in the horror genre (see: Hostel and Cabin Fever), he eventually got gigs with HBO, composing the music for True Blood (everything except that title theme) and most recently, the inescapable, emotionally charged title theme (and music for) FX’s The Americans, in its final season on the cable network (see above).

Michael Zegen – This past winter, my wife and I sat down to watch Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, just hoping to find a series to fill the void of the one we’d just finished (PBS’ addicting period drama, Poldark). It’s entirely possible that we set a record for binge-watching speed; Mrs. Maisel is like one of those books you can’t put down. And Michael Zegen, who plays the title character’s down-and-out husband, is a big reason why the show’s so great. He has this old-world-type quality to him that you just can’t teach in a drama program. He graduated from Skidmore in 2001.

Lake Bell – It’s not a bad start when your first show is ER. From there, Bell appeared in a series of critically acclaimed dramas, including The Practice, its spin-off Boston Legal and How to Make It in America. A versatile actress, she’s also voiced multiple characters on Netflix toon comedy, BoJack Horseman, and appeared in both of Netflix’s Wet Hot American Summer TV reboots. She attended Skidmore for a spell before transferring.

Evan Dando – Quite possibly the most ’90s musician of all time—the second most ’90s band, The Barenaked Ladies, name-dropped him in one of their own songs—Evan Dando is the frontman of Boston alt-rock band The Lemonheads, which has been churning out genius-level slacker rock for decades (see: It’s a Shame About Ray and Come On Feel The Lemonheads). Never one to be shy about all the drugs he was taking or the famous women he was dating, Dando is truly one of the last great rock stars of that era who’s still standing. He briefly went to Skidmore in the ’80s before dropping out due to horrendous grades.

Justin Henry – His résumé does not snake through the decades like many of his contemporaries, but rather reads like a master class in classy choices (he was a child actor, by the way; that’s him above): Kramer vs. Kramer, Fantasy Island, Sixteen Candles and ER. For the former-most film, he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, making him the youngest person in history nominated for a golden statue. Acting wasn’t his only gig; he got a BA in Psych from Skidmore in ’93.

G. Love – We put G. Love and Special Sauce on one of our most-shared lists of all time, because he got his start jamming at Caffè Lena. “Cold Beverage,” anyone? Sadly, he didn’t graduate from Skidmore, but thankfully, it helped launch his incredibly cool music career.

Tawny Godin – There she is…Miss America…at Skidmore College. Wait, what? Yes, Miss America 1976 was a Skiddie for awhile, but didn’t graduate.

Scott Jacoby – I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with and recording at Scott’s studio in New York City—and pretending to be cool in the corner of one of his cocktail parties. A Skidmore grad, class of ’93, Scott is a Grammy-winning record producer, who’s worked with an eclectic range of acts, such as Coldplay, John Legend, Sia and Vampire Weekend. (And my band at the time, Gun Gallery.) Prior to that, he was also “Big in Japan,” scoring a No. 1 single there.

Jane Roberts – How could we leave Jane—or should we say Seth—off this list? Another subject of a solid, newly relaunched saratogaliving.com feature, Roberts was a New Age movement guru, who went on to speak as “Seth,” a second “personality” that people have gone on to research for decades. She studied poetry at the college, but dropped out.