One Response to “Logan Center for the Performing Arts”

1. Alfred Klinger says:

   October 29, 2012 at 8:00 am

   Andrew often listen to Critic’s Choice. I listened carefully to your description/feelings about Logan Center. I just happened to have the privilege of walking through much of it on the day it was open to the public. I am doing some poetry with a group I meet with @ the Newberry Library and thought I would share my views of Logan with you. In general I appreciate the variety of cultural events and the people who make them up whom you interview. You are most perceptive. Here is the piece on Logan.

   Color Cadenza of a Prelude to a Pirouette-Alfred Klinger

   The Midway is a flood of autumn leaf. Their shapes, colors intense, kindled coruscations lit mysteriously from below as from the sky their hues sharply defined. Their harmony filled with unpredictable movements out of synch with the chiaroscuro clouds buffaloeing , galloping above driven by the scourge, the whip of persistent south wind

   What a prelude to your entrance to this house of diverse creativity. You hear its cavernous passages equally to what you see. The heaviness of boots, lightness of sandals, rap of heels on concrete, tile. Steps in the square tower climb you ten stories. Corridors lead to entrances, elevators, cul de sacs, projection rooms, performance spaces. At the top it meets the clouds. On the way it is a breathing organism which walls exhale, inhale, whisper, whistle its vertical alloy hollow supports have the patina of Picasso sculpture. Its railings are tracks which pull you, give you wheels as you ascend. Corner glass set in concrete walls meet perpendicularly inviting in ether which inundates, brightens the darkest clothing, footware while enticing you to the top where there is an observation deck and Bronzeville, Hyde Park, Kenwood revealed.

   I am swept along with the animals in the sky, down Cottage, down Drexel on my way to the glaciers, snow, icicles which made the lake to the north and to the east. To the west Washington Park and Lorado Taft’s sculpture of Time.

   I am in this parallel universe where the cement, alloy support this sucker, shrink its massiveness so that though it stands it floats dismisses the inherent opacity, oppressiveness and opens up to a Beethoven Ninth, Schubert Great C giving it the fascia, ligaments, tendons of a ballerina. No longer can one see the inches, centimeters that were there at the beginning but which now have vanished. They have been replaced by sonatas, syncopated string quartets of instrumentalists accompanied by pirouettes, jumps of dancers. Even if you are not limber there is a strong feeling you can participate.

   Alfred Klinger

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