Stone Cold Pimpin'

Photo by Nik Blaskovich
By Ted Mills, News-Press Correspondent
November 30, 2007 10:45 AM

When my cocktail partners and I have felt the need to get funky, we've often stepped into EOS, the nightclub on the corner of Haley and Anacapa streets that packs in the crowds every weekend and covers them with a fresh blanket of house beats. We've stepped out later, sweaty, danced out, but completely oblivious to the fact that EOS serves up some très gourmet cocktail concoctions. No longer will we make that mistake.
Put this down to bar manager, Ashley O'Brien, who took over the position three months ago, and who has already put her stamp on the establishment. EOS is now one of the few bars in town where the slightly higher drink prices feel deserved -- we tasted mixes on our early evening sojourn that we've never had anywhere else and we want to try again.

During Friday happy hour, the bar was nearly empty, and the club was preparing for a party that evening. And that meant O'Brien had the time to chat and make us an assortment of drinks that showed off her talents, borne from years steadily climbing the ladder from waitress to manager at bars such as Couchez, Q's Sushi a Go Go and Sevilla.
Back in the cooler is where O'Brien keeps her infused vodkas -- the base of many of her special martinis and mixed drinks. Homemade flavors that don't appear on any store shelf include strawberry and ginger, watermelon, rosemary, and many more. The apple cinnamon-infused vodka became the essential ingredient in O'Brien's "Fall Harvest," a chilled but stomach warming drink that tasted of spice and came with a rim of cinnamon and sugar. Take notice, people: our fellow female mixophile imagined this as the perfect date-and-kissing drink, "because you want to leave the taste on your lips." Gawrsh.
Needing to cool off, we tried a Cool Cucumber Cooler, which used cucumber-infused vodka and comes garnished with a fat slice on the rim. Refreshing and light, this and the Fall Harvest were generous in their alcohol, so don't judge these on looks alone.
EOS supplies O'Brien with everything on her shopping list, including limited edition flavors and small batches of regional liquor. With a true mixologist's sense of mission, she's always coming up with a new idea, and adding something to a spirit to change the standard flavor. The Prickly Pear margarita contains real pulped pears, and looks devilish. The Manhattan I tried came with subtle blood orange flavorings.
"I was very intimidated to come out with this new menu," says O'Brien, two weeks after its debut. "I felt ill the whole week before . . . what if nobody ordered anything from it?" That hasn't happened, of course, and the cucumber vodka in particular has gone through several batches. We finished off with O'Brien's oddest, most daring, recipe: the Blackberry Basil Cooler. With no experience beforehand of tasting basil in a drink, we have so admit it took us all by surprise. O'Brien has earned the smile on her face, and EOS as only a nightclub destination should be rethought.

BLACKBERRY BASIL COOLER
3 oz. Cîroc vodka
2-3 fresh basil leaves
2 sweet blackberries
3/4 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 oz. simple syrup

In a pint glass, muddle basil leaves and blackberries. Add lemon juice, simple syrup and vodka. Shake to bruise basil leaves. Pour into ice-filled Collins glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

EOS Lounge
500 Anacapa St.
564-2410
Hours: 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Wednesday to Saturday

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dancer Melissa Ullom, Photo by Stuart K. McDaniel
ONSTAGE : Velvet overground - Betrayal, disaster and idealism emotionally compete in UCSB Dance Concert
By Ted Mills, News-Press Correspondent
November 30, 2007 10:12 AM

This weekend's dance concert, "Through Darkness and Light," not only marks the opening of the 2007-2008 season of student dance performances at UCSB, but is a send-off for a select group of dancers, under- and post-grads, as they make their way to Beijing for a special series of concerts. More on that later, though. The trip would not be happening if not for the work of the dancers and choreographers shown in the seven pieces this weekend.
The last time we saw faculty choreographer Valerie Huston's work was a year ago with "Tête à Tête," which shares some themes and ideas with her latest creation, "The Velvet Touch." Like "Tête," this work revisits an early version of the choreography and deals with two characters who may or may not be aspects of the same person.

"Betrayal is this work's primary emotion," Huston says up front. "I wanted to explore the farthest reach of those emotional points."
Divided in five parts, "The Velvet Touch" ends in something murderous, and involves velvet opera gloves.
"This is a pretty violent work for me," she says.
Set to five harp and violin duets by Jean Françaix, Huston's piece employs classical ballet choreography, gestural movement, and plenty of handwork to emphasize the gloves.
Jerry Pierson, of Santa Barbara Dance Theater, saw the work in its earlier stage, and intends to bring it and other pieces to China, as a follow-up trip to Pierson's company's own journey there earlier in the year, where the entire group was overawed to find they were playing 2,500 seat halls with 150-foot stages (in both cases, by comparison, bigger than the Arlington Theatre).
Asked to bring a bigger company, Pierson is bringing the entire student company as well as members of his own. Asked to recommend another piece, Huston suggested "Stolen Time," by guest choreographer Carley Conder, also in this weekend's concert.
Set to lesser known works by Vivaldi, the Arizona-based Conder says the genesis of the idea came both from pop culture -- the television drama "Lost" -- and real life -- the tsunami that hit southeast Asia in 2005.
"I'm interested in how people come back from a tragic event," she says. "And how you deal with it . . . all those emotions: anger, rage, the feeling of community, solitude, and vulnerability."
Conder works with fluidity of the upper body while employing ballet movement, and intends a liquidity and watery feeling to emerge through the eight dancers she employs in the work.
"I don't usually get the chance to work in this style," she says of the ballet language in the piece, "So this is a real treat."
Elsewhere in the program, senior choreographers have their say in debut works. Sophia Formosa's "Shrouded Awakening" springs from her viewing of Emilio Estevez's "Bobby," which details Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1968.
"I've never experienced that kind of leadership in my generation," Formosa says.
Set to fragments of Kennedy's speeches and "The Sound of Silence," "Shrouded Awakening" attempts to recreate a philosophy from the 1960s that Formosa thinks we need now.
"I wanted to go back beyond politics to where the seeds of misunderstanding and violence start," she says. "I know it sounds idealistic, but I still like to think it could work."

'THROUGH DARKNESS AND LIGHT'
When: 8 tonight and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: UCSB's Hatlen Theatre
Cost: $17, $13
Information: 893-7221, www.theaterdance.ucsb.edu

Posted by Ted Mills at 09:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ONSTAGE : The 'Sister' experiment - Local director shapes actors and a play out of her life experience
By Ted Mills, News-Press Correspondent
November 30, 2007 12:00 AM

"This is not theater in Los Angeles, this is not working with professional actors, but this is really where you have to step up your game."
Writer and director Trinity Amanda Kesselring feels she's onto something completely different and challenging with her play "Four Sisters, Four Seasons," set to debut Thursday at Center Stage Theater.
Her company, Acting Out, gathers together a group of non-actors and gives them an opportunity to shine in a venue very few of them would have considered.

Some in the cast are accountants, some are technicians and some are life coaches. Most, as well, are people Kesselring met on her journey through brain tumor treatment last year, which changed her life and her art. It was during that time she got to know a group of women in their 50s and began understanding their lives beyond the usual polite conversation.
Out of this experience, Kesselring, now 27, forged a play about four sisters, all in middle age, who have to re-evaluate their lives.
"I come from a family of five sisters, so I know what the dynamics are," she says. "But there's also that sense of when you hit 50, you start over. These were stories that needed to be told."
"Four Sisters, Four Seasons" takes one year in the life of one Santa Barbara family, and shows how each of the four change over that time. Kesselring likens the play to "Steel Magnolias" or "Love, Actually," with its ensemble cast and sweet humor.
Cast as the four sisters, the play lists Phoenix Djukic as Karen, Denise Dutra as Charlotte, Denise Ornelas as Diane, and Katherine Crick as Peggy. At the start of the play, all four make New Years resolutions and as comedy-drama would have it, nobody keeps them, at least not in the way that they thought.
Meanwhile, two of the sisters' daughters have problems of their own, including Grace (Jennifer Brigham), who returns home once she learns she has breast cancer, and must learn to live again under her mother Phoenix's wing. Jasmine Aurora (Chantal Peterson), Diane's daughter, is also on hand to offer New Agey advice to all (and provide some comic relief).
Kesselring's method for assembling the cast and producing the script resulted from workshops in which many of the cast discovered outlets for their strengths and realized that they could bring them to the play.
"Generally, you audition for a part that already exists," Kesselring says. "But here I created the part out of what existed in the person herself. And so out of all the things I've worked on (both in writing and directing) this has pushed me to be incredibly creative within a set of limitations."
Not that she's avoided weaknesses -- sometimes this has produced her favorite results.
"Many women in the cast couldn't get angry," she says. "It took them weeks to tell their partners to go to hell. But a month and a half later they have all gone above and beyond my expectations."
For an experiment started almost from scratch, "Four Sisters, Four Seasons," has two nights to show results. But even before opening night, Kesselring is satisfied.
"(My cast) walk out more empowered, and that's a very good reason to try acting, at least once."

'FOUR SISTERS, FOUR SEASONS'
When: 8 p.m. Thursday and Dec. 7
Where: Center Stage Theater,
Paseo Nuevo mall (upstairs)
Cost: $20
Information: 963-0408

Posted by Ted Mills at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)