The Washington Post - 05.10.2019

spree and try to rescue Sophie

from captivity.

Kate also discovers the caverns

behind cousin Bruce’s dusty

bookshelves, a techno-fortress

wimpily guarded by Luke Fox

(Camrus Johnson), the son of Lu-

cius Fox, who was Wayne’s busi-

ness manager. Kate is no fan of

Batman; she blames him for fail-

ing to rescue her twin sister and

mother when their car plummet-

ed off a bridge years ago. Only

Kate survived. Rather than just

give viewers this origin material

in an efficient, don’t-change-the-

channel style, “Batwoman” metes

it out with deliberate vagueness,

more frustrating than foreshad-

owing.

Whatever grudge Kate holds

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Batwoman. Don’t you know?

She’s a lesbian, but that’s not all

she is — they say she’s Jewish, too.

Without getting nerdy about it,

Batwoman is not Batgirl, that

feisty, redheaded ancillary to the

Batmans and Robins of yore.

The drab “Batwoman,” pre-

miering Sunday on CW, is a thou-

sand percent less groovy than

Batgirl. Ruby Rose (“Orange Is

the New Black”) stars as Kate

Kane, the cousin of Bruce Wayne.

Kicked out of the police academy

for a same-sex romance with an-

other cadet named Sophie (Mea-

gan Tandy), Kate ran off to some

remote tundra for one of those

personal training boot camps

with a mystical jujitsu instructor.

She’s returned to Gotham just in

time to witness Alice’s crime

encountered a stark reminder of

her groundbreaking status. In a

2014 episode of PBS’s “Pioneers of

Television,” Carroll recalled that

NBC’s makeup department did

not have makeup for an actress of

her complexion.

“The studio had only dealt with

the little American girls or Euro-

pean girls,” Carroll said. “How

could you have a makeup depart-

ment and you don’t have makeup

for every skin in the United States

of America?”

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first time in nearly four decades

(since Teresa Graves starred in

ABC’s short-lived 1970s crime

drama “Get Christie Love!”) that

an African American woman was

the lead of a prime-time network

drama.

By the time she began playing

Julia Baker in 1968, Carroll had

already become the first black

woman to win a Tony (for the

musical “No Strings”) and had

starred in several films including

“Porgy and Bess.” But in her early

days at NBC, the Harlem native

for three seasons on NBC. The

series — which starred Carroll as

a registered nurse raising her

young son alone following

the death of her husband in Viet-

nam — was the first to star an

African American woman in a

professional role and not the

stereotypical servile characters to

which black women had been

relegated.

Carroll, who died Friday after a

battle with cancer, was seen as a

forebearer to Washington and her

iconic role, which marked the

BY BETHONIE BUTLER

When Season 4 of ABC’s “Scan-
dal” premiered in 2014, viewers
learned that Olivia Pope, the in-
imitable fixer played by Kerry
Washington, was living under an
alias. Her team of gladiators had
all taken on new monikers, but
Olivia’s — Julia Baker — held a
deeper significance.
Julia Baker is the character
Diahann Carroll played on the
groundbreaking sitcom “Julia,”
which premiered in 1968 and ran

BY HANK STUEVER

Gotham City, a nervous surveil-
lance state, hasn’t heard from
Batman in years. Municipal lead-
ers are ready to shut off the city’s
Bat-Signal klieg lights and rely
instead on the crime-fighting ser-
vices of a private security force
called the Crows. There’s a big
news conference and party to
celebrate the city’s batless confi-
dence, which, if you know any-
thing about Gotham City, is just
the right opportunity for a new
villain to announce herself: the
psychotic Alice (Rachel Skarsten)
and her Wonderland henchmen
in rabbit masks. Who will save
Gotham now?
Batwoman.
Who? What?

KLMNO

Style

SATURDAY,  OCTOBER  5 ,  2019  .  WASHINGTONPOST.COM/STYLE EZ SU C

TV REVIEWS

Gotham deserves better than this lame ‘Batwoman’

ROBERT FALCONER/THE CW

Ruby Rose plays Kate Kane, the alter ego of Batwoman.

APPRECIATION

Diahann Carroll led the way to Olivia Pope

With ‘Julia,’ the Oscar-nominated actress set the stage for other prime-time shows starring black women

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Diahann

Carroll, seen

in 1963, was

the first on TV

to portray an

African

American

woman in a

professional

role. She died

Friday at the

age of 84.

BY SARAH L. KAUFMAN

The revolutionary art of Merce

Cunningham, the great modern-

dance choreographer, looks as

singular and even futuristic now,

in his centennial year, as it must

have 50 and 60 years ago.

This was clear Thursday night

at the Kennedy Center, where the

Compagnie Centre National de

Danse Contemporaine, from An-

gers, France, performed his medi-

tative “Beach Birds” and the more

lush “BIPED,” with its shimmer-

ing costumes, arresting visual

projections and a layered, tuneful

score by Gavin Bryars.

Bryars, the celebrated experi-

mental composer who worked

with Cunningham’s longtime mu-

sical collaborator, John Cage, in

the 1960s, was in the pit playing

upright bass for both pieces

Thursday. Lucky for us, to be so

close to the Cunningham-Cage

royalty.

The artistic bloodline is impor-

tant, given Cunningham’s death

in 2009. He would have been 100

on April 16, and this program,

which continues through Satur-

day, is part of the “Merce Cun-

ningham at 100” celebrations

across the country, as well as in

Europe, Latin America and Cana-

da.

The CNDC, as the French com-

pany is called, offered a rare look

at two Cunningham pieces from

the 1990s. Both “Beach Birds” and

“BIPED” were lovingly recon-

structed and staged by Robert

Swinston, the CNDC director who

was a longtime member of the

Merce Cunningham Dance Com-

pany.

But hands-on connection to a

dance isn’t enough to bring it to

life. The works looked beautiful,

but after getting underway, they

felt somewhat lackluster. “Beach

Birds” takes your breath away

when it begins, with the dancers

silhouetted in silence on a dark-

ened stage, each one with knees

slightly bent. They look like an

array of Noguchi sculptures, styl-

ized and sleek. They’re even more

beautiful when the lights come

up, and they haven’t moved. They

still have that look of perching,

and they’re swaying so gently, it’s

almost imperceptible. When

Cage’s music begins, it sounds

like wind and soft rain.

The dancers look like birds, all

in white except for a black stripe

across the chest and arms. Deli-

cately, they hop and dip. They

SEE DANCE ON C4

DANCE REVIEW

Plenty of

preening,

but lacking

the flutter

CHARLOTTE AUDUREAU/KENNEDY CENTER

Anna Chirescu and Carlo

Schiavo in “Beach Birds,” part

of the “Merce Cunningham at

100” program.

BY CAROLINE

KITCHENER

reflections on forever

The retailer that

recently declared

bankruptcy has

long been

treasured as a

place to find trendy

looks for cheap

CAROLINE KITCHENER; LILY ILLUSTRATION

very sale racks, sending them off with a

Hot Cheetos tube top or some leopard-

print spandex: the final offerings of a

store that, for many, was a lot more than a

place to buy cheap clothes.

Forever 21 has always catered primarily

to young women in their teens and 20s. It

was a place many went in middle and high

school, especially, to buy trendy clothes

on the cheap. But, now, much of the store’s

original base has aged out of “Forever,”

and younger consumers are turning in-

stead to companies that make it easier to

shop online. Gen Z is also eager to support

brands that focus on sustainability, prior-

itizing good labor and environmental

practices over low prices. (Forever 21 has

come under fire for paying its workers

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There is a little bit of everything on the

$5 rack at Forever 21: a pair of thigh-high

combat boots, a crop-top hoodie embla-

zoned with the Sprite logo, tweed shorts, a

phone case featuring a smiling taco.

I have come here, to the Forever 21 at

Potomac Mills mall in Woodbridge, Va., 25

miles from downtown Washington, be-

cause Forever 21 just declared bankrupt-

cy. Over the next few months, as many as

350 of its 549 stores will close worldwide;

up to 178 of those closures will be in the

United States.

The locations most likely to shutter are

in “lower-quality malls,” executives say,

making this store, right next to an old

Sears — which filed for bankruptcy last

fall — especially vulnerable. Soon, one

final clearance may lure patrons to these