Crazy Horse sculptor's widow carries on mountain dream

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1 of 5. The nearly 90-foot-tall carved granite face of Crazy Horse peers down on what will be the extended left arm and hand on the mountain carving in progress in South Dakota's Black Hills June 2, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Pat Dobbs/Crazy Horse/Handout

By Greg McCune

CUSTER, South Dakota | Mon Sep 5, 2011 5:40pm EDT

CUSTER, South Dakota (Reuters) - Nearly every morning for more than half a century, 85-year-old Ruth Ziolkowski rises around dawn, puts her feet on the ground and gives thanks she is part of a dream.

Since 1947, she has worked at the Crazy Horse monument to Native Americans in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where she is leading the effort to literally move a mountain.

"I'm tickled to death to get up every morning and go to work," Ziolkowski, president of the non-profit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, said in an interview this summer.

Billed as the world's largest sculpture, Crazy Horse is only a 20-mile drive from better-known Mount Rushmore, where faces of presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt are carved into granite.

A few more miles down the road is Pine Ridge reservation, a mostly barren land where more than half the residents live below the poverty line, according to government figures.

Pine Ridge is where many Sioux Indians of Crazy Horse's Oglala tribe were put after they were pursued by the U.S. Army, starved of the buffalo they hunted, and had their traditional lands confiscated.

RIVAL TO RUSHMORE

Unhappy that a monument to white leaders was carved into mountains the Sioux considered sacred, Lakota Sioux elder Chief Henry Standing Bear invited to Pine Ridge Korczak Ziolkowski, who in 1939 had won the New York World's Fair sculpture prize.

They decided to carve a rival monument to Native Americans featuring Crazy Horse, a Sioux warrior who helped lead one of the most famous Indian victories over the U.S. Army -- annihilating much of General George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

Korczak Ziolkowski began working on the granite mountain along with volunteers including young Ruth Ross from Connecticut. Ruth and Korczak were married in 1950, and raised 10 children at the foot of Crazy Horse.

"He felt we had done them (the Indians) a terrible wrong and he wanted to right some of that wrong," she said.

Many people thought Korczak's plan was indeed crazy.

Mount Rushmore took 14 years to complete, cost $1 million at the time of which 85 percent was government money, and used around 400 workers, according to the National Park Service.

Stubbornly independent, Korczak accepted only private donations. He sketched out a monument much larger than Mount Rushmore, with the warrior on horseback and hand outstretched.

All four of Mount Rushmore's presidential heads would fit inside just the warrior's head at Crazy Horse, said Pat Dobbs, spokesman for the monument. Korczak also wanted to carve completely around the mountain, while the presidents' faces are only on one side of Mount Rushmore.

NATIVE AMERICAN OPPOSITION

Some Native Americans opposed the project. They said Henry Standing Bear had no authority to invite a white man to carve the monument, and said it was desecrating the Black Hills and exploiting an Indian hero. They said Crazy Horse, described in history books as a quiet man, would not have approved.

Indian activist Russell Means said the Crazy Horse carving was like going to the Holy Land of Israel and carving on Mount Zion. "It is an insult to our entire being." he said in 2001.

Korczak worked virtually alone on the mountain for years and died in 1982, 16 years before the first part of the carving -- the giant face of Crazy Horse -- was completed in 1998.

To this day the horse and outstretched hand of Crazy Horse are only in rough shape. Plans are to complete the horse's head next, although Ruth was careful not to give a completion date.

Whether the unfinished Crazy Horse is a monument to sheer persistence or utter futility, the project has expanded, with a visitors center including a museum, restaurant and gift shop, and numerous events. A fundraising drive begun in 2006 netted $19.3 million by end-2010, including in-kind donations.

About a million people trek to Crazy Horse every year, and the entry fees account for 40 percent of revenues with most of the rest from private giving, Dobbs said. On some days tourists can view a dynamite explosion as mountain blasting continues.

EMPHASIS ON EDUCATION

But the most important change has been an emphasis on Native American education. Ruth said her husband always dreamed an Indian University of North America would be on the site.

A dormitory has been built, and beginning in the summer of 2010, Crazy Horse provided a program for students, some of them Native American, to work at the tourist center and take classes such as math and writing in preparation for college.

One of those students, Dylan Tymes, who grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation, said he is hoping to start his sophomore year of college soon. Tymes said Pine Ridge is a rough place, a "ghetto," with few jobs and many people living on food stamps.

Tymes said even some of his own family were skeptical of the Crazy Horse memorial, but the education project and summer job won him over. "If it wasn't for the Crazy Horse program I don't think I would even be in college right now," he said.

Some prominent Native Americans also are joining with the Ziolkowski family to help. Five of the 26 foundation board of directors are of Native American heritage.

Billy Mills, a project advisor and Lakota Sioux, who in 1964 became the only American ever to win the Olympic 10,000 meters run, said the warrior Crazy Horse was one of his boyhood idols. After Mills' mother died when he was a young boy, his father spoke of Crazy Horse to calm his son's anger and lift him from the self pity that Mills said destroys many Indians.

Mills does not believe Crazy Horse would be angry about the mountain carving if he were alive but would "use it as an opportunity to teach the world about indigenous people."

Ruth Ziolkowski is fine with the fact that she will not see Crazy Horse finished in her lifetime. But to her nine living children, two of whom are on the foundation board and a third a foreman on the mountain directing work, she has a clear wish.

"If this project stops because I die, my life has been wasted," she said.

(Additional reporting by Eric Johnson; Editing by Jerry Norton, Mary Wisniewski and Peter Bohan)

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London hit "War Horse" makes thrilling Broadway bow

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By David Rooney

Mon Apr 18, 2011 5:14am EDT

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - It's easy to see what attracted Steven Spielberg to British children's author Michael Morpugo's novel "War Horse."

But it's hard to imagine how the screen version, due in December, can improve upon the thrilling experience of this stage adaptation, which is as emotionally stirring, visually arresting and compellingly told as anything on the filmmaker's resume.

Produced by London's National Theater, the play premiered in 2007 and went on after two sell-out engagements to become a smash in the West End, where it's still running. This Broadway transfer makes tremendous use of the deep stage and various aisles of Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, creating a spectacle both intimate and epic. The limited run is scheduled through June 26, but rapturous word of mouth seems certain to change that to an open-ended stay.

Adapted by Nick Stafford in association with the Handspring Puppet Company, the play is specific in its historic setting of World War I, yet any concerns about American audiences' distance from that conflict are unfounded. The writer and creative team make this story universal in its reflections on war, its consideration of how we define courage and cowardice, and its portrayal of the purest kind of love.

Comparisons to "The Lion King" are inevitable but also facile. While the puppetry designs of South African company Handspring and its founders Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones are the undisputed stars here, this is an entirely different, far more emotionally immersive experience than the Disney show. It belongs to a rich tradition of British story-theater that favors artisanal craftsmanship over technology. When it works, as it does so exquisitely here, this can be as transporting for adults as it is for children.

Operated onstage by teams of three or more puppeteers, the life-size horses are breathtaking in their detail. The designs eschew naturalism for constructions of leather, cloth, cane and wire that share every secret of the mechanisms involved. Yet, in every way -- their breathing, their flaring nostrils, twitching ears and soulful eyes, their powerful flanks and movements that can be skittish or graceful -- these are not cute facsimiles but flesh-and-blood creatures. What's remarkable is how quickly the puppeteers, who also provide vocal sounds for the horses, vanish through sheer force of imagination.

Directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris with a fluid narrative grasp and seamless cohesion between design and performance elements, the show follows the life of a horse named Joey from birth. As a foal, Joey appears to grow before our eyes before being purchased by Ted Narracott (Boris McGiver), a Devon farmer. Ted pays a ridiculous amount for the horse merely to outbid his brother Arthur (T. Ryder Smith), their bitter rivalry shared by their respective sons, Albert (Seth Numrich) and Billy (Matt Doyle). When Ted's feisty wife Rose (Alyssa Bresnahan) learns that the mortgage money has gone on a horse not even bred for farm work, she orders 16-year-old Albert to raise the animal until it's healthy enough to fetch a good price.

Joey's speed and strength attract Arthur's attention, resulting in a bet with Ted that the horse cannot be trained to pull a plow. When Albert's perseverance wins his father the bet, he also becomes Joey's owner, nixing any plan to sell. But when Britain goes to war, and large sums are being paid for cavalry horses, Ted sells Joey to the army behind his son's back.

Word reaches Albert that the officer riding Joey has been killed, so he runs off to France, lies about his age and enlists, determined to find the animal. Joey, meanwhile, has been captured by the Germans and put to work pulling an ambulance cart in a casualty clearance station in the Somme Valley.

The battle scenes are stylized, almost balletic at times, yet charged and visceral. The horror of horses being ridden into barbed wire and machine-gun fire yields particularly distressing moments. One striking stage picture, in which a horse and a tank rear up in each other's paths, provides a wrenching illustration of the conflict of nature with the machine age. But despite its penetrating sorrows, the overriding tenderness of this story of how a boy and his horse endure the brutality of war will leave few in the audience unmoved.

One could nitpick that the directors overuse the folk songs and battle anthems that punctuate the action, or that Stafford's writing is at times simplistic in explicating its themes, notably in a face-to-face encounter between a British and a German soldier. But overall, the presentation and writing are sentimental in the noblest possible way.

While the actors can't quite compete with the majestic beauty of the puppets (which include ravens and an ornery goose), the American cast all contribute vivid characterizations and total commitment to the illusion that these animals are real.

Numrich brings heartbreaking conviction to Albert's love of Joey and his almost unwavering faith that the horse has survived. In a uniformly strong ensemble, Peter Hermann also makes a deep impression as a German who assumes a medical officer's identity to avoid returning to the front. This character typifies the play's refusal to break down antagonists into villains and heroes, but rather to show that everyone is a victim in war.

It's impossible to overstate the effectiveness of Rae Smith's gorgeous design work. Its most evocative element is the torn page of a sketchbook overhead, which maps the shifting action and changing atmosphere with a mix of pencil drawings and projections.

In its blending of modern and traditional storytelling, its poetic imagery and primal emotion, this is the kind of magical theater event that comes along only rarely. As an introduction to the stage for young audiences, "War Horse" has the uplifting power to make lifelong converts. For more seasoned theatergoers, it has the elegance and inventiveness to erase the jaded memories of dozens of more cynical entertainments.

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By David Rooney

Mon Apr 18, 2011 5:14am EDT

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - It's easy to see what attracted Steven Spielberg to British children's author Michael Morpugo's novel "War Horse."

But it's hard to imagine how the screen version, due in December, can improve upon the thrilling experience of this stage adaptation, which is as emotionally stirring, visually arresting and compellingly told as anything on the filmmaker's resume.

Produced by London's National Theater, the play premiered in 2007 and went on after two sell-out engagements to become a smash in the West End, where it's still running. This Broadway transfer makes tremendous use of the deep stage and various aisles of Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, creating a spectacle both intimate and epic. The limited run is scheduled through June 26, but rapturous word of mouth seems certain to change that to an open-ended stay.

Adapted by Nick Stafford in association with the Handspring Puppet Company, the play is specific in its historic setting of World War I, yet any concerns about American audiences' distance from that conflict are unfounded. The writer and creative team make this story universal in its reflections on war, its consideration of how we define courage and cowardice, and its portrayal of the purest kind of love.

Comparisons to "The Lion King" are inevitable but also facile. While the puppetry designs of South African company Handspring and its founders Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones are the undisputed stars here, this is an entirely different, far more emotionally immersive experience than the Disney show. It belongs to a rich tradition of British story-theater that favors artisanal craftsmanship over technology. When it works, as it does so exquisitely here, this can be as transporting for adults as it is for children.

Operated onstage by teams of three or more puppeteers, the life-size horses are breathtaking in their detail. The designs eschew naturalism for constructions of leather, cloth, cane and wire that share every secret of the mechanisms involved. Yet, in every way -- their breathing, their flaring nostrils, twitching ears and soulful eyes, their powerful flanks and movements that can be skittish or graceful -- these are not cute facsimiles but flesh-and-blood creatures. What's remarkable is how quickly the puppeteers, who also provide vocal sounds for the horses, vanish through sheer force of imagination.

Directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris with a fluid narrative grasp and seamless cohesion between design and performance elements, the show follows the life of a horse named Joey from birth. As a foal, Joey appears to grow before our eyes before being purchased by Ted Narracott (Boris McGiver), a Devon farmer. Ted pays a ridiculous amount for the horse merely to outbid his brother Arthur (T. Ryder Smith), their bitter rivalry shared by their respective sons, Albert (Seth Numrich) and Billy (Matt Doyle). When Ted's feisty wife Rose (Alyssa Bresnahan) learns that the mortgage money has gone on a horse not even bred for farm work, she orders 16-year-old Albert to raise the animal until it's healthy enough to fetch a good price.

Joey's speed and strength attract Arthur's attention, resulting in a bet with Ted that the horse cannot be trained to pull a plow. When Albert's perseverance wins his father the bet, he also becomes Joey's owner, nixing any plan to sell. But when Britain goes to war, and large sums are being paid for cavalry horses, Ted sells Joey to the army behind his son's back.

Word reaches Albert that the officer riding Joey has been killed, so he runs off to France, lies about his age and enlists, determined to find the animal. Joey, meanwhile, has been captured by the Germans and put to work pulling an ambulance cart in a casualty clearance station in the Somme Valley.

The battle scenes are stylized, almost balletic at times, yet charged and visceral. The horror of horses being ridden into barbed wire and machine-gun fire yields particularly distressing moments. One striking stage picture, in which a horse and a tank rear up in each other's paths, provides a wrenching illustration of the conflict of nature with the machine age. But despite its penetrating sorrows, the overriding tenderness of this story of how a boy and his horse endure the brutality of war will leave few in the audience unmoved.

One could nitpick that the directors overuse the folk songs and battle anthems that punctuate the action, or that Stafford's writing is at times simplistic in explicating its themes, notably in a face-to-face encounter between a British and a German soldier. But overall, the presentation and writing are sentimental in the noblest possible way.

While the actors can't quite compete with the majestic beauty of the puppets (which include ravens and an ornery goose), the American cast all contribute vivid characterizations and total commitment to the illusion that these animals are real.

Numrich brings heartbreaking conviction to Albert's love of Joey and his almost unwavering faith that the horse has survived. In a uniformly strong ensemble, Peter Hermann also makes a deep impression as a German who assumes a medical officer's identity to avoid returning to the front. This character typifies the play's refusal to break down antagonists into villains and heroes, but rather to show that everyone is a victim in war.

It's impossible to overstate the effectiveness of Rae Smith's gorgeous design work. Its most evocative element is the torn page of a sketchbook overhead, which maps the shifting action and changing atmosphere with a mix of pencil drawings and projections.

In its blending of modern and traditional storytelling, its poetic imagery and primal emotion, this is the kind of magical theater event that comes along only rarely. As an introduction to the stage for young audiences, "War Horse" has the uplifting power to make lifelong converts. For more seasoned theatergoers, it has the elegance and inventiveness to erase the jaded memories of dozens of more cynical entertainments.

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