Pharaoh

Lines Contemporary Ballet of San Francisco breaks a lot of molds.It's a chamber-sized company of 12 dancers whose work devours the stage, thanks to a complement of exceptionally tall, long-legged ballerinas.And its cutting-edge repertory bypasses all the classics. Instead, it performs the work of its founder, award-winning choreographer Alonzo King, who filters music through a boundless imagination.For its performances that end a week's residency at Towson University, Lines will perform "Klang" (German for sound)

When all is said and done, I guess I'm not a purist.If an opera director chooses to have his Guglielmo and Ferrando sporting Joe Cool sunglasses and Armani suits in his production of Mozart's "Cosi fan tutti" I can live with it, assuming the dudes can sing, of course.Heck, my favorite version of "Antigone" has Sophocles' tragic King Creon dressed more to fight Klingons than to uphold the lTC power of the ancient Theban state.So I maintain my equilibrium when I tell you that J. B. McClendon, director of the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre's production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," has turned the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber Old Testament rock opera into a beach party.

There are certain meetings of time and spirit and faith in the West that some would call coincidence and others would call divine.To the more crass and less theologically astute, Hanuk-kah and Christmas might fall into this rarefied category. But about all they share is temporal proximity: They just happen to reside in the same monthly neighborhood. Other than that, the two have almost less in common than Yom Kippur and Ramadan, both of which, at least, require fasting.Moreover, the influence of one has corrupted the sanctity of the other: Christmas merchandising has given Hanukkah celebrants an excuse for excessive gift-giving, a frenzy that doesn't say much about either faith.

But does Bankers Trust understand about lacrosse?The Housing Department is the agency of Baltimore government that transforms decrepit houses into rubble and poor people into destitute. Elsewhere, these tasks are left to private enterprise.Like an ancient pharaoh, Jack Kent Cooke built his own mausoleum.D6The Os went 4-1 without Robbie? Is there a moral?Pub Date: 4/09/97

Moses is with us once again on celluloid.He was played staunchly by Charlton Heston in "The Ten Commandments" and stolidly by Burt Lancaster in "Moses -- The Lawgiver." Now in "Moses," a two-part movie which begins tonight on TNT, the Old Testament hero gets an intense workout from the always meticulous Ben Kingsley.Part of an international television series on Bible stories, which so far has succeeded quite admirably with "Abraham," "Jacob" and "Joseph," this "Moses" (filmed, like the first three, in Morocco)

25 Years Ago* Some 250 Western Maryland College coeds turned out with blankets Tuesday night to hold a "sleep in" in the Baker Memorial Chapel in protest over the barring of sorority girls from the new women's dormitory. The girls abandoned their protest plans, students reported, after Dr. Lowell S. Ensor, president of the college, assured spokesmen for the protesters that he would review the dormitory policy. -- Democratic Advocate, March 24, 1969.75 Years Ago* "The story in the Pilot of March 7 about the coming of the locusts makes me homesick.

If you didn't tune in for last night's premiere of Michael Jackson's new video, ''Remember the Time,'' you have some xTC questions about what you missed. ''What was the story line?'' you may be wondering. ''Were the special effects good? Was Eddie Murphy funny? Could Magic Johnson act?''And did Michael grab his crotch again?''To answer the most important question first: No, he didn't grab his crotch. Nor did he trash any parked cars, or throw steering wheels or trash cans through storefront windows.

Since I started writing about religion, I've wanted to attend a Passover Seder, one of the most joyous celebrations in the Jewish faith.I wanted to experience the service for myself and bring a better understanding to my writing.I knew my Bible stories.I knew that Moses had been spared when Pharaoh had ordered all male Hebrew children be killed and had beenraised by the ruler's daughter.I knew that Moses had grown to realize his true heritage, to demand the release of his people and to lead them out of Egypt.

IF YOU DIDN'T tune in for last night's premiere of Michael Jackson's new video, ''Remember the Time,'' you have some questions about what you missed. ''What was the story line?'' you may be wondering. ''Were the special effects good? Was Eddie Murphy funny? Could Magic Johnson act?''And did Michael grab his crotch again?''To answer the most important question first: No, he didn't grab his crotch. Nor did he trash any parked cars, or throw steering wheels or trash cans through storefront windows.

CHICAGO -- Using modern computer technology, a University of Chicago archaeologist has coaxed a secret from Egypt's ancient, silent Sphinx -- the famous monument's face was modeled after the government figure who ordered it built.Egyptologists have long suspected that the Sphinx was modeled after the Pharaoh Chefren, who ordered it created in about 2500 B.C., but computer work by Mark Lehner, an `D assistant professor at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, confirms the suspicion.

Who will speak for the pharaoh Akhenaten, the builder of temples and cities who reigned over ancient Egypt 2,400 years ago? Who will explain his oddly shaped head, sunken eyes, pendulous breasts and a belly that made him look pregnant? That would be Irwin M. Braverman. The Yale medical school dermatology professor will address a University of Maryland medical school conference today on the genetic disorders that might have determined Akhaenaten's strange appearance. He has spent months pouring over images of Akhenaten and come up with a theory about the teenage pharaoh's peculiarities.

The lesson for today is from the 37th chapter of the book of Genesis, beginning at the third verse: "Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colors. "And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him." Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat follows the Bible story closely, telling it with charm and a lively sense of fun - qualities that are fully expressed in a splendid production by Toby's Dinner Theatre.

There is a growing movement to teach the Bible "as literature" to children in public schools. The case is made that the Bible has been so central to Western civilization that ignorance must be seen as a form of "illiteracy." However, if we take off the thick religious lens through which the Bible has been traditionally read (as any public school teacher should be required to do), we will find a far more remarkable tale than is taught in Sunday school, but one that challenges traditional Jewish and Christian conceptions of the nature of God and his relationship to mankind.

The mother of a long-missing witness in a Baltimore murder trial brought the man to court yesterday morning. By yesterday afternoon, Pharaoh Carr - who ignored six notices to appear in court, even leaving the state at one point - was on the witness stand in the case of LeShawn Green. Green is accused in a July 2005 East Baltimore pizza parlor shooting that left Jawan Lee, 16, dead and three other teenagers wounded. Over several months, police recorded jailhouse conversations in which Green, 25, encouraged Carr, 22, not to come to court.

TV PICK-- THE MUMMY WHO MIGHT BE KING-- Could a mummy found in Niagara Falls be the remains of a pharaoh? (MPT, Tuesday 8 p.m.)

King Tut fever has infected the world of design. Get ready for everything from pharaoh heads to sarcophagus storage. Egyptian has become the motif du jour, inspired by Tutankamum and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, a four-city traveling exhibit. The boy king may seem an unlikely design muse, but he has proven to be an inspiration since his burial chamber was discovered in 1922. The result back then was a worldwide craze for Egyptian design. He inspired decor from the grave again in the late 1970s with "The Treasure of Tutankhamun" exhibit.

LUXOR, Egypt -- Out of the blinding light of a fall morning here in the Valley of the Kings, American archaeologist Kent Weeks led the way down a narrow, stone passageway and into the entrance of a tomb. Weeks peered his flashlight into the enveloping darkness of "the hidden tomb," as he calls it, and pressed on through the damp, winding passages toward what may be his archaeological team's most significant find after years of methodical digging, scraping and brushing. At the end of a long hallway a human skull rested, propped up in a wooden box, and framed in the bleak light of a bare bulb powered by a generator that rumbled through the stony silence of the tomb.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat got its start as a cantata for a boys' school choir. So it's inherently well-suited to children's theater. And Pumpkin Theatre's holiday production is as charming and cleverly staged as any children's show you're likely to see this season. Director/choreographer Todd Pearthree and his design team include numerous witty touches in this hourlong rendition of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's oft-produced Old Testament musical. For example, when Joseph (mellow-voiced Brent Bell)

My impressions this summer on a first trip to Egypt were mostly of the usual sort: pyramids (and temples, too) out of scale with anything human, an unrelenting sun dictating still, as for millennia, the tempo of each day, and everywhere the press of bodies. But perhaps unusually, the Sphinx left me less with a feeling of timelessness and awe than with a sense of impending disaster - of the imminent collision of the now with the forever. This huge, mutilated face, which has stared silently and mostly alone into nearly 5000 years of sunrises, now watches daily the inexorable advance across the Nile of a chaotic modern city, Cairo, that has more than doubled in size in my lifetime, to 15 million.

The Talent Machine Company's current production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" is amazing in its high-spirited cast brimming with energy, its fast-paced staging, its brilliant choreography, its fabulous sets, its dazzling costumes and its great sound and lighting. No single performer in this 23-member cast of 12 to 19-year-olds was less than brilliant in a recent performance. This production of "Joseph" along with the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre's season opener "Jesus Christ Superstar," are this season's standouts.