tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28325861781124771072024-03-13T09:50:15.975-07:00Dance ReviewDance reviews written from a different point of view - not only from a critic's perspective but from that of a choreographer as well. Hoping to stimulate your thoughts about art...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2832586178112477107.post-1895724173919555642011-04-18T20:37:00.000-07:002011-04-18T20:37:48.515-07:00Proliferation of the Imagination: Don’t Pop My Balloon<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ballet X and the Wilma Theater collaborate as a part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts to create a theatre/dance/music/comedy production which was supposed to encourage us to think out of the box but instead seals us inside it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inside some clever quirky sexual innuendo and pleasurable music was the underlying message – gender roles in every society are not meant to be reversed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Walking into the lobby of the Wilma Theater Friday night before the show took me back to the subways in Paris. Patrons gathered around as musicians played then a dancer lured us to our seats. From this point on the atmosphere was set.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The show was inspired by the French play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Les Mamelle de Tiresias</i> and kept true to its original plot – a woman becomes frustrated and insists that she and her husband switch sexes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The audience at the Wilma burst into laughter, just as Therese burst her balloon made breasts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the end the she realizes that this role reversal is not as simple as it may seem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Proliferation of the Imagination</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> takes this concept to the next level – depicting men as incapable to care for children, as the Husband character kicks not-so-life-like baby dolls across the stage, forcing women to stay in their submissive child rearing roles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The final song stated “stay the same” referring to the lives of men and women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I expected an open-minded feminist influenced perspective, to my great disappointment I observed an old fashioned mentality which many of us do not live by today in terms of the acceptable roles for men and women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you can’t rely on the artists of our society to embrace breaking conventional gender roles then who’s left?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In regard to receiving the storyline of this colorful show, it was like reading a book while listening to someone else read the book on tape and watching the movie version simultaneously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each dramatic character was shadowed by his or her dancing counterpart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While any one medium would have been a vivid depiction, the repetition of the plot through written words, live narration, interpretive dance, and drama was an overload to the senses. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ballet is historically performed to tell a story, each gesture representing a different thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ballet X’s Matthew Neenan uses this vocabulary effortlessly and with great beauty each extension of the leg higher than the next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Choreographically the dancers have one foot in ballet and the other in modern dance, literally (in one scene each dancer wears one pointe shoe while the other foot is bare.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The more abstract or “modern” excerpts of choreography marked by the use of following the weight of gravity and contraction of the torso was tougher to swallow, not due to a lack of technique but due to the theatricality of the show’s vaudevillian essence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This style of contemporary movement needs no accompaniment. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The musicians though were a highlight to the show playing many familiar French as well as classical tunes and providing us with live sound effects like rustling paper next to the microphone in a “Prairie Home Companion” sort of way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having a live score created an intimate atmosphere and carried us from one scene to the next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The costuming by Maiko Matsushima was cartoon-like and blunt as if a Picasso portrait and a Warhol piece had offspring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Drew Billiau designed the colorful lighting, and Steven Dufala created the movable set.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">With some simplification and trust that the audience can understand under the table messages, this show would have great potential – until then it’s good for a few laughs and some bright moments of music and dance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> Please check out dancebloggers.com for a link to this blog as well as many others!</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2832586178112477107.post-12603689805639080542010-11-01T19:38:00.000-07:002010-11-02T20:42:09.976-07:00What's In Between? "Something In Between" - Koresh Dance Company<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Somewhere in between dance and theater, western and eastern influences, the literal and the abstract -- Before the show began Koresh explained that the title of this show evolved because this was an in between moment for his choreography as this show fell in between two others; <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the irony is that the title is perfect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the Suzanne Roberts Theater this past weekend the curtain unveiled another Koresh Dance Company brain twister topped with fast passed dancing that sometimes skips a beat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From comedy to drama, instrumental to spoken word this show was all over the place.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Koresh uses complex rhythm and syncopation notably well and when the whole Koresh crew is moving in unison with their in-your-face-directness and occasional (and sometimes unnecessary) screams you feel like you entered the intimate moments of an ancient tribe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Passion exudes from every throw of a wrist or stomp of a foot, both signature Koresh moves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some moments left you a little dry and wanting more while others on the edge of your seat finding the internal pulse that was also driving the energy-packed dancers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All ten dancers are beautiful technicians, though some emanated Koresh’s unique voice more powerfully than others.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The technical aspects of the show were both simple and well executed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The stage was reconstructed in a manner so you felt as though you were in an open space, the dancers exited from all three sides which enclosed them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lighting was nothing out of the ordinary, yet hit the dancers body’s in just the right way and created the sultry Koresh-like environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Costuming varied from the ethereal to the everyday life, and even at times seeming like the dancers just kept their warm-up clothes on from earlier that day.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Had Koresh edited the program a bit more he could have had a jaw-dropping hour long show that kept you wanting more instead of a nearly two hour show that allowed his audience to check their programs and observe their neighbors expressions.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1