"Giselle," A ballet at the Fox Theatre, Oct. 26-29, 2006.
Close your eyes and imagine the soft pitter-patter of feet, beautiful leaps and twirls, gentle music and brilliant costumes made to represent a past time. Got it? Well, you are either special or exactly like me. I couldn’t see that whole picture in my mind until I saw it with my own two eyes at “Giselle,” a ballet performed at the Fox Theatre.
I am no ballet connoisseur, but I can say that this performance entranced me from the very beginning.
Now for those of you who are like me and have not one clue what a rone de jamb e or pirouette is, don’t worry. You don’t need to know any of that stuff to feel the emotion and dynamics of this dance.
“Giselle,” an early 19th century story, is based around a triangle of lovers. In Act One, Giselle, the village beauty, falls in love with Albrecht, a disguised prince. Albrecht and Giselle claim their love for each other and their eternal faithfulness until Hilarion, who is also deeply in love with Giselle, discovers Albrecht’s disguise and reveals the Prince’s identity to Giselle. She then, being so overwhelmed and distraught by this claim, loses her mind and dies of a broken heart.
Act One was my favorite. The dances were upbeat and fun. The performers were fully clad in bright colorful dresses and many of the dances included the whole group with spurts of solos intertwined throughout.
However, the most important part was understanding the plot and message they were trying to reveal. I can’t imagine trying to evoke a message with no words, but the director, John McFall, did a wonderful job doing this in the first act.
Soft and hard hand and feet motions helped the dancers express their emotions. The music repeatedly switched from a light and soft melody to a loud thunderous roar allowing the audience to feel the struggle between the lovers and the set was constantly lightened and darkened to reflect the mood of the play.
Act Two was a little more confusing. The set and costumes were nicely done. You could definitely tell you were in a cemetery surrounded by a bunch of angry ghosts, but the story line was harder to follow. I actually had to look it up and see that they were trying to portray the afterlife of Giselle. McFall had more difficulty delivering the story to an audience member like myself in this act.
However, I did find out that the second act was supposed to depict Giselle and other angry women ghosts at the graveyard that were killed right before their wedding day. These ghosts kill all the men that enter the cemetery. Hilarion, the one who exposed the Prince, goes to visit Giselle’s grave and is killed in a dance battle and thrown into a lake by the spirit of an angry ghost.
A little bit later, Albrecht also goes to see Giselle’s grave and is attacked by the angry mob of ghosts as well. He however, passes the dance of death because of Giselle’s deep love for him. As they say their final farewell, Albrecht recognizes Giselle’s true love and is forever touched with the memory of the delicate and beautiful village girl.
Giselle, danced by Naomi-Jane Dixon, Albrecht, danced by John Welker and Hilarion, danced byTamila, gave stellar performances. These characters, along with the rest of the cast, made the show enjoyable, exciting and very emotional for me. This standout cast worked extremely well together, were consistently precise in their dance movements and genuinely looked like they were enjoying themselves.
Every element, whether it was the characters, set, costumes or music, caught my attention. My eyes clung to the performers for the whole hour and a half. So, in my first experience with the ballet I realized one important thing, even though I didn’t know exactly what they were doing, I still found myself really intrigued, amused, and dying for more.
-Reviewed by: Kim Malawy
Showing posts with label Performance Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Performance Review. Show all posts
Saturday, December 9, 2006
Two Performance Reviews: "Enough"
"Enough!," A trapeze show at Chase Street Warehouse, Nov. 3-5, 2006.
"Since 1950, we Americans have used up more resources than everyone who ever lived on earth before then."
What does it take to force America to come to terms with its own habits? That is the question asked by Canopy Studio's "Enough!," its program quoted above. Come to think of it, it's not so much that this question is asked directly; it's more imagined.
The real question, as related by Artistic Director and senior dancer Susan Murphy, is "not whether we can afford to fix the problem, but whether we can afford not to."
But as one watched, the imagined question might just have come to mind.
Using trapezes, rope, streams of fabric, and even a box full of four dancers twelve feet off the studio floor, "Enough!" both assaulted and soothed the senses as its performers climbed, twirled, and swung through eleven acts of often exquisite artistic expression.
Murphy introduced the premise after her solo performance "Lost Garden," which evoked a poignant, yet sadly overused feeling of loss as the studio's projector shined an image of an ancient, massive tree being chopped down.
During the performance, Murphy danced across and then laid peacefully upon a large pair of branches hanging from the ceiling in the back of the studio (one wonders how they got the branches).
This is but one example of the many fascinating, dangling props used during the presentation, another of which was a box-frame hung over 12 feet off the studio floor while holding four dancers.
"Packaging," the number that used said device, was by far the most rousing and thought-provoking performance of the evening, and only the fourth at that. As the four ceiling-height performers shifted symmetrically from position to spinning position, one could not help but consider the wonder of the human imagination.
"Enough!" provoked the disturbing, inconvenient sentiment that there's too much population and not enough common sense in regard to the continuation of civilization as we know it. The performance ends up feeling bittersweet, as it has used the beauty and refinement of dance to illustrate a forthcoming doom of life as we have known it.
Unfortunately, it concluded on an unrealistically idealistic note, with all of the dancers (representing the human race) embracing each other after spending an hour convincing the audience that mankind is probably too foolish to change its ways before it's too late. Again, bittersweet.
If only that single word, the title of the show, yelled during the height of the final ensemble number "War," was really enough.
-Reviewed by: Miles Moffit
I took my program as I walked into Canopy’s Chase Street Warehouse studio on the evening of the second night of their newest production, "Enough!," removed my shoes as instructed so as not to scuff up the delicate bamboo surface of the floor-level stage that I was about to sit directly in front of, sat, opened the program, and commenced to wishing I hadn’t. I never even would’ve imagined it possible, but it appeared that I was about to bear witness to the truly audacious: a group of several human beings attempting to tackle the dimensions and ramifications of a complex socio-political issue via flying trapeze.
After this realization, it was immediately difficult to suppress an assumption that this was going to be at best a little pretentious and heavy-handed; at worst, outright suck to the point of comedy. I’d seen several Canopy productions before, and I have to tell you that trapeze is not known for being a particularly political medium. For example, a previous show tackled the general theme of “weather” compellingly and with panache. "Enough!’ s" ambition was considerably loftier: to explore the ecological damage that humans have caused, the physical and emotional consequences, and what might be done about it. On the flying trapeze. I can’t stress that enough. I did my best to suppress skepticism at the ability of people to express ideas about our greatest environmental and cultural strife by hanging upside-down from swings and politely folded my hands in my lap as the lights went down.
Unfortunately for "Enough!," things got off to a rocky start early on as the lights were cued twice before the performers and stagehands were ready for them, exhibiting an amateurism that is atypical of Canopy performances. The subtle hastiness of this small blunder betrayed a roughness that permeated the majority of the show’s 11 performances.
The eight performers in the first piece, for example, were never really able to synchronize their moves, though sometimes they got close enough that it was clear they were aiming to. "Enough!’s" artistic director and Canopy impresario Susan Murphy employed Joanna Haigood, a special choreographer from San Francisco, for the second piece. The result consisted of Murphy slowly climbing around on some actual tree branches that hung by ropes from the ceiling as video footage of forests played on a large screen behind her. Conceptually it was interesting, but visually it was just plain boring. Haigood is not credited in the notes of any of the other pieces. This means that she came to Athens from San Francisco just to help a woman figure out how to walk slowly (and without the actual appearance of choreography) on a tree branch, and it pains me to say that that is a little embarrassing.
Most of the other pieces were crushed similarly under the overambitiousness of the theme. Many of the performances had only a superficial adherence to the theme, such as the duo piece of Lauren Puls and Annette Byrd in which the two rode bicycles onto the stage, got off them, and spent the next five minutes performing individual trapeze moves while a giant video of people riding bicycles played in the background. In fact, the video overpowered the scene visually to the extent that I sometimes forgot there were people on the stage performing, and after enough repetitions of the 20-second clip over the course of several minutes it got more than a little old.
Of course, there were some triumphs. Melissa Roberts, Nicole Mermans, Lindy Pals and Megan Cattau all shined in their group performance contained entirely within the metal outline of a large cube suspended high above the floor. This piece appeared to have no adherence to the theme whatsoever, and was all the better for it. Chris Knightes and Cattau were magnificent in their duo piece performed on a ladder hanging from the ceiling. The crowd went wild for their perfect grace, and they too were unencumbered by the theme.
Most triumphant of all was Lisa Yaconelli’s modern dance performance, which contained no trapeze element whatsoever but the most well-executed adherence to the theme by far. Yaconelli danced around a clothes rack that had a large “Sale” sign in front of it, stopping occasionally to add clothes. All the clothes were the same—dull gray t-shirts—and yet as she added more, her accumulation of them became more frenzied and needy. Eventually she added two large coats and a hat to her attire and became so burdened with material excesses that she could no longer dance. It was a plain, strong message delivered with elegance.
Canopy Studio would do well to apply Yaconelli’s lesson to future theme shows. There is nothing wrong with being ambitious, and the tendency to want to use one’s talents to promote ideas that one feels passionate about is completely understandable. However, ultimately "Enough!" proved it pretentious to suppose that a trapeze performance is going to be an effective communicator of very complex socio-political concepts. With this show, Canopy Studio became so burdened by the weight of an ostentatious ambition that it, too, forgot how to dance.
-Reviewed by: Jace Bartet
"Since 1950, we Americans have used up more resources than everyone who ever lived on earth before then."
What does it take to force America to come to terms with its own habits? That is the question asked by Canopy Studio's "Enough!," its program quoted above. Come to think of it, it's not so much that this question is asked directly; it's more imagined.
The real question, as related by Artistic Director and senior dancer Susan Murphy, is "not whether we can afford to fix the problem, but whether we can afford not to."
But as one watched, the imagined question might just have come to mind.
Using trapezes, rope, streams of fabric, and even a box full of four dancers twelve feet off the studio floor, "Enough!" both assaulted and soothed the senses as its performers climbed, twirled, and swung through eleven acts of often exquisite artistic expression.
Murphy introduced the premise after her solo performance "Lost Garden," which evoked a poignant, yet sadly overused feeling of loss as the studio's projector shined an image of an ancient, massive tree being chopped down.
During the performance, Murphy danced across and then laid peacefully upon a large pair of branches hanging from the ceiling in the back of the studio (one wonders how they got the branches).
This is but one example of the many fascinating, dangling props used during the presentation, another of which was a box-frame hung over 12 feet off the studio floor while holding four dancers.
"Packaging," the number that used said device, was by far the most rousing and thought-provoking performance of the evening, and only the fourth at that. As the four ceiling-height performers shifted symmetrically from position to spinning position, one could not help but consider the wonder of the human imagination.
"Enough!" provoked the disturbing, inconvenient sentiment that there's too much population and not enough common sense in regard to the continuation of civilization as we know it. The performance ends up feeling bittersweet, as it has used the beauty and refinement of dance to illustrate a forthcoming doom of life as we have known it.
Unfortunately, it concluded on an unrealistically idealistic note, with all of the dancers (representing the human race) embracing each other after spending an hour convincing the audience that mankind is probably too foolish to change its ways before it's too late. Again, bittersweet.
If only that single word, the title of the show, yelled during the height of the final ensemble number "War," was really enough.
-Reviewed by: Miles Moffit
I took my program as I walked into Canopy’s Chase Street Warehouse studio on the evening of the second night of their newest production, "Enough!," removed my shoes as instructed so as not to scuff up the delicate bamboo surface of the floor-level stage that I was about to sit directly in front of, sat, opened the program, and commenced to wishing I hadn’t. I never even would’ve imagined it possible, but it appeared that I was about to bear witness to the truly audacious: a group of several human beings attempting to tackle the dimensions and ramifications of a complex socio-political issue via flying trapeze.
After this realization, it was immediately difficult to suppress an assumption that this was going to be at best a little pretentious and heavy-handed; at worst, outright suck to the point of comedy. I’d seen several Canopy productions before, and I have to tell you that trapeze is not known for being a particularly political medium. For example, a previous show tackled the general theme of “weather” compellingly and with panache. "Enough!’ s" ambition was considerably loftier: to explore the ecological damage that humans have caused, the physical and emotional consequences, and what might be done about it. On the flying trapeze. I can’t stress that enough. I did my best to suppress skepticism at the ability of people to express ideas about our greatest environmental and cultural strife by hanging upside-down from swings and politely folded my hands in my lap as the lights went down.
Unfortunately for "Enough!," things got off to a rocky start early on as the lights were cued twice before the performers and stagehands were ready for them, exhibiting an amateurism that is atypical of Canopy performances. The subtle hastiness of this small blunder betrayed a roughness that permeated the majority of the show’s 11 performances.
The eight performers in the first piece, for example, were never really able to synchronize their moves, though sometimes they got close enough that it was clear they were aiming to. "Enough!’s" artistic director and Canopy impresario Susan Murphy employed Joanna Haigood, a special choreographer from San Francisco, for the second piece. The result consisted of Murphy slowly climbing around on some actual tree branches that hung by ropes from the ceiling as video footage of forests played on a large screen behind her. Conceptually it was interesting, but visually it was just plain boring. Haigood is not credited in the notes of any of the other pieces. This means that she came to Athens from San Francisco just to help a woman figure out how to walk slowly (and without the actual appearance of choreography) on a tree branch, and it pains me to say that that is a little embarrassing.
Most of the other pieces were crushed similarly under the overambitiousness of the theme. Many of the performances had only a superficial adherence to the theme, such as the duo piece of Lauren Puls and Annette Byrd in which the two rode bicycles onto the stage, got off them, and spent the next five minutes performing individual trapeze moves while a giant video of people riding bicycles played in the background. In fact, the video overpowered the scene visually to the extent that I sometimes forgot there were people on the stage performing, and after enough repetitions of the 20-second clip over the course of several minutes it got more than a little old.
Of course, there were some triumphs. Melissa Roberts, Nicole Mermans, Lindy Pals and Megan Cattau all shined in their group performance contained entirely within the metal outline of a large cube suspended high above the floor. This piece appeared to have no adherence to the theme whatsoever, and was all the better for it. Chris Knightes and Cattau were magnificent in their duo piece performed on a ladder hanging from the ceiling. The crowd went wild for their perfect grace, and they too were unencumbered by the theme.
Most triumphant of all was Lisa Yaconelli’s modern dance performance, which contained no trapeze element whatsoever but the most well-executed adherence to the theme by far. Yaconelli danced around a clothes rack that had a large “Sale” sign in front of it, stopping occasionally to add clothes. All the clothes were the same—dull gray t-shirts—and yet as she added more, her accumulation of them became more frenzied and needy. Eventually she added two large coats and a hat to her attire and became so burdened with material excesses that she could no longer dance. It was a plain, strong message delivered with elegance.
Canopy Studio would do well to apply Yaconelli’s lesson to future theme shows. There is nothing wrong with being ambitious, and the tendency to want to use one’s talents to promote ideas that one feels passionate about is completely understandable. However, ultimately "Enough!" proved it pretentious to suppose that a trapeze performance is going to be an effective communicator of very complex socio-political concepts. With this show, Canopy Studio became so burdened by the weight of an ostentatious ambition that it, too, forgot how to dance.
-Reviewed by: Jace Bartet
Monday, December 4, 2006
Performance Review: "The Ghastly Dreadfuls"
“The Ghastly Dreadfuls’ Compendium of Graveyard Tales and Other Curiosities,” A puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts, Oct. 11–29, 2006.
“The Ghastly Dreadfuls,” this year’s wickedly funny and entertaining Halloween puppet show at The Center for Puppetry Arts, is a bite-sized Almond Joy treat for adults.
Let loose from their respective cemeteries for an evening of graveyard tales and cabaret-style song, dance and puppetry, the multitalented, fictional Ghastly Dreadfuls narrated this variety show, tickets to which were an affordable $20.
After describing their respective demises with glee — Simply Dreadful, for example, was kicked in the head not by a horse, “but by a whore, a rather large one” — the pale-faced, wild-haired deadpan crew of seven launched into their first story, “The Ghost on the Trapeze.”
The acrobatics the puppets performed during this original first sketch were dazzling. The philandering trapeze artist, his spurned wife and his circus lover actually swung from the set’s tiny trapeze and gingerly navigated the tight rope, one small wooden foot in front of the next. I couldn’t help but look up in awe at the puppeteers deftly manipulating their creations in the near darkness.
But watching this professional puppet show was like watching a movie with subtitles: after a while the subtitles or, in this case, the puppeteers ceased to be important. And sitting farther back in the narrow, stadium-style theater, the thin marionette strings disappeared, nudging the audience into the world of make-believe.
Marionettes didn’t dominate every sketch though. “The Girl in the New Dress,” the story of a creepily cheery girl who turns into a sort of demented June Cleaver is told through a series of campy, cartoon-style revolving cutouts. Think artist Roy Lichtenstein, but with blood spatters.
The suspenseful “Three at Table” alternated puppet and people actors to great seamless effect. And the short PG-13 film “Exotic Ghosts: The Creepy Compendium of International Ghouls from A to Z” by Kristin Jarvis comically highlighted little-known spirits such as Hantu Tetek, a ghost from Southeast Asia who smothers men with her huge breasts.
No detail of this entertaining production — from the intricately designed puppets, to the spooky lighting, to the set design — was too small for creators Jon Ludwig and Jason von Hinezmeyer. Even sound effects were spot on. For example, the sound of puppet feet crunching on snow during a lonely trek in “Three at Table” was a dead match.
“The Ghastly Dreadfuls” marked a departure from the center’s past Halloween shows, explained Ludwig and von Hinezmeyer.
“It is a more formal show than previous Halloween shows in that there is no audience participation. But, there is no fourth wall separating the Ghastly Dreadfuls from the audience either,” said von Hinezmeyer and Ludwig in an interview published on the National Center for Puppetry Arts Web site, www.puppet.org.
The intermission featured a costume contest for theatergoers possessed by the Halloween spirit and a highly popular beer and wine cash bar for the rest of the lively hipster crowd. The first monkey in space, a sexy stewardess and a Kanye West–inspired gold digger took home the winnings: assorted axis of evil finger puppets and two free tickets to future shows.
Maybe the winners will return for the center’s production, “Tales of Edgar Allan Poe,” which will run from Jan. 17 to Feb. 11, 2007. If the Halloween show proved an apt barometer of the center’s talents, the Poe show will be a night of inexpensive, chilling fun. I’ll be back to this Midtown Atlanta performance gem.
- Reviewed by: Allison Loudermilk
“The Ghastly Dreadfuls,” this year’s wickedly funny and entertaining Halloween puppet show at The Center for Puppetry Arts, is a bite-sized Almond Joy treat for adults.
Let loose from their respective cemeteries for an evening of graveyard tales and cabaret-style song, dance and puppetry, the multitalented, fictional Ghastly Dreadfuls narrated this variety show, tickets to which were an affordable $20.
After describing their respective demises with glee — Simply Dreadful, for example, was kicked in the head not by a horse, “but by a whore, a rather large one” — the pale-faced, wild-haired deadpan crew of seven launched into their first story, “The Ghost on the Trapeze.”
The acrobatics the puppets performed during this original first sketch were dazzling. The philandering trapeze artist, his spurned wife and his circus lover actually swung from the set’s tiny trapeze and gingerly navigated the tight rope, one small wooden foot in front of the next. I couldn’t help but look up in awe at the puppeteers deftly manipulating their creations in the near darkness.
But watching this professional puppet show was like watching a movie with subtitles: after a while the subtitles or, in this case, the puppeteers ceased to be important. And sitting farther back in the narrow, stadium-style theater, the thin marionette strings disappeared, nudging the audience into the world of make-believe.
Marionettes didn’t dominate every sketch though. “The Girl in the New Dress,” the story of a creepily cheery girl who turns into a sort of demented June Cleaver is told through a series of campy, cartoon-style revolving cutouts. Think artist Roy Lichtenstein, but with blood spatters.
The suspenseful “Three at Table” alternated puppet and people actors to great seamless effect. And the short PG-13 film “Exotic Ghosts: The Creepy Compendium of International Ghouls from A to Z” by Kristin Jarvis comically highlighted little-known spirits such as Hantu Tetek, a ghost from Southeast Asia who smothers men with her huge breasts.
No detail of this entertaining production — from the intricately designed puppets, to the spooky lighting, to the set design — was too small for creators Jon Ludwig and Jason von Hinezmeyer. Even sound effects were spot on. For example, the sound of puppet feet crunching on snow during a lonely trek in “Three at Table” was a dead match.
“The Ghastly Dreadfuls” marked a departure from the center’s past Halloween shows, explained Ludwig and von Hinezmeyer.
“It is a more formal show than previous Halloween shows in that there is no audience participation. But, there is no fourth wall separating the Ghastly Dreadfuls from the audience either,” said von Hinezmeyer and Ludwig in an interview published on the National Center for Puppetry Arts Web site, www.puppet.org.
The intermission featured a costume contest for theatergoers possessed by the Halloween spirit and a highly popular beer and wine cash bar for the rest of the lively hipster crowd. The first monkey in space, a sexy stewardess and a Kanye West–inspired gold digger took home the winnings: assorted axis of evil finger puppets and two free tickets to future shows.
Maybe the winners will return for the center’s production, “Tales of Edgar Allan Poe,” which will run from Jan. 17 to Feb. 11, 2007. If the Halloween show proved an apt barometer of the center’s talents, the Poe show will be a night of inexpensive, chilling fun. I’ll be back to this Midtown Atlanta performance gem.
- Reviewed by: Allison Loudermilk
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