Dido and Aeneas
The New York Chamber Opera


Performed at: Symphony Space
Reviewed on 1/24/05
by Celeste Sunderland

The New York Chamber Opera likens the story of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas to the current state of affairs in the United States of America. In his program notes, director Ira Siff compares Purcell’s manipulative sorceress and witches to the corporations and religious factions that dip their hands into today’s political world. The opera’s prologue, rewritten by Siff and dramaturg Floraine Kay and spoken with polite indifference by soprano Sarah Miller, describes a charming leader, adored by much of the population, whose hidden agenda leads to a nation exhausted of its resources, while his own family reaps the benefits.

In Symphony Space’s tiny Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre, the small company presented a concise taste of Purcell’s classic work. Composed of expert musicians, the chamber orchestra changed tones frequently to match the unfolding drama onstage. Conducted by Lucy Arner, they moved from dainty gaiety in scenes where Aeneas seduces Dido and her people, to fiercely stormy when the lovers fight, to mournful as they created a melancholic cushion of sound to accompany Dido’s heartbreaking lament as she accepts her suicidal fate.

A gracious Dido, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Batton sang the part with strong composure in voice and character. Her powerful singing and proud presence gave life to the staunch female leader, whose furrowed brow showed concern for her people, and whose scarlet chiffon gown revealed femininity and desire. With all-smiles charisma, Richard Byrne played a decent Aeneas whom we hardly got to know. Soprano Karen Frankenstein sang the part of Belinda, Dido’s closest confidante, and the most beguiling character. With an impish smile and a way of lilting her phrases at opportune times, she charmed. Mezzo-soprano Dulce Manzini was a sleazy, pimped-out sorceress, while her witches, Kyle Church Cheseborough and Terence Wood, dressed in prim Hermès-scarf and Chanel-bag drag, sang in humorously angelic countertenor ranges.

With the performance lasting just over an hour, scenes moved along at a rapid pace, and Dido’s emotions changed like the flip of a light switch. This resulted in a slightly confused narrative, and characters that never really had a chance to develop. Though vaguely anonymous, the singers who made up Dido’s court possessed a lovely range of voices that often wafted together to form a fragrant vocal bouquet, particularly in the final scene when the forlorn group ritualistically scattered white petals on their lost queen’s chair. With themes of adoration, manipulation, and corruption, an ancient tale finds relevance over three centuries later.

Artistic excellence? ****
Entertainment? ****
Inventiveness? ***
Healing power? **

(Updated on 03/14/05)

Photo: Steven Schreiber

Beacon
Yanira Castro
Presented By Dance Theater Workshop
Performed at The Brooklyn Lyceum
Reviewed on 01/22/05
by Celeste Sunderland

Fluorescent light can be harsh. The dingy, decaying crevices of the Brooklyn Lyceum, once the largest indoor swimming pool in the country, were lit last January by designer Roderick Murray’s installation of fluorescent tubes. Those severe pools of light against the cold brick enhanced the tense discomfort choreographer Yanira Castro created with Beacon.

Feelings of unease crept into the audience’s psyche upon arrival, as companions were separated and led into Plexiglas pens. At first shrouded by a burgundy velvet curtain, the walls reflected the audience members, until the curtain rose to reveal the vast space beyond.

A woman in white boy shorts and translucent lab coat stood in the light. Her pasty, expressionless face seemed deathly; lank hair clung damply to her neck. Eerie long-tones reverberated through the chill air as she danced with rigid, angular movements. Music by Dan Siegler changed to a deep churning sound as the dancer got down on her side and began moving her arms briskly as if swatting at something, kicking her legs awkwardly as if they did not work well… the crippled memory of a swimmer left for so long without water.

Three women in curly black wigs and black, wetsuit-like coats moved together from their statuesque stance in the corner. Like scared clones they crawled jaggedly across the floor, in frightening sequences that incorporated details like retching, convulsing, and flailing against a wall like robotic dolls controlled by the bleeping sounds of an electric guitar.

Castro captivated her audience throughout with visions of discomfort, particularly in one scenario where the dancer in white, now nearly naked, lay face down on the floor. The entire scene quaked with piercing cold as, still lying face down, she slowly manipulated her body, raising her arms and bending them at the elbows, walking a single foot up toward her head almost into a split. Then the woman in white stood up in a lunge, looked skyward, and extended her wrists as if awaiting the stigmata.

A vivid energy surged through this morbid performance. The dancers, performing each movement of Castro’s choreography with intense focus, magnified our phobias with skill in that scary, forgotten place. Snow falling through an illuminated airshaft made an accidental backdrop to the dancers’ terror-stricken movements, providing a glimpse outside, and promising silent respite beyond.

(Updated on 6/9/05)

Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet


Performed at: Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
Reviewed on on 1/21/05
by R. Pikser

Alonzo King, founder, choreographer, and artistic director of Lines Ballet, is not kidding around, nor are his dancers. From the first extended leg to the last breathless high-speed series of shapes, the lines are indeed there. Mr. King works in ballet's abstract, rather than romantic and emotional tradition, which is why his premiere Before the Blues, created in collaboration with the renowned saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, seems a bit strange. The tortured shapes and non-organic transitions of the opening, repeated throughout the ballet, come to reveal themselves as abstractions of slavery. Yet other sections, accompanied by more lyrical music or by text read by Danny Glover, are choreographically just as extreme and unrelenting. Only longtime company member Chiharu Shibata seems able to bring some calm to the frenetic movement. Lauren Porter Worth also has moments in which she is mistress of Mr. King's choreography, while the amazing John Michael Schert allows the movement to live through him. The other dancers are dominated by it or retreat to a place of concentration that cuts them off from themselves, each other, and the public. For the audience, such bombardment dulls the senses and makes any connection to the movement or to the performers difficult.

Mr. King's 1998 Who Dressed You like a Foreigner, while still breathtakingly difficult, has more dynamic variation and a sense of playfulness in the way the movements are strung together. Ultimately, though, the choreography is limited, and it limits the extraordinary dancers who are giving their all to it. Mr. King, having fallen in love with more, has allowed himself to become trapped in the extremeness and difficulty of his own choreography-thus cutting himself off from other avenues of exploration.

(Updated on 6/2/05)

Hitler's Hit Parade




Reviewed on 1/16/05
by R. Pikser

Sankofa, the African bird with its head looking back, tells us that we must know the past in order to know where we are going. Oliver Axser and Susanne Benze's film Hitler's Hit Parade, made in 2003, collages the cultural artifacts of Nazi Germany: sentimental pop songs, home movies, professional films, news footage, and propaganda films. We see families on picnics, young children meeting a smiling and friendly Hitler, girls engaged in organized gymnastics, boys at camp, and feel-good movie industry films about the rich and glamorous. Later, promotional films for train travel are juxtaposed with footage of an uglier reality. Films of deportation, or soldiers with prosthetic legs marching and playing sports, turn to scenes of death: dead soldiers, dead concentration camp victims, artworks created with human hair or human body parts. All this is accompanied by trite love songs and a few sad ballads of loss and longing.

What do we learn? That young love and love songs exist no matter how terrible the circumstances-that people need to live normal moments, even in the midst of horror and chaos. The song “Thank Goodness for Sunday” really says it all. How easy it is not to condemn the German people for what happened under Nazism. Yet there are few segments in the first section of the film that are not paralleled in American family archives. Yes, there are Nazi party parades and flags, but, objectively, would footage of Republican or Democratic conventions of the same era have been so different, if people had been allowed to take such films? No matter how terrible the politics of a period seem in retrospect, they often seem mundane at the time. Those to come may well perceive our times as we now perceive the times of Nazi Germany. The real interest of this film is to help us understand our own times.

Unfortunately, Axer and Benze's choice of a collage technique suggests much without clarifying what happened. We do not see or hear a complete picture of the German people's lives at that point in history. What other music could they listen to? At what moment did these songs come out? Did these people have jobs? Did they have enough to eat? When were those artworks with human hair and body parts made, and by whom? Attempting to give us a general sense of the period, the filmmakers have dehistoricised what they do show us. They have left us with a rather general sense of the banality of evil that Hannah Arendt so brilliantly identified. Perhaps that was their intention. Now, we have to extrapolate the lesson and choose how to use it.

Artistic excellence? ***
Entertainment? ***
Inventiveness? ***
Healing power? ***

(Updated on 6/17/05)

The Axis of Evil Vaudeville Revue II
Theater for the New City


Performed at:
Reviewed on 01/15/05
by R. Pikser

In times of national crisis, people need theater. If they hope to affect their situation, they especially need pointed political theater that expresses their outrage and, by its example, encourages them to be creative in their actions. The more outrageous the times, the more outrageous the artistic response must be. Unfortunately, in The Axis of Evil Vaudeville Revue II, Martin Bard (writer, director, and lyricist) and Arthur Abrams (composer and accompanist), for all their credits in theater and political theater, have allowed their need to show the horrors of the present moment to kill their distance from the work. That loss of perspective has resulted in heavy-handedness, undercutting their effectiveness.

The up-tempo numbers are generic: ridiculing Bush's stupidity, having Bush and Cheney do a soft-shoe together, or listing the usual suspects, Halliburton and Bechtel, without pausing to go after any of the many specific points that are there to be made. The pieces that do try to make a point-such as one about a soldier in Iraq who kills a child who only wanted to befriend the Americans-try to cover too much, go on too long, and drag down the tempo of the two-and-a-half hours. The music, also, is generic rather than specific to the words of the songs, which, although understandable given the lack of catchy lyrics, still doesn't help the piece or the public. If you are already disheartened by the political situation, this revue will give you yet another reason to be depressed, in spite of the efforts of the actors (especially Chanel Mobley and Quinn Murphy) to be perky.

That said, Theater for the New City must be praised for making its facilities available to this Community Voices series. Without a place from which to start, the left will never achieve success. Axis of Evil II may not be the answer to our agit-prop prayers, but it may, it should, inspire other attempts. Bard and Abrams get points for trying.

Artistic excellence? **
Entertainment? **
Inventiveness? **
Healing power? **

(Updated on 6/22/05)

Photo: Carl Skutsch

Café Antarsia



Performed at: HERE Arts Center
Reviewed on 01/14/05
by Celeste Sunderland

Aside from the enchanting lilt of librettist Ruth Margraff’s voice, the singing in a performance in January of the folk-opera Café Antarsia left much to be de sired. To call this work an opera, albeit a folk-opera, is a bit of a st retch; but the acting and stage direction were quite good. And when one considers the gorgeously poetic dialogue with which Margraff has endowed her libretto, the intoxicating Balkan rhythms composer Nikos Brisco has laced through his score for a feisty gypsy band, and the historic subje ct matter complete with warring factions, bloodthirsty brothers, and dangerous seduction, it seems that, when this work-in-progress is completed, the duo may have a little masterpiece on their hands.

The setting is 19th-century, Ottoman-occupied Crete. Greece has been ruled by the Ottoman Turks since 1453; the island, able to hold out against the invaders until 1669, now bristles with unrest as revolutions ensue. The young and intoxicated rebel Thanassos (Raul Julia) tries to spark up a tavern uprising, but he is helpless without his brother, Captain Michales, to lead him. Eddie Gooch plays Michales with a quiet stoicism, yet the dark gleam that flashes from his eyes whispers of passions bubbling beneath the surface.

The performance opened with mysterious glances and confused hyper-awareness that culminated in a superbly violent chain of events that displayed the actors' fine acrobatics. Since only the first part of the projected three-act production was performed, most of the action dealt with establishing a sense of place, relaying historical relevance, and getting the audience accustomed to the characters. Themes of loyalty and honor were explored as we see a woman clothed in white alternately praying, singing, and weeping, surrounded by candles and religious icons. She is Michales's wife, but her tale is still unknown. We’re also introduced to Roxelana, played by Reema Zaman. The beautiful wife of Turkish leader Pasha Cengiz, she dances for Michales, undulating her sinewy body before him, and appears to fall in love with him, but the outcome of this plot twist we have yet to discover.

With a fanciful cast that includes the sprightly Phil Ristaino as Karaghiozis, a sly, half-Greek, half-Turk rebel, a jaunty band with two bouzoukis and an accordion, and dialogue that conjures mystical encounters and mythological images, if Margraff and Brisco complete their ambitious work, audiences will be in for an intellectual bit of fun. Until then, Act I provided a savory taste—especially with that complimentary shot of grappa.

Artistic excellence? ***
Entertainment? ****
Inventiveness? ****
Healing power? ***

(Updated on 6/8/05)

Photo: Jacques Grenier

La Pudeur des icebergs
(The Modesty of Icebergs)
Daniel Léveillé Danse

Performed at: Danspace Project,
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery Reviewed on 1/8/2005
by R. Pikser

How wise of Daniel Léveillé to present his dancers naked. That way, the audience had something to concentrate on other than the repetitive choreography, unrelieved by variations on or development of a theme. With La Pudeur des icebergs, Léveillé seems to think he is returning the dancers and the public to a pre-linguistic purity of ritualistic physicality. For those who like minimalism, his work may suggest possibilities. For those of us who believe that choreographers have a responsibility to do some thinking before they take our time and our money, the consideration of the nude body was interesting for a bit… and the rest of the hour-long program was endless. La Pudeur resembles a presentation at the end of the first week of rehearsal, when some ideas have cropped up, but no work has been done on them—and at least a rehearsal has the freshness of discovery. The choreographer crafted a few interesting moments, such as a long, sensual second-position plié during which the dancer’s hands extended below his thighs, making a lovely sculpture, then rose, barely caressing his body; or the series toward the end of the piece when different pairs of dancers forcefully pushed each other through the air. But such moments were as disconnected as they were rare.

Watching bodies without the intervening medium of cloth is definitely interesting. One appreciates why artists do life drawings rather than leotard drawings: The shapes of which the body is composed are vibrantly distinct when clothed only in skin. But if that’s all there is to see, I’ll take a drawing class.

(Updated on 6/9/05)

Photo: Paul Kolnik

The Nutcracker
New York City Ballet

Performed at: New York State Theater
Reviewed on 12/29/04
by Celeste Sunderland

The Nutcracker includes many moments where one could say the magic begins. Maybe it’s when the tree grows into a magnificent tannenbaum that scrapes the ceiling. Or when the Nutcracker comes to life and leads an army of toy soldiers against the giant mice. Or when Marie becomes a princess with a tiny shimmering crown upon her head. But the beauty of the ballet is that magic flows through the entire production, through each strain of the Tchaikovsky score.

With its 50th anniversary performance of George Balanchine’s timeless choreography, the New York City Ballet continues what has become a grand holiday tradition with stunning aplomb. The company’s set is gorgeous, from the Stahlbaums’ elegant parlor, to the winter scene with its monster evergreens heavy with snow, where the Nutcracker (Jerimy Rivera) turns into a little prince and crowns Marie (Anjelica Fellini) as his little princess. In the second act when the curtain rises to reveal a confectionary paradise, all jaws drop at the pastel-colored, candy-covered stage, and the fantasy dives headfirst into an international, sensory spectacular.

Maria Kowroski danced the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy with regal grace. Her dainty pirouettes matched Tchaikovsky’s sweet, dreamy melody. Rivera did a wonderful job with the expressive mime dance before leading his princess off to watch the mischievous parade of delights that followed. With shoes dyed to match their bright tights, the “Hot Chocolate” troupe danced with fiery Spanish panache. The music turned Middle Eastern and the lights dimmed as Melissa Barak shimmied out as the exotic “Coffee,” mesmerizing with fluid grand battements, twirls, and poses. “Tea” charmed with Austin Laurent’s goofy, leaping Chinaman, then a jubilant cast of candy canes jumped through hula-hoops. The Marzipan Shepherdesses were enticingly elegant with stiff, straight-legged steps; eight children emerged from Mother Ginger’s petticoats to dance with impressive precision and lyricism; and a willowy Miranda Weese danced a graceful Dewdrop with strong control.

The musical drama during the Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier’s pas de deux was overwhelming. Kowroski and Charles Askegard skillfully built tension with a series of expertly executed movements, reaching a pinnacle when the Cavalier pulls his partner, en pointe in arabesque, magically gliding across the stage. This scene stirred a life-long passion for romance in every audience member, from the little girl in her mother’s lap in front of me, to the elderly man sitting by my side.

(Updated on 6/9/05)

Isabella's Room

Performed at: Brooklyn Academy of Music
Reviewed on 12/18/04
by R. Pikser

Jan Lauwers, the writer/director of Isabella’s Room, has created this work as a tribute to his late father, using the perhaps magical influence of the latter’s collection of African art from the former Belgian Congo as a starting point. Mr. Lauwers knows something about form. He also knows that one reason we go to theater is to see lovely young people and another is to be titillated. Thus, he has beautiful art, fairly interesting music, attractive half-naked youngsters bouncing around, sex, and even incestuous sex. The theme of the play would seem to be that, no matter what, life goes on, and all we can do is to live as best we can with what we are given.

Other questions present themselves, however, if one takes the time to ask whether or not this work is worth taking seriously. Isabella, in her 90 years, has traversed most of the 20th century, including two world wars and colonialism, yet nothing has really seemed to touch her, which she admits. She loves and lives with her African art, yet relates to it as her possession, in the grand tradition of colonialism. Since it was left to her; she is not responsible for how it came to be in her room, just as she was presumably not quite responsible for her impregnation by the black one-night stand with the stereotypically, predictably enormous penis.

Touching on these issues is not the same as dealing with them: Mr. Lauwers has been either lazy or superficial in this work. Just as watching beautiful bodies does not make gripping dance, passing reference to events does not constitute engaging them, and saying that one is not engaged does not make up for that lapse. Isabella’s Room is like the room itself: chock full of items pleasant to look at and listen to, but which are neither understood nor dealt with. It could have provided us with nourishment. Instead, we are left with meringue.

Artistic excellence? ***
Entertainment? ***
Inventiveness? **
Healing power? **

(Updated on 03/14/05)