Absence makes the heart grow fonder!
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| Posted by Megan Kurashige
Hullo everyone. I haven’t written anything in a long while, but I have had the chance to get very excited about a few things dancewise in the meantime! First off, I got to see the Forsythe Company, which was completely AMAZING. Three Atmospheric Studies prompted these visceral feelings—horror, discomfort, sadness—and made me think, coming out of the theater, in a way I haven’t for a while. The dancers are so committed and intelligent and active in making choices… It was immensely inspiring and reminded me how important it is to be responsible for your own artistic work. It’s such a huge commitment to work in an exploratory manner all the time; I get frustrated sometimes and am just dying to do something cut, dry, and ready-made, but it really is satisfying to work flat out.
I went to see San Francisco Ballet on Wednesday night. They did Wayne MacGregor’s Eden/Eden, which I had heard much about and seen pictures of odd costumes so I was dying to see the piece. It was the last piece on the program, so the audience came back, all giddy from intermission and waited for the curtain to go up. Which it did, once the music started, on an empty and black stage and… nothing… nothing… technical difficulties! There was an announcement and chattering (meanwhile, I’m sure, someone was running around madly backstage) and then it all started again, this time with full music and the film, which hadn’t worked the first time around, projected onto the stage.
I really liked the piece. It’s a spectacle: extreme, absurd flexibility; bizarre, dehumanizing costumes; film fragments; and constant snippets of dialogue voiced over the music. But it’s a dense and odd spectacle with interesting movement ideas pouring out at insane speed. It also looks really, really hard. Muriel Maffre was spectacular, but all the dancers impressed me. They looked like they were eating the choreography up.
I foundthis interview with Steve Reich (the composer for Eden/Eden). It’s an interesting little NPR bit.Here’s a completely random picture. This car was parked around the corner from the theater, in front of a fancy restaurant. I love that such things still exist!
And that’s it for now. Happy dancing, happy art consumption, happy living and etc!
