Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC)
Thursday, October 27, 2011
- Bourbon Room Rocks/ DPAC
* * 1/2 stars
Durham Performing Arts Center
A visit to the Durham Performing Arts Center for the touring production of Rock of Ages yields a number of odd sights. Audience members, mostly people in their 40s and 50s, are wearing suits and evening wear to a play that’s based, in part, on the fashion excesses of 1980s youth culture. They also sip cups of red wine in front of a set labeled “The Bourbon Room.”
And as they trudge along the red-carpeted floors, the sound system blasts the likes of Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” and Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” How did low-rent entertainment become the subject for a top-dollar production?
Understand, that’s not a dis of 1980s music, something I greatly enjoy and often use as a pick-me-up. But with the 30th anniversary of MTV occurring this year and the excellent new oral history I Want My MTV now in bookstores, it’s fascinating how the 1980s rock culture—those songs and videos that were often mocked even by the artists who created them—became such a massive mainstream force. Big hair, androgynous fashions and lyrics that barely qualified as single entendres represented a force of youthful enthusiasm and exuberance.
This actually offers some potential for a musical premise; the strength of most musicals comes from characters articulating in song what they can’t in mere words. But Rock of Ages suffers from letting the silliness just be silliness.
With a jukebox musical, the audience is likely to already know most of the songs, so there’s a moment of groaning when a character headed out on a date breaks into Foreigner’s “Waiting For a Girl Like You,” or the lead-in to a club’s demolition is, yes, Europe’s “The Final Countdown.”
Again, there’s some fun you could have with that, particularly as lyrics are recontextualized in different situations, but Chris D’Arienzo’s book is, frankly, not very good. The story concerns Sherrie (Shannon Mullen) and Drew (Dominique Scott), a couple of dreamers who fall for each other at the 1980s Sunset Strip hangout the Bourbon Room and find their plans deferred by fate, misunderstanding and the spoiled rock god Stacee Jaxx (Matt Nolan). The plot is so thin that narrator Lonny (Justin Colombo, who seems to be channeling Tenacious D-era Jack Black) has to explicate such major points as the fact that the first act coming to an end.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
People-watching at the club, with Twyla and Frank:
Come Fly Away at DPAC
4 stars out of 5
Durham Performing Arts Center
Through Oct. 2
dpacnc.org
It’s understandable that modern dance aficionados might have paused when considering the touring version of COME FLY AWAY, choreographer Twyla Tharp’s evening-length tribute to musical legend Frank Sinatra which closes a stand at Durham Performing Arts Center on Sunday.
As mentioned in our preview, Tharp had already gone to the well three times with Ol’ Blue Eyes between 1976 and 1983, reconfiguring various groupings of his hits that she’d choreographed into what ultimately became one of her most widely interpreted—and controversial—works, Nine Sinatra Songs. Its seven duets conveyed a range of relationships from elegiac to openly abusive, including an interpretation of “That’s Life” whose depicted violence was so realistic that Mark Morris responded by yelling “No more rape!” before storming out of an American Dance Festival performance of it in 1984.
Others were offended, not by one, but two self-congratulatory recap sections in that piece—one at midwork, the other at the end—that merely reiterated peak gestures from the sequences preceding them. While that sort of self-quotation might not call that much attention to itself in an evening-length ballet, Nine Sinatra Songs lasted all of 28 minutes, victory laps included—both of which were set to (what else?) "My Way."
So the thought did cross my mind: If Tharp was already challenged to fill a half-hour Sinatra tribute in the early 1980s, what awaited audiences in this full-length work which had garnered mostly affirming—but far from unanimous—reviews in New York last year?
As the production unfolded, the gratifying answer soon became obvious: an even stronger show than the one that played Broadway in 2010.
It will no doubt raise some eyebrows that Tharp has fundamentally retooled this show after its New York bow, trimming what was a two-hour, 34-song filibuster into a tight, intermissionless 80-minute touring version. But closer comparison of the two productions reveals that, in excising 12 numbers from the New York production—and adding five new ones to the mix—Tharp has managed to address many of the reservations lodged over the Broadway version.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Exclusive ADF video preview:
PAUL TAYLOR's THE UNCOMMITTED
Exclusive video footage from the world premiere of THE UNCOMMITTED by PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY at the 2011 American Dance Festival. Taylor has dedicated the work to departing ADF president Charles Reinhart. The Paul Taylor Dance Company closes the 2011 ADF with performances at the Durham Performing Arts Center through Saturday, July 23.
Regular viewers will note the brevity of this entry when compared with the eight other video previews we have produced during the 2011 ADF season, and the one company-produced video we reposted, Emanuel Gat's "trailer" for BRILLIANT CORNERS.
Taylor's company restricted our finished video preview of THE UNCOMMITTED to 30 seconds, permitting us to film no more than three minutes of raw footage over the course of the 28-minute work without seeing it beforehand. The results appear above.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Exclusive video preview: SHEN WEI's LIMITED STATES world premiere at ADF (NSFW)
Exclusive video footage from the world premiere of LIMITED STATES by SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS at the 2011 American Dance Festival. The company performs at the Durham Performing Arts Center through Saturday, July 16.
Friday, July 8, 2011
First facts: Shen Wei's upcoming world premiere,
LIMITED STATES, at ADF
- photo courtesy Shen Wei Dance Arts
- Hunter Carter, Jessica Harris and Brandon Whited in STILL MOVING.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 2011
Its name is LIMITED STATES. Rumors concerning a video component designed by the choreographer are now confirmed, and parents in the viewing audience may want to know the new work involves nudity.
But the big reveal—thus far—is that patrons who attended his company's two performances of a work called STILL MOVING in June at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art may have gotten more than just a glimpse into the work that's headed our way. More on that in a moment.
For the most part, the information available at this point leaves us with an intriguing array of question marks. We've learned that a New York-based media design firm, FAKE LOVE, is credited with "video projection: effects and production." After digging a bit into Fake Love's track record, we found a group whose “experiential designs” have involved projecting arresting visuals onto a cloud of 500 balloons for a Microsoft rollout, CG-enhanced media support and commercials for fashion designers and high-line cosmetics, the History Channel and Google, as well as atmospheric animated and video backdrops for Girl Talk and Phantogram’s concert tours. Particularly given Fake Love's trippy clips reel, in this case the term "effects and production" leaves plenty of room open to interpretation.
LIMITED STATES is divided into three movements over 65 minutes. The first, “Dimensions,” is set to an intriguing soundscape including Rossini, NOAA weather reports, ethereal, ambient audio by Asher Thal-Nir and decidedly minimal percussion by Jarrod Fowler.
The second movement, “0-11,” honors the 11 years founding company member Sara Procopio has danced with Shen Wei since her first work with him (as an ADF student) in 2000’s NEAR THE TERRACE. Her solo is set to the controlled feedback of noise composer Daniel Burke’s group, Illusion of Safety.
Burke is also credited for the music in the final section, “Internal External #2,” which we've learned is based on a similarly-named piece that concluded Shen Wei Dance Arts’ evening-length performance, STILL MOVING, in the courtyard of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in June of this year.
- photo courtesy Shen Wei Dance Arts
- Shen Wei Dance Arts in STILL MOVING. Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 2011.
The rest, we learn at DPAC next Thursday night.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
When a film studio foregoes all previews of an upcoming release, that usually conveys a certain lack of faith in the finished product. This week, we'll find out what a similar circumstance means in choreographer EMANUEL GAT's case when his company performs during the American Dance Festival at the Durham Performing Arts Center.
The festival scheduled no photo shoot for Gat. There was no need for one, since the company wanted no press photography of any kind taken of his latest work, BRILLIANT CORNERS, which premiered two weeks ago in Vienna.
The company has made its own trailer for the work. For three minutes we watch a cascade of partial body shots while dancers are apparently warming up: socializing, stretching, sitting, doing neck rolls, walking, rehearsing moves, gazing up at the lights.
All of that is followed by 50 seconds of the full ensemble in what appears to be actual dancework. More accurately, it's 15 possibly connected clips of the group, ranging from less than one to 7 seconds, shot from various angles, while a single, ambient passage suggesting chamber music for long strings plays in the background. See for yourself:
It's a decent commercial. It establishes a certain ambience, even generating a sort of suspense, before providing a series of brisk—but fragmentary—glimpses of the ostensible performance itself. And all those camera angles are just there to let us know that more action's going on than any one vantage point could hope to capture.
The quick edits flit from place to place: look here—no, here! To see all the camera sees, we'd have to move as fast as Gat's dancers, or faster. Our point of view is as kinetic as the dance—if not more so...
Yes, the trailer is quite impressive. And with only it to go on, we'll just have to wait and see how it syncs up with the actual experience of the dancework when Emanuel Gat Dance presents BRILLIANT CORNERS, Thursday through Saturday nights, in DPAC.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Exclusive video preview: SERAPH, Pilobolus world premiere
Exclusive video footage from the world premiere of SERAPH, a collaboration between the dance company PILOBOLUS and the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab, at the 2011 American Dance Festival. Pilobolus performs at the Durham Performing Arts Center through July 2.
Friday, June 24, 2011
New video preview of the dance company Evidence performing a section of Ronald K. Brown's new suite to Stevie Wonder, ON EARTH TOGETHER, at the 2011 American Dance Festival. The company appears with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company through June 25 at Durham Performing Arts Center.
Exclusive video preview: Dayton Contemporary Dance Company at ADF
Exclusive video preview of the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company performing a section of Donald McKayle's RAINBOW 'ROUND MY SHOULDER at the 2011 American Dance Festival. The company appears with Evidence through June 25 at Durham Performing Arts Center.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Cutting thinning HAIR:
A new conspiracy theory about an old rock musical
- (c) Joan Marcus, 2010
- Steel Burkhardt and Paris Remillard in the touring production of HAIR
2.5 stars (out of 5)
Durham Performing Arts Center
through May 15
I believe I’ve stumbled upon a late-breaking conspiracy theory—so please say you heard it here first:
A Vast (or, possibly, Half-Vast) Right Wing Conspiracy is actually funding the revival and tour of that touchstone 60s rock musical, HAIR.
Impossible, you say? Hard to believe? Beyond the realm of possibility? Yes, I thought all those things, too—once.
But then I saw the touring version this week at Durham Performing Arts Center. And then I started connecting all the dots…
Let’s dispense with the disclaimers up front. According to the old one-liner, if you can remember the 1960s, you weren’t there. To tell the truth: I wasn’t. In addition, Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot’s iconoclastic musical has had two full revivals—and a handful of self-styled “concert” presentations—in New York after the original cast first bowed there in 1967. I’ve seen none of these iterations. Indeed, the only production I had seen going into this performance was a Burning Coal Theatre staging last fall—one that I wasn’t as taken with as reviewer Kate Dobbs Araial. (No slam there; critics regularly agree to disagree on the merits of a show.)
So, here a national, professional touring version had the opportunity to make the first case for this musical with a viewer who still had pretty fresh eyes for the work—and next to nothing in the way of preconceptions about what it actually did in a darkened room.
And by the end of the evening I was wondering exactly when HAIR had been hijacked by the Conservative Cabal.
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