I fully anticipated that this would be the craziest and/or funnest week of the summer and it was certainly both of those things.
This week at ADF we saw:
Rosie Herrera perform Dining Alone (2011) and Pity Party (2010) in Reynolds:
Where to start?! She was pretty easily my favorite show of last year's ADF so I, understandably, had very high expectations for her return. While it was a wonderful show, I was almost a little disappointed from all the changes that were made to Pity Party. I definitely didn't expect it to be completely identical, but it was pretty drastically altered and with a much smaller cast so my happy memories of what would happen next weren't there.
Dining Alone, on the other hand, totally delighted me. The use of music, the star drop and piano player, the use of plates, and mixture of funny with meaningful continued to surprise and entertain me. It is safe to say that I'm a huge fan of Rosie and her wacktacular visions and dreams she lets us witness.
We also saw:
Pilobolus perform Untitled (1975), Seraph (2011), Korokoro (2011), All is Not Lost (2011), and Day Two (1980) in DPAC.
Need I say much about Pilobolus? Well, I will because they are that fantastic. Not only are they extremely and often unhumanly talented, but they are completely pleasant, friendly people who thanked us crew people incessantly and didn't take long to introduce themselves to us.
Clips from Untitled can be found all over YouTube - one of their early masterpieces. Seraph was a little silly if you looked at it from a purely artistic point of view, but the entertainment value was undeniable. A mostly-naked, long haired, Hawaiian man encountering two robot helicopters flown by MIT Robotics guys? Come on. Clip from the press call here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk82Y5vVbmc
Korokoro was a beauuuutiful piece choreographed by Takuya Muramatsu of the huge Japanese butoh company Dairakudakan. The best possible fusion of butoh and Pilobolus. I didn't understand the use of the projections that were used because the time or two I was able to watch the piece from the front I couldn't notice them at all. And it was impossible to perceive them from my backstage view during the shows so I'm not sure how the audience reacted to them.
All Is Not Lost was just the epitome of COOL. First of all, it's the music video for OK Go's song of the same name. It's performed on top of a 700-pound, several foot-high plexiglass table. There's a camera directly underneath the table pointing up and its image is projected on a big screen on the other side of the stage. Half of the dance is choreographed in a way so the projection looks like a kaleidoscope. Just by sitting/standing/rolling on the plexiglass with even numbers of people in symmetrical patterns in the same color unitard, it totally tricks your eye.
Day Two is another early years masterpiece that is epic and primal and performed solely in thongs (the majority of this show was performed in the near-nude) and ends with a massive bow sequence. I won't go into the super specifics of our crew jobs to prepare for this (but believe me, there are many) but after we peel back two entire marley sections in seconds, the dancers pour four huge buckets of water onto the stage and they push off blocks we screw into the floor and hold down so they propel themselves slip-n-slide style across the stage as the curtain comes back up. We also have to catch dancers as they slide offstage at fairly dangerous speeds. So intense.
Working this show was a completely welcome and enjoyable challenge and saying goodbye to Pilobolus was very sad. But that's how festivals go I guess...they leave as quickly as they arrive.
Coming up in my next post: Eiko and Koma in the Sarah Duke Gardens pond and Emanuel Gat in DPAC.
This week at ADF we saw:
Rosie Herrera perform Dining Alone (2011) and Pity Party (2010) in Reynolds:
Where to start?! She was pretty easily my favorite show of last year's ADF so I, understandably, had very high expectations for her return. While it was a wonderful show, I was almost a little disappointed from all the changes that were made to Pity Party. I definitely didn't expect it to be completely identical, but it was pretty drastically altered and with a much smaller cast so my happy memories of what would happen next weren't there.
Dining Alone, on the other hand, totally delighted me. The use of music, the star drop and piano player, the use of plates, and mixture of funny with meaningful continued to surprise and entertain me. It is safe to say that I'm a huge fan of Rosie and her wacktacular visions and dreams she lets us witness.
We also saw:
Pilobolus perform Untitled (1975), Seraph (2011), Korokoro (2011), All is Not Lost (2011), and Day Two (1980) in DPAC.
Need I say much about Pilobolus? Well, I will because they are that fantastic. Not only are they extremely and often unhumanly talented, but they are completely pleasant, friendly people who thanked us crew people incessantly and didn't take long to introduce themselves to us.
Clips from Untitled can be found all over YouTube - one of their early masterpieces. Seraph was a little silly if you looked at it from a purely artistic point of view, but the entertainment value was undeniable. A mostly-naked, long haired, Hawaiian man encountering two robot helicopters flown by MIT Robotics guys? Come on. Clip from the press call here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk82Y5vVbmc
Korokoro was a beauuuutiful piece choreographed by Takuya Muramatsu of the huge Japanese butoh company Dairakudakan. The best possible fusion of butoh and Pilobolus. I didn't understand the use of the projections that were used because the time or two I was able to watch the piece from the front I couldn't notice them at all. And it was impossible to perceive them from my backstage view during the shows so I'm not sure how the audience reacted to them.
All Is Not Lost was just the epitome of COOL. First of all, it's the music video for OK Go's song of the same name. It's performed on top of a 700-pound, several foot-high plexiglass table. There's a camera directly underneath the table pointing up and its image is projected on a big screen on the other side of the stage. Half of the dance is choreographed in a way so the projection looks like a kaleidoscope. Just by sitting/standing/rolling on the plexiglass with even numbers of people in symmetrical patterns in the same color unitard, it totally tricks your eye.
Day Two is another early years masterpiece that is epic and primal and performed solely in thongs (the majority of this show was performed in the near-nude) and ends with a massive bow sequence. I won't go into the super specifics of our crew jobs to prepare for this (but believe me, there are many) but after we peel back two entire marley sections in seconds, the dancers pour four huge buckets of water onto the stage and they push off blocks we screw into the floor and hold down so they propel themselves slip-n-slide style across the stage as the curtain comes back up. We also have to catch dancers as they slide offstage at fairly dangerous speeds. So intense.
Working this show was a completely welcome and enjoyable challenge and saying goodbye to Pilobolus was very sad. But that's how festivals go I guess...they leave as quickly as they arrive.
Coming up in my next post: Eiko and Koma in the Sarah Duke Gardens pond and Emanuel Gat in DPAC.
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