In our busy daily lives, we don’t often have the opportunity to be immersed in anything outside of the regular stuff… I mean transported, outlook altered, mood changed. I sampled a couple of cultural experiences offering such a chance this week, Minneapolis-based Morgan Thorson’s Heaven at PS 122 which closed Oct 3 and Kurt Hentschläger’s Zee at 3LD Art & Tech Center.
As the audience entered, the tightly bunched group of performers walked very slowly around the periphery of the stage, quietly demanding all attention. Everything was white—the marley, the curtains that lined the walls, the columns (with pleated skirts around their bases), the dancers’ costumes, crafted of quilted fabric with Ace bandage accents. White lace even trimmed all of the industrial audience chairs. Lenore Doxsee designed the superb lighting; Emmett Ramstad the costumes; the two with Thorson designed the visual setting. read more
This past week, the two most potent cultural events I’ve seen involve both space travel and music—Wooster Group’s La Didone, and SciFi Network’s Battlestar Galactica. Coincidence?
La Didone intertwines tellings of Francesco Cavalli’s opera and Mario Bava’s film, Terrore nello spazio (Planet of the Vampires, 1965). Wooster Group regulars, including Kate Valk, Ari Fliakos, and Scott Shepherd, re-enact Bava’s kitschy film pretty faithfully, down to the super-enunciated line readings and comically overt gestures. Elizabeth LeCompte directs this production at St. Ann’s Warehouse, which runs through April 26.
The opera singing cast members, including the revelatory Hai-Ting Chinn as Dido, joined by John Young and Andrew Nolen, wear the same silver pleather spacesuits (by Antonia Belt) as the actors, zipped to varying degrees of reveal. It took some time to be able to process the juxtaposition of the two genres, but it works in the end. read more
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