End of week
Apr. 5th, 2014 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicMy Remix assignment is excellent. Now in the phase of reading/rereading their work; next, will need to pick some favorites and brainstorm how to transform them.
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Saw Heartbeat of Home last night, a multicultural but largely Irish* dance production from some of the people who made Riverdance. It was all right. Lacked the heart of Riverdance and the consistently impressive talent of even Lord of the Dance. The latter seemed to be a fault of uneven choreography; waving arms and patterns of bodies are less interesting than footwork in these particular traditions, and it seemed like many of the dancers weren't given enough opportunity to really show their stuff. The songs were forgettable (though the 70ish couple next to me murmured, "Beautiful," to each other after one number that seemed dull and interminable, so take that as you will) and the live music was way too loud and brassy.
I did appreciate the incorporation of more styles, including tango, mambo, flamenco, Afro-Cuban, street dance and some weird flowy dream sequence type things that were maybe trying to be ballet?, but for the most part I don't think they did as good a job as other productions at having the different styles talk to one another.
But! Criticisms aside, it was worth seeing. The best three or four numbers had little or no instrumental accompaniment, so you could hear and appreciate the rhythms of the percussive shoes. Two had drums only, which was great. Favorite may have been the Art Deco-style, cleverly named "Don't Slip Jig," where a half dozen of the male dancers got to cut loose together and in solos, dressed in shades of gray against a digital backdrop suggesting they were on the roof of a vertiginous skyscraper.
The male flamenco dancer was particularly great and deservedly popular; I was going to call him Gael Garcia Gordon-Levitt because of his face and hair, at least as it appeared from the balcony, but turns out his name is Stefano Domit.
I liked the tango piece as well because in the second half they had the lead Irish couple come out and dance in counterpoint to the Argentine couple: Irish hard shoes interpreting a Latin rhythm.
On a note unrelated to talent, it was kind of fun that the bassist, female, had dyed dreadlocks and bare tattooed feet, and the lead female Irish dancer, who vaguely resembled Jenna-Louise Coleman/Clara Oswald, looked like she'd just stepped out of a vintage catalog with her dark hair in a victory roll. (I had to look up what it was called, shh.)
*ETA: Ah. These two excerpts from performance reviews clarify the intentions of the show:
The Celtic Tiger now has many stripes. Irish dance now is not necessarily what some still think of as Irish at all. (Chicago Tribune)
"But the idea behind 'Heartbeat' was not to do a mashup. It was to honor the individual cultures and rhythms, and to move forward by mixing them. The show is about crossover talents, and thinking about where step-dancing could go, whether under the influence of Afro-Cuban rhythms or street dance. The challenge was to preserve tradition but also devise new forms." (Chicago Sun Times)
.
Now on to Winter Soldier and other things.
.
Saw Heartbeat of Home last night, a multicultural but largely Irish* dance production from some of the people who made Riverdance. It was all right. Lacked the heart of Riverdance and the consistently impressive talent of even Lord of the Dance. The latter seemed to be a fault of uneven choreography; waving arms and patterns of bodies are less interesting than footwork in these particular traditions, and it seemed like many of the dancers weren't given enough opportunity to really show their stuff. The songs were forgettable (though the 70ish couple next to me murmured, "Beautiful," to each other after one number that seemed dull and interminable, so take that as you will) and the live music was way too loud and brassy.
I did appreciate the incorporation of more styles, including tango, mambo, flamenco, Afro-Cuban, street dance and some weird flowy dream sequence type things that were maybe trying to be ballet?, but for the most part I don't think they did as good a job as other productions at having the different styles talk to one another.
But! Criticisms aside, it was worth seeing. The best three or four numbers had little or no instrumental accompaniment, so you could hear and appreciate the rhythms of the percussive shoes. Two had drums only, which was great. Favorite may have been the Art Deco-style, cleverly named "Don't Slip Jig," where a half dozen of the male dancers got to cut loose together and in solos, dressed in shades of gray against a digital backdrop suggesting they were on the roof of a vertiginous skyscraper.
The male flamenco dancer was particularly great and deservedly popular; I was going to call him Gael Garcia Gordon-Levitt because of his face and hair, at least as it appeared from the balcony, but turns out his name is Stefano Domit.
I liked the tango piece as well because in the second half they had the lead Irish couple come out and dance in counterpoint to the Argentine couple: Irish hard shoes interpreting a Latin rhythm.
On a note unrelated to talent, it was kind of fun that the bassist, female, had dyed dreadlocks and bare tattooed feet, and the lead female Irish dancer, who vaguely resembled Jenna-Louise Coleman/Clara Oswald, looked like she'd just stepped out of a vintage catalog with her dark hair in a victory roll. (I had to look up what it was called, shh.)
*ETA: Ah. These two excerpts from performance reviews clarify the intentions of the show:
The Celtic Tiger now has many stripes. Irish dance now is not necessarily what some still think of as Irish at all. (Chicago Tribune)
"But the idea behind 'Heartbeat' was not to do a mashup. It was to honor the individual cultures and rhythms, and to move forward by mixing them. The show is about crossover talents, and thinking about where step-dancing could go, whether under the influence of Afro-Cuban rhythms or street dance. The challenge was to preserve tradition but also devise new forms." (Chicago Sun Times)
.
Now on to Winter Soldier and other things.
no subject
Date: Apr. 5th, 2014 05:10 pm (UTC)Thanks for the review - I like Irish dance as well as many other kinds of dance, and it sounds really interesting even if not as good as some of its predecessors.
I was going to call him Gael Garcia Gordon-Levitt
Gael Garcia Bernal, drool... I'm sorry, what were you saying?
no subject
Date: Apr. 5th, 2014 09:24 pm (UTC)