At the Theatre in February

This post is long overdue; I wanted to write it before my head messes up my memories. It feels important to me, so excuse me if you’re here for an update about Valentines. I don’t believe anyone of us will be very creative if we don’t take a break and consider how we live our lives. I’ve always dreamt of spending my days in the theatre (not on stage) but just looking at the actors and drawing inspiration and last week has been just that for me. The more performances I saw the more I understood the connection between dance and creativity, between living “out there” and just being…
I love to go to performances, when the workdays are long and the sky turns bright before it turns black. You go in, hurrying to be on time; you leave the theatre, and it is night, velvety and magical. It was a triumphant evening, happily to be seated in a theatre on a warm day in February. It was a howling success when the South Korean Dance Troupe – CcadoO’s performed it’s piece called ‘Murder in the Elevator’, heating up the stage in a brilliantly paced, mysterious, drifting, certainly luxuriant exploration of very scary elements such as death, angst, existentialism, hopelessness, despair, love, lust, bondage and fear. The dance delved into the cause of death of a man found dead in an elevator… quite obvious in the title itself. The images, movements and sounds; all which help to uncover the events that led to his death.

‘Quantransitions’ & ‘Charade’ by Rhythmosaic Dance Company (USA): Delves into the relation of objects and things to the person presenting it and the audience he presents it to. The use of a chair, a laptop, eating an apple, playing a video of movements, all require an audience to be presented to… to be connected to. This performance used modern day technology to reveal associations with body, rhythm and sound.
‘Quantransitions’ was supposed to fuse the art forms, flamenco and kathak….which I didn’t seem to recognize but the dance was beautiful and entrancing and it ended all too soon. ‘Charade’ by Jonah Bokaer was not made for everyone and in particular got the reputation of being difficult and remote. It required concentration and an open mind. Half way through the performance I noticed people whispering questions to others beside them- ‘What is happening?’ ‘Did I come all the way to see this?’
But glance closer and you see entertainment full of interesting embedded messages that can occupy the adult mind most pleasantly.

You want the venue to be a mob scene at showtime, and it was, especially the past week. In the theater what registers is when the quality of reality as well as a sense of drama is revealed.

Cie Phillippe Saire (Switzerland) who presented ‘Could I just draw your attention to the brevity of life?’ used a very Broadway presentation to the whole theme. The performance made use of light in various ways… which was breathtaking! While the concept presented was fairly simple, the staging of it was unconventional and very post-modern.

If you haven't felt the earth move under your feet in the theater lately, then you should’ve stopped by Samir Akika’s (Germany) dance presentation of all that was urban and hip titled ‘Extended Teenage Era’. The central thrill to expect at the hundred and ten minute show was the troupe’s caliber performance and humorous take on the popular new world with the accompaniment of beats and intense dances that had the audience screaming out for more. It paid better homage to the kind of idiosyncratic world of today. It was a performance that broke all conventions, genres of music, art and dance styles- and my favorite! It received such rapturous reviews and I hope the troupe does come back here to perform again.

After the long row of the most fervid performances there are those who heal the hunger for more with a proper placement in bed, and the entertainment of choice to be a book. I have on my desk the perfect comic titled ‘Only love can break a heart, but a shoe sale can come close’ by Cathy Guisewite -- whose marvelous gifts include a clever grasp of the modern woman’s angst.

She conveys her profound, learned and insightful humour in a hilarious and decidedly American manner. Women’s career, diet, dating, and mother issues is, against all odds, a real page-turner.

So before I end this post, there’s some bad news and some good news. Bad news is that my file hosting site continues to trouble me hence I cannot upload music on my partly music blog. Good news is- for now- All the lovely readers who’ve wanted to download tracks I put up here on EC, grace the interwebs, here is the moment you’ve been waiting for…. A link that is provided below will take you to a page that will give you the option to both open the Mp3 (and listen to it right now) or save the Mp3 onto your desktop. All files are completely safe and ready for download. Don’t y’all love me!

MP3: Taking Back Sunday with ‘What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost’