By the fourth time the rows of fifth graders were exhorted to raise their voices, they were psyched. “Roooooaaaaaaarhhhh,” they again shouted. This time it worked. The community had spoken; bullying muscle-bound storm god Anzu was routed; the huluppu tree was liberated!

You actually could leave the kids home and still thoroughly enjoy Inanna and the Huluppu Tree. Combining music, dance, aerial acrobatics and theater, the piece was created by Miami Theater Center (MTC)’s founder, Stephanie Ansin and artistic collaborator, Fernando Calzadilla. Based on ancient Sumerian myths, and featuring original music by Luciano Stazzone with choreography by Octavio Campos and aerial choreography by Lleigh Reynolds, it is presented at the MTC in Miami Shores.

If yours are not among the busloads of South Florida schoolchildren lining up for weekday morning performances, bring them to a Saturday evening show. A well-produced study guide serves as a crib sheet to the unfamiliar names and the story line, while also giving props to Sumerian innovations: the wheel, writing, irrigation, arithmetic, the hover-craft. (Not really, but Inanna’s brother Utu’s nimble horseless chariot is slick.)

Actually, the play’s strongest take-away lies in its moral messages, rather than historical lessons. These are first intoned by Great Grandmother Earth, Goddess Ninhursag (Shaneeka Harrell), in a resounding invocation to the play’s principals, her offspring. And more injunctions percolate up during the course of a drama that is delivered in a flowing sequence of short songs, performed with varying degrees of finesse; a wide-ranging musical backdrop; and dances created by Campos in an appealing diversity of fanciful styles — Middle Eastern-ish.

As the play opens, three masked acolytes peer through a richly painted scrim and nervously ask, “Where is he? Where is he?” A restive crowd in the ancient city of Uruk impatiently awaits the coronation of a new king, Prince Gilgamesh (Rico Reid), son of the late king. But he is AWOL, and the play’s namesake character, Inanna (vivacious Diana Garle) — goddess of love, war, fertility, plus a few other divine attributes — is desperate. She has descended with haunting luminosity from heaven to crown Gilgamesh, and he is a no-show. What’s a goddess to do? Stage a diversion.

Enter the huluppu tree. Uprooted and washed adrift in a river of the Urukians’ tears (grieving their king’s death), this sapling was rescued by Inanna, and, after a three-generation divine family dust-up, she plants it next to the temple to serve as a time-marker for the arrival of a new king. Thus, we have our diversion.

But in drama, as in life, plans go awry. Replete with golden fruit and elegantly crafted in graceful wooden arcs and poles, the huluppu tree stands commandingly center stage. It grows thicker and denser before our eyes. An attractive nuisance, however, it soon hosts an unwelcome encampment of three lively new deities (the Sumerians had thousands of them), two of whom flap, roar, swoop and somersault in the air: Luckner Bruno’s thunder-cracking Anzu and acrobatic goddess of merriment and laughter, Siduri (Ana Mendez). They are lifted and propelled with skill and strength by unseen stagehands. (Tip of the hat to Cirque du Soleil, Crouching Tiger and MTC technical director, Ron Burns.)

These oversize characters, each with a distinctive trick bag, neglect official duties to instead cavort, vie for position and devour the tasty huluppu fruit (a few of which they toss into the audience). Among these three freeloaders, the “pharmacist” Ningizzida, (Troy Davidson) eloquently exploits his jokester role and his signature props: a roulette wheel of maladies and herbal remedies and a multi-pocketed cloak of herbs. Inanna is stymied by these loafing lodgers, but then Prince Gilgamesh, the would-be king, returns from his pilgrimage and is put to the test: Can he turn out the freeloaders and restore order to the kingdom? Can Inanna keep him on track, avoiding violence? Will the audience repeatedly surge to his aid? (Does Superman wear a cape?)

Some of the larger-than-life characters are effectively amped-up with computer-enhanced voices and, in the case of Anzu, by that glorious steroidal body armor, enormous wings and yellow-feathered legs. Subtleties of staging and delivery are interwoven amid broader styles of engagement with an indulgent and mostly guileless audience, reared on The Lion King, Star Wars and Xbox. The assembly eagerly embraces this combination of old and new stylings.

In the music, sound design, choreography and deep, richly layered set, we inhabit an ambiguous milieu, but when did you last encounter “authentic” Sumerian music or dance? A combination of live percussion (musicians perched in a Mondrian-like scaffolding within a luminous cathedral of modulated blue light) and commissioned music evocative of such diverse sources as John Williams’ extra-terrestrial scores, early rap and Putamayo’s Arabic Groove carries us through tonal moods that complement the drama. Never outright campy, the playwrights, director, choreographer and actors give an occasional wink to avoid sanctimoniousness, even as they preach that old time religion.

Confession one: My wife and I have no children. Confession two: We cheered with the best of them. You will too.

May 1 – June 2, 2013 at the Miami Theater Center, 9806 N.E. 2nd Ave., Miami Shores; at 10:00 a.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 7:00 p.m. Saturdays; cost is $20; 305-751-9550; www.mtcmiami.org.

The Miami City Ballet Company (MCB) will close its 2012-2013 season this weekend at the Arsht Center with Broadway and Ballet, a valentine to Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine. No surprise there, since the MCB has been acclaimed far and wide for its devotion to the masters, especially Balanchine. What makes this program so delicious is the unpredictable pairing of the works as well as the works themselves.

The first part of the performance belongs to Jerome Robbins. So successful was he as a choreographer of Broadway musicals — “West-Side Story,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “The King and I” are only a sampling of his handiwork — that it is easy to forget that Robbins loved ballet as well. And ballet as pure as it gets: that’s what his “Dances at a Gathering” is all about.

Originally created by Robbins in 1969 and set to the piano music of Chopin, it marked his return to more classical forms, most particularly pas de deux. The ballet has no props, and hardly any set. Five couples came together in no less than 18 movements, nearly all of them waltzes and Slavic mazurkas. This “Gathering,” in the hands of the rotating cast of MCB, which includes Jeanette and Patricia Delgado as well as Rene Penteado, is a nearly encyclopedic examination of flirtation. One may as often sigh at its sheer beauty of a piece as laugh aloud at its wit. There are the twists that Robbins was so fond of: a gesture at odds with the lyricism of a movement that manages to zap up its impact. And there are the times when flirtation becomes surrender. Look out then.

If the evening begins with elegance and a delight in non-narrative movement not ordinarily associated with Jerome Robbins, the evening ends with bawdiness and very nearly a funk not ordinarily associated with Balanchine. His ballet, “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” was originally a play within a play, part of a Rodgers and Hart Broadway hit, “On Your Toes” from the 1930s. Several decades later Balanchine dusted off his work and expanded it into a stand-alone ballet filled with ladies of easy virtue, silly coppers, sly gangsters and a very deadly competition between two male dancers centering far more on their skill as dancers than any issues of romantic attachment. The real question seems to be, can a great classical dancer become a great hoofer if circumstances demand.

Yep. Especially with a little help from one’s friends, or in this case one Phillip Neil, tap-dancer, former New York City Ballet principal and current South Florida resident. Suddenly — that is after a bit of tutelage — several MCB members  including the great Yann Trividic, become the irrepressible hoofers and jazzistas   “Slaughter” demands. Patricia Delgado, dancing in very high heels, plays the love interest in a climax that could wake the dead.

If all this weren’t enough, on Friday night, the part of gangster gunman will be played by retired Major League Baseball catcher extraordinaire, Mike Piazza. He promises no errors.

Miami City Ballet’s Program IV Broadway and Ballet, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., Sunday at 2:00 p.m. at the Ziff Ballet Opera House, the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300  Biscayne Blvd., Miami; tickets range from $20 to $175; www.arshtcenter.org.

This review also appears in Miami New Times.

Photo: Daniel Azoulay

Probably the most predominate need for any choreographer is to find a place to play, create, investigate, but even more important, a place to show their work. From the Works in Progress Series in New York’s Dance Space, or The Shared Choreographer’s Showcase in Cambridge, Mass.’s Dance Complex, or our hometown Open Space series presented by Dance Now Miami at The Little Haiti Cultural Arts Center, studios and more established companies offer a vehicle for other artists to present their work in a lightly produced or bare-bones affair.

One company helping to support other artists is Sobers & Godley, founded in 2009 by Simone Sobers and Gierre Godley to present original contemporary works. In the summer of 2012, the duo founded and produced Dance Soirée in New York City. The mission was to provide an accessible platform for emerging artists to present their work in a raw setting for written feedback from an audience. One choreographer based on audience votes receives an Audience Choice Award honorarium. Showcases take place in the winter, summer, and fall in New York City. And this past weekend, on Sat., April 27, the project’s inaugural spring showcase took place in Miami at the Miami Dance Studio.

Twelve artists, nine local and three from New York, answered the call for work to be presented in this venue. It was standing-room-only, with audience members watching from the back and sides. The magic was the intimate proximity of the artists to the audience, where every nuance and bead of sweat is exposed by two floor stage lamps shining a light against a white wall background. Every piece had the same set up; that one common denominator required that the artists stand out on the merits of their work.

Some were more successful than others.

There were a series of solos which, either by coincidence or design, were all costumed in white, and all seemed to blend into each other. The difficulty of presenting solo work is that unless you have the fortitude and commanding presence of Judith Jameson performing Ailey’s “Cry,” solo work can feel uncomfortably indulgent or overly introspective, trading movement for a highly gesticulated vocabulary. A stand out by merit of its folkloric theme and the dancer’s own enchantment was the ritualistic performance of “Espiritu Shanti,” by Kamaria Dailey.

Highlights of the showcase included Southern Breakdown, a trio by Brigette Cormier, danced by Cormier and two others, dressed in striking red dresses.  The women danced in individual vignettes that moved craftily in and out of unison movement and brought the dancers back to their own starting poses. The movement itself was captivating, but the musical choice of Train Song by Avocado State was distracting. The vocabulary and the interpretation of the space was strong enough that the piece could have worked equally well, if not even more impressively, in silence.

“Consumer,” a spoken word and movement collaboration by writer and spoken word artist Marie Whitman and dancer Paola Escobar, was an intelligent performance piece, where both word and movement reflected and informed each other well. While Escobar danced in, on, and over a rocking chair, Whitman would circle and manipulate the chair while sharing her thoughts on the perils of consumerism. Both women had great presence and Whitman has the rare talent of delivering her engaging words effortlessly, without a hint of hesitation or recitation.

“Beauty of a Woman,” choreographed by Alexandra Makarova, was performed by a quartet of women of varying ages from a young girl to the mature and vibrant Makarova. The piece was a lovely and mesmerizing fusion of contemporary and flamenco. The women danced in canon with the flourishing of fans in hand as they accented the syncopations and rhythms in the soft flamenco guitar music. The movement was rich and flowing but also very physical and challenging.

Also promising was Chad Austin and Shawna Bowden’s quartet, “A Woman’s Story,” whose second section was the strongest danced by four women to a cover of Nina Simone’s often times misunderstood song, Four Women; and Ferdinand de Jesus’ “Bitter Earth,” a duet performed by a powerful couple to Max Richter’s mix of a Dinah Washington standard.  Both pieces had elements that on the surface mildly imitated themes, devices and design of already established works by artists like Ulysses Dove, Talley Beaty, or Alvin Ailey. But at their core was a strong intensity and delivery that as the artists’ future works develop, can grow to an even more powerful original voice.

Even with the diversity of styles mentioned so far, there were two pieces that unfortunately felt out of place. “Fun on a Foggy Day” was a tolerable, decently sung, half jazz dance/half musical number with requisite jazz hands. And “Down on the Pharm” was an overly long costume piece that was heavy on metaphor and light on the tap.

Finally, the bookends of the night were an untitled opening duet by presenters Sobers & Godley that was physical, visceral, and predatory, as the two used the back wall as an extension of their bodies and as the edge of the abyss. The closing piece was Sobers’ creation, danced by the aforementioned Makarova and Claudia Alvarado. The piece titled “About Your Nothing” was a wonderfully dense and at times harrowing pool of movement, with barely a rest for the two strong performers. Whereas many artists confuse emotionally heavy dance interpretation as craft, this work proves that vocabulary, true movement of bodies in space, and genuine craft are more successful at provoking emotions with subtext.

One thing that could benefit the overall experience is curating a smaller number of presenters to eight to 10 (their were 12 works by invited artists and the presenters’ two works). In a showcase of so many styles and artists, reducing the number of works and the length of the showcase would give the audience a better chance to more deeply appreciate each course and rest the palate in between. The selection process would also benefit the program by having a more defined scope. But overall, Miami dance will be better served if such a series continues.

Photo credit: Samantha Siegel

At its 1853 premiere in Venice, Giuseppe Verdi’s beloved opera La Traviata was jeered. That may have been the fault of the singers, as the composer hinted in a letter to a friend. Since Verdi’s time, lush orchestrations, a string of aria hits, and a libretto about a libertine courtesan who finds love and dies have made La Traviata the most performed opera in the world. Indeed, the need to make such a familiar production fresh has lead to many outlandish and sometimes even absurd productions.

Not so with Florida Grand Opera’s 2013 season closer. FGO plays La Traviata straight – and the singers would have made Verdi proud.

On April 20, María Alejandres was indisputably the best leading lady of the season, and one the best Violettas I’ve ever heard. Her voice projected powerfully, with a flawless technique and colorful musicality. It was deliciously decadent to hear Sempre libera, Violetta’s first act tour de force sung, not shrieked.

Ivan Magrì held his own as Alfredo, with a youthful lyric tenor in complete control and balancing neatly with Alejandres throughout. However, it took a couple of acts for dramatic chemistry to flare between the two, in the duet Parigi, o cara. It was worth the wait.

Giorgio Coaduro made a fine Germont, with a convincing paternal presence and vocal command. Although it took him a little while to warm up, he did so in time for a heartfelt Di Provenza il Mar, il Suol.

The cast as a whole seemed disconnected from each other in the first acts, finally coming together as an ensemble in Act III. Bliss Heberts’ staging did not help. It seemed static, perhaps because Allen Charles Klein’s majestic sets did not leave much room for anything or anybody else. This posed a particular challenge for the dancers in the Gypsy and Picador chorus. Fortunately, choreographer Rosa Mercedes made the most of the limited space.

Maestro Ramon Tebar brought out the best in the orchestra, taking a Bel Canto approach that highlighted the influence that style had on Verdi’s work. The contrast in tempi between the pathetic opening prelude and the adjacent party scene, and the unusually fast Brindisi were refreshing jolts.

Energized, the audience responded to FGO’s production of La Traviata with a standing ovation that lasted almost as long as the courtesan’s drawn-out death.

Space and sound are closely related, even if it often goes unnoticed. Over the course of two weeks, many of the performances at the Subtropics Festival in Miami Beach confronted this relationship.

Paula Matthusen, a former Miami resident, spent hours recording sounds in New York City’s historic engineered underground, including Old Croton Aqueduct, which was used in the 19th century to deliver water to the city. Her surround-sound composition prominently featured the acoustic hallmarks of water dripping in caves, even incorporating sounds of a tour guide at one point. But particularly striking were the shifts to a new space. The sonic difference between an underground tunnel and the outdoors is significant, and without a visual aid, the listener is struck by the contrast.

At one moment, we abruptly moved from the watery echo of the aqueduct to silence. The background sounds disappeared, replaced by a loud, violent metallic sound, like a hammer striking a metal pipe. In a soundscape composition, these are the equivalents of themes and melodies, and indeed Matthusen described her piece as a “theme and variations.”

Water was also prevalent in Dafna Naphtali’s performance. Naphtali is a New-York based vocalist who uses computer processing to significantly alter her voice during performance. In one piece called “Dripsodisiac,” she made sounds with her voice that recalled dripping water. The computer then took those sounds, repeated them, and spun them around the speakers that surrounded the audience, creating a wet, sonic space that falls somewhere between a natural environment and a digital one.

Ron Kuivila performed a piece from his laptop that incorporated dial tones, ring tones, and FAX machine sounds from different countries, combining them with actual analog telephones stationed around the room, the sort you will remember if you were alive in the 1970s. The dial tones and the ringing telephones with their bell gave a nostalgic quality to the piece, a reminder that sounds can go extinct like wild animals. Now we can hear them in a gallery, but how much longer will they be found in their natural habitat?

These performances took place at Audiotheque, a studio in the ArtCenter South Florida building at 924 Lincoln Rd. Gustavo Matamoros, the sound artist and director of Subtropics, has turned it into a performance space that seats around 40 people, surrounded by speakers. The intimate atmosphere complements the music, allowing the electronics to stay at a comfortable volume while still conveying subtle nuances. And the audience feels at home, enough to ask a lot of questions after the performance.

The festival included several performances at other locations, including Matamoros’s trio Frozen Music at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, also featuring David Dunn and Rene Barge. On a beautiful sunny day, children climbed around the many nooks of the garden, and speakers surrounding the open grassy lawn produced an urban collage of sounds. Chief among the mix was a six-hour recording of Dunn’s electronic automaton, which produces a never-repeating, chaos-driven stream of beeps and hums and bloops, sort of like Finnegan’s Wake performed by an Atari.

The sounds were reminiscent of mockingbirds, and much like Natali’s water drips, they produced a curious effect that sounded both natural and synthetic at the same time. The same can be said of the Botanical Gardens, a beautiful space that achieves much of its beauty through human manipulation of nature, and that can’t entirely escape the rumble of busses and traffic on the surrounding streets.

In a different context, these same sounds can kill. In a lecture the day before, Dunn had described his fascinating work recording the communicative sounds of bark beetles — a parasite that is devastating hardwood forests across North America. Before Dunn, no one realized how chatty the beetles were, as the sounds are very quiet and can only be picked up by special microphones embedded in the tree. Working with biologists, Dunn developed his electronic automaton in part to kill the beetles. By piping the sound into a tree, the beetles become disoriented, uncommunicative, and unable to reproduce.

The Subtropics festival will return in two years, and while at times it may be challenging and provocative, it will absolutely not affect your reproductive abilities.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to catch more music and sound art along these lines, check out Phill Niblock’s piece Aomoni Water playing at the 24/7 outdoor Listening Gallery (underneath the awning) at 800 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach. On Sat., April 20, you can check out The Treble Girls at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, 2000 Convention Ctr. Dr., Miami Beach ,at 5:00 p.m. –  a mother-daughter duo featuring flute, violin, voice, and electronics. Part of the 12 Nights of Electronic Music and Art, a production of The Feta Foundation; 12nights.org; $7.

Image: Dafna Naphtali

Celebrated dance critic Margaret Putnam once wrote: “Tango is the Everest of social dance. Impossible. Demanding. Intricate. And therefore irresistible.” Astor Piazzolla must have believed this to be true as well, as he poured every one of those adjectives into every musical note of his life’s work, also adding a few more like violent, sad and secretive. María de Buenos Aires, his “Tango Operita,” was part of a double bill last Thursday evening along with american composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez’ Tango presented on Florida Grand Opera’s “Unexpected Operas in Unexpected Places” program. The venue, Design District’s The Stage, was not all that an “Unexpected Place,” since it regularly hosts live music, film, and theater — but this was a first venture into nightlife for FGO.

The doors opened at eight o’clock, a good time to arrive since seating and standing room was limited. Furthermore, guests were informed that the performance would take place throughout the entire space, both indoors stage-side and the outdoor patio. Sharply at nine o’clock the pre-show started with FGO Young Artist Lyndon Meyer announcing the evening’s proceedings with the piano, moving on to  exquisitely soulful renditions of Alberto Ginastera’s Canción al Árbol del Olvido (Song to the Tree of Forgetfulness) and Kurt Weill’s Youkali by fellow FGO Young Artists Rebecca Henriques and Carla Jablonski. Meyer’s colorful and extremely sensitive playing was the musical heartbeat of the evening, in more ways than one.

First on the bill was Rodriguez’ Tango, with a text based on newspaper articles about the the tango craze about a century ago, was brilliantly executed by tenor Matthew Newlin, also an FGO Young Artist. Although mostly recited with the occasional chant and recitativo-like passages, Newlin managed to bring life and coherence to what seems more like a comedy sketch than an opera. Also, this seems like the perfect moment to start lauding, with a full brass orchestra, the highly virtuosic and achingly passionate dancing of Jeremías Massera and Mariela Barufaldi, indisputably the soul of the entire performance.

After a brief intermission for cocktails, guests were instructed to take their seats to welcome Catalina Cuervo as María de Buenos Aires. The music, unmistakably by Piazzolla since the first bars, was excitingly delivered by a small band formed by FGO Orchestra members who, much to my pleasant surprise, did not sound like a bunch of classical musicians playing some other type of music. A source for their inspiration must have been bandoneón player David Alsina, of whom Piazzolla himself would have been proud.

Less inspiring, unfortunately, was  Cuervo’s performance. Whether because of opening night jitters or embarrassingly noticeable technical difficulties with the sound system (her mike didn’t work at all for her opening number), she failed to convince me about who María is and who or what she later becomes. Cuervo, strikingly beautiful, is endowed with a deep, raspy voice much like that of the great Amelita Baltar. Gorgeous, yes, but there is not enough pain in her voice for this role.

Distractingly, Luis Sosa, a Venezuelan actor who played the poet-narrator El Duende, did not even try to speak in an Argentine accent, making his treatment of tango slang lunfardo annoying at best.

Thankfully, velvet-voiced Luis Alejandro Orozco, with his skip-a-beat good looks, tied it all together as El Cantor (here, a singer delivering décimas, usually improvised 10-line poems). The Mexican baritone appeared to be the only cast member who understood what Piazzolla’s opera is about.

José María Condemi’s staging worked beautifully. With creative and precise use of the space, Mr. Condemi is a natural theatrician. He even joined the action at times, sidling up to the women of the chorus at the bar.

Maestro Ramón Tebar looked like he was having the time of his life conducting the band, as always, displaying command and comfort. I must also give a final Bravo! for dancers Massera and Barufaldi, who supplied the evening’s sustenance, breath, sex, torment…in short, the tango.

]]> http://artburstmiami.com/2013/03/24/it-takes-fgo-to-tango/feed/ 0 http://artburstmiami.com/2013/03/22/pie-solo-takes-worthwhile-risks/ http://artburstmiami.com/2013/03/22/pie-solo-takes-worthwhile-risks/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:24:13 +0000 Mia Leonin http://artburstmiami.com/?p=3391

In “Pie Solo,” created and performed by Pioneer Winter, the Miami-native taps his way into new creative territory. Running about an hour, Winter’s first solo piece integrates contemporary movement, tap dance and video; however, the centerpiece of the show is his monologue. It’s a risky choice, considering the dancer/choreographer has never before utilized his voice in a performance. “Pie Solo” is part of Miami Theater Center’s Sandbox Series, designed to help contemporary artists create new work. The show runs through March at MTC in Miami Shores.

Winter’s monologue raises issues about family and religion, but the piece primarily weaves a narrative that explores Winter’s identity as a gay man. Portraying himself, Winter delivers his text in a frank, sincere tone. He neither falls on his sword, nor does he hide from the audience. At times though, he loses momentum as he struggles to pace breath, vocalization and movement.

One of the unique aspects of the performance is the integration of tap dance. The 25-year-old began taking lessons when he was four. In one of the show’s most powerful scenes, Winter stands in a makeshift bathroom stall with a small video of an anonymous pair of shoes on display in the next stall. In conjunction with the video, Winter taps out a darkly humorous depiction of two strangers having sex in a public bathroom. The coordination between live tap and the dancing on the video is riveting. This is a moment where Winter’s tap dancing skills transcend performance and create a rich metaphor.

Another such moment occurs in an anecdote about his grandfather’s death. He explains that in ceremonious moments, his father would always say, “Tap dance, son.” In this poignant, yet funny segment, Winter recalls tap dancing furiously on the dock of a lake to placate his grieving father while his grandfather’s ashes blew in his face. This is a moment where the performer’s refrain: “I only want to please” fits perfectly. Often, though, it feels like a throw away line.

I would like to see Winter organize the show around a powerful metaphor such as tap dance, or as he mentions at one point, the celebration of the first quarter of his life. The show needs organizing principles that will allow for a broader scope of material. For example, he introduces some intriguing tidbits about religion and family that go undeveloped. Winter’s mother, who also tap danced, died when he was nine years old. His family, of Russian-Jewish descent, converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses.

There’s also room to tighten some scenes. For example, an interactive scene where Winter gives an audience member a foot rub and “blow job” (by playing a saxophone between the man’s legs) is very humorous and serves as an effective transition to Winter’s coming out story; however, it goes on too long.

“Pie Solo” has some challenges to work out; however, Pioneer Winter’s charismatic presence and the show’s moments of clarity and humor make for an interesting performance.

A version of this review first appeared in the Miami Herald, March 19.

“Pie Solo” by Pioneer Winter runs through March 30 at the Miami Theater Center, 9806 NE 2^nd Ave., Miami Shores; at 8:00 p.m. Friday and Saturdays; cost is $20; info: 305-751-9550, www.mtcmiami.org

Photo credit: Javi Geovanni

 

 

 

 

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After patiently waiting for an audience member to silence his/her phone, Maestro Giancarlo Guerrero gave the downbeat to a performance full of color and dance. The Cleveland Orchestra, being the extremely fine-tuned instrument which it is, responded gracefully and lavishly to the Maestro’s controlled but immensely exciting and sometimes dance-like conducting throughout the evening.

The first work of the program, Neruda Songs for Mezzo-soprano and Orchestra by Peter Lieberson, was a sensuous treat. Lieberson selected these five sonnets out of the Cien Sonetos de Amor (One Hundred Love Sonnets) by beloved Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, and set them to music specifically for his wife, the great late Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. In the composer’s own words, “each of the five poems that I set to music seemed to me to reflect a different face in love’s mirror.” Anyone familiar with Hunt Lieberson’s incomparable artistry, with her natural gift for phrasing melodic lines and dynamic shaping, would understand the enormity of the shoes Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong had to fill for this performance. With a deep but tender, powerful but soothing voice, and a vast palette of musical colors, DeShong more than did both Mr. and Mrs. Lieberson justice. It was an intimate rendition, becoming apparent that Ms. DeShong understands that Neruda Songs are filled with a sort of delicate passion and peace made with the loss of a loved one. Maestro Guerrero accompanied Ms. DeShong very sensitively, also bringing out of the orchestra the vast array of sound colors in Mr. Lieberson’s score, especially pleasingly in Amor, amor, las nubes a la torre del cielo (Love, love, the clouds went up to tower of the sky) with the winds ascending to a climactic chord, and in Ya eres mía. Reposa con tu sueño en mi sueño (And now you’re mine. Rest with your dream in my dream), with its repeating sensual bossa-nova rhythm. In the last song, Amor mío, si muero y tú no mueres (My love, if I die and you don’t), DeShong’s diminuendo on her final Amor made me believe that peace is in fact attainable.

Expecting to be bombarded by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the main course on the evenings menu, I was very pleasantly surprised by Maestro Guerrero’s relaxed but nevertheless intense interpretation. Despite the endless debate over Beethoven’s tempo and metronome markings, Maestro Guerrero chose to obey the Master’s wishes and for the first time in my life was able to hear the written articulation in the second violins and cellos in the opening of the first movement. I was also able to hear the different instrument sections’ interaction and famous Beethoven crescendi boil to a simmer, making me break a sweat. The second movement made Maestro Guerrero dance on the podium. His precise and subtle conducting filled the movement with an elegant drama, as opposed to a nervous one. The third movement made ME dance. At a slightly slower tempo than that in Beethoven’s marking, the enhanced heartbeat-like pizzicati in the double basses and cellos created a great groove which made the graceful melodic line dance. The Finale, that symphony within a symphony, shined with the presence of roughly 200 members of the combined forces of the Master Chorale of South Florida, Alec Schumacker, director, and the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, James K. Bass, director. After the series of beautifully shaped recitatives in the cellos and double basses, and the exposition of the “Ode to Joy” theme, came the commanding presence and voice of bass Raymond Aceto, triumphant and virtuosically stating his own recitative. While the balance between orchestra and chorus was perfect throughout the movement, the same thing cannot be said about the four soloists as they sang together. Ms. DeShong, after having thrilled us earlier in the evening, disappeared into oblivion, making it seem as if she did not know her part well and was afraid of being found out. Soprano Nicole Cabell had some intonation issues, but displayed great command of her part, a very difficult one. Tenor Garrett Sorenson, with a lovely lyric voice, sang his solo majestically, and was in perfect balance with Mr. Aceto at all times. The massive choir maintained a well-shaped sound throughout, and got the most bravo shouts in the four curtain calls at the end.

Maestro Guerrero looked exhausted but blissful, and I’m sure he had a tremendous night sleep after such a fabulous performance, probably ecstatic at the thought of doing it all over again the next evening, AND the next.

Imaginarium Life is a complex multi-media performance piece created by the brilliant dark angels at Bistoury Physical Theatre, Alexey Taran and Carla Forte. The performance documents — through dance theater, sound and gorgeous cinematography — the spiraling, chaotic world of an artist whose obsession with himself and his own imaginary world of self-inflicted wounds destroys him and the person he loves. Sounds tragic, yes, but the unregulated, self-centered ego focused only on detachment instead of human connection is a recipe for disaster. This all-too-human failing demands attention. Taran and Forte focus our eyes and egos on this failing in this exquisitely eerie performance.

Ruben, the artist, played by Taran, suffers greatly. In fact, he deifies suffering at the cost of his own well-being. But why? He seeks happiness and freedom, which are reasonable goals. We all deserve these things, but he tries to achieve those goals through radical isolation and detachment — an often misunderstood Buddhist notion. What we don’t realize at first is the suffering that his wife, Ana, played by Forte, experiences throughout this piece. As Ruben tries to retreat into his imaginary world to escape the demons on his back (who are always on his back no matter what world he steps into), Ana supplies the structure to keep her husband afloat in la la land. She enables. She encourages. She feeds. She loves him, but love sometimes leads us to betray our own self-interest that will inevitably come back to haunt us (and Ana) in the end.

“You dream too much: does it hurt?” is one of the first lines to create a lightening bolt. In the imaginary world there’s supposed to be no pain, no suffering, no hurt; just happiness, joy and freedom — at least in theory. This line made me question what is Imaginarium Life. Is it an imaginary world free from sin and sorrow? Shame and suffering? Despair and desolation? Or is Imaginarium Life just life as it is simply renamed to give us (or Ruben) the false impression that we can create new worlds out of nothing when we are in fact powerless to do so.

“To be able to live: first kill the self.” I know what Ruben feels. Sometimes the only way to save ourselves is to destroy the absurd notion of the self that we’ve created because we feel like we’re not good enough, smart enough, cute enough, creative enough or fill-in-the-blank enough. This broken self, this powerful and intoxicating thing, becomes so big and damaged that it sublimates our authentic self to our manufactured self.

In other words, see Imaginarium Life. See what happens when we create false worlds to destroy false selves when we live in a physical world that flows whether we like it or not. Damaged or not, we exist in one world and in one reality. When we step off, we step away from true salvation.

As Ruben’s existential crisis and exorcism of the ego progresses, he totally disconnects from reality and loses all sense of the external world. He confuses the imagined Ana with the real Ana. This warps his sense of reality and the consequences of his actions are deadly. As the performance wraps up, the merging of the imaginary world and the physical world becomes obvious as Ruben tries to pin a pair of angel wings onto the projected image of Ana. He leaps and hops in front of the moving image as he attempts to put the wings back on his broken angel.

“The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering,” Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska writes, “whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we’ve just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don’t know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we’ve got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.”

Imaginarium Life is astonishing it its ability to connect to the audience through radically detached characters. It’s a human narrative that explores the damaged and fractured egos of an impotent artist and his embittered wife. The artist who tries to save himself from himself by retreating into himself as if he can cure a wound with a wound is indifferent to his own suffering. Imaginarium Life exposes this blindness that we impose upon ourselves for…what? Self discovery? In a vacuum?

This play is a terrifying and expansive performance that is visceral and stunningly visual. Imaginarium Life exists in two separate worlds — the projected world and the physical world. Whatever you might think of their work in the end, Taran and Forte’s performances are measureless. Their craft is impeccable. Their future is blinding.

This review first ran in December, 2012.

The performance and film fusion of “Imaginarium Life” returns to the Miami Beach Cinematheque, 1130 Washington Ave., Miami Beach from March 15-17, at 9:00 p.m.: tickets range from $15- $17.

Alvin Ailey Dance Theater’s performance at the Arsht Center Friday night began and ended with a prayer, or rather with an electrifying, raging, shimmering, sassy, full-bodied reminder of what prayer can mean.

A work by choreographer Garth Fagan, of Lion King fame, opened the show. Fagan has often acknowledged his debt to African dance and music; that debt is all over this dance entitled “From Before.” It began with a series of solos, as dancer after dancer — each in a body suit of strong color —  moved through proscribed and ancient polyrhythmic movements, each said to call down a different aspect of the creator. This work was so accomplished, let alone downright beautiful, that at one point the audience could actually see the machetes said to be carried by one of the warriors of the godhead.

The dance went on as more and more similarly attired dancers came onto the stage. The music began to change and didn’t stop changing as the company moved in and out of kaleidoscopic patterns. At one moment the company was all calypso; soon the dancers appeared almost as Pac Man figures. Then bam: The sudden reappearance of sacred dance and rhythms. The poignancy was heart-stopping. Revelatory too, as we realize we have been seeing versions of those rhythms all along.

A short piece was followed by one of Miami’s own Robert Battle, who became artistic director of Alvin Ailey in 2011. Entitled “Strange Humors,” it was part comedy, part titanic struggle: a pas de deux for our time, more likely for any time. These dancers did their director proud. Angles were juxtaposed with the grace of round gestures; a string quartet and percussion wrestled as well, while two male dancers were driven by more feeling than they knew how to contain.

A compilation of works by choreographer Ohad Naharin followed intermission. Again, the company was masterful with kaleidoscopic moves in a work that went from Yiddish folk tunes to electronic rock to Vivaldi. Although the dancing itself never failed, the choreographic connection of the parts to the whole seemed at times tenuous.

The compilation began with images of Hebrew scholars; with stunning tenderness the dancers and the work managed to both embrace them and their tradition and suggest the hollowness let alone the danger of righteousness.

A short piece that followed seemed misplaced.

Then there was a pas de deux at least as full of feeling as the earlier “Mixed Humors.” Meanwhile dancers in black tuxes had come and gone. Now they were here in force and goofing on just about all social dances from the 1940s onward, from the skimmy to the chachacha to mambo, even to Bill Cosby’s signature moves. They were goofing on themselves too.
Wry can be a lot of fun, but it isn’t sublime. And this is a company that knows its sublime. Goofing continued as the dancers drew folks from the audience to the stage to dance along with them, or try to. Granted, if ever there was an audience pleaser, this was it. Still, this reviewer wonders why an audience would miss a chance to see more Alvin Ailey dancers dancing, and choose instead to cheer the chutzpah of audience members.

The evening closed, as almost all Alvin Ailey evenings close, with “Revelations,” the signature piece of the company’s founder. One might yearn to see Judith Jamison back in the role that became her signature as well, one might praise some of the dancers in this epic and fault others. Bottom line, the work is so beautiful, so full of joy and homage that we can only be glad this piece continues to have the place it does in our cultural canon.

Ailvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd continues through Sunday; for more details and tickets, call 305-949-6722; arshtcenter.org.