Reviews
2005 HIGH PERFORMANCE RODEO
Presented by One Yellow Rabbit
Runs until January 30
Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre) and various venues
Laurie Anderson, arguably the world’s best-known performance artist, finally appeared at the High Performance Rodeo last week – and the audience made sure she knew she was at a rodeo. The first time Anderson played a portion of violin music in her new solo show The End of the Moon, she was greeted with a wild, cowboy whoop of appreciation from the depths of the Jack Singer.
Despite its ominous title and the fact that it touches on both 9-11 and the destruction of the universe, Anderson’s engaging 90-minute piece is filled with amusement and whimsy. Her ostensible purpose in creating The End of the Moon was to report on her two-year tenure as NASA’s first artist-in-residence and, while she admits that she wasn’t too sure what that entailed, she clearly approached the assignment with a wry fascination. The "behaviour" of NASA’s Mars Rovers intrigues her. Reflecting on the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, she asks if any planet would choose to call its satellites "fear" and "panic." And she finds her own thoughts on esthetics bumping up against the world of physics, where a certain appalling theory about the eventual death of the cosmos is deemed to be "in bad taste."
Anderson’s thoughts, shared in a hushed, conspiratorial tone, don’t just orbit around NASA; they drift into other areas as well. There’s a funny anecdote about Thomas Pynchon, an even funnier reflection on life as merely bad art, and a seemingly cute and innocuous story about her pet terrier and some vultures, which unexpectedly turns into a metaphor for life in New York since the fall of the World Trade Center.
Clad in a night-black suit, twinkling with what appeared to be sequins, Anderson moved about the shadowy Jack Singer stage, itself bedecked in a constellation of flickering candles. On one side was a big, comfy chair, suggesting cozy intimacy; on the other, a stark projection of the lunar surface on a screen. And in between were her musical and video gear. Although she’s kept the special effects minimal, she couldn’t resist at one point placing a palm-sized video camera on the bow of her violin, which provided a close-up point-of-view shot on the screen of her playing, mimicking those cameras attached to race cars or rockets.
The End of the Moon doesn’t promise – or deliver – any shattering insights, but it’s the very thing that cliché tells us performance art isn’t supposed to be: highly entertaining.
Speaking of dark subjects leavened with humour, Azimuth Theatre’s disarming Faithless succeeded in taking the tragic story of an alcoholic, suicidal novelist grieving the death of his two young sons and turning it into a crazy comic narrative about the search for faith. With nothing more than a blanket and a couple of chairs (and some very expressive lighting and sound by Kerem Cetinel and Aaron Macri, respectively), protean actors Chris Craddock and Steve Pirot trace an engrossing tale that zigzags from gentle, poignant scenes between lovers and brothers to zany bits involving a knock-down-drag-’em-out fight with Jesus and a bumpy elevator ride to Hell. The labyrinthine script occasionally drags with excess detail and the ending goes Hollywood soft, but overall it’s both smart and compelling, and actor-turned-director Marianne Copithorne’s fine sense of comedy is everywhere evident.
Let us now praise the Vertigo company for giving us that terrific Playhouse theatre – the new venue is a godsend to contemporary dance in this city. When it houses a mid-sized Rodeo production like Santee Smith’s seven-dancer Kaha:wi, the energy rolls off the stage into the audience in waves.
I’m not a fan of shows that symbolically trace the cycle of life (or circle, as Tim Rice and Elton John would have it), but Smith’s successful fusion of traditional Iroquoian and modern dance allows you to ignore the themes and just revel in the physical exuberance of strong young dancers, led by Smith herself. Her choreography is bold, earthy, sensual and exciting, set to a recorded score produced by Smith and Bob Doidge that gives Mohawk chants a slick pop sheen.
In the course of one hour, Smith’s creativity flags a bit and the chanting can get wearisome, but the dancers are a delight – especially the hunky, acrobatic Alejandro Meraz – while their torsos are etched and gilded by Ron Snippe’s rich lighting – a case of literal jeunesse dorée.
Another familiar premise got a new treatment when local band The Summerlad unveiled their own "Symphony of a City," City of Noise, in a one-night-only performance. For this largely instrumental work in four movements, commissioned by the Rodeo, the four lads (guitarists Garrett McClure, Sean Grier and Arran Fisher, and drummer Dean Martin) and their new keyboardist Meagan Kelln augmented their sound with five additional guitarists, a four-member chorus and a second percussionist. The result sent their hypnotic, driving music soaring into the realms of the majestic. A great way to top off the festival’s third week. |
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