Cinderella review
Review of Richmond Ballet's recent production of Cinderella for Style Weekly, click here.
Review of Richmond Ballet's recent production of Cinderella for Style Weekly, click here.
In the January issue of Dance Magazine, a profile of the Richmond Ballet.
In the February issue, an education piece on "Teaching Without Touching" (not yet available online).
In this week's Style Weekly, a preview of spring dance happenings in Richmond.
A few weeks back in C-ville Weekly, a review of Miki Liszt Dance Company.
Review of last night's Richmond Ballet performance online at Style Weekly here.
6 August 2008
This is the first of a series of dance-focused blogs from the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. For subsequent installments, visit Dance Magazine.
For a dance lover, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe serves as an exercise in frustration and elation, alternately and sometimes simultaneously. The “Dance and Physical Theater” section of the mammoth Fringe book looks depressingly slim slipped between the mammoth Comedy section, the respectably thick Music section, and the robustly-proportioned Theatre listings. However, in this my fifth year at the Fringe, I have developed a great faith in stumbling upon unexpected treasures amidst the masses of mediocre or transcendently bad.
And faith is a good thing to have this year, since a few tried-and true dance elements are missing. The Aurora Nova venue, run with ever escalating success by Artistic Director Wolfgang Hoffman for the last several years, is simply not here this year. Fringe regulars—dance and theater lovers alike—grew accustomed to making the long, joyful trek down the steep hill of Frederick Street to beautiful St. Stephen’s Church at the bottom. There we could experience the likes of the superb Russian visual/physical theater artists Derevo, or the jaw-dropping intensity of the Norwegian Zero Visibility Corps in works that turned us inside out.
But this year, St. Stephen’s does not even appear as a venue on the Fringe map, and Aurora Nova’s website returns a server error when visited. We’ve been forced back into self-reliance: reading the Fringe programme, checking the papers, and sniffing out the good, the bad and the ugly alike. I was thrilled to note that Derevo was indeed included in the Fringe book, at another venue, but when I called for tickets I was informed that one of the group had sustained a severe knee injury requiring surgery while performing in Poland, and that the show was cancelled. Heartbreak!
So we soldier bravely on. It has been a slow start for me here, seeing a mixture of theater and dance/physical theater works over the last several days, only a few of which have stood out so far. While I cannot call Al Seed’s The Fooligan [at Pleasance venue] dance in any strict sense, his one-man show revealed a sensitivity to physical performance and pantomime that any dancer would do well to emulate. In a round, Humpty-Dumpty-esque suit, the clearly lithe Seed told stories of a talented and corrupt storyteller, in a rich, rolling voice, interspersing spoken sections with stretches of purely physical narrative. His relationship with the fat suit shifted continually with his voice. At times he expanded within it, appearing as a genuinely monumental man; at other times he receded within it and moved quickly enough that I’d almost forget the suit was there.
On a whim a group of us saw The Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs [pronounced “Chumleys’ and “Fanshaws”] present ‘Dancing on Your Grave’ Featuring Corpse de Ballet, and were treated to a hilarious music-hall style act performed by five singer-dancers who amongst them sang, danced, and played accompaniment on ukeleles. With ghastly make-up, and movement ranging from rigid to floppy, all on a small, square stage-on-the-stage, the troupe brought new richness to the term dead-pan, if such a thing were possible.
Last night, some spectacular dance at last—the Brazilian company Balé de Rua tore up the stage at Assembly Hall with an intense, energetic blend of capoeira, hip hop, folklore, and percussion performed by 14 men and one woman. Directed by Marco Antônio Garcia, the show seeks to convey the joy and power of the Brazilian people, referencing the damaging slave trade and the Afro-Brazilian people’s strength in surviving it. Along with deep drumbeats, lightning-quick arms and legs, chiseled torsos, and impeccable lighting, the show took the hot/cool aesthetic of hip hop, with its perfectly timed stops and starts, layered it over fast-rolling beats, embellished it with gesture and facial expression, and wove it seamlessly together with more traditional Brazilian forms.
While a viewer may or may not leave feeling culturally enlightened, chances are good that she will certainly leave feeling energized and delighted at the technical skill and irresistible exuberance of these fiercely committed performers.
For more, see my guest blog at www.dancemagazine.com.
First, a piece I wrote about Shentai, an art-carnival-extravaganza in Charlottesville last summer, for C-ville Weekly. Click here. This one was a delight to write.
Next, a current piece for Style Weekly on the state of the dance scene in Richmond, here. Please note that I neglected to mention the annual Yes, VA Dance showcase, info on which can be found here.
Article on Child Prodigies in Dance can be found in February issue of Dance Magazine.
Short piece on one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" for 2008, the Washington Ballet ballerina Diana Albrecht, can be found here.
This little blog is dusty from disuse, but here we are back again. Below are links to several recently published pieces:
A review I wrote of a giant Christmas pageant-spectacular, for Style Weekly: http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=15843
The obligatory Nutcracker review, for Style Weekly: http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=15949
A review of the Richmond Ballet for Style Weekly--a reconstructed Agnes De Mille ballet based on a Faulkner story (I had fun with this one):
http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=15608
An article on witch roles in dance for Dance Magazine:
http://www.dancemagazine.com/issues/October-2007/Tales-from-the-Dark-Side
I had a short piece published in the launch of an online erotic journal, of all things. Visit Eve In Hand and check in the "Muses" section. And yes, there are lines in my piece that are over the top; I wrote it all in a rush last year and have not edited it since. So be it.
Dear Virginia,
I am yours, born and bred. I love you--hills, flats, pines, grapes, rivers, old stones, hairpin turns, cloud-strewn, hazy sky. I could never leave knowing I would not return. But now my heart has darkened and questions well up from my shaken roots.
Did you wrestle with your conscience before you voted this way? Did you consider the monstrous impudence of attempting to legislate love? Did you look with eyes of compassion at the courage, hopefulness and affection of men and women who work, live, love and travel the road alongside you? Who love their children as you love yours? Who look up at the same sky with eyes dazzled by the sun? Who feel the same pain from a knife-cut, from the death of a friend, that you do? Do you remember how you felt when you knew you wanted to spend the rest of your life with your beloved? Do you know your own heart? Do you presume to understand the deepest reaches of the hearts of even those closest to you? Are you without fear? Do you show your family, your friends, strangers in the street gentleness, openness, a brave and understanding mind? Do you know what brings you joy? Is it the same that brings joy to your friends? Does it not differ? Can you imagine a law written against the love you bear your wife or husband?
I had hoped you would do justice to your land, your own loves, your neighbors. I had hoped so, but my hope has gone and I am reaching through a cold darkness to try and comfort some of the people I love best in the world, people whose hearts and lives have now been trampled by the place I come from, the place I loved best in the world.
My Virginia, you have spoken and your words breed hatred, bigotry, intolerance, ignorance, confusion, sorrow. But I am still yours, and I have no choice now but to clasp hands with my friends as we set our foreheads into the wind and bare our throats to the growing cold, with courage to keep us warm.
Sincerely,
Lea Marshall
Richmond, VA
Man, they were hilarious!
Link to online review in Dance Magazine:
http://www.dancemagazine.com/dance_magazine/reviews/show_review.php?f=april_2006/trocks.php&PHPSESSID=41b6062bb290145c2b0027741eaaba14