Danse Macabre Part III: The Dance of the Dead, March 24, 2006, Talento Bilingué
This is the first Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre show I've made it to, although I've heard a lot about their other shows. This show was a collaboration with Two Star Symphony and Freneticore, and combined with the show only being an hour long, that didn't leave much time for puppetry. I was disappointed with that, but not disappointed with the show.
The central figure of the show was a guy who had been buried alive but was not yet dead. Boy, if listening to someone describe being buried alive for an hour doesn't creep you out, nothing will. The show alternated between music, puppetry, acting, video, and dance. The acting consisted of a few monologues, some by the buried guy explaining how he got there, and one by a woman giving his eulogy. It seems his church was maybe a little too eager to get him in the ground.
Two Star's music was enjoyable, although their violin section was a little weak. When I played the violin in orchestra in high school, everyone complained about my tone, and now I see what they were talking about; however, I only cringed one time, when the musicians briefly got out of phase with one another. Most of the music was original composition, the exception being an excerpt from "The Unknown Soldier" by Luc Sante. I love the program note that reads, "Two Star Symphony is Houston's most unusual string quartet." Yes, having eight musicians and four non-string instruments does make for an unusual string quartet.
About two-thirds of the way through the show, we started hearing disembodied voices describing how they had died. ("I was trampled by horses," etc.) I took it to be an interlude between a monologue and the dancing, but apparently it was meant to be the other occupants of the cemetary. (We're in a cemetary?) Knowing this would have lent more meaning to the dance section, in which the dancers clearly portrayed dead people who (not so clearly) had risen from their graves to dance with Death. Since Two Star took up half the stage, and the set took up another quarter, the dancers had all of about 100 ft2 in which to dance. That didn't leave much room for creativity, but they made good use of what little space that they had, flailing and sagging as any good corpses should do.
When is FrenetiCore going to have actual content on their web page?
The central figure of the show was a guy who had been buried alive but was not yet dead. Boy, if listening to someone describe being buried alive for an hour doesn't creep you out, nothing will. The show alternated between music, puppetry, acting, video, and dance. The acting consisted of a few monologues, some by the buried guy explaining how he got there, and one by a woman giving his eulogy. It seems his church was maybe a little too eager to get him in the ground.
Two Star's music was enjoyable, although their violin section was a little weak. When I played the violin in orchestra in high school, everyone complained about my tone, and now I see what they were talking about; however, I only cringed one time, when the musicians briefly got out of phase with one another. Most of the music was original composition, the exception being an excerpt from "The Unknown Soldier" by Luc Sante. I love the program note that reads, "Two Star Symphony is Houston's most unusual string quartet." Yes, having eight musicians and four non-string instruments does make for an unusual string quartet.
About two-thirds of the way through the show, we started hearing disembodied voices describing how they had died. ("I was trampled by horses," etc.) I took it to be an interlude between a monologue and the dancing, but apparently it was meant to be the other occupants of the cemetary. (We're in a cemetary?) Knowing this would have lent more meaning to the dance section, in which the dancers clearly portrayed dead people who (not so clearly) had risen from their graves to dance with Death. Since Two Star took up half the stage, and the set took up another quarter, the dancers had all of about 100 ft2 in which to dance. That didn't leave much room for creativity, but they made good use of what little space that they had, flailing and sagging as any good corpses should do.
When is FrenetiCore going to have actual content on their web page?
Labels: performance review
posted by Silvershoes @ 6:43 AM
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