Sammy vs. Nico
Last night Nicole and I went to see Marie Chouinard's Orpheus and Eurydice. I wasn't impressed. Nicole loved it. I wasn't going to blog about it. Nicole said I had to. As a loyal friend, I reluctantly agreed.
This is the second draft of my review. The first was started as soon as I got home. At around 1:00 am, and hundreds of words later, I realized it was too long for a blog entry and went to bed. To summarize, I thought it was choppy and repetitive. There were brief elements of wonderful creativity and beauty but as a whole there wasn't enough original content to justify sitting in the uncomfortable seats of theatre Grand for over an hour.
If you're going to call the show Orpheus and Eurydice then I expect the story. There was no story. The dance highlighted Orpheus' quest to save Eurydice and unsuccessfully tried to connect it with the quest for finding one's voice. These two ideas carried the entire show and resulted in a final twenty minutes of complete boredom where everything that was presented before was repeated with exagerated intensity in an attempt to drive the choreographers disjointed message home.
Instead, the show should be titled "My name's Marie and I'm feeling uncreative today so I'll be lazy and throw something together. Oh, and maybe I'll reference a tiny part of a Greek Myth to feign story". Maybe that's a little harsh, but I'm out $57 for a show that was maybe worth $25. It was interesting to learn from the dancers at the post show Q & A that the Greek myth was only implanted after the show was first conceived. Confirmed my suspicions all along.
I always enjoy watching dance, the movement, the endurance, the commitment. This performance wasn't lacking in superb dance skill and striking body movement and so it wasn't a complete waste. I was just looking for a little more especially compared to other great shows I've seen and paid a lot less for. Now I'm going to email Nico and tell her to leave a comment for this blog entry with her review. But, personally, I would not believe a word she tells you. ;-)
This is the second draft of my review. The first was started as soon as I got home. At around 1:00 am, and hundreds of words later, I realized it was too long for a blog entry and went to bed. To summarize, I thought it was choppy and repetitive. There were brief elements of wonderful creativity and beauty but as a whole there wasn't enough original content to justify sitting in the uncomfortable seats of theatre Grand for over an hour.
If you're going to call the show Orpheus and Eurydice then I expect the story. There was no story. The dance highlighted Orpheus' quest to save Eurydice and unsuccessfully tried to connect it with the quest for finding one's voice. These two ideas carried the entire show and resulted in a final twenty minutes of complete boredom where everything that was presented before was repeated with exagerated intensity in an attempt to drive the choreographers disjointed message home.
Instead, the show should be titled "My name's Marie and I'm feeling uncreative today so I'll be lazy and throw something together. Oh, and maybe I'll reference a tiny part of a Greek Myth to feign story". Maybe that's a little harsh, but I'm out $57 for a show that was maybe worth $25. It was interesting to learn from the dancers at the post show Q & A that the Greek myth was only implanted after the show was first conceived. Confirmed my suspicions all along.
I always enjoy watching dance, the movement, the endurance, the commitment. This performance wasn't lacking in superb dance skill and striking body movement and so it wasn't a complete waste. I was just looking for a little more especially compared to other great shows I've seen and paid a lot less for. Now I'm going to email Nico and tell her to leave a comment for this blog entry with her review. But, personally, I would not believe a word she tells you. ;-)
posted by sammy at 8:52 AM
1 Comments:
Last time I saw a Marie show, I was confused and, in some ways, unimpressed. Yes, the dancers were amazing and the visual impact was wonderful but I just didn't connect to what they were trying to say/do/communicate with their dance.
This time, as Samina says, I LOVED it. I think it benefits from the narrative element over top the dance. The story was told, then parts were retold, particularly the poignant moment where Orpheus looks back and loses her after all he had been through. Yes, there still were parts that I wasn't sure how they fit in--I think there was an extended section that could be Orpheus' journey through out the underworld and then there was the language part that I loved but had to think of as a second story line or tangent to the myth. But it worked for me.
The dancers were amazing and Marie's penchant for the nude meant we could really see a lot of the intricate torso movements and, of course, enjoy the 10 beautiful bodies up there. There was a lot more humour in this one and a big element of theatre, almost farcical and definitely bawdy at times. But you know, I probably enjoyed it more this time because I knew a bit of what to expect--it would be strange, the dancers would make their bodies move in weird, ugly twisted shapes, and I was prepared to just 'be in the moment' and react/appreciate/enjoy rather than understand and look for meaning.
We'll do ballet next.
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