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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > April > 07
Monday, April 7, 2008
Review: ‘Cult of Color: Call to Color’
Austin deepened the niche that it’s been carving itself on the broader cultural landscape Saturday night with the opening of “Cult of Color: Call to Color,” the brilliant collaboration between Ballet Austin’s Stephen Mills, artist Trenton Doyle Hancock and composer Graham Reynolds.
We’re a city that can support — indeed, cultivate— bold, new creative ventures. And, as “Cult of Color” proved — the ballet is sponsored by Ballet Austin with an accompanying exhibit hosted by Arthouse — those enterprises are done at a smart scale and with a flair that’s utterly unique.
Everything about “Cult of Color” is audacious, starting with Hancock’s odd mythology on which the two-act 70-minute ballet is based. The celebrated Houston-based artist has been unraveling his offbeat cosmology for years in vivid, sprawling, mixed-media paintings that are critically acclaimed and much collected. (The Blanton is just one of more than 20 museums around the world to acquire a Hancock painting). In Hancock’s world self-righteous colorless creatures known as Vegans struggle in their black-and-white cosmos while trying to battle the Mounds, the producers of color, and by implication, love and fulfillment.
To bring those eccentric creatures to the stage, Mills created a movement vocabulary that was wholly and wonderfully otherworldly. Here was ballet-based modern dance that was sensuous, yes, but also simian and earthbound; funky but also feline. Partnering and group movements were sometimes ritualistic and then sometimes urbane. And all of it delighted and surprised.
The troupe pulled it off with energetic flair and considerable personality — not easy given the elaborate and whimsical white Vegan costumes, insectlike with their bulging heads and protruding limbs. Anthony Casati brought a wonderful blustering innocence to Sesom, the Vegan who strives the hardest to bring color to the Vegan world. As the oppositional Betto Watchow, Jim Stein manifested pure sinewy threat.
The brilliant forest that visually defines Hancock’s imaginary world has been writ large in a stunning collage created by the Fabric Workshop and Museum of Philadelphia and that serves as a glorious color-filled 60-foot backdrop.
Reynolds’ compelling score drives the emotional and dramatic trajectory of “Cult of Color.” Like in the choreography, here again is an astute and playful combination of juxtapositions. Luscious cinematic orchestral flourishes shift into raucous klezmerlike refrains. Sci-fi movie sound effects weave in and out of rumbling big band rolls. It’s a roller-coaster ride of musical styles deftly and charmingly combined.
“Cult of Color” couldn’t have taken place without the support of a small but forward-thinking group of patrons, most notably Julie and John Thornton. As the premiere performance in Ballet Austin’s new Austin Ventures Studio Theatre (John Thornton is a general partner of Austin Ventures), the 250-seat venue in the organization’s new Butler Dance Education Center, “Cult of Color” epitomizes the groundbreaking possibilities such a venture — backed by risk-taking philanthropists — can produce.
”Cult of Color” continues 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. April 10, 8 p.m. April 11, 2 and 8 p.m. April 12 and 3 p.m. April 13 at Austin Ventures Studio Theatre, Butler Dance Education Center, 501 W. Third St. $50. www.balletaustin.org.
Anthony Casati (left) as Sesom and Alisyn Paino as Painter. Photo by Tony Speilberg.
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Review: Zenon at Texas State
Texas State added itself to the list of the area’s reputable dance presenters Friday with a performance by Minneapolis-based Zenon Dance Company. One of the country’s stronger regional modern dance companies, Zenon brought an accessible, yet artistic program, including works by important choreographers rarely seen in Austin, such as Doug Varone and Sean Curran.
Zenon has physically inquisitive dancers who explore movement for its fullest potential. Opening Sean Curran’s “Coda,” Bryan Godbout let fingers lead him around his body’s axis, layering spiral upon spiral. The dancers gave a sense of not just personal body awareness, but a collective awareness in “Garden” by Wynn Fricke. Every gesture by Amy Elaine Behm-Thomson’s set the rest of the cast into motion. As three couples of men and women responded to Behm-Thomson, she first seemed the group’s protagonist. But then the group became her support system, lifting her above their heads as she walked along the stage’s back wall to exit at piece’s end.
Somber thoughtfulness transformed into flamboyant fun for lighter pieces, such as “The Secret Life of Walt and Kitty” by Cathy Young and “Elegant Echoes” by Danny Buraczeski. In Young’s piece Behm-Thomson and Gregory Waletski conjured images of a 1970s Las Vegas couple seducing each other with flare. Where the rest of the program showcased the dancers’ fluid limbs, Buraczeski’s jazz dance set the dancers’ pelvises into motion, sending them hip-shrugging across the stage.
Zenon’s breadth of repertory (the program also included Varone’s “Of the Earth Below”) is a rarity in dance today. These dancers take on modern and jazz equally well. And they’re funny. That’s hard to beat.
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Review: Austin Symphony Orchestra Long Center debut
Subtlety and sharpness marked the Austin Symphony Orchestra’s debut at the Long Center of Performing Arts Friday night.
And music director Peter Bay smartly picked a program that showed off the sophisticated acoustics of the new Dell Hall, the Long Center’s main 2,400-seat venue. With the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet as special guests, Bay presented a program of all Spanish music rife with bright colorations, crackling rhythms and spirited melodies — perfect for making the most of Dell Hall’s exceptional sound.
After all, the Dell Hall is a vastly more complex instrument than we’ve ever experienced in an Austin concert venue. Gone is the need to make every concert simply - and awkwardly — loud as was necessary in the Bass Concert Hall at the University of Texas, the symphony’s home since the early 1980s.
Clarity is the starting point in Dell. Nuance rules. And that means that there’s a whole new range of volumes and colors a symphony orchestra can employ as Bay so deftly demonstrated Friday night, unfortunately to an audience that had noticeable holes of empty seats scattered through it in every of the three levels of seating.
Bay could not have picked a better piece than Luciano Berio’s ‘Versions of ‘Night Retreat from Madrid’’ to start with. Berio’s variations on a popular theme, superimposed on each other, start soft then builds into an impressive volume before receding as if a band of musicians were approaching and then passing along the way. And thanks to Dell Hall’s exceptional nuance, we heard those crescendos and decrescendos with great delicacy.
Though amplified with microphones, the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet nonetheless delivered a crystalline performance of Joaquin Rodrigo’s sensuous and virtuosic ‘Concierto Andaluz.’
Undoutedly the great flourish of the evening’s program was the finale, Manuel de Falla’s ‘Three-Cornered Hat.’ The frolicking piece, originally commissioned as a ballet version of a familiar folk tale, starts with castanet rolls and shouts of ‘Ole’ from the orchestra. Then it’s a sonic celebration as everything from a blackbird’s chirp to a squeaking well is delightfully rendered by the orchestra. At one point a soprano (Liz Cass) sings a tune from off-stage. A sprightly fandango erupts; A snippet from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony pops up in a humouros moment. A cuckoo clock strikes. Could there have been a more charming - and musically eclectic - piece to show off Dell Hall’s dazzling acoustics? Perhaps not, and Bay made it sparkle with finesse.
This reporter spent the concert’s first half in an orchestra level center-section seat, the most expensive the symphony offers. (If bought outside a season ticket plan, the cost is $48.) If there was a fault of the evening, it was that the symphony didn’t take advantage of Dell Hall’s flexibility that allows for the orchestra pit lifts to be raised, thus moving the entire symphony out further into the hall to maximize the acoustics. What was a wonderful sound could have been spine-tingling. And given the number of empty seats around the house and especially in the first few rows, one wonders about the judiciousness of the decision to forego artistry over potential revenue.
But spine-tingling happened in the balcony during Falla’s ‘Three-Cornered Hat.” From a seat in the front section of the balcony - a $27 ticket - every note shimmered and glittered. It was an auspicious debut of Austin’s newest cultural gem.
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