Live! The Realest MC: Posture and Poise
On the surface, Kyle Abraham’s new dance work at On the Boards, Live! The Realest MC, seems to be about gay issues. It is a queer retelling of The Adventures of Pinocchio. The reality, however, is more complex. It is as much about how sex roles, gender and homosexuality are framed largely by the context of race as it is about individual struggle and acceptance. This brings up other questions of race, of course, but in ways that most of the critics of dance and theater–who tend to be white and largely bourgeois–do not care to grasp because such a discussion, too, would prove reality more complex than currently fashionable when it seems easier to reduce it to psychodrama.
The Working Artist: Spotlight on the Cabiri – Behind the Scenes
Many people watch pseudo-documentary work such as Behind the Music with the Latest Lame Boy Band and the like. But even those quasi-real glimpses at the artist’s life reek of antiseptic. Yes, they occasionally contain elements of soap opera and other things to please the mostly hypnotized viewers of “reality” television but they rarely touch on what artists actually do.
Arrangements in Air: Navigating the World of Audio Drama
With the decline of radio and the rise of the Internet most audio drama has moved to a base not in broadcast but rather in podcast. New problems have arisen but two are especially notable. The first is an old problem in a new context: “How do I find all this stuff?” The second is a problem that arises from solving the first.
Romance in the air: Simon & Kirby Comics at Fantagraphics Gallery
The implication is that “vital superheroes” are the apex of comic book writing and that romance comics are beneath contempt for any artist of Jack Kirby’s stature. More accurately, though, a return to simple reality was in the air. Romance comics were the height of American realism in comics.
The Working Artist: Spotlight on The Cabiri—Phase 2
Even those who “support” the arts often treat the making of art like an optional activity in life, something to be reserved for the gifted. It isn’t. Art is not just about being crazy, weird, incoherent, and incomprehensible while expecting money for it. Being an artist requires massive amounts of self-imposed dirty work alternating with almost palpable tedium. This is for all those who do the dirty jobs.
Seattle Chamber Players team up with Olympic Ballet Theatre for The Kairn of Koridwen
Part of the exploration of the Seattle Chamber Players’ American Chamber Dance series aims to revive “rarely performed ballets conceived for chamber ensemble and dancers by maverick American composers.” Charles Tomlinson Griffes was certainly a maverick and his beautiful ballet is rarely performed–very rarely.
Word of Mouth and the Gatekeepers of Comic Art
The interesting question arose at the webcomics panel Thursday night at the Henry: “How do you find all this stuff?” I believe the woman who asked it genuinely wished to know more about webcomics. Between the five artists on the panel, the best answer they could manage was “Word of mouth, definitely.” While this sounds like a good marketing strategy, the answer can only be unsatisfactory to a novice. The answer “word of mouth” simply raises more questions.
Mark Haim’s X2: Remarks in passing
I quite liked the first half of Mark Haim’s X2 at On the Boards. It is an inventive use of space and time all linked by Louis Andriessen’s music De Tijd (Time), inspired as much by the Confessions of St. Augustine (which form its text) as by Morton Feldman. I’m much less keen on the second piece.
The Working Artist: Spotlight on The Cabiri
The Cabiri unite teamwork, effort, sweat, and concentration to pursue their art and hone it to its finest. That the group are not regularly celebrated by Seattle’s performing arts pundits, much less by Seattleites at large, strikes me as a miscarriage of justice. With their emphasis on creating spectacular shows for all ages of people, The Cabiri deserve a much larger and much more faithful following
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