Category: Performing Arts

Performing Arts

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.

Dance

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.

Culture Dance Performing Arts Society Theater

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

Dance

Joining disciplines with a Hyphen: Catherine Cabeen Company at Velocity

One of the difficulties of assembling an accurate history of jazz is dealing with the subject of improvisation. Lacking a real system of notation, improvisation passes from teacher to student through direct practice alone and is difficult to reproduce. Dance also shares this problem. While there are various systems of notation for dance, these often narrow the range of expressive options rather than opening them up. Yet with a bit of humility and a sense of playfulness, one can approach the subject of notation as a playground for inspiration.