Fabulous Beast's "Rian" and Donka: A Letter to Chekhov

Rian and Donka: a Letter to Chekhov

(previously posted on keestone.livejournal.com)

This evening, I got a standby ticket to see Fabulous Beast Dance Company's Rian. I'm glad I didn't drag anyone with me. 

Now don't get me wrong, Fabulous Beast is a very good ensemble of dancers.  I have no gripes with their technique or artistry.  And there were some excellent pieces within the concert as a whole.  But I think the concept behind Rian was fundamentally flawed, it lacked anything other than the concept to unify it, it was static, disconnected, and at least 45 minutes too long.  I got bored.  And if I of all people get bored watching dance, that's a bad sign.

I suspect I'm a bit synaesthetic in my physical response to the shape of music. It's probably why I'm so passionate about dance.  When I listen to music I love, I love to close my eyes and watch it take shape, watch it dance.  (I nearly had a fit when I saw the Fantasia 2000 "Rhapsody in Blue" set-piece. Can't they hear that's a curved line?!?)  It's also probably why I so vehemently hate some music. I mean, I can't listen to distorted electric guitar because it makes me physically ill, and I don't feel like I'm exaggerating when I talk about certain repetitive heavy beats being the equivalent of hitting me in the head with a baseball bat over and over.  So when it comes to dance, I get pissy when the the movement doesn't fit with the sound.  I got pissy this evening -- not at every piece, but enough to make me less appreciative of the very good dancing.  The concept of the piece was generally flawed in this.  Rian  mixed Modern dance with Irish Trad. music.  Occasionally it worked --  when the music wasn't actually Trad. music for instance, or in some slower, Sean-nos style songs (one of which was beautifully choreographed with three women mostly moving very little except for their arms, while one woman moved more) -- but mostly it didn't.  There's a very good visual equivalent of the "diddly-idly" jigs and reels, and that's the stiff, percussive movement of traditional Irish step dancing.  Not that I want a repeat of Riverdance for a concert performance of dance to Irish music, but the curved, smooth, breath-movements paired with the jigs and reels made me feel like they got the wrong place and the dancers should have been at a Jefferson Airplane concert at the Fillmore, but they somehow got plunked down in a trad. session while still hearing the psychedelic rock.   Except for that one point when I really really wanted the couple dancing to just break into a Lindy Hop, because they had the perfect swing and partnership for that even if the music had nothing to do with it.

So, I got pissy.  And then I got bored.  The choreography lacked dynamism. It was very much one level. The evening overall didn't have any structuring movement; it was just a concert, a bunch of songs thrown together.  For two hours.  Without intermission.  I started checking my watch about an hour in, but I had no idea when it was ever going to end because there was no build, no climax, just another song starting.  Some things might have worked better if they'd been before or after other things, but in any case there was entirely too much of the "music starts, one person starts a repetitive series of movement, another person runs up and joins in, wash, repeat.  As in, like half of the choreography was that.  Yawn!  And then there were a few absolutely beautiful moments, and I got pissy because the rest of it could have been of that caliber but it wasn't.

That's enough of that.

Last Saturday, was Donka: A Letter to Chekhov, which really only had tenuous connections to Chekhov but was beautiful, spectacular, and really enjoyable.  It basically mixed the kind of acrobatic performances you'd see in something like Cirque du Soleil with clowning (of the more traditional commedia-inspired action, not of the painted faces . . . although there were big shoes at one point), with some absolutely stunning set-pieces and shadow play.  Its only real flaw in my opinion, was that there was a bit too much talking, part of which was trying to a more clear connection to Chekhov. Just give me the pretties!

But here!  a video!




And that's it for now.