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(12/05/13 3:19am)
“Press/Release,” the Dance Program’s fall concert, showcased newcomers and veterans alike in eight pieces, six of which were student-choreographed, at the Mahaney Center for the Arts Dance Theatre on Nov. 22- 23.
It was a welcome opportunity to see the College’s talented Dance Program in a new light: “Press/Release” shed light on enormously skilled underclassmen dancers that I never even knew existed and it was equally as fun to watch the senior majors show their prowess as choreographers as it was to see younger performers. As it turns out, their choreography is as impressive as their dancing.
One of the night’s standouts came from Rachel Nuñez ’14, who choreographed “Objects in Mirror” for dancers Octavio Hingle-Webster ’17, Danielle Weindling ’17 and Laura Xiao ’17. A trio with some crazy psychosexual power struggles — I never really know exactly what is going on in dance pieces — Hingle-Webster, Weindling and Xiao performed to an original mash-up that interweaved, among others, The Weeknd, Otis Redding and Ólafur Arnalds’s Icelandic chamber music. It was irresistible.
Nuñez’s inventive soundtrack was matched only by that of Jill Moshman ’14, whose piece, “Residue,” closed the show. Moshman’s ambitious score brought together Woody Guthrie, a Bach cello suite performed by Yo-Yo Ma and Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” with clips from subway announcements and selections from a wide spectrum of sources, from nursery rhymes to “The Phantom Tollbooth” to “The Bell Jar.”
Moshman choreographed “Residue” in collaboration with Doug LeCours ’15, with the pair performing the piece as well. By integrating everyday sound clips and kitchen chairs that were both pedestrian and tangible, Moshman and LeCours infused a sense of real life into a genre that is often inaccessible and elusive.
Cameron McKinney ’14 was the only senior dance major to perform solo at the fall show. “Nights Devoted to Roaming in Darkness,” which McKinney choreographed for himself, was a visually striking and very serious piece that involved a large bamboo pole. McKinney seemed to be getting at themes of introspection and discovery, his movements recalling, perhaps, those of a cautious explorer feeling out entirely new territory.
There was also Meredith White ’15 , who choreographed “Lost and Found,” featuring Vladimir Kremenovic ’17, Nellie Pierce ’16.5, Veronica Rodriguez ’16.5, Sarae Snyder ’15 and Sophie Vaughan ’17. Set to original ambient music by Eric Hass ’15, “Lost and Found” showcased Pierce’s hair: everyone started off in oversized hoodies, androgynous and almost unrecognizable, then the dancers paired off, crawled around on all fours carrying each other on their backs and finally circled around a kneeling Pierce, who slowly unraveled her knee-length hair over the course of the piece.
In a style true to her own character, Isabella Tudisco-Sadacca ’13.5 presented a spoken word–dance hybrid piece entitled “This Body I Carry,” which explored her self-discovery, her relationship with her mother, and that time she lived in Senegal, all set to the tune of speeches from the Franco-African Negritude movement.
The two numbers that were not choreographed by students included the Annual Newcomers Piece, arranged by concert director Catherine Cabeen, and “Narayaniyam,” a classical Indian Kuchipudi-style dance that was the culmination of a theory-practice course on Indian religion, aesthetics, history and dance. “Narayaniyam” was particularly engaging — it was a bright, cheery piece with 15 dancers in ornate, jangly outfits, a refreshing shift from some of the more esoteric works.
“Narayaniyam” was also the only appearance of the night for dance department bigwig Adeline Cleveland ’13.5, who will be performing tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m. alongside Amy Donahue ’13.5. Cleveland and Donahue will present entirely original senior work that seeks to combine their interest in dance, gender and self-expression across a variety of media.
(11/14/13 1:30am)
An entirely sophomore-driven and remarkably thought-out production, “Cock” was the collaborative brainchild of director Jordan DuBeau ’16 and producer Alexander Burnett ’16. Written by British playwright Mike Bartlett and debuted in 2009, the Hepburn Zoo production starred Burnett, Arnav Adhikari ’16, Juliette Gobin ’16 and Dylan Gilbert ’16 and ran from Thursday, Nov. 7 through Saturday, Nov. 9.
While on a break from his negative and domineering boyfriend (Burnett), John (Adhikari) finds refuge in a tender divorcée (Gobin) who shows him the light of a not-terrible partner, which John mistakes as the light of heteronormativity, thus throwing him into an identity tailspin that carries us through the rest of the play. We follow a meandering John as he demonstrates his complete inability or his unwillingness to make a decision, leaving his two overbearing paramours to battle it out over our meek hero.
The play’s climactic scene — a dinner party with John, his boyfriend, his girlfriend and, for some reason, his boyfriend’s dad (Gilbert) — culminates in (spoiler alert) John’s deciding to stay with his boyfriend, not because he really wants to, but because he is afraid to give up the identity that he has spent so many years constructing for himself.
Despite its intrepid title, “Cock” thankfully relies less on sensationalism and titillation than it does on sharp humor and skillfully drawn characters. Bartlett’s dialogue is precise and adept enough to carry the piece without much semblance of context.
“Looking at the script, with its zero stage directions and its incredibly particular layout of dialogue, I get the sense that the playwright cedes control of how the play is staged, with the condition that the dialogue comes through as he intended,” DuBeau wrote in his director’s note. “It’s written so well that it seems to scintillate regardless of the visuals.”
There is no set or props to speak of (although the costume design from Yvonne Chan ’16 was spot-on), and though we can glean enough from the text to determine that we are in contemporary London, we are given little framework for the characters’ lives off-stage. John is, in fact, the only named character — M, W and F comprise the rest of the cast — making “Cock” a modern-day take on the love triangle archetype.
Of course, in making John’s choice between a man and a woman, Bartlett explores more (post)modern themes than Shakespeare did — themes of sexual identity and labeling that feel especially relevant in a college setting. It gets a little heavy-handed towards the end, when John will not stop musing about the irrationality of the straight-gay binary — a deft filibuster, it seems, while he tip-toes around the inevitable decision at hand. But generally speaking, “Cock” presents a theme worth exploring at Middlebury: as Burnett put it in his producer’s note, “What happens when we forget the labels? Are there parts of ourselves we haven’t realized exist?”
At 90 minutes without an intermission, “Cock” felt, at times, too long. Part of this seemed intentional, an attempt to mimic structurally the frustration that all the characters feel at John’s indecision. As a rhetorical device, it was effective: I, too, was frustrated. When the girlfriend and the father took their respective exits in the final scene, I was relieved to see them go, simply because it meant that a choice was finally made.
What was best about “Cock,” though, was the cast, which brought Bartlett’s archetypes to life, fleshing them out into three-dimensional, if nameless, people with idiosyncrasies and flaws and shimmering humanity.
Burnett’s M was not just an antagonistic boyfriend but also a man who is deeply, adoringly in love. Gobin’s W was not just a magnetic, self-possessed seductress but also a woman with her own history, needs and insecurities.
Gilbert’s F was more than just a third-act wrench thrown into the three-wheeled dinner party — he was a hilarious and adept take on the overprotective father figure, adding depth to the M character and perspective on the evolving question of sexual identity.
Adhikari offered perhaps the most multilayered interpretation: he succeeded in creating a character that was alternatively infuriating and charming, pompous and unsure, and relatable through it all.
(10/16/13 10:39pm)
Student organizers of the Middlebury MothUP have partnered with the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts to produce a high-caliber, curated storytelling event geared towards the larger College community. “Cocoon: Stories of Metamorphosis” will take place at the MCA Concert Hall on Friday, Oct. 25 at 8 p.m.
Inspired by acclaimed nationwide storytelling organization The Moth, “Cocoon” will feature six storytellers — two students, one alumna, one professor, and two Addison County community members — as well as Luke Greenway ’14.5 as emcee and MCA Technical Director and guitarist Mark Christensen with musical interludes.
Greenway has been working to put together the event along with his two MothUP co-organizers, Rachel Liddell ’15 and Veronica Rodriguez ’16.5, in cooperation with the Center for the Arts, the Committee on the Arts and the College Communications Office.
“It’s something that has been a long time in the making,” Greenway said, adding that it was MCA Director Liza Sacheli who initially approached him last spring about the possibility of collaboration.
“One of our goals at the Mahaney Center for the Arts is to establish a literary arts component to our programming,” Sacheli said. “The [MothUP] seemed like a perfect opportunity to bridge the areas of writing and performance — so it was a good fit for us.”
For the MothUP organizers, too, a partnership with the MCA was a natural next step for the student group, which has hosting storytelling events in the Gamut Room and Gamphitheatre since 2010. From the outset, founder Bianca Giaever ’12.5 intended for the MothUP to be a way to bridge the gap between the College and the town — storytelling as a community-builder, an idea echoed from current MothUP leadership as well.
These days, the MothUP regularly attracts crowds that far exceed the Gamut Room’s capacity. While the Moth-inspired format — all stories must be true and told without notes — lends itself to casual, intimate spaces like the Gamut Room, Greenway, Liddell and Rodriguez see “Cocoon” as an opportunity to build on what the MothUP has been and to grow the organization in new ways.
“People at the MothUP tell stories about losing their virginity, or they swear, or they talk about drugs — and obviously, this changes that,” Liddell said. “But I like the idea of opening up that community.”
“Cocoon,” Liddell said, will exhibit a more highly polished, professional product than the Middlebury MothUP traditionally offers, marking an important transition in the story of the organization.
“Stories have an incredible power to bring people together that I’ve witnessed again and again at the MothUP,” Greenway said. “I can’t wait to bring that to a wider audience with this event.”
In addition to the higher-capacity and higher-quality performance space, “Cocoon” will also feature a more diverse group of storytellers that were hand-selected and groomed for the occasion. Mariam Khan ’16 and Emily Bogin ’16 will be the only student storytellers, alongside English and Environmental Studies professor Dan Brayton, recent alum Emily Jacke ’12.5, Town Hall Theater and Opera Company of Middlebury Director Doug Anderson and Vermont Public Radio producer Ric Cengeri.
“I am hoping to say something that other students will connect with but might not have considered themselves, or something they might have thought about but perhaps not voiced,” Bogin said.
“I have always admired [the MothUP’s] presence on campus and programming they have had in the past,” Kahn said. “In my story, I hope to express my personal experiences with ‘metamorphosis’ and speak about some of the lesser known aspects of my identity.”
Khan will be recounting stories from her experiences as a Muslim woman growing up in Maine and as a professional touring DJ.
Each of the storytellers has been working with Liddell, Greenway and Rodriguez in an effort to make their narratives more pointed and their performances more fluid, working towards an official Moth-caliber story as a goal. The evening itself will also be more refined, thanks in large part to a grant from Middlebury’s Committee on the Arts, which went towards funding production costs, publicity efforts, and a post-show reception for storytellers and audience members.
Tickets are on sale now through the Box Office at $5 for Middlebury students, $8 for Middlebury faculty, staff, alumni, and parents, and $10 for the general public. 70 percent of the proceeds from ticket sales will go to the MothUP organization, which is not an official student group and thus does not receive funding from the College.
(09/26/13 3:11am)
Hip-hop “choreopoem” “Word Becomes Flesh” played to a packed Wright Theater on Friday, Sept. 20 and Saturday, Sept. 21, preceded by student spoken word poets and followed by a talkback moderated by dance department faculty chair Christal Brown. The first of the Performance Art Series’ 2013-2014 series, the production brought in the six-person, California-based touring company for a week of residency events in collaboration with Theatre Department and Dance Department.
Originally performed in 2003 as a one-man show by playwright and artistic director Marc Bamuthi Joseph, “Word Becomes Flesh” is, at its most basic level, a series of letters to a man’s unborn son, morphing the chronicles of nine months of pregnancy into a meditative explanation of “why [he] might choose not to stay.”
“While women continue to fight for their right to make choices about their bodies, the legacy of patriarchy and male privilege still allow a man the social right to choose domestic absenteeism and refrain from offering either emotional or financial support,” actors of The Living Word Project explained in a press release on the project. “‘Word Becomes Flesh’ critically, lyrically, and choreographically examines this phenomenon. In the process we confront the intersection of the physical reality and mythology of the black male body from the cotton field to the athletic field and all spaces in between.”
The 60-minute piece came out of San Francisco–based theater group The Living Word Project, and is made up of individual poem/dance components that range from highly abstract, far-reaching explorations of the modern African-American condition to laugh-out-loud parodies of Bay Area natural birthing classes. In the process, the show deconstructs what it means, and what it has meant, to be to be a black man—and father—in America.
“It put everyone’s mind to work,” said Sarah Braithwaite ’14. “The content and the actors gave Middlebury a glimpse of a culture that is not spoken about a lot, and I think Middlebury needs more education culture shocks like this. People definitely enjoyed it because it blew their minds and opened their eyes to some degree.”
Now in its third year of touring as the six-person show, “Word Becomes Flesh” calls itself a “choreopoem”—a spoken word–dance performance hybrid with the narrative structure of a traditional theater piece and hip-hop spun by a live DJ as a backdrop, all of which is hard to picture until you have seen it fit together. It is about making the metaphorical physical: In one scene, a cast member talks about how difficult it is to push himself to write, and two dancers flank him on either side, choreographically mimicking the stop-and-start nature of the phenomenon he is describing. They try out a sequence; they stop short, shake it off and try again, like a more corporal iteration of crumpled drafts in an overflowing wastebasket.
With the dance and spoken word elements so well blended, the music component can feel, at first, a little contrived or superfluous. But it allows scenes to crescendo easily, building as the music does—it is all done so subtly that you barely notice the music at all until it is no longer there. These moments of calm underscore the show’s most dramatic moments—rare moments without movement or music, where Bamuthi’s words can be given their full, deserved weight.
“The talent was extraordinary and the message was extremely enlightening,” added Braithwaite. “It was all so raw and real and engaging.”
Leading up to the Friday and Saturday night performances, the six-person troupe behind “Word Becomes Flesh” spent a week in residency at Middlebury College, offering hip-hop movement and spoken word workshops that were open to all students and community members, as well as master classes for upper-level theater and dance students and a spoken word event at 51 Main in cooperation with Verbal Onslaught.
All poets, actors, educators and artists in their own right, the men who came together for “Word Becomes Flesh” brought a unique level of expertise and passion to the Dance and Theatre Departments last week.
While brought to life in this current iteration by magnanimous performers, “Word Becomes Flesh” really belongs to Bamuthi, a widely acclaimed arts educator who works with Youth Speaks, the larger organization that encompasses the spin-off theater company, The Living Word Project. Through Youth Speaks, Bamuthi also created the Brave New Voices slam poetry competition, whose final rounds aired in a seven-part HBO documentary presented by Russell Simmons and directed by Bamuthi himself.