Catherine Rush attends the February 24th, 2018 performance of “Poor People’s TV Room” at Bryn Mawr College. Created by Bessie-award-winning writer/choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili, and performed by a small inter-generational cast of black women, this multidisciplinary piece exists at the intersection of installation and dance theater. Inspired in part by Nigeria’s 1929 Women’s War, as well as the 2014 Boko Haram kidnappings of 276 schoolgirls, “Poor People’s TV Room” takes a non-narrative, full-bodied approach to articulating the interplay of trauma and resistance.
Read MoreOur newest writer to join Artbog, Catherine Rush, reviews the dreamy world created in “Leaps of Faith and Other Mistakes” at The Painted Bride Art Center. It is one of the many wonderful performances premiering as part of the 2017 Fringe Festival. She writes, “The work’s structure is built intentionally in the tensions among its talented collaborators, thematically mirroring the dazzling acrobatics both playfully and profoundly employed.”
Read MoreMichael gives a glowing review of “To My Unborn Child,” an imaginary elegy from visionary Black Panther Fred Hampton to his son. Premiering at the 2017 Fringe Festival, the play Michael says, “makes no attempt directly to connect Fred Hampton’s story to issues that beset the African American community today, but the connection is as obvious as it is heartbreaking and disturbing.”
Read MoreDonald reviews a collaboration between the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in which paintings from the collection are paired with musical compositions they have inspired. While the idea of pairing music has the potential to provoke creative dialogue, the overall result fell short of those ambitions, he says.
Read MoreFunk music has been identified as being a particular expression of music that allows the artist to confront daily events which may have been grueling or challenging. With 2016 hopefully a distant memory to the audience, Lettuce “put the stank on” the TLA crowd–transporting them to an alternative universe where the music is groovy and fear is non-existent.
Read MoreThe organ is an instrument that is too massively impressive to be ignored. The Philadelphia Orchestra dedicated a concert on November 17-19 to the celebration of the 10th anniversary of Verizon Hall’s Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ (an organ of nearly 7,000 pipes!). This concert showed off the very best of what the organ can do–specifically for organist extraordinaire Paul Jacobs, a Curtis Institute of Music graduate and the only organist to ever earn a Grammy Award.
Read MoreComposer and electronic music pioneer George Lewis (a MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient) took it upon himself to continue the dialogue he shared with the late artist, performer, and multi-instrumentalist Terry Adkins in the way he knew would be most appropriate–a recital.
Read MoreIn their opening concert, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia created a wonderful bridge between the Classical Period and the present, showing how Mozart’s legacy lives on. Haydn once wrote of Mozart that “posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years,” and he could well be on the money there. What the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia has accomplished as a consolation is to show us that the soul of Mozart continues to pour into music, no matter what period or style.
Read MoreYou might not think of a library as a concert venue, but on September 14 the Free Library hosted a rollicking rhythm-fest of a concert. Philadelphia-based percussionist Pablo Batista and his 7-piece Latin Jazz Ensemble played to a packed house on the beautiful 4th floor west-facing skylight room as the sun set over the city skyline.
Read MoreHaving seen all of the new operas presented by Opera Philadelphia in the past few years, Breaking The Waves is the best one out of the pack. It’s touching story, memorable score and libretto, and daring staging (the first opera I’ve ever seen with nude scenes!) make for a resounding contemporary American opera that will have a long life.
Read MoreNotes of a Native Song (title inspired from Baldwin’s non-fiction book, Notes of a Native Son), is a 90-minute song cycle with theatrical elements created by Tony-award winner Stew (composer, text) and Heidi Rodewald (composer) to showcase the impact of Baldwin’s life and work.
Read MoreWhen experiencing this incarnation of “Firebird,” I couldn’t help but be immersed in all that’s going on in the storytelling. At times for a split second, I stopped noticing that the reliably superb Philadelphia Orchestra (led by conductor-in-residence Cristian Macelaru) was playing right behind the elaborate action. The orchestra was the glue that held all of the pieces together, especially in moments when the choreography and multimedia aspects didn’t always paint the clearest picture for the audience to follow along. All of the competing art forms forced me to choose which aspect of the piece to focus on and then after a while, switch over to the next aspect that caught the eye or ear.
Read MoreThe integration of the visual and the visceral was particularly successful in “Bonzi,” whose titular character (dancer Edgar Anido) is a traveling salesman who leads a humdrum life trying to sell people things they neither want nor need. At the start of the performance, the bowler-hatted Bonzi knocks on a plain white door and sets in motion a series of surreal vignettes involving multiple doors, bowler hats, apples, and eggs–all motifs familiar from the paintings of Magritte. Dancers hiding behind movable doors on casters swirled around the stage, dazzling poor Bonzi as well as the audience. With constant costume changes and the clever use of props, the dancers playfully shift personas from alluring coquettes with quixotic tree-like headgear circling around Bonzi, to a self-contained corps of dancers that largely ignores him. By the end of the performance, Bonzi seems to enter the dancers’ madcap surreal world, leaving behind his heavy black briefcase with unrestrained glee.
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