Cedar Lake: Stunning, Post-Modern Choreography Hits Spoleto U.S.A. -- A Guest Blog by Tracie Broom

Twenty seconds into Cedar Lake’s first piece, “Violet Kid,” at their June 2, 2012 performance at Gaillard Auditorium during Spoleto U.S.A. in Charleston, SC, tears were pouring down my face. The choreography, full of licks descended from the hallowed ground of high-end, post-modern release technique – blisteringly physical and intellectual – was so unbelievably GOOD.

Maybe you’ve seen the 2011 Matt Damon movie, The Adjustment Bureau? Damon’s love interest, played by Emily Blunt, leads a dance company in NYC called Cedar Lake, and he spends half the film shouting, “Where is Cedar Lake!” in an effort to find her while eluding guys in fedoras. Well, he finds her, spending a quiet moment marveling as the Cedar Lake dance company performs. This performance is so very, very good that I found myself marveling, too. It was like nothing I’d seen in a “non-dance” movie since a few snippets in the 1996 Bertolucci film Stealing Beauty. (Remember that?)

When my Spoleto 2012 program arrived in the mail, mere days after my catching The Adjustment Bureau on cable, how stoked was I that Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet was coming to SC? Pretty stoked. Bought tickets immediately. (Talk about effective brand placement in a film, no?)

Led by Artistic Director Benoit-Swan Pouffer and based in New York City, Cedar Lake’s mission is “to provide choreographers a comprehensive environment for creation and presentation.” Noted by Kinsey Gidick, reporting for Charleston City Paper from the after party the night of June 2 at the College of Charleston President’s House, “The beauty of Cedar Lake is that Walmart heiress and founder, Nancy Walton Laurie, has been insistent that her performers be able to do contemporary ballet as a full-time job, which is to say the cast members live in New York City and don't have to have second and third jobs to survive.”

Guest choreographer Hofesh Schecter, who designed or collaborated on every aspect of “Violet Kid” including the stark, cinematic lighting, edgy music, and everyday costumes, somehow managed to fit all of the absolutely coolest, best parts of post-modern technique and composition into one great, glorious 33-minute piece for 14 dancers. Virtuosic athleticism. Focused, unemotional execution. Intricate, pedestrian movement vocabulary, manipulated into dozens of phrases which were then deconstructed and reassembled into even more variations. Each piece was revisited and made large, small, narrowing, expanding, rising, sinking, slow, fast, impossibly fast, and every other Laban Movement Analysis term I can remember from my dance degree studies at Wesleyan University. This piece used every compositional tool in the box, and thoroughly. What a pleasure to watch.

A consistent return to familiar movements took dancers through every sort of level change, plane (sagittal, horizontal, vertical), and group permutation from solo to duet, trio, quartet, on up to the entire cast thundering across the floor in multiple traveling sequences that, paired with Schecter’s musical composition, gave one goosebumps. (At our beach house that night after the show, inspired, we implemented a rule that you had to “travel” across the floor at least once a day for the remainder of the trip.)

Canon and unison came and went, with A groups, B groups, C groups, D groups and even E groups roiling about, as bits and pieces of traditional Jewish dances made their way into the work, altered and compressed with bits of hip-hop, classical ballet, and contact improvisation until they were barely recognizable.

This, all happening in the middle of downtown Charleston, South Carolina on a Saturday afternoon.

Movement-wise, release technique greats were called to mind: Jose Limon, Bill T. Jones, Ralph Lemon, Trisha Brown, Stephen Petronio, etc. but I noticed subtle nods to the strict, modern traditions of Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham, too. The technique also reminded me fondly of my favorite release teacher back in San Francisco, ODC’s Kathleen Hermesdorf. Reading the program after the performance, I was delighted to read that the U.K-based Schecter has worked with legendary post-modern choreographers like Wim Vandekeybus, who was one of our idols in college for his uncommon, hyper-athletic work.

Unobtrusive costuming consisted of cargo pants and casual shirts in varying shades of khaki, gray, and coral. The music, a lengthy, contemporary classical/modern electronic piece composed by Schecter, featured a live double bass string trio performing in 1800s drab dresses atop a raised platform on stage. The work called up a cross between the most melancholic bits of the Tristan und Isolde prelude by Wagner, the post-mod noise you might enjoy at Conundrum Music Hall, and the deep, sliding strings of the Balanescu Quartet. It was perfect.

Two other pieces comprised the two-hour program. “Annonciation,” was a contemplative, idiosyncratic duet choreographed by post-modern ballet legend Angelin Preljocaj. The third piece, “Grace Engine,” was devised for 15 dancers by Crystal Pite, who has choreographed for phenomenal Spoleto U.S.A. alum Nederlands Dans Theater. While both pieces were extraordinary, neither could quite match the fullness and scope of the opener, and “Grace Engine” was a little too emotionally overwrought for my taste. Overall, however, the program was one for the books. To say that Hofesh Schecter is a genius is a blithering, silly understatement, and I’m honored to have seen this remarkable dance company perform his work.

To view videos of Cedar Lake in performance, start here: http://cedarlakedance.com/repertoire

- Tracie Broom

 Tracie Broom is a post-modern dance snob who likes nothing more than to be put in her place by brilliant work. She lives and works in Columbia, SC.

Abraham.In.Motion (and Wideman/Davis Dance Company) -- A Rant and Review from Spoleto

 

Jasper loves dance. And while Columbia hosts no small supply of dance companies, sometimes it becomes painfully obvious that, among our abundance of ballet companies, sexy undulating companies, and one-woman show companies in the city, we are missing – or appear to be missing – an excellent contemporary company that addresses social issues, makes us think, and entertains us at the same time. I couldn’t help but think of this on Monday night when I watched the final Spoleto performance of The Radio Show by Abraham.In.Motion at the Emmett Robinson Theatre on the campus of The College of Charleston.

Dancer, choreographer, and founder of Abraham.In.Motion, Kyle Abraham, is clearly a product of two places – Pittsburgh, PA and New York City – and evidence of this was more than obvious in last night’s performance. It was from his hometown of Pittsburgh, where he and his family listened religiously to the voices of Black radio, that Abraham found the impetus for The Radio Show’s concept. When, in 2009, WAMO – the only urban radio station left in Pittsburgh – went off the air, Abraham was struck by the absence of the Black voice from public airways. In program notes he writes, "I wondered how aware listeners were to the goings-on in other urban communities around the country now that this voice had been taken away.  Without black radio, where is the audible voice of the black community? Radio was so present during times of strife in the past. Where is its place today?”

The 34-year-old Abraham, who studied at The Creative and Performing Arts High School in Pittsburgh, continued his education by receiving a BFA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Among the many honors he has received over the past few years, including the Princess Grace for choreography, a Bessie Award, and being named one of the “25 to Watch by Dance” Magazine in 2009, it is the maturity of his NYC training that stands out about Abraham. Though highly stylized, his technique and that of his dancers (almost all of whom are formally trained and with higher education degrees) is solid, grounded, efficient, and rich in interpretation. When so many dancers are gathering into groups these days and saying, “Hey, look at us! We’re a company!” it was satisfying to see a young new company with a fully realized dance vocabulary, confidence in their mission, a unifying aesthetic, and the training and education to pull it all off.

The evening began with Abraham, who grew up playing piano and cello, approaching the stage via the audience after having tapped a couple of ladies in the audience for impromptu turns in the aisle, reminiscent of the beginning of Alvin Aileys’s Minus 16 earlier in the festival. Abraham gave us a virtuosic solo performance that incorporated into the narrative of the loss of urban radio the concomitant loss of his father’s mental dexterity as he struggled with the deteriorating effects of Alzheimer’s. I get chills when I type these words – he danced to static. As an off-stage radio scanned up and down the dial, encountering bits and pieces of classic music like Aretha Franklin, Al Green, the Chi-lites, and the Shirelles, interspersed with the static left when these songs disappeared from the airwaves, and emblematic of the static his father encountered in his thought processes, Abraham and six other dancers performed three pieces, Preshow, AM 860, and 106.7 FM. Elyse Morris, Rachelle Rafailedes, Rena Butler, Chalvar Monteiro, and Maleek Washington completed the ensemble.

Watching this young company perform so passionately brought to mind Columbia’s own Wideman/Davis Dance Company who, for a few years, were gathering a modest but strong amount of steam among folks who know dance in the city. Thaddeus Davis may be the best choreographer in South Carolina. Like Abraham’s, his work is grounded in technique, socially relevant, and aesthetically unified. But for the past year, Wideman/Davis Dance Company appeared to be missing from Columbia’s dance culture. Where were they? They were at the University of South Carolina teaching, choreographing, and performing, though many of us who follow WDDC – who adore and want to support WDDC – were unaware when these performances took place. On one occasion, I found out the day before a late night show was taking place that it would be occurring. The other performances came and went with some but little recognition.

Here’s the deal – hiding down in the dance building on the USC campus is one of the finest choreographers in the country and, scattered throughout the world, the company members he gathers when he has something to give and the money and support to give it. (Elyse Morris, one of the dancers in last night’s performance, proudly lists Thaddeus Davis among the choreographers whose work she has performed.) But while Kyle Abraham and Abraham.In.Motion has a number of impressive benefactors, including the Heinz Endowments and the New York State Council on the Arts, Wideman/Davis Dance Company does not.

Wideman/Davis Dance Company is another example of the right people not getting the modest amount of money available to artists in SC. When I think of some of the silly things that are funded – funds given to organizations that know more about grant writing than about the arts – it is infuriating.

The problems are multifactorial and include not enough time/money/energy given to promoting the arts and not enough information available about accessing what little money there is out there.

Jasper doesn’t have answers to these problems, but on some days we get as many as 500 readers of What Jasper Said, so maybe some of you do. And here’s a disclaimer – I haven’t spoken to Thaddeus about this post, so I don’t know what his response will be. But I do know that a dance artist of his training (BFA from Butler, MFA from Hollins), with his accolades (the Choo San Goh Award for Choreography, being named, like Abraham above, one of the “25 to Watch in the World” by Dance Magazine, and having the premiere of one of his pieces being named one of the top ten moments in dance by the New York Times), his experience (Davis has danced with Donald Byrd and the Dance Theatre of Harlem among other illustrious companies and choreographed for Alvin Ailey, Julliard and more), and his passion and talent should be celebrated by the city he calls home.

I was fortunate to see Abraham.In.Motion at the Spoleto festival last night – it was an excellent performance. But Columbia is equally as fortunate to have a company the caliber of Wideman/Davis Dance residing in its city. Let’s give WDDC the kind of support they deserve – and let’s see them next year on the Spoleto Festival 2013 stage.

The Animals and Children Took to the Streets - Spoleto Review

Jasper is back at Spoleto for a few days and we hit the ground running by catching the last performance of theatre company 1927's The Animals and Children Took to the Streets at noon on Sunday. This show represents some of the best of what arts festivals can bring -- risky, innovative, multidisciplinary performances that carve out new ways of looking at humanity. Granted, shows like this don't always work -- we remember with horror some Spoleto and Piccolo Spoleto bombs from the past that will go unnamed. But this time, all the quirkiness and uniqueness anda darkly Dickensian attributes of The Animals and Children Took to the Streets come together to form a creepily satisfying narrative that acknowledges both the best and the worst in all of us.  

Written and directed by Suzanne Andrade, who is one fourth of the company 1927 along with her partner, animator Paul Barritt, and actor Esme Appleton with Lillian Henley, who is a musician, Animals and Children brings music, animation, live action, and storytelling together. The stage is a combination screen and set in three parts with sparse moveable scenery carried on and off stage by the actors. There are three windows behind which typically sit the actors -- though, as mentioned, they are  mobile as well -- and from their various positions they sing in an almost madrigal manner at key points in the play. But, their primary job is interacting with the Edward Gorey-like animation projected onto the screen/set. The screen/set is identified as a tenement house called Bayou Mansion on Red Herring Street where nothing good ever happens. Full of an assorted cast of perverts ranging from a 21-year-old granny to an underwear thief to a guy who likes to sniff women's bicycle seats; one would think the adults would be to blame for all the bad things that happen on Red Herring Street. But no, when the sun goes down and the shades are drawn, residents lock their doors against the hordes of marauding children who wreak havoc on the community, usually en masse. But one day, a new pair arrive in the neighborhood in the form of a mother and daughter -- described as being "cleaner and prettier" than all the rest -- and they introduce a form of optimism into the atmosphere at the same time that all the children have been subdued via a giant drugged gumdrop. So the story is told of a pessimistic, and somewhat lovelorn, caretaker who is caught in the middle and, through a series of interactions with the audience, must choose either the path of idealism or the path of realism which will bring us to the end of the story.

Even though we caught the final performance of the play at Spoleto, we'll keep the ending to ourselves lest we spoil it for those of you lucky enough to catch this show in one of their next gigs. (The Charleston stop came between a shows in Dijon, France and an upcoming performance in DC.)

We loved the delightful creepiness of the show, the tongue-in-cheek manner in which it was presented, the underlying nastiness of the lines and lyrics -- who doesn’t like songs about living in a "shithole?" -- and the fact that, yet again, animation is proven to be a proper art form for exploring decidedly adult topics of social issues.

A musical trip through time and place with Spoleto & Jeffrey Day

 

My Spoleto weekend wrapped up with a tour of music spanning many centuries and the entire globe.  The trip went from ancient China to 1790s London, to 19^th century New England, and May 2012 Japan. And I was able to do it all in a 10 block area of downtown Charleston between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Sunday.

Let’s start in the oldest and last stop – which also has the benefit of being very new.

The opera Feng Yi Ting by Duo Wenjing had its first full production and American premiere in Charleston Sunday night. It’s based on a tale from the Han Dynasty (206 BC  - 220), but was written in 2004 and brings together musical and theatrical elements from both ends of that time frame. In the story, the despotic leader of the country has recently adopted a new godson. A young woman, Diao Chan, decides to seduce them both to set them against one another allowing for for more sensible leaders to take charge. The story is told with humor and beauty, but this is no epic – it has only two performers (the young woman and the godson) and lasts barely 45 minutes.

What makes it unique is the blending of Eastern and Western music and opera styles. In the pit of the Dock Street Theatre along with the violins and oboes are several musicians playing traditional Chinese instruments. On stage the performers sing and act in the highly mannered style of Chinese opera, while surrounded by state-of-the-art video projections as well as live video feed of the actors in giant black and white close ups. It sounds like it could be a mess of too much, but it isn’t.

The highly-praised composer’s music is always engaging and the quality of this production shouldn’t be a surprise considering the rest of the team working that created it. The director is Atom Egoyan (best known for his many movies including The Sweet Hereafter) and Derek McLane, a Tony-winning Broadway designer.

For some audience members an hour of the Chinese opera style singing is probably plenty. But we did 15 hours of the 18-hour Chinese opera The Peony Pavilion at the festival a few years ago. Another hour of something as imaginative and excellent as Feng Yi Ting would have been fine with us.

Additional performances take place May 29, June 1, 4 and 7.

A few hours before the trip to ancient China we were in Japan in 2011 – when the earthquake and tsunami struck. The first concert in the Music in Time series, which focuses on contemporary classical, brought to the hall three works by prominent Japanese composers many of us have never heard of. All the works were written for traditional Western instrumentation and one would be hard pressed to find anything particularly “Japanese” about the music.

The program had a very last minute change when composer Toshio Hosokawa called series director John Kennedy a few weeks ago and offered a brand new piece instead of the one scheduled – and it turned out to be a work about the disaster in Japan, as was the piece by Toshi Ichiyanagi that was the linchpin of the concert. The new work, Meditation, had its world premiere in Korea just a few weeks ago; the festival didn’t even receive the music until five days before the concert.

The lateness of the addition showed in no way. This is an intense and dramatic work that musically reflects the power of the earth to shift, move and heave land and water at will. It calls for 30 players which made for a very packed stage at the College of Charleston recital hall and a roar of sound always. The first movement is called Beat of the Earth and that beat, aided by ample percussion is the thing that marches forward through Meditation.

Ichiyanagi, the most distinguished senior composer in Japan, wrote his Symphony No. 8 – Revelation 2011 less than a year after the earthquake, tsunami and resulting death and damage to a nuclear power plant and the Sunday concert was the American premiere.  Like Hosokawa’s piece, this one is very much about the power of the earth - how it can kill and how it can heal. Although the ensemble was slightly smaller at about 20 it is still a loud and dramatic piece, but had the benefit of many passages where several young players from the festival orchestra shone as soloists.

The final piece, Listening to Fragrances of the Dusk by Somei Satoh, was also getting its American premiere at the concert. Although written in 1997 long before the disaster, it seemed to be speaking to the tragedy as well. Unlike the two other pieces this is a very quiet, slow and meditative work – and served as a perfect elegy for the victims and coda for the concert.

The second offering of the chamber music series served up what series organizer and host Geoff Nuttall described as a “Haydn sandwich” – the Haydn Symphony 101 between works by late 19^th and early 20^th century American composers Arthur Foote and Amy Beach. Both of the Americans were from New England and their music, especially that of Foote, felt like a stroll through the New England countryside on a summer day with Beach’s Piano Quintet in F sharp minor being the more dramatic of the strolls. “This is some of the most amazingly exquisite music you’ve never heard before,” Nuttall said, and he was right.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t Haydn.

The Symphony 101 was one of the composer’s famous London Symphonies which were amazingly popular and heaped with praise for very good reason. Wanting to spread the music further than a full orchestra could take it, and there being no MP3 players at the time, the symphonies were arranged for smaller ensembles. In this case the work was played by the St. Lawrence String Quartet with the addition of flute, piano and double bass. I’ve heard dozens of these chamber concerts over the past 20 years and the performance of the Symphony 101 Sunday was in the top 10. The players took this work, which is full of sections in which the musicians appear to be searching for the right music, to new heights.  Haydn loved to create these quirky pieces that played with, but eventually delighted and astounded audience members.  This symphony did so in the 1790s and it did the same on a May Sunday in 2012.

At the end of the work, the musicians appeared ever happier than the audience. I don’t think I’ve even seen a group of players who appeared more thrilled with what they had just done. I thought they were about to levitate, but believe they already had.

-          ­Jeffrey Day

From Spoleto: Kepler opera -- great music with a murky narrative -- A Review

  For those who are fans of Phillip Glass, his newest opera Kepler provides two-hours packed with quite recognizable Glass music: swirling arpeggios, cyclically-repeated motifs, tuned percussion, passages deep in the bass, unexpected contrasts bursting though like an exploding star bursting through the dark and twinkling blanket of a night sky.

The Spoleto production of Kepler marks the American premiere of a full production of the opera, which was mounted in Europe several years ago and had a concert staging in New York. The orchestra, under the director of resident conductor John Kennedy, sounded solid in the Sottile Theatre, as did the seven soloists, and especially the 30 members of the Westminster Choir.

The subject is Johannes Kepler, a great scientist who lived from 1571 to 1630 and explored new ways of thinking about the universe and especially our place in it. He was often wrong, but opened the doors to those who came after him. His theories often bolster the idea of a geometry of God in which science and religion could peacefully co-exist. (We all know how that turned out.) He came up with ideas of how the various planets fit in relation to one another and theorized that the planets had elliptical orbits.

The opera isn’t so much about his life as his ideas, not unlike some of Glass's early “portrait operas” such as Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha. This may not sound like great material for opera from which we often expect love and love gone wrong, with a little murder thrown in. The life and work of Kepler may actually have made for a great and compelling opera, even without a lot of hot blood, but this version is so abstract, so lacking in action, and any sort of narrative it is both baffling and boring.

The libretto is based on Kepler’s own writings as well as those of a poet who was his contemporary. Maybe in the original German there was some grace to the words, but they mostly fall heavily to earth.

The “story,” such as it is, is nearly impossible to follow unless one has a decent knowledge of Kepler’s life and work. (The festival program book provides no program or director’s notes for the opera which would greatly help the audience and the opera.) It is a series of disjointed snippets, supposedly a look into Kepler’s mind. It is certainly the artist’s right to take this approach, but is better when it actually works.

Director Sam Helfrich does what he can moving around 40 people  who don’t have that much to do, often using the choir as a university classroom full of eager 16th century students. He and set designer Andrew Lieberman have devised some beautiful and compelling scenes. The set itself is a simple one of wood and some tables and chairs with most of the changes taking place through lighting effects on a huge screen. One of the high points is what we guess is a representation of the supernova of 1604 which was viewed with awe throughout Europe, including by Kepler. The orchestra builds as the exploding star rises on screen and then suddenly drops away washing through the hall like the light. Unfortunately later in the opera most of the choir starts bleeding through their white shirts which feels like a desperate grasp at adding some excitement.

Like the one-character opera Emilie staged at the festival last year, Kepler would really be more effective staged as a concert where its ideas and music would be unencumbered by attempts at dramatic flair.

Additional performances of Kepler take place May 28, 31 and June 2.

From Spoleto: First chamber concert fun and moving -- A Review

The Haydn string quartets "are the greatest music ever composed," announced Geoff Nuttall at the start of the first of the Spoleto Chamber series concert. And the string quartet the St. Lawrence String Quartet of which Nuttall is first violinist then proceeded to play (Op. 76, No. 2) is very good indeed. And the second piece, a tour de force - or farce - for solo flute, "Great Train Race" by Ian Clark is indeed fun. But the closer - Concerto for violin, piano and string quartet by Ernest Chausson was the star of the concert. Chausson was a late 19th century French Romantic composer  who was quite popular, but died young and didn't write all that much.

The piece is not really a concerto - it's more of a duet for violin and piano with the quartet serving a supporting role. One thing for certain is is an amazing work - lush  and lovely but never sweet and sticky, powerful but not just for the sake of flexing muscles, and complex but never showy.

Pianist Inon Barnatan and violinist Livia Sohn were perfectly matched with the work and with one another.

Lucky for me, I was sitting in the second row of the Dock Street Theatre on their side of the stage so I got to see every stroke of her bow and every movement of his fingers on the keyboard.

Nuttall is in his third year hosting the series, (a role he inherited from  series founder Charles Wadsworth), and he's settled into it well. He reminds one of a favorite professor sharing his knowledge and his enthusiasm, (he'd also rank as the coolest professor and best dresser.)  This year he even gave out his email address from stage.

Last year, for the first time, the program for the chamber series was announced in advance. Nuttall's concern with doing this was that people would see names of composers and works they didn't know and stay away.

"Tomorrow you see we're doing Foote and Beach - who the hell are they? You may thinks 'Oh it's probably modern and noisy.' If you have any fear or questions about things we're doing email me," he said. And then he gave out his email. Some of the audience members may have thought he was joking, but he really did give them his real email address. (That said, he didn't repeat it several times.) That's a pretty bold and admirable thing to do.

While Nuttall's demeanor is a breath of fresh air, the more educational aspects of this first concert went on a bit long. His explanation of what Haydn had done with the most simple building blocks ("He's thumbing his nose at everyone else who was making music," he pointed out regarding Op. 76, No. 2) was terrific but then he went on for several more minutes.

After Tara Helen O'Connor had played the "Great Train Race," which you might have guessed involved making a lot of train sounds with the flute, he had her come out and demonstrate several of the techniques. Several too many.

Making classical music more accessible and understandable is to be commended. More and more musicians are  speaking from the stage about the music and some even integrate a narration into concerts. They aren't often very good at it and even through Nuttall is one of the best at this, even he can go on a bit.

Sometimes its best just to play the tune.

- Jeffrey Day

Jasper's Picks for Spoleto 2012 -- weekend #1

It's not that there's not enough art in Jasper's hometown of Columbia, SC to keep the old boy entertained. He just likes to stretch his legs -- and his horizons -- by visiting other arts centers once in a while. And, we'll admit it -- Jasper adores Spoleto! In fact, Jasper fancies the Spoleto Festival so much so that he'll be blogging from Charleston (in a couple of voices) over the next few weeks and keeping you loyal winners abreast of what's going on in the Holy City. If you've been considering a road trip to Spoleto this weekend, here are Jasper's picks for the best events to take in.

The Animals and Children Took to the Streets is a quirky multi-media performance presented by a theatre company out of London called 1927. The mix of music, live action and animation all on one stage is what caught Jasper's eye. We also found this lovely review in the Guardian:

"Suzanne Andrade, Esme Appleton, musician Lillian Henley and animator Paul Barritt evoke life in a seedy tenement block, Bayou Mansions, on the fringe of a big city. This is like a murky version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which first appeared in 1927, populated by rats, cockroaches and all manner of social outcasts. But the sharply subversive script shows how a gang of child-pirates go on the rampage, take over a middle-class park and even kidnap the mayor's cat before being whisked off in black ice-cream vans and effectively sedated. But their cry of "we want what you have out there" strikes a chill chord after this summer's riots.The 70-minute show makes its points with visual and verbal humour rather than heavyweight hectoring. A live, do-gooding liberal mum descends on the estate with her cartoon daughter to set up an art club only to retreat when the going gets tough. And the idea that we seem to be permanently stuck with grotty sink-estates is perfectly counterpointed by the lightning transformations of Barritt's brilliant animations, where coffins turn into telephones and cockroaches. Performed by a quick-changing, white-faced female trio, the show feels like a heady mix of Berlin cabaret, silent movie and social commentary."

Once we read the terms "sharply subversive," "black ice cream vans," and "art club," we didn't even have to read "white-faced female trio" or "Berlin cabaret" to know we wanted to be in the audience. There are 9 performances between May 25th and June 3rd. We hope you find your way to one.

Watch Alvin Ailey Dance Theater here

At Jasper, we're pushovers for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and we don't miss the opportunity to see this wonderful and inspiring dance troupe perform. The company will be performing two programs for this year's festival and we're delighted to report that their iconic piece Revelations will close out both of them. If you see dance at the Spoleto Festival this year, make sure you see Alvin Ailey.

Making up the Truth is an odd performance that is a cross between a lecture and comedic story telling hour, with Jack Hitt, frequent contributor to Harper's, the New York Times Magazine, and (Jasper's favorite radio program) This American Life.  We love this description of the show:

In his new solo show, Jack Hitt tells extravagant, almost unbelievable, true stories that take him from his early childhood in South Carolina (where his flamboyant neighbor, a British novelist, became global news as one of the world's first transsexuals) through his trek to New York (where his apartment super kept a deadly secret identity). MAKING UP THE TRUTH weaves these and other stories together with the latest experiments in cognitive research. Scientists of the mind are now studying the mechanics of how we all narrate our own stories in our brains, and Jack searches them out to answer the question everyone always asks him, "Why do these things always happen to you?" They don't, the experiments show. We are all making up the truth, often to shield ourselves from what Jack discovers: the uncanny wonders that lie just beyond our brain's notice. And that tale, it turns out, is another extravagant, almost unbelievable, true story.

Leo is a gravity-defying show by a German troupe called The Circle of Eleven. Here's the blurb on Leo that hooked us:

"Through a clever juxtaposition of live performance with projected film, two Leos move through identical spaces governed by opposing physical laws. [Tobias] Wegner exploits every potential for invention and comedy as Leo tests the limits of his strange environment, moving from humble tricks with hats to breakdancing up walls. Leo is a funny, surreal, and surprisingly touching work that challenges the senses and tests perceptions of reality."