On Saturday, June 6, *Skin Divers* & *Carmen* brought sexuality to the Four Seasons stage to rival the hottest bedroom. Skin Divers opens the senses to the body’s power to remember, and the mind continues to process it long after curtain. While this multimedia piece is sophisticated and stimulating, Carmen overwhelms audiences during the second half of the evening. This provocative interpretation of the famed opera is an eruption of passions so powerful they cannot be processed, simply absorbed.
There's a surprising theme that links this year’s mainstage shows at "Bard on the Beach":http://www.bardonthebeach.org/: twins. They feature in The Comedy of Errors, which opens next week. They also, perhaps unexpectedly, make an appearance in their sleek production of *Othello* directed by Dean Paul Gibson.
Twin Set: Michael Blake and Bob Frazer from Othello, photo by David Blue
Ravenous applause greeted the opening performance of *Giselle* last night and the final production for prima ballerina Chan Hon Goh. Leading the "National Ballet of Canada":http://www.national.ballet.ca/, which has been her home for 20 years, Goh was a revelation in the majestic Four Seasons auditorium. Her dancing was sublime, as it has been throughout her dazzling career. But her dramatic power continues to evolve and engulf the stage.
In a world primed for cynicism it would be easy to dismiss a story like *Tuesdays with Morrie* as a schmaltzy softball for bleeding hearts in the same vein as the sometimes over-the-top “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series of books. However such a dismissal would be missing the true merits of the work and an opportunity to be truly moved.
Rick Roberts and Hal Linden in Tuesdays with Morrie
The play title makes reference to 36 Views of Mount Fuji, a series of 46 large, color woodblock prints by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. This wasn’t clear until well into the 2-hour play presented by "Tempus Theatre":http://tempustheatre.com/ so I spent a good part of the production trying to figure out the title and the significance of the number 36. Perhaps 36 was the number of previously viewed performances of this newly formed theatre company presenting its second production? Could 36 have been the number of different art projections viewed on the black curtains during the show?...
I wanted to rave about *John and Beatrice*. I wanted to stand on the rooftop patio of the slick Coal Harbour highrise that houses the PAL Vancouver Theatre and shout the production’s praise to the urban folks going about their daily lives below. Just as the title character Beatrice sought a man to love, I wanted to love this piece, completely and in its entirety. But seldom do things work out as we desire.
I've dived into the dating pool again and I am very distracted by this one very smart and sexy but complicated guy. Why can’t people come with instructions - or even drawings?
What makes a show like *live** work is the fact that it not only plays with our perceptions of reality and illusion, but that it plays with the very idea of performance itself, stretching the concept of performativity to the far end of the spectrum and asking questions about who is audience and who is performer, and what constitutes spectacle in the first place. The great thing about this show, however, is that it asks all these questions without slacking off into the mentality that if one is asking questions, then anything goes in the way of aesthetics. All of...
Living in Calgary at the turn of the millennium brought me few artistic pleasures: the "Calgary Folk Festival":http://www.calgaryfolkfest.com/users/folder.asp, "One Yellow Rabbit":http://www.oyr.org/, and the "Old Trout Puppet Workshop":http://www.theoldtrouts.org/. As a globe-trotting arts lover, I felt wretchedly misplaced amongst the stripmall shopping, suburban-dwelling oil profiteers in the Texas of Canada. I clung dearly to the few cultural niches I discovered, and the Old Trouts were one of those nuggets that kept me going until I finished my degree and fled to Vancouver.
In a world preoccupied with flu pandemics, economic crises and a brand spanking new era of American politics, it’s no surprise that some of the slower burning challenges facing society have been pushed to back of our consciences. AIDS in the western world is one such challenge.
Gavin Crawford as Prodon and David Yee as Vidor in I Have AIDS. Photo by Mircea Popescu
