"Battery Opera’s":http://batteryopera.com/ production event *Lives Were Around Me* is an intimate and startling theatrical experience. Although I have little idea of what happened, I was captivated by every moment.
David McIntosh, Lives Were Around Me, Photo: Amy Pelletier
*Andrew Templeton:* who likes to drink beer, shoot things and watch UFC with the guys
*Michael J Unger:* who drives a pick up, wears a tool belt and likes to watch UFC with Andrew
*Maryse Zeidler:* who likes to gossip and is not that old!
*Joel DeStefano:* who proves that he’s more than a drunk boyfriend dragged to a dance thing.
_Alex Edwards and her mother Susanna Uchatius took in "Siren":http://pushfestival.ca/index.php?mpage=shows&spage=main&id=69#show, the sound installation by UK artist "Ray Lee":http://www.invisible-forces.com/ that was part of this year’s PuSh Festival. Alex shared her thoughts with her mother, who shared them with Norman Armour, Executive Director of PuSh, who in turn shared them with us and now we want to share them with you. You’ll see why._
Siren, Alex Edwards wants more like this, so do we!
*Don McGlashan* will likely never know of the merry dance he had behind the scenes here at Plank. No fewer than four different reviewers were assigned to this gig but all – for various reasons – had to pull out; the last for the most understandable reason that she’d been nominated for an award and the ceremony was the same night!
When I first studied WB Yeats’ poem _Among School Children_, I puzzled at the final line: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” I read this line, and the entire poem, over and over before I let it go, not convinced that I had been able to decipher the mystery of Yeats’ question. But watching "Hiroaki Umeda":http://www.hiroakiumeda.com/ perform his two solos *while going to a condition* and *Accumulated Layout*, something fell into place and I felt as though I finally had a glimmer of understanding of what Yeats might have experienced that led him to his famous...
A sudden barrage, a wall of noise presents itself, omniscient in the theatre, like a big, fat, invisible sitting Buddha opening its mouth to let the world out. The sound is sustained… and sustained, testing the audience’s patience, allowing us to luxuriously soak in the saturated images. And at centre stage, as if by circumstance, a figure in black, perhaps bearing weight or witness stands, perhaps transmuting this ancient god gradually into a giant circuitry; now a deified current, it cuts a cold aspect shot across the wall upstage in blunt, bold projected archi-textures.
Hioraki Umeda, connecting to the core; Photo: Julieta Cervantes
I'll admit it. I sometimes dance in my kitchen. At times my arms hit the countertops, I stub my toe on the oven and in the process I curse the housing market for keeping me out of places with actual space to move around in. Then I saw *Dances for a Small Stage* and while I still may have Vancouver housing woes, watching these eight dance pieces performed on a stage no larger than my kitchen made it clear that size does not always matter.
The dangers of reviewing for Plank or Dances for a Small Stage
Over the years I’ve added various positions to my artistic name: writer/actor/musician/director. So each time that I leave a movie, concert or play I usually know if I’ve really liked it or not by a few simple reactions. If I’ve loved it, I wish that I'd been part of the production and immediately go home to use the inspiration on my own project.
Taking a break from Skydiving, Bob Fraser and James Sauders; photo by Tim Matheson
I'm not going reveal much here in the way of scene details or plot points of *Skydive*, currently enjoying a remount at the "PuSh Festival":http://pushfestival.ca/index.php this year after coming home from a cross-Canada tour. To do so would be a dire injustice to the experience that this carnival fun-house ride of a play has waiting for you at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage. I can, however, talk about the device that the play is structured around, as the company themselves make no secret about it (check out http://thenextstage.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/new-on-the-v-list-skydive/). And I can also tell you that this is...
Skydiving back into PuSh are James Sanders and Bob Frazer, photo: Tim Matheson.
