Check out this press review on Seattlest:
Out of Africa: Festival of Lies at On the Boards
"As a soukous band plays and the audience noshes on couscous, red rice, and chicken, all doused with a hearty amount of spicy peanut sauce, a man sways to the music while carrying a fluorescent light to the center of the floor.
I have to be honest. When I first read that Faustin Linyekula was to turn On the Boards into an African “social club and soukous party," the first image that came to mind was Disney World’s international village. I pictured a faux African nightclub where vacationer’s were encouraged to dance and spend money. Upon arrival I found the stage had indeed been transformed and the audience was encouraged to dance and spend money.
Tune in to John Kertzer's African music show The Best Ambiance tonight at 7pm for a live interview with Faustin. You can listen on your radio dial at 90.3 FM or on-line at kexp.org. The show will be available in the KEXP streaming archive for two weeks, so if you missed the live broadcast, you can still listen to it on-line.
Posted by Tania
Here's a press review of the Geography show:
"Get Out This Weekend: Geography at OtB" on Seattlest
Welcome to our review blogs for Geography. Read the reviews below, click on the Comments button to read the comments of others and post your own thoughts.
Scott/Powell Performance’s new work, Geography, is about our global landscape. It is about the human erosion to the global ecology. It is about humanity limiting itself, crowding itself, damaging itself. It is about the perilous obstacles that lie just beyond the fragile confines of the body. It is about drowning Polar Bears.
I was eagerly anticipating Geography and I expected it would be easy to write about. Not so: I’m tempted just to say, “Go see it, as often as you can, ” and leave it at that. But here are a few impressions:
Choreographer Molly Scott has said that Geography was inspired by changes in the environment, especially the way crowding affects us physically and emotionally. I wouldn’t necessarily have guessed this if I hadn’t been told, but the theme has certainly provided a superabundance of choreographic ideas.
I’m just home for an evening at “On The Boards, ” where I saw a highly anticipated show, Geography by Scott/Powell Performance.
I was first introduced to the group’s work last Valentine’s Day at “Ten Tiny Valentine’s Dances, ” where I thought Powell’s well-crafted score perfectly accompanied Scott’s duet. Tonight, I was also anxious for more exposure to Robert Campbell video design, who’s work I first saw at The Henry Art Gallery/ 911 Media’s New Works Laboratory Piece with Yuki Nakamura.
Toward the beginning of Scott/Powell's new work, an ethereal green ensemble jumps into and out of an implied space. Resembling waterbugs, they dance and flit among and around each other, but not exactly *with* each other. It appears to be a microcosm of some kind, a busy colony at work.
Here's a collection of links to press reviews of the Misuse liable to prosecution show:
"No pussyfooting around evil consumerism" in The Seattle Times
"At least the premise was promising" in The Seattle P-I
Welcome to our review blogs for Repeat After Me. Read the reviews below, click on the Comments button to read the comments of others and post your own thoughts.
Repeat after me begins in a vulnerable way. "Can you hear me, is this loud enough?" as the mic check happens at the top of the show, bringing you right into the performance; American dance #1, PBR, pie eating, American tableaux #3, Toby Keith, American flag underwear, sentimental karaoke.
The piece satirizes an America that most Seattlites don't experience, but also highlights a patriotism that I began to long for by the end.
I have a really hard time with chaotic theater. It's a rare show that captures my attention and keeps me from engaging my obsessive desires for thematic order and visual clarity. When I watched the 20-minute version of this piece during the NW New Works Festival this past spring, I just did not get it.
It must be said that 'Repeat After Me' is not a rigorous investigation of patriotism or the country culture that produces songs like "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" and "Where the Stars and Stripes and Eagle Fly." There are some interesting juxtapositions, and the cast does a pretty good job of singing the songs straight and not mocking them (though the recurring stripping down to American flag underwear and same-sex kisses suggests a non-red-state perspective), but this show is more about creating theatrical spectacle than political analysis.
And as spectacle, it's entirely enjoyab
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