Ailey II’s Xhosa Scott
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Alvin Ailey II
Last night, Anne was still not feeling well, so I took her ticket and went with Joanie to see Alvin Ailey II perform at UMSL’s Touhill. The evening’s dance concert was preceded by a rock concert performed in the auditorium’s Terrace lobby. The rock concert was a tribute to Saint Louis’s own Chuck Berry. The tribute band What the Chuck! was led by Berry’s son and includes his grandsons.
Ailey II is the company’s JV squad or as Anne likes to call them the farm team. Even so, they are still quite professional and based on the size of the house, much respected in Saint Louis. They opened their show with a hat tip to Berry and Saint Louis in a continuation of the lobby’s concert with Berry Dreamin’, a dance that featured Chuck Berry’s music.
The second act’s dance, Down the Rabbit Hole continues choreographer Houston Thomas’s earlier work and expands on its themes of examining the relationship between humans and technology. Inspired by The Matrix films, this dance explores how technology weaves itself into the fabric of our life, transforming how we as humans interact and function. Set to a techno music score, this high-powered piece asks the question: Technological change—are we powering it or is it powering us?
The final act featured Revelations, Alvin Ailey’s signature work from 1960. Inspired by the spirituals of his youth, this work features traditional gospel music. This dance is divided into three sections.
The first section, “Pilgrim of Sorrow”, begins in total stillness. When the stage is illuminated, the earthy colors of the costumes appear as drab earthtones. Ailey’s intention was to portray people attempting to rise up from the ground. The motions of these dancers also add to this portrayal. This dance has arms reaching up, as people reach skyward as they rise.
The next dance section, “Take me to the Water”, is set to the spiritual “Wade in the Water”. Which was used by slaves as a euphonism for riverbank escapes. This dance portrays a baptism, symbolizing another pathway to freedom. Bolts of fabric were waved behind the dancers to represent the water.
The final section, “Move, Members, Move” celebrates the liberating power of gospel music. It is also the most positive and uplifting section. A rousing church service is enacted complete with Sunday hats, fans and stools. The entire cast appears onstage, conveying a huge celebration.
As with any good performance in town, at its finally, this Saint Louis audience rose like a herd of clapping seals and earned an encore for its trouble.
Patterns in Nature – Balance
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Patterns in Nature
Last night, I went alone to the garden. Anne was under the weather and did not feel well enough to go to. Too much electioneering on Tuesday. Those fifteen hour days are killers. I got there at six when the garden reopened for the night. However, sunset was not until 7:30. So, I walked around, got my 10K steps. Played a lot of solitaire and basically killed time. Eventually, it darkened enough to begin taking pictures. It really wasn’t until the last hour that the light got really good. I closed the gardens at nine. There are twenty-one installations in this show, and I have included a few of my favorite ones with this post.
Bruce Metcalf
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Automatons
Dan is considering going to LA next month. Specifically, UCLA to give a talk on automatons. Leveraging his work last year for the immersive theater musical¹ Masquerade, which is still running. This show is a retelling of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera using the immersive theater format. Immersive theater is a performance style that breaks the fourth wall, placing the audience directly inside an often site-specific, 360-degree environment where they can become active participants in the show, rather than just passive observers.
For this show Dan made six automatons that were designed to augment the musical. While still in development two of them are shown operating above, mechanical hands wearing opera gloves clapping and a violin playing itself. It is on the strength of this work that Dan has this opportunity to go to Hollywood.
For Dan, this work is a labor of love, as shown below with one of his 40K models. Whether the theme is steampunk or plain out gothic, his talents lend themselves to creating these devices. It was serendipity for him that he scored his first gig in immersive theater, Life and Trust. He did set construction for it for almost a year, many times longer than the show actually ran. Most of that job was carpentry, but he also made some automatons there too. That gig led to Masquerade, which now appears to have opened the door to this UCLA visit.
- Masquerade now bills itself as the first immersive theater musical.