dandelion dancetheater

My friend, the lovely Julia, got me tickets to see Dandelion Dance Theater's new show, so on Tuesday evening, the always magnificent Heather and I went down to the Travelling Jewish Theater (which is in the Artaud complex).

This is (pretty much) what I thought:

It is a small, casual space, and it makes you feel less like you are settling down to watch a show and more like you are in a room where anything might sweep you out of the ordinary world. It’s a good venue for Dandelion’s work, which explores the vulnerability and absurdity of being human through a mad mixture of music, dialogue, and movement.

The first piece on the program was We love you to the end of the world, directed by Kimiko Guthrie. It examines an unwieldy chunk of layered subjects—war, media, family, consumption, delusion—and the performers achieved some striking images, but the work felt slightly unclear. It seemed like it was trying to say too many things at once before it knew exactly what it wanted to talk about.

The second piece, Mutt 49 Crosses the Line, created by Eric Kupers and the entire performing ensemble, was funny, awkward, bizarre, and deliciously absurd. It made me laugh, made me uncomfortable, and made me goggle at the immense range of the Dandelion performers. Here they are playing the banjo, the guitar, and the harmonica in a deranged country band. Here they are singing, dancing, reading a list of shameful transgressions, and telling a story about a dog with four freckles on its beloved toes. They enact submission with a violin, drift across the stage like a blind moon, and introduce each other like circus impresarios or announcers at a rodeo. The piece is a collage of emotions and unlikely visuals. It careens through them, but it doesn’t close itself off or become inscrutable. The performers seem to be having a conversation with you, telling you what it’s like to be them and wanting to know if it’s just as strange and difficult and funny to be you.

(I do have to say... I thought the nudity was mostly pointless. I don't mind nudity in shows when it says something. But if it just seems to be there to make me uncomfortable, or to be shocking, I get irritated.)

I’m glad I went though. I look forward to seeing how Mutt 49 develops as part of the larger project, MUTT, which is set to premiere next year. You should see this. Then you can look forward to it too.

spiders, gravestones, and the inevitable pizza

On Saturday, I went with three extremely wonderful people (Dana, Emily, and Lauren) to see Neil Gaiman read from The Graveyard Book in Palo Alto. It felt strange, but good, to sit in a theater with about 600 people of all sorts--old and young, alone and in big, cheerful groups-- who were all there to listen to someone read them a story. Everyone leaned forward in their chairs, laughed at the funny bits, and held their breaths at others, and listened as Neil told us about a young boy named Bod who dances with the ghosts and the living, and sees the first of the winter snow. It was a magical kind of thing, the sort that I wish could happen more often.

There's a video of the reading here, though it's more fun to start with the first chapter (we got the fifth, "Danse Macabre"). We also got an interlude, which is called "The Convocation," one of my favorite words. It makes me think of witches and crows, for no good reason, really (I think the proper words are, "coven" or "congeries" and "murder," respectively). And then, as an extra treat, we got some bits from Henry Selick's film of Coraline, and "Blueberry Girl."

The stage was full of gravestones, and Neil had a leather armchair with a funny looking lamp and a fake crow. There was also a spider that drifted down from the rafters and almost landed on a small boy's head.

Before the reading, we had pizza. Not ordinarily something to be boasting about, though I love pizza madly, but this was a delectable pie that introduced me to the thrilling combination of ricotta and lemon zest. Fluffy cream cut with bright yellow sourness. Not something you'd expect on pizza with all the fixings, but astonishingly delicious. Pizza Chicago.

It was a good evening all round, but the very best part was standing around in our little foursome, talking about Clarion friends and writing and books, and enjoying each other's company.

Oh. Have also discovered that Saint-Saens's Danse Macabre is even more infectious than usual when played on a banjo. It sounds mad and a little funny, and it begs you to get up and dance.