On the Fringe:
We learned about Isadora Duncan, that there were dance companies that dancers who concentrate on reconstructing her work, that her work was quite fin-de-siecle, art nouveau like, with flowing solid color silk outfits that flittered and fluttered as you danced, with everything very child like, it seems, and her ambitious to let children learn to use their natural movements and lose the bindings of 19th century convention. At the Duncan centered production at the Fringe, I thought that the costumes were the best thing about the performance, and that the goal of the dancers was really to make the costumes appeal, much as a puppeteer bringing a puppet to life, and melding personally far into the background. But, I am no dance expert, and ill equipped to be a critic. But I really liked the final “butterfly”, with the golden wings fluttering in the non-existent breeze.
Then, Hannah’s friend Patrick, did a silent-movie mime (almost) one man performance. The sad sack unable to cope with the world, with everything (and that means everything) falling apart around him.
And then the Catholic University drama students who tried to stage the story of Gilgamesh and looked like they might succeed until the actor playing Gilgamesh opened his mouth and it turned out that he was a Casper Milquetoast (what ever that is). The narrator was, on the other hand, quite good. She could have sat on a rock and told the story, and that would have been OK. Who needs the actors?
And who needs a hat? What kind of a question is that? Well, there was an attractive, young, well dressed woman sitting right in front of us wearing a large broad brimmed straw hat, designed to block a partial view of the stage. Her friend (maybe after hearing our muttering) tapped her on the shoulder and suggested that she might take it off, which she did, only to replace it with a baseball cap. Who needs a hat? She does.
And then on Sunday, our last Fringe event…..the Sixth Extreme Exchange political show. Very well done, and very entertaining.
Arthur Thinks (He Thinks) 