[NEohioPAL]Berko review: BEBE DANCE COMPANY

[Roy Berko]

BEBE MILLERS COMPANY USES “MOTION CAPTURE’ TO CREATE 
VISUAL ART

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association & Dance
Critics Association)

--THE TIMES NEWSPAPERS--


Lorain County Times--Westlaker Times--Lakewood News
Times--Olmsted-Fairview Times	


The Bebe Miller Company recently brought its newest
dance piece, ‘LANDING/PLACE,’ to Cleveland under the
joint sponsorship of Dance Cleveland and Cuyahoga
Community College.

You don’t go to see Miller’s work expecting the
“normal” dance program.  This is both its strength and
its weakness.   Her company doesn’t dance, per se, it
uses “motion capture” which incorporates
state-of-the-art digital equipment to capture every
subtle movement of a subject, preserving the movements
on a computer. The technology is most often used for
creating visual special effects and animation.  In
other words, the dancers are incorporated into
mechanically produced musical sounds and computer
generated graphics.  It’s much like being in a
contemporary art gallery, often with pictures that
make no logical sense, with dancers who are
free-flowing in their interpretation of a continuously
developing illusion against a background of video
movement.

The ‘LANDING/PLACE’ project, which began last October
when the company started to integrate the “motion
capture” with video imagery, developed over the
summer.

According to Miller, the ‘LANDING/PLACE’ project
“explores sensory, spatial and cultural
dislocation—the yearning toward order in the
apprehension of difference. Inspired by Miller’s
travel in Eritrea, North Africa, ‘THE LANDING/PLACE
PROJECT’ is created as a portrait of a more common
landscape, the daily exchange of competing ideas of
‘place’ and the tension created by an unfamiliar body
in an accustomed landscape.”

With all that said, I was not captivated by the
intermissionless performance.  Okay, I may be
old-fashioned, but I like to understand, to feel
something, to be carried away by what I see on stage. 
 At first I was captivated by the integration of the
media.  I was especially enamored with the technician,
sitting alone stage right in the orchestra pit, who
with his Mac computer and technical gear produced all
the visual and musical/electronic sounds.  After a
while my attention waned, especially when a spotlight
came up on him and he lip-synced an opera aria and
then jumped on stage and attempted to dance with the
performers.  Well, I guess it could be called dancing
if you consider wiggling one’s hips and sliding one’s
feet around clumsily, dancing.  

After my interest in the technician waned, I just sat
back and watched the proficient dancers move around
the stage.  This is a very talented group of
performers!    They deserve to be the center of
attention, rather than the gimmicks.

For a while I tried to make sense of the “stories”
being developed, but those attempts also soon waned
out of frustration.  I wasn’t alone in my attempt for
understanding.  Seated in my row was a charming
teenager, who was in attendance with her mother.  She
leaned over about half-way through the production and
whispered, “Is this supposed to make some kind of
sense?”  The mother replied, “I have no idea.”

I get frustrated by artists who pile trash in a space
and call it a work of art.  I am confounded by those
who paint a bunch of squiggly lines and hang it up and
then expect viewers to spend long periods of time
pretending to like the work.  I don’t think it’s art
when someone gets up on a ladder and randomly pours
paint onto a canvass.  I also get upset by
choreographers who create something that defies
understanding and then state that the audience should
interpret it for themselves.  That’s not my job.  It’s
the creators job to give me enough concept and
execution to lead me in some direction, even if its in
a direction in which I don’t want to go.

At the conclusion of the performance the young lady
sitting next to me said to her mother,  “Should we
stay for the after-talk?  Maybe they’ll explain to us
what we just saw.”  Her mother said, “No!  Someone
else shouldn’t have to explain to you what you just
saw.  She should have made it clear to you with what
she created on stage.”  My response? “Amen!”  I’m
going to hire this woman to help me write my future
reviews.

UPCOMING AREA DANCE PERFORMANCES

OHIO DANCE THEATRE (Children’s Series)--’THE
NUTCRACKER,’ December 2 (7:30 pm), December 3, (2 pm
and 7:30 pm), December 3, (2 pm), Stocker Center,
Lorain County Community College (440-366-4040  or
800-995-5222) and November 26  (7:30pm) and November
27 (2 pm) at Westlake Performing Arts Center,
440-250-9150

GARTH FAGAN--February 25, 2006, 8 pm, Ohio Theatre,
sponsored by Dance Cleveland and Cuyahoga Community
College, 800-766-6048, 216-241-6000, or
www.tickets.com

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATRE, April 7 (7:30 pm),
April 8 (7:30 pm), April 9 (3:30 pm), Palace Theatre,
sponsored by Dance Cleveland and Cuyahoga Community
College, 800-766-6048, 216-241-6000, or
www.tickets.com

CINCINNATI BALLET’S ‘THE NUTCRACKER’, December 7-11,
sponsored by Playhouse Square Foundation,
800-766-6048, 216-241-6000, or www.tickets.com

THE NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA’S ‘THE FIREBIRD’ and
‘THE FOUR SEASONS, January 27-29),  sponsored by
Playhouse Square Foundation, 800-766-6048, 216-241
6000, or www.tickets.com

VERB BALLETS (“THE MOON DOGG,’ ‘ LAURA’S WOMEN,’
‘SUPER FRIENDS,’ and ‘PLANET SOUP), January 20-22, The
Beck Center for the Arts, 216-521-2540.

OHIO BALLET (‘WINTERFEST’), February 17-18, Ohio
Theatre, 800-766-6048, 216-241 6000, or
www.tickets.com


Roy Berko's web page can be found at www.royberko.info.  His theatre and dance reviews appear on NeOHIOpal, an on-line source.   To subscribe to this free service via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.fredsternfeld.com/mailman/listinfo/neohiopal.


		
__________________________________ 
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com