Results tagged “meanyhall”

BURLESQUE ON THE BIG SCREEN: Northwest Film Forum will be showing A Wink and a Smile only until the 21st, so if you're interested in learning more about the lives of some of Seattle's finest burlesque dancers, we encourage you to get out and see it before it's too late! The documentary follows ten ordinary women attending Miss Indigo Blue's six-week program at the Seattle Academy of Burlesque, where they are transformed from their daily lives into beautiful bombshells who are not afraid to show off their skills and new-found empowerment.

At first, we weren't ready to like Artistic Director Nacho Duato's work Castrati--out of the gate it felt strained, and we worried that the topic (castrated Italian boys who became famous singers) would be too easily over-dramatized. Set to a series of works by Vivaldi, it opens with a group of men wearing low cut gowns, half dress-half cape numbers in all black; we later deduce these are the veteran castrati, their mission to bring vulnerable new recruits into the fold. They waver between almost inquisition-styled menacers, with striking unison choreography that relies heavily on canons and repetition to lend a military feel, and older-brother, caring mentors who swoon and partner each other gently--in the latter roles they shed their black robes to reveal sparkly corsets and tights underneath. The contrast worked, illustrating the dual lives these men endured, the loss of that which defined then as men simultaneously bringing them great fame and adoration.

When Seattlest was a young dancer, we dreamed of creating choreography worthy of this Spanish company. Not that we knew La Compañía Nacional de Danza back then, but the first time we saw them perform it was like watching the dancers from our imagination writ large on stage--we never succeeded as a choreographer, but Artistic Director Nacho Duato (that's right, you read correctly) has The Gift. Intense, vivid and poignant without ever being self-important or overly hand-wringy about injecting meaning into motion, this company sells out wherever they go.

Even though he grew up in Seattle and has recently joined the UW jazz studies faculty, and even though he had an intriguing-looking gig at SAM during last fall's Earshot Jazz Festival, we still haven't managed to catch a performance by trumpeter Cuong Vu. But we'd sure like to catch him tonight at UW's Meany Hall and finally hear him in person.

8 pm tonight (& Saturday) // UW's Meany Theater // Tickets $20-$40

TONIGHT at Meany Hall, it's "Climate Change and the Future of Life on Earth," a two-hour multi-media presentation designed to freak your climatological shit out. It stars the world-famous paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and environmental activist: Dr. Richard Leakey. Shazam! (What? We never get to say "Shazam"!) Author of The Sixth Extinction, Dr. Leakey will talk "about our impact on the environment"...um, no, he's gonna open up a can of knowledgifying whup-ass is what.

If you missed Reggie Wilson's group at On the Boards a few weeks ago, you have the chance to not only make up for it, but to add three other stellar choreographers and one of Seattlest's favorite dance companies to the bill. Opening this evening at Meany Hall as a part of UW's World Series, the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company performs the Seattle premiere of colôr-ógrăphy, n. the dances of Jacob Lawrence. There have been many works of dance inspired by works of art (and obviously, vice versa), but this strikes us as one of the most inspired and poignant pairings we've heard of. We've long been a fan of Lawrence's ability to craft narrative and emotion with simple graphic representations peppered with explosions of color and implied motion (his "Ironers" hangs in our dining room, still by far our favorite).

You think you know someone. A fiery one-off German Romantic wunderkind. You've had beers with this guy. And then this Neefe dude pops up. As Byron Schenkman told the Town Hall audience:

Friday, Saturday, 8pm, tickets $42

YOUNG BLACK CULTURE: Studies claim that African-American male culture has continued to decline despite generally strong national economic growth. Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas with moderator Carl Livingston Jr. and a group of respected panelists discuss their attempts to "defy convention and support the success and progress of African-American boys."

Go see Parsons Dance at the Meany tonight or Saturday. You should go to watch one man perform one solo, and you will thank Seattlest for telling you to do so. In all our many years spanning from actually being a dancer to attending countless modern dance performances, we have never in our life seen anything such as Parson's 1982 work Caught. (That we had never seen it, much less heard of it until now, is pleasantly humbling.) Thursday night, it was performed by Jeremy Smith, a newcomer to the company. You may not have the good fortune of seeing Smith in action, as two other dancers will likely take his place Friday and Saturday. And while we're certain those performing it tonight and Saturday will be skilled, and you will indeed still thank us, we saw them on stage with Smith in other pieces, and we know that he is lightning incarnate.

As we tucked into our seats at Meany Hall for last night's performance of the Shen Wei Dance Arts company, we noticed that the the floor was painted in a random array of fuzzy geometric shapes (initially we thought it was sand, the first of our Butoh flashbacks), and there were no wings installed. With the house lights still on, one by one the grey-and-black-clad dancers walked quietly out to the edge of the stage, and then slowly began shuffling onto the stage, standing solemnly once they reached their respective resting points. The house lights still hadn't gone down.

*Carrie Clark mp3s here.

THEATER: You have only five more chances to catch WET’s latest offering, In Disdress Now: Redux. Marya Sea Kaminski’s one-woman show was originally developed as as part of On the Boards' Northwest New Works Festival in June 2006. Now the “story of a girl wrestling meaning out of love, porn, and the folds of an enormous red hoop dress” has been expanded into a full-fledged tour de force.

A few weeks ago we noticed something new in the upper reaches of our Comcast Digital Cable guide. Channels 962-984 now play Seattle FM radio stations: KISW (971), KPLU (966), even KUBE (967).

Wednesday 25th

Her name is Tess Altiveros and, in the current UW production of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (jointly staged by the Schools of Music and Drama), she plays the mezzo-soprano "pants role" of the love-struck pageboy, Cherubino. The operatic convention of an adult woman portraying an adolescent male makes musical sense; there's no better practitioner than the beloved Frederica Von Stade, who brings a golden voice and a winsome sprightliness to her art.

Seattlest remembers well the day we were sitting at the Victrola back bar and Byron Schenkman, harpsichordist and co-founder of the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, turned to us and said, "I've been thinking about switching to piano." Well, you could have knocked us over with a skinny decaf latte. And if you think it's not big news, tell that to the Seattle Times, P-I, and Seattle Weekly. (We couldn't find the Stranger's most recent commentary -- kinda wish there was a way to date-order the search results.)