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March 26-29 saw the world premiere of Adamantine, Susan Marshall & Company’s newest evening-length dance. For someone like myself—a writer-type sometimes mystified by dance—the performance came across with all the clarity and radiance suggested by its title. Adamantine’s strengths certainly included the originality and confidence of its performers, yet they also extended to Marshall’s discriminating use of stage elements and lighting effects. The spotlights, scrims, and strobes created myriad opportunities for both striking illusions and expressive commentary. At times, the presence of the individuals onstage was palpable, solid; at others, their bodies appeared discontinuous and ephemeral. One particularly memorable scene, which the choreographer called the work’s “center of gravity,” featured a female dancer who, peering down into a combination fan and spotlight, allowed her magically lightweight plastic jacket to fly off her arms and up into the yawning vertical space of the stage. To me, it was an image of narcissism, endearing in its innocence, showing one way in which we shed and retrieve everyday objects as parts of our self-image. 

During a post-show discussion on Saturday night, Marshall made an intriguing reference to her own fascination with the way her dancers work together, how their years of collaboration have developed certain patterns and pathways in the creation of each new piece. I found myself wondering what exactly she meant and whether people who have spent years in the world of dance saw what she was describing taking place in Adamantine. 

For me, Adamantine evoked the struggle to get and to keep what we value. In particular, the dance seemed to address our constant vulnerability and to imply that strength mostly means picking ourselves up and dusting ourselves off, more or less literally, over and over again. 

Alyssa Timin is a freelance writer living in New York. Her art and music writing has appeared in the annual magazine of the Philadelphia Music Project, Finnish Music Quarterly, New Music Box, Visual Arts Journal, Artsline, and Sequenza 21.

You may not know it, but you may already own a Whitehead. The composer of the music accompanying Susan Marshall & Company’s Adamantine and frameDances doubles as a textile designer. Major companies such as Target, West Elm, and Kenneth Cole have used his patterns for clothing and home furnishings. 

In fact, it would be more appropriate to say that Peter Whitehead quintuples as a designer—he also paints, performs both as a musician and actor, and invents instruments. More than just a man of many talents, he is a perfect example of the kind of person best, and most simply, called an artist. There is something classic, even timeless, in his fluid transitions among media, as though his creativity flows from a source that precedes material distinctions, that is fundamentally undifferentiated. Read more »

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, the great sociologist Emile Durkheim distinguishes between two versions of the sacred: he terms angelic, ordering, and pure concepts the “right” sacred; the “left” sacred comprises all that is demonic, chaotic, and transgressive. 

Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki captures these religious polarities more vividly than perhaps any other living composer, and he has a particular talent for the “left,” the creeping and hair-raising. As one scholar remarks, “above all, there is [in Penderecki’s music] the splendid, enrapturing, nonpareil category of the high-energy ‘demonic scherzo.’” Indeed, many directors have used his works to help conjure cinematic demons—his compositions have been adapted for soundtracks to The Shining, The Exorcist, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, and Inland Empire, among others. 

It therefore is not entirely a surprise that his newest work, String Quartet no. 3 (Leaves from an Unwritten Diary), opens with what cellist Nicholas Tzavaras describes in a program note as “an almost grave introduction with a dark and screaming melody by the viola.” The Shanghai Quartet, of which Tzavaras is a member, will give the American premiere of Leaves at the Kasser Theater on February 21st. Peak Performances and the Modlin Center for the Arts in Richmond co-commissioned the work in honor of Penderecki’s 75th birthday. He wrote the work especially for the Shanghai Quartet, which also celebrates a major milestone this year—their 25th anniversary—and gave Leaves its world premiere performance in Warsaw in November 2008.  Read more »

At first glance, classical music and improvisation may seem to make strange bedfellows. Indeed, in the 1960s, composers brought them together almost by force. Earle Brown, for one, describes his work from that time as “secretly” exploring why classical musicians could not improvise. 

This weekend at Peak Peformances, Minamo brilliantly demonstrates how much has changed since the days of Brown’s guerilla tactics. Violinist Carla Kihlstedt and pianist Satoko Fujii, both trained as classical musicians, team up to play a fully improvised concert on January 31st. There are no plans, no parameters—there is simply a connection. Read more »