Review: ‘Slumber’, your bloodiest sexy dream

Looking to experience something scary and exciting to boost your Halloween spirit? Check out “Slumber”, the circus and dance show at the House of Yes in Brooklyn. Don’t dress up too fancy if you are planning on sitting next to the stage, some blood, which flows abundantly during the performance, might spill on you. Watch how the beautiful and deadly nightmare of a young girl becomes a reality and her friend starts to slit open the throats, stomachs and wrists of her girlfriends one by one.  

photo by John Dolan

The cast of incredibly talented performers challenges the limits of human physical abilities, featuring a contortionist, Olga Karmansky, silks and trapeze performers,  Anya Sapozhnikova and Melissa Aguerre, aerialist Joren Dawson, and dancers  Bokyung Park and Lisa Sainvil. Lee Hubilla narrates in between killing people and taking selfies. Set to the electro-pop soundtrack from artists such as Halsey, the Chainsmokers and Terror Jr, the show is lit like a party at a nightclub with strobes and neon spotlights.       

Choreography, by husband-and-wife team Keone and Mari Madrid, smartly uses the strengths of the performers to narrate through dance and circus numbers. The show opens with a captivating and sexy dream sequence in which the cast, all dressed in white underwear, start rolling around in a single bed in the middle of the stage and then extend the action to the podium in the center aisle. Sapozhnikova and Aguerre perform a routine on the silks hung above the crowed. The use of welding art on the wall behind the bar, as well as silks and aerial straps above the seated audience, smartly expands the performing space and creates a sense of doubled danger and excitement – not only for the performer (like it is in traditional circus) but also for you.

The Chinese pole routine performed by Joren Dawson seduces, not only the members of the female squad, but the audience as well, with its playful strength. This flirting soon exceeds the limit of Lee Hubilla’s comfort and balances on a razor’s edge of fun and assault. The smart and risky direction of Lyndsay Magid and Josh Aviner keeps you intrigued for a while but then Lee Hubilla takes the stage and this is where things begin to fall apart. As cute and charismatic as she is, she becomes redundant and repeats herself a lot. All of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of a not-so-funny standup comedy act and your cheeks are in pain from polite smiling. 

                                    

Although unbalanced due to excessive use of dialogue with the audience, “Slumber” is still worth catching while it is running in the House of Yes. The solo number of Olga Karmansky, where her recently killed body is testing out its limbs and joints, or the “cocaine trip” of the trapeze duo Anya Sapozhnikova and Melissa Aguerre, is worth the trip. 

“Slumber” is produced by Hideaway and runs through November 6^th in the House of Yes at 2 Wyckoff Avenue, Brooklyn. Attendees must be 21 years of age or older. For more information and tickets visit http://hideawaycircus.com/slumber/.      

Review: Nijinsky’s ‘Letter to a man’ read by Mikhail Baryshnikov

Mikhail Baryshnikov, solo-performer of "Letter to a Man" became a ballet legend in the 70s. He is probably the most recognizable ballet dancer thanks to numerous film and TV roles, including Sex and the City. At 68 years, the dancer and choreographer is still performing, this time in the role of Vaslav Nijinsky, the iconic Russian ballet dancer of the beginning of the 20th century. The production directed by Robert Wilson is currently running at BAM as a part of the Next Wave Festival and is based on Nijinsky’s diaries. Direction, set design and lighting concept is a collaboration of Wilson and Baryshnikov in their attempts to give visuals to a voice of developing schizophrenia.

photo by Lucie Jansch

We find Nijinsky in Budapest in 1945 during the final weeks of World War II. So says the program, in reality we see an aged Pierrot-esque figure dressed in a straitjacket with his face painted white, sitting on a chair. “I understand war because I fought my mother in law” – says the man in Russian. He repeats the phrase multiple times varying his intonation. The English translation is heard shortly after each phrase with a female narrator providing occasional remarks. Fast and dramatic changes of lighting introduce a new voice and create a hypnotic pattern that develops in parallel with the verbal narration.

Short sentences and longer paragraphs (text by Christian Dumais-Lvowski) are mostly delivered through voice-over by the male and female narrators in two languages. The text loops, it repeats itself, sinking the audience in a sort of trance. But the hypnotic effect gets interrupted by sharp piercing sounds that mark the border between scenes (sound desighn by Nick Sagar and Ella Wahlström). The music by Hal Willner weaves the fragments of songs by Tom Waits, Arvo Pärt, Henry Mancini, and Soviet futurist composer, Alexander Mosolov.

photo by Lucie Jansch

Music organically fills in the pauses between scenes, needed for the change of the minimalistic but elaborate set designs. Robert Wilson, a visual artist himself, brings the quality of a painting to his theatrical landscapes. Using lighting as a brush, he creates surreal “canvases”, resembling Malevich’s suprematism at times and Vrubel’s symbolism at others. Each new scene, each new fragment of Nijinsky’s diary, is presented in a new setting, some of which are quite spectacular. The laconic surrealism of Magritte comes to mind with its play between “image” and “reality”, with silhouettes of a faceless man and objects out of their element suspended in the air.    

The memory of Baryshnikov gliding softly through the stage in slow motion, waving tree branches or doing stop-motion choreography sequences near the “corps” and other scenes, are still haunting me many days after I saw “Letter to a man”. There is certainly a grasping quality to this estranged production. The tiny figure of Baryshnikov seems lonely in the vastness of an almost always empty stage. On a rear occasion he has the company of a sculpture, the cutout silhouette of a cartoon girl holding a giant chicken on a leash, or a shadowy figure. Stagehands appear a couple of times to change the scenery, but mostly it happens behind the black curtain.

These transitions seem to become longer towards the end of the show, which ruined a bit of the dramatic tension building up during the scenes. Staring at the closed curtain, for what felt like a few minutes, might be a technical necessity but it wasn’t justified narratively. This avant-guard production about descending into madness, initially coherent and moving forward, started to resemble a series of individual “performances”, “numbers” or “pictures” closer to the end.

photo by Lucie Jansch

This show might have been more successful as a video art exhibit. It already separated Baryshnikov’s voice from his body. The only time when we hear him talk is at the very end, when he says “Vaslav Nijinsky” and disappears behind a small curtain set up in the back of the stage. Such a strange final scene, Baryshnikov is cheerful and content all of a sudden, an abrupt change of pace after the darkly colored existential passages about God, sexuality and “a man” from the letter in the title. The unnamed man is Sergey Diaghilev, the Ballets Russes founder, former employer, lover and friend.

Was it the desire to give the torn apart soul of Nijinsky some rest and peace in the end? Was it the necessity to bend the narrative arc one way or another? Whatever the director’s motivation was, it didn’t land. The confused audience didn’t clap for a few seconds after the show was over. Only after the traditional indicators of the finale, the curtain call and house lights going on were we sure that Nijinsky’s story had come to an end. Then Baryshnikov, dressed in Armani, bows to a standing ovation.        

Review: ‘Paris’, Greek gods in a baroque cabaret

Once again Company XIV lifts up the velvet curtain of their Baroque-Burlesque theater. This one of a kind New York collective, led by the artistic director Austin McCormick and named after the intimate and decadent private performances at the Louis XIV's court, makes the cold Fall nights in New York hot and sexy again. Their newest production, “Paris”, based on the ancient Greek myth “The Judgment of Paris”, consists of the company’s signature mixture of dance, circus, opera and burlesque.   

photo by Mark Shelby Perry

This season, XIV hosts the audience in The Irondale Center, former Sunday school auditorium in the historic Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. The religious remnants peak out from behind the stage and a grandiose stained-glass window serves as a backdrop for the open-to-view dressing room of the goddesses in the gallery. Sofas and armchairs fill the orchestra and the balcony. Despite the misfortunes, which caused the company to change venues frequently, XIV makes any place warm and cozy and makes you feel like a welcome guest. From the dim pink light in the bathroom, to the silky cushions on the couches and tart pinching of champagne in your mouth, XIV tunes the mood through every element that accompanies the theater viewing experience, making it truly immersive.  

Once you enter the theater, you are immediately immersed in the atmosphere of Paris cabaret, where the 17^th century aesthetics infuses and blends together aristocratic arts and down-to-earth entertainment. The host for the night is lustful Zeus (Charlotte Bydwell), dressed in a black tuxedo but only halfway. The other, half of the two-faced master of ceremonies is dressed in a semi-transparent gown and is called Fifi. To hide the female half of her costume while being Zeus, Bydwell is constantly hanging on the corps-de-ballet dancers and occasionally engages in a dialogue with herself.

“The Judgment of Paris” serves as the narrative outline for the show, though occasionally the Roman names are used. Paris (Jakob Karr), a Trojan mortal is assigned by Zeus to choose “the fairest goddess” among three contestants: Athena (Marcy Richardson), Juno (Randall Scotting) and Venus (Storm Marrero) and reward her with a golden apple. Paris is seduced by Venus’ promise for love of the most beautiful mortal woman, Helen (Lea Helle), and picks the goddess of desire.

I must say that the choice would be very difficult if I was asked to pick the most fascinating performance. “La Fille Au Roi Louis” sang by the soul-piercing soprano Marcy Richardson while doing elaborate acrobatics on the pole; Leonard Cohen’s “I‘m Your Man” performed by Randall Scotting in a provocative and sarcastic dance with scared Paris; mesmerizing rendition of Bjork’s “All is Full of Love” by Storm Marrero under the pouring glitter… It’s wonderful that you don’t have to choose and can enjoy every number equally.

PARIS runs through November 12 in a limited 5-week engagement playing Tuesdays - Saturdays at 8pm. The show contains partial nudity – 16 & over admitted. Performances take place at The Irondale Center, located at 85 South Oxford Street between Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn, NY. Tickets for PARIS from $25 to $175. To book seats, couches and VIP tickets visit http://CompanyXIV.com or call 1-866-811-4111.