parades & changes, replays (& replays & replays & replays & replays...)

Every so often I see a dance and I feel I've been given the finger. Well, hi! Anna Halprin, mother of the Planetary Dance and the happy holistic practice of movement arts for one's quality of life, you have put me in my place. I'm not particularly impressed with "parades & changes, replays," nor am I inclined to read the laborious program notes explaining the 1964 original of the 2008 recreation. I am inclined to give you, my darling reader, a play by play. Even if you read it, you'll probably be all right seeing it too.

The white noise of crowd uncontrol hums out of the speakers when a kindly man in a suit takes the stage, presumably for the standard off-with-the-cell-phones chide. Instead he conducts, and dancers sneakily seated rise and speak in French and English and who knows what else about... well, anything? Once they reach the stage, what I will call Part I is already off to a wily start. Off with the suits! On with the suits. Off with the suits again! And so on. Next thing you know there's a brown paper waterfall and a celibate orgy center stage, then the back wall opens and off they all glide, clad in wads of the waterfall. End Part I.

Jerome Delatour

In Part II, the lights are brighter and the composed, near-smirk faces are wilier, and everyone is probably more aware of my formalist eyes bugging out in the back row of the theater. (Will I ever be on time to anything?) A brief flash of Stomp later, the stage becomes aisles of 21st-century-junk-kitsch piles. This I'd been anticipating. The dancers mosey and don wacky costumes. They put wacky costumes on each other!

Jerome Delatour

There is not one pirouette, not one leap or gesture that suggests this came from a classroom. (Although, minor gripe, a few moments feel like a college class learning to make improv scores.) Generally the dance is just... there. Production value be damned, since a huge white balloon lit from the inside and a live musical score are about as complex as things get. As two critters wander out of the theater, having gone from suited to naked to suited to naked to dressed in colorful trash, I wish LA had more pedestrian traffic. It's a little bleak to see two such laissez fair art bodies wander out into the street to find... nothing.