Wednesday, February 19, 2014

This is a strange fusion, but very interesting


Take a troupe of acrobats and gymnastic dancers.

Mix with a classical music string quartet.

Shake well, and what do you get?  You get Opus, starring Circa and the Debussy String Quartet.

Yaron Lifschitz's legendary Australian perfomance troupe, Circa, has joined up with the Debussy String Quartet to set acrobatics to Shostakovich and, in the process, they've refined away all the circus's Big Top crudities. Opus is cut-glass, caviar circus. It's black tie and ballgown circus. And it's an astonishing thing to watch: graceful, bombastic. Profound.





Even the simple collision of art forms is thought-provoking. Why is one high and the other low? What makes a musician virtuosic and a circus performer freakish?

Here acrobatics looks as disciplined as ballet: all arched feet and hyperextension. Circus becomes poised and noble. Not unruly. Not cocksure.

Violinists start to seem sexy and fierce. Why does no one ever run away to join a string quartet, I wonder?





There's more at the link.  Readable, thought-provoking, and definitely stretching boundaries.

Peter

1 comment:

Francis W. Porretto said...

-- Why does no one ever run away to join a string quartet, I wonder? --

Must have something to do with sex. Most things do.