Lyra is a project that has been in the making since 2018, conceived by Robert Dekkers as a full-evening work for his Post:ballet dance company. I first became aware of Dekkers through The Living Earth Show (TLES) duo of guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson. They provided the music for Do Be, a cycle of five dances that Dekkers choreographed for his company; and I covered the world premiere performance at Z Space at the beginning of August of 2016. Each of the dances was set to music by a different composer, all commissioned by TLES.
Like Do Be, the performance of Lyra will involve music provided by TLES. This time, however, the entire score has been composed by Samuel Adams; and, unless I am mistaken, Adams’ music was on the program of the first public concert presented by TLES. This time, however, the dancing has been choreographed by Vanessa Thiessen; and it will be integrated with projected film conceived and implemented by cinematographer Benjamin Tarquin. Dekkers will serve as the overall director, responsible for integrating all of the contributing resources.
2018 now feels like the distant past. Most likely pandemic conditions led to an extended wait for performance to take place. However, at the beginning of this year, three films of Post:ballet performances were presented as a live-stream by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The second of those films was “Surface Down,” and it provided a foretaste of what to expect from the full-length performance of Lyra.
Lyra was conceived as a contemporary take on the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in the arid landscapes of Eastern California. “Surface Down” was filmed on a railroad track leading into a tunnel, the implication being that the tunnel was the gateway to the Underworld. The choreography presented the episode during which Eurydice was taken from Orpheus and escorted to the Underworld by Atropos. The music was provided by Meyerson, whose vibraphone and drums were situated in the mouth of the tunnel, suggesting that he was the “gatekeeper” to admit Atropos and Eurydice.
The performance of Lyra in its entirety will be the third program in the PIVOT Festival presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). It will take place in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater, which provides considerable flexibility to accommodate both Thiessen’s choreography and the projections of Tarquin’s cinematography. (Equally flexible will be the layout of seats for the audience.) The Theater itself is on the fourth floor of the Veterans Building, which is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Readers probably know by now that this is an excellent location for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel.
All tickets for Lyra will be sold for $65. There will be two performances, the first on Friday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m., followed by a 5 p.m. performance on Sunday, October 24. Each date has its own Web page for purchasing tickets, accessible through the hyperlinks on the dates themselves in the previous sentence. The duration of the performance will be 65 minutes without any pause or intermission.
No comments:
Post a Comment