Atlanta Ballet: Tu Tu & More

Posted on April 14, 2018 by Robbie

I generally enjoyed Atlanta Ballet’s program last night. Up first was Tu Tu by Stanton Welch, set to Ravel’s piano concerto. Costuming was pretty fun, with everyone in shiny, Klimt-esque attire. The women were in pancake tutus with bare legs and the men were just in shorts. The set was fairly simple, making use of a white backdrop lit with a color gradient with black panels in front of it. Each movement had a different configuration: for the first movement, only a center panel of the colored white backdrop was visible, the second was all black, with the dancers lit mostly from above, and the third was an inverse of the first movement, with a black panel in the middle and a blue gradient stretching to the wings on either side.
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Atlanta Opera: Out of Darkness: Two Remain

Posted on April 8, 2018 by Robbie

I found Atlanta Opera’s production of Out of Darkness: Two Remain to be a bit uneven. Composed by Jake Heggie with a libretto by Gene Scheer, it’s made up of two acts, with the first being a chamber opera and the second a musical, the plot driven forward more by unsung dialog than by the music. Both depict aged survivors struggling with their memories of the horrors of the Shoah and are based on the writings of real people. The first act was a masterpiece that moved me to tears. The second was merely decent in terms of the writing and composition and was rendered barely better than mediocre by this production’s casting and staging, though it was not without some moving moments.
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ASO: Robert Spano with Robert McDuffie

Posted on April 7, 2018 by Robbie

As I was walking along Peachtree toward the Woodruff Arts Center for last night’s concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, I passed a Subaru with an Alabama vanity plate that said “EROICA.” I love the idea that somewhere there is a Beethoven’s Third-Head that travels around visiting concert halls where they play Beethoven’s Symphony no. 3. Hopefully they enjoyed the concert last night: there was some good stuff in it.
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Dance Canvas: 10th Anniversary Performance Series

Posted on March 24, 2018 by Robbie

One of the reasons that I like going to Dance Canvas’ annual performance series, Introducing the Next Generation, is because it always features a good diversity of dance forms and aesthetic styles from an equally diverse group of emerging choreographers. This year’s production marked their 10th anniversary, so they celebrated by bringing back 10 choreographers from their previous shows.
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ASO: Miguel Harth-Bedoya with Alcides Rodriguez and Ksenija Sidorova

Posted on March 18, 2018 by Robbie

I don’t know why we bothered to sit at all at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s concert last night. The programmed works were all relatively short and Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the soloists delivered such great performances of all of them that we just had to pop out of our seats for a standing ovation after each piece. Both in terms of programming and performance, it will probably end up being my favorite concert of the season.
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Atlanta Ballet: Black Swan

Posted on March 17, 2018 by Robbie

At the end of the last piece of last night’s performance of Atlanta Ballet’s Black Swan program, a violinist sitting next to me asked me if that was it. She also asked if I noticed how off the dancers were. I said yes to both questions; it was a disappointing show. It felt rather short and it just wasn’t very well done. It didn’t help that of the two pieces, the first was an excerpt that ended in a cliffhanger and the second didn’t really have a very strong ending.
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ASO: Pre-Concert Chamber Recital

Posted on March 15, 2018 by Robbie

I was fortunate enough to be sitting with a member of the ASO’s Talent Development Program before the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s pre-concert chamber recital this evening. I was fighting a horrible amount of grumbly grumpiness but she was sweet enough to humor some random adult asking her about her music studies. It’s amazing what a dose of youthful optimism can do to turn a mood around. Thanks to her, I was already in a pretty good mood when the music began and I’m grateful for that because it let me quickly settle into the best of the pre concert chamber recitals that I’ve been to this year.
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