Author Archives: Robbie

Vertigo Dance Company: Vertigo 20

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I only occasionally stay for artist talk-backs after any kind of performance. I particularly prefer to avoid them for dance. However, I ended up staying to hear Noa Wertheim, Vertigo Dance Company’s founder, artistic director, and the choreographer of this evening’s work, talk after the show at the Rialto Center for the Arts. I did so mainly because I was curious as to what the name of the piece was and if it meant anything. I didn’t know the name of the piece because the Rialto didn’t give us any program notes. There were a few mentions of her other works in the program but nothing about this one. This would be surprising if this weren’t the Rialto, a venue that doesn’t respond to email from subscribers and couldn’t start a show on time if they tried.
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ECMSA: Matt Haimovitz and Tim Fain

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The Emory Chamber Music Association’s Cooke Noontime Concert Series held at the Carlos Museum is a bit challenging to attend. First of all, it’s at noon on a workday. Secondly, there are two or three buses of residents from retirement homes who get there at around 11:20a and take up more than 75% of the seats and the remaining 25% are generally gone by 11:40a. So you pretty much have to be available for two hours in the middle of a workday, plus you have to pay for parking at a university campus that’s probably nowhere near anywhere you need to be. Then you only get a one hour concert that is often just a collection of single movements extracted from larger works. Generally, it’s not worth it for me to go but, still, if I have the time then I often find myself there wondering how concerned I should be about my addiction to live music. Today, though, was worth it. I had reason to take the day off and got there around 11:15a and, after waiting in the hallway of the third floor of the Museum with the exits all blocked by the crowd until the doors opened at 11:30a, I was able to get a fairly decent seat to hear what turned out to be a pretty amazing concert by cellist Matt Haimovitz and violinist Tim Fain.
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ASO: Joseph Young with Joseph Swensen

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Last season, Joseph Young blew me away with a program that included Hayden, Mozart, and Prokofiev so I was very excited to have the opportunity to hear him again this season. In particular, I thought that he’d kill Dvorák’s Symphony no. 9. Unfortunately, although this was an enjoyable concert, I can’t say that I was particularly impressed with Young’s conducting this time around.
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ASO: Hugh Wolff and Denis Kozhukhin

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The main reason that I had a ticket for this evening’s performance was Copland’s third symphony and, honestly, I’m just not that into the first two pieces that I had to sit through this evening to get to hear it. I like a lot of John Adams’ work, but ‘Lollapalooza’ kind of annoys me. It starts off kind of groovy, but the repetition of the lol-la-pa-LOO-za theme gets old pretty quickly and, in the end, it strikes me as being kind of soulless and merely nearly fun. The performance of it this evening under Hugh Wolff’s baton wasn’t spectacular nor was it bad. One of the same violinists who was slightly off in the Adams from last week was the same this week, though it wasn’t as big of a deal since the strings were overpowered by the brass. The person sitting next to me said that it felt a lot longer than the listed runtime and, for once, I just agreed instead of trying to defend a contemporary piece of music.
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Yossi Berg & Oded Graf Dance Theatre: Come Jump with Me

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I apologize to everyone between Emory and my place in Virginia Highland: I should not have driven home right away after the performance that I attended tonight at the Schwartz Center Dance Studio that was part of the Exposed festival of dance and theater from Israel. I was stifling sobs by the end of “Come Jump With Me” by Yossi Berg & Oded Graf Dance Theatre, I was so moved by this duo’s work, performed by Yossi Berg and Olivia Court Mesa, about the social and emotional pains of life in Israel. I broke out in tears again on the brief drive home and am shaken to the point that all I can do is sit down and write about my experience. My apologies to my future self for not being able to go into more detail about the piece, but hopefully I’ll have enough to remember what touched me most.
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ASO: Robert Spano with Pedja Muzijevic

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This was one of those bad-audience nights. The person sitting behind me had a deep, sickly, bronchial cough and, on the occasions that she tried to suppress it, made even more noise for longer periods of time getting cough drops from her bag. There were a couple of (probably) middle-schoolers next to me who were were whispering during the performances even more than the two adults sitting in front of me. There was, what sounded like, a hearing aid somewhere to the left of me that was squealing from feedback. And, although I hate to admit that seeing her still gets under my skin, the phony of phonies was there: Lauri Stallings, with whom Robert Spano regularly debases himself by working with her company, glo. Despite all of this, I wasn’t really bothered for the first half of the concert because what was on stage wasn’t really worth hearing or thinking about. Fortunately, things turned around dramatically after the intermission.
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MaryGrace Phillips: {stairs}

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I originally dismissed {stairs}, a dance piece by MaryGrace Phillips, simply because it was to be staged at the B Complex, which has a concrete floor. I really feel that we should all avoid patronizing artists and organizations that produce dance works on hard surfaces: it’s terrible for the dancers but, even if they’ve managed to receive that rare education on dance safety, they often are not in a position to turn down the opportunity. Earlier this week, however, I realized that she is a Work Room resident and, thus, would almost definitely have access to the Lucky Penny’s portable dance floor and so I felt much more comfortable attending. I really wish that an organization would form around the issue of dancer safety that can certify performances as meeting basic safety criteria: I’d feel a lot better about going to alternative venue performances if such a thing existed.
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