Author Archives: Robbie

Full Radius Dance: Breakaway

Posted on by
Reply

After an awful day at work, I walked down to 7 Stages where I bought a ticket to Breakaway by Full Radius Dance and then drank a sizable cup of not very good wine before being seated for the show. I must say that it’s a good thing that I live within walking distance of the theater because I don’t think that I had enough to eat for supper and the wine hit me pretty hard. All of that is to say that, although I enjoyed the dance concert, the first half of it is already a bit of a blur to me.
Continue reading →

ASO: Marc Piollet with Augustin Hadelich

Posted on by
Reply

Tonight’s ASO concert opened with Blacher’s Variations on a Theme by Niccolo Paganini. I believe that this was the first time that I’d heard the piece. The theme comes from Paganini’s Caprice no. 24 and is presented at first by the concertmaster, is then picked up by the rest of the orchestra, and then the variations begin. The variations were mostly pretty fun, a number of them having a strong jazz influence and sounding very Gershwiny. The musicians played it well under Marc Piollet’s baton and I thought that it served as a good concert opener.
Continue reading →

Off the Edge

Posted on by
Reply

Feeling exhausted and beat down by a day that seemed determined to drive me off the edge, I attended the first evening of Off the Edge dance festival at the Rialto. Curated by Ilter Abrahimof, the executive director of a talent management agency that specializes in touring dance productions, this evening’s program featured works from five very different artists. The program for tomorrow’s show, during which I’ll be attending an ASO concert, will feature completely different works, though some of the same performance companies.
Continue reading →

ASO: Robert Spano with Jorge Federico Osorio

Posted on by
Reply

Spano and the musicians did very well this evening. None of the complaints that I had regarding the ASO’s last three concerts applied to this concert. Rex was back in the first chair of the cello section, which was good to see. (There was actually a little applause when he came on before the show, though I’m not sure that he could hear it.) The program, however, left me wishing that I’d found something else to do with my evening.
Continue reading →

Michael C. Carlos Museum: African Gallery

Posted on by
Reply

I went to a preview of the remodeled African gallery at the Carlos this evening and I have to say that it is a big step backward from what they had before. Stylistically, they went with a 50’s modernist/futurist design, with the walls on one side painted purple and gray on the opposite. It’s a design scheme that came back into fashion several years back but is already on its way out and will look extremely dated in a few years.
Continue reading →

ASO: Cristian Macelaru with Karen Gomyo

Posted on by
Reply

Tonight’s ASO performance was another backwards program, with the concerto after intermission followed by a short piece at the end. It was played, once again, with the musicians seated in the unmodified American layout, with the cellos downstage-right of the violas. And, under the baton of Cristian Macelaru, they played this backwards program well.
Continue reading →

Atlanta Ballet: Moulin Rouge® The Ballet

Posted on by
Reply

I did not expect to find Moulin Rouge® The Ballet to be of particularly high quality and my expectations were not betrayed. Unfortunately, neither of the narrative ballets programmed for this season appealed to me but, still, I wanted to go to at least one. I didn’t bother with this one the first time that they staged it, so it was new to me, and, unless you have a kid performing in it or you have a crush on Alessa Rogers, I can’t think of a single reason for a person to go to see the Princess and the Goblin. I’m sorry, I mean Twyla Tharpe’s™ the Princess and the Goblin© (patent pending).
Continue reading →