There were four pieces on last night’s program by Full Radius Dance at 7 Stages, all choreographed by Douglas Scott. It included two rather moving pieces in the middle bookended by lighter works at the beginning and end. Overall, it was a pretty good show.
Continue readingAccording to the “About” section of the MAD Festival’s Facebook page, “The annual Modern Atlanta Dance Festival (MAD) presents the best of Atlanta’s modern/contemporary dance.” This year’s lineup, however, was bookended by a couple of choreographers from outside of the Metro area, Melissa Pihos and Sarah Wildes Arnette, both of whom are assistant professors of dance at Valdosta State University. If, perhaps, this goes against the mission statement of the festival, I think that there is enough value to creating the opportunity for Atlanta audiences to see artists from elsewhere in Georgia to justify the geographic expansion. I don’t think that it betrays the sense of the festival’s localness to look outside of the economic domain of the State’s largest metropolitan area, so long as it doesn’t stray too much beyond the boundaries of the State. That said, I’d love to see a separate Southeastern regional dance festival in Atlanta, though I wonder if there’s really a big enough audience for it or, for that matter, a good funding source.
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Full Radius’ concert program at 7 Stages was titled Silver in honor of the company’s 25th anniversary. This prompted me to look up the traditional gift materials for each anniversary and I found that the tradition for the third anniversary is leather. Unfortunately, Artistic Director Douglas Scott didn’t include anything on the program from their third anniversary show, which must have been pretty wild.
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After a tiring week and with a mild headache, I spent my Friday evening watching the MAD Festival at the Balzer Theater at Herren’s. The evening began well with “A Waltz for the End of Our Time,” choreographed by Douglas Scott for Full Radius Dance. This was the only work on the program to have live musical accompaniment, which was provided by a trio called Flight of Swallows on violin/banjo, guitar, and cello. The piece presented a sense of always moving forward without really having a specific narrative. I was particularly impressed by some fairly athletic partnering between Laurel Lawson and Rebekah Pleasant as well as the shapes that the remaining three dancers formed as they worked together. It was a good start to the festival and lifted my mood dramatically as I anticipated seeing the rest of the show.
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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.
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