SIFF 2013 is over — well, sort of: the Best of SIFF runs June 12 through the 20th — but if you need a film to see tonight, then make tracks to the Paramount for Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc, 7 p.m. It’s the first of a series of international silent films. After a stop in France, the series moves on to Ireland on June 17 (The Colleen Bawn, directed by Sidney Olcott), and to India on June 24 (A Throw of Dice, directed by Germany’s Franz Osten, with Indian actor and producer Himansu Rai). All are accompanied by Jim Riggs on the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ.
Roger Ebert’s 1997 review of the 1928 Passion of Joan Arc film begins: “You cannot know the history of silent film unless you know the face of Renee Maria Falconetti,” and then he himself goes on to quote Pauline Kael saying: “It may be the finest performance ever recorded on film.” Amazing! you think. I must see all of this prodigy’s work! Then go see the movie tonight — and relax, because that’s all we seem to have from Falconetti.
For Danish director Dreyer, the emphasis is on the “passion,” which I think radically for 1928, contrasts 19-year-old Joan’s experience with that of an itinerant Jewish preacher run afoul of the Roman judicial system. (For plenty of people, there would have been no comparison at all — blasphemous to use a similar construction for Joan and Jesus.) It’s an early fictional-documentary, based on the trial of Joan of Arc from contemporary accounts of the proceedings. The Church doesn’t come off well.
“There were 29 cross-examinations, combined with torture,” explains Ebert, “before Joan was burned at the stake in 1431.”
The Paramount was awash with local dance professionals in the audience Saturday night, for the final performance here of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s Legacy Tour. It will wind up in New York the end of December, when the company disbands for good.
This was the second of two programs presented here, with one relatively early, one middle career, and one late sample of his choreographic genius. And genius it was, from the very beginning.
Saturday’s program showed the connections and close attention to detail in all aspects of Cunningham’s dances, not just movement, but also the sound—often it wasn’t what we would normally describe as music—the costumes and their relation to each other, the lighting, and the set or backdrop.
Duets, from his middle period, is just that, a series of couples performing together, each quite different but always with some connection to the couple before or alongside, sometimes just a color carried from one pair to the next, sometimes a motif in the movements. Though always in bare feet, the rigorous classical training of the dancers shone in all they did: the lithe fluidity of the bodies in often quite slow, sustained movement, the ease and beauty of body lines and the flow of the dance.
Most remarkable was the synchrony between dancers who might not be touching or even close. The music, John Cage’s Improvisation III, is for percussion, and the rhythms and timbres were reminiscent of random water drops or rain dripping on the outdoor drums at Rattlesnake Lake’s Watershed Education Center, sometimes louder, sometimes soft, but always with that texture of sound. The dancers maintained an amazing sense of where they, or their colleagues, were in what developed like a sonata for bodies.
It was ironically, the next, early work which was titled RainForest, but this was clearly not one in the Olympics. This rain forest was tropical, with a collection of taps, squawks, snarls, rustles, swoops, and swishes in David Tudor’s score of the same name, while the stage was covered in large mylar pillows by Andy Warhol of blue and silver which floated around the stage floor with others hanging motionless on the black backdrop. Dancers here were clad in fleshcolored tights, seeming nude except for the garments’ ratty condition with holes and rips. Movement was often slow, or briefly, suddenly quick, with a sense that the dancers might have been insects or occasionally a small animal stalking. The slow unfolding of two dancers moving together had extraordinary control.
Lastly came Split Sides, from 2003. This is performed according to random choices in order of dance modules, costume color modules, music, décor, even lighting. All this is chosen by dice throws which are done with due ceremony on stage at the beginning. This seemed unneccesarily pretentious. The dance itself, to music of Radiohead or Sigur Ros, again featured couples much of the time, sometimes dancing as a corps in unison and with more time spent in the air that in the other two works. There were even a couple of unmistakeable yoga poses. One dancer, temporarily alone on stage, showed mindboggling balance which passed unnoticed until you looked at his feet and saw he had one set of toes, and only that, on the floor.
In the end, Split Sides seemed more amorphous than the other two works, and lasted too long, but the overall impression left by the evening’s performance was one of superbly trained, gifted dancers in works of great imagination, and that the quality has not diminished since Cunningham’s death in 2009. May they all, wherever they disperse to, continue to preserve his work, perhaps setting his dances on other companies who are surely eager to add them to their repertoires.
August 14, Sade arrives at Key Arena (tickets $60-$175). You will not believe this–no one can–but the British-Nigerian singer is 52. You want to read something into her being the daughter of a lecturer in economics and a nurse, as her drawing-room soul repertoire consistently explores the wounds of romantic losses, or gains foregone.
The latest album before her Ultimate Collection, Soldier of Love, went platinum, of course. I don’t think Sade has ever been in the position of losing a fan, once you’ve succumbed to that husky catch in her voice. The upbeat numbers can be criticized for their sheen and polish–the ideal sound for a modernist airport lounge in some exotic locale, it’s been said–but “Nobody expresses adult sorrow and melancholy with such graceful pain,” admits the Evening Standard.
Every siren has a mystery you can’t quite plumb the depths of; with Sade, it’s the feeling that despite the elegance and sophistication, she’s been hurt just like you. But of course it is a performance, all the languorous attractions and slinky exits; she is not really like you. She is just Sade for the length of the song, when that intimacy will vanish like a shade pulled down.
Two days earlier, on August 12, Adele arrives at the Paramount (tickets are sold out) for her rescheduled show, the original date put off because of laryngitis. She is also British, and no one can believe her age, either. Now 23, she’s ninth on the list of ” richest British and Irish music stars under age 30.” The U.S. learned of her after a Saturday Night Live appearance in 2008, and the day after, her album 19 rose to the top of the iTunes charts and was number five at Amazon.com.
The queen apparent of “heartbroken soul,” Adele sings her unrequited soul into submission, her lower register dark and stormy, like a cello with its hands on its hips. She can still sound a little pinched when she soars up for those high notes, but the ease with which she turns that thundering instrument on a dime leaves you struck dumb. Pitchfork says of her song “Someone Like You” on her album 21, “Sometimes, pop music can still break your heart.”
Adele’s vocal forces are backed by justification, which is essential for a siren. You can’t very well go luring sailors to their deaths if you’re unsure of where you stand. When you hear “Rolling in the Deep,” you totter away singed with righteousness.
If you don’t have Adele tickets, head over to the Neptune on August 12 for rising star Irish blues-and-rockabilly singer Imelda May (tickets $14 advance/$19 day of show). Her latest album, Mayhem, just dropped here in the U.S. on July 19. She’s triple-platinum status in Ireland and gold in the U.K., if you’re susceptible to the herd instinct.
May got her start in burlesque clubs and as part of a swing troupe before going solo, and has retained a ’50s look from those earlier days. On Mayhem, she wrote 13 out of the 14 tracks, and covers Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love.” Pop Matters loves the “bittersweet” remembrance of “Kentish Town Waltz,” but don’t get too used to dreamy balladeering, because along comes the punchy “Inside Out,” with its woozy brass and May growling, and hollering off-mike.
May is a siren’s siren: her fans include Jeff Beck, Jools Holland, Wanda Jackson, and Elvis Costello. People who have lived, you see. You go on long enough, you get a thicker skin, the bubblegum doesn’t stick anymore and you think you’re over sirens–that’s when May and her badgirl ’50s outfits jumps you.
