Category — Critic’s Corner

 
          Performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on November 19, 2008 was Les écailles de la mémoire (The Scales of Memory) by Brooklyn’s Urban Bush Women and the men of Compagnie Jant-Bi from Senegal.
          The dance opens with all fourteen dancers standing in two rows staring out at the audience expressionless. They then begin to move in excruciatingly slow motion. The audience is engaged, but soon becomes eager and restless after what seems almost ten minutes before they take their first step. The dancers begin speaking in their mother tongue, introducing themselves and their lineage. As suggested by the title, the dance attempts to convey the message of accepting the past in order to have fulfillment in the present. However, this moving message and storyline failed to translate through the dancing.

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           Currently on display at the Special Exhibitions Galleries on the 2^nd floor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the exhibition titled, “Art and Love in Renaissance Italy.” The Italian Renaissance was a time of incredibly high achievement. It is during this time that some of the greatest artists were discovered including Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello. Italian Renaissance put intense focus and emphasis on love, marriage, and family, which they depicted through very monumental, clear, and beautiful images.  As written in the entrance of the exhibit, the works in this gallery take an “important detour from the path of marriage and family to explore Renaissance artists responses to the sensual aspects of love.” [Read more →]

bam.org

     People were starting to get restless. It was the opening night of Les ecailles de la memoire (The scales of memory) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the show was already ten minutes late in getting started. However, once the theater went dark and the music started to play, all that frustration melted away and all that was left was awe. Les ecailles de la memoire is a show filled with breathtaking music, astonishing dance, and a sincere story about the culture of a people. [Read more →]

metmuseum.org

     The Renaissance in Italy was an era filled with the sweet sensations of love. It was the era of poets, musicians and bards – all of whom created art in order to express the wonders and tragedies of love. In addition to all of these well-known mediums of affection, there was a massive collection of paintings, pottery, sculpture, jewelry, and tapestry created to depict the theme of love as well. Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that runs until February 16, 2009, explores the ways in which artists utilized these mediums to portray the different aspects of love – from courtship and marriage to adultery. [Read more →]

The performance opens up with a group of men and women who start to move in slow motion. As they move forward, one woman starts to announce the name of her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. The others behind her begin to speak as well, stating their family names in their own language. One voice became many, and the chaos of layered declarations, filled the background of the stage with memories, like scales. “Les Ecailles de la Memoire” (The Scales of Memory) is a dance performance that seizes the imagination, leaves you on the edge of your seat, and thrills you in the moment. [Read more →]

How can we relive the past? I do not mean fifty years ago, or even a hundred. I mean four thousand years! Most people wonder in awe about what life was like such a long time ago. Did humans look the same as they do now? What kind of activities did people engage in? What did they wear? With new and innovative technologies emerging at what seems like lightning speed, uncovering the past seems like a more and more feasible feat. Thanks in large part to Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman and The Hagop Kevorkian Fund, as well as other sponsors, a new exhibition titled “Beyond Babylon” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was made possible. This intriguing exhibit takes us on an adventure through the Mesopotamian region in the Second Millennium B.C, showcasing ancient jewelry, weapons, and texts.
Walking through the doorway of the exhibit, it feels like you enter into a whole new world. In stark contrast to the off-white walls of the rest of the museum, the walls at “Beyond Babylon” are colored a bold blue. It is a good recreation of the old world. The ceilings are high and the doorways are massive, being a good representation of the word Babylon itself, which when disassembled into its parts means “gateway of deities”. It was clear indeed that deities had a powerful influence on the people of the Mesopotamian region in those days. On exhibit were various religious figures. Also, uncovered from Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, Dynasty 12-13, was a wand. It was decorated with fantastic creatures and deities. Supposedly, it had a protective function. Circular motions were made with it over children to protect them during the night. It was made from beautiful hippopotamus ivory, as were many of the artifacts from this time.
Besides wands and such, weapons are also a big part of the exhibit. One particularly beautiful weapon was an Axe inscribed with Ahmos. It is made of gold, electrum, copper alloy, semi-precious stones, and wood. This battle-axe exemplifies the ingenuity of the people in those days, as well as their artistic and creative ability. This battle-axe can be considered as much a weapon as an artistic piece. Probably one of the most revealing artifacts of the time is The Uluburun Shipwreck. This ship was carrying 17 tons of cargo and 15,000 artifacts from 12 different cultures, including the Canaanite, Mycenaean, Cypriot, Egyptian, Nubian, Baltic, northern Balkan, Kassite, and Assyrian. At the exhibit, inside a fake vessel, are housed horse training manuals, cups and vessels, helmets and armory, as well as glass and ceramics.
“Beyond Babylon” is an exciting and interactive exhibit. There is a ton of information available, including a short film. In a rather small space, the creators manage to display artifacts from over ten different cultures, and from over 4 thousand years ago. This exhibit is an educational experience where you can come pretty close to reliving the past.

A play about something as gargantuan as the worth of thirteen lives, about their daily narrow escape from death should leave a viewer with some resounding sense of something.  One should be left with a feeling just as huge as the implications of the play.  Yet I left the theatre with nothing more then an appreciative shrug for what Irena did. [Read more →]

The ravaging dogs at the beginning of the film chase you into a story of confusion, a slowly unfurling lick of flame.  It’s a slow paced documentary that keeps your eyeballs nailed to the screen, a rarity.  And with its beautiful animation and mysterious quality Waltz with Bashir is a film that invokes the word awe.  Its stylistic approach to the portrayal of a true story, the story of a man trying to find a past that haunts him with strange dreams gives the film a universal sense.   Beyond that it is a war story, death permeating the screen, bringing you closer to a reality you hope you will never face.  [Read more →]

In a play, there are actors on stage, pretending to be people made up by playwrights and directors, sometimes based off a real person from the past or the present, yet a character nonetheless.  In Conflict had actors pretending to be living, breathing, existing human beings with deep and sometimes dark stories to tell.  People that had served in Iraq and decided to tell all that would listen their stories of hope and betrayal and utter depression.  The actors up on the stage had no choice but to be on top of their game, because the person they were portraying could be out in the audience, or even more stressful, their spouse could be.  And all the actors were on top of their game.  There were some that were better then others, some stories that were more interesting or heartbreaking, and still each person pretending to be a different person was practically who they were pretending to be. [Read more →]

The lights dim, the stage is set, and suddenly the audience is thrust into the mid-1940’s. There is a palpable sense of tension as the audience comes to the understanding that what s being portrayed is the nerve center of the project behind the creation of the atomic bomb. The voices of the scientist sing out as they describe the science behind the creation of this terrible device. As they finish their discourse on molecular structure, the story becomes real and personal. We are shown the high-stakes world of radical science, where any new development equals a possible new weapon to be used to wage war. Morals and ethics [Read more →]