Spellbeamed

Bizarre. Odd. Confusing.

Those are some of the words that were used to describe the Spellbeamed production on September eleventh. The avant-garde production featured an ensemble alternating between more traditional styles of music and….not so traditional styles of music. To go along with music, there were intermittent projections of seemingly random objects such as shoes and boxes as well as computer generated graphics. Yep, it’s bizarre.

However, I think I was able to take the production and interpet it to mean something meaningful to me. Thinking about the show, I tried to find something I could take out of the “music” and a common theme to string the objects shown. If one analyzes the patterns of music, it seems to be that the sections of normal music always follow the sections of the avant-garde style music. Additionally, the avant garde sections themselves seem to emerge from sounds of worldly things, such as wars. Perhaps, then, the continuum of sound from everyday noises to music is meant to show that everything can be taken as music- its just where one decides to draw the line.

The same can be said for the pictures that were flashed onscreen. Perhaps they were meant to show that art, as well, can be seen from anything. It just depends on where one decides to draw te line between picture and art. After all, abstract art and the computer graphics shown are not that far off form each other.

Spellbeamed, then, is more than just a production thats “bizarre”. It’s a production that’s meant to show that music and art don’t have to be defined in their boxy classical definitions. It is a production that is meant to expand our narrow view of art and music and enable to see the beauty in everything.