The Arts in New York City
A couple of days leading up to the show, a question kept revolving around my head: What was to be expected? I looked online searching for answers. Had this show premiered before? I only found a brief description of what was intended:
http://broadwayworld.com/article/Roulette-Presents-SPELLBEAMED-With-Zeena-Parkins-910-11-20120817
I took away from this that a random assortment of possessions from the players, would be laid out for all to view. Keep in mind that I did not have the luxury of experience when I read this description (reading it now I find this description gives everything away). In class, Professor had informed us that the show would be Avant-garde. Avant-garde is the invention and application of new techniques to a certain field, specifically music in this case. Perfect, I thought to myself: No one was supposed to have thought of or tried what this group was about to do in less that a day. About an hour leading the anticipation had built up quite a bit. I entered the rather mundane building and looked around for a clue to what was to come. Walking to the front of the stage that was rather close to the seats before it, I found an odd and seemingly unrelated assortment of objects lying out in the open.
The performance, if that’s what it was, began with a woman reading into a microphone. Her voice came out distorted and impossible to understand. I found this rather annoying and pointless because only the people sitting close enough to hear the words directly from her could piece together a word here and there. However, I reservedly praise this part in regards to pushing the performance in the direction of Avant-garde music. At the same time, another woman dressed as a surgeon picked up random objects and used them to strum a harp. As expected the sounds were very dissonant and displeasing to the ear. The point, I feel/hope, of this part was not to push the boundaries of Avant-garde music. As expected, every object played on the harp created a different sound which implied that every object regardless of it was commonplace or not, was unique and “when its song was sung” its tale came to life so to speak.
Then the musicians began to play their respective instruments in a non-traditional way. The violinist would strum his violin with his fingers rather than with a bow; the pianist would open the piano and strum the strings and so on. The resulting music was very painful on the ears and the fact that it seemed that they were improvising did not help the music. In terms of Avant-garde, I doubt that this is was something new. Thinking back of all the performances, this has definitely been the one etched most clearly in my mind.
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I agree completely with Ammar. Considering how in Arts of New York City, we would have to look at things in a new perspective that we normally would not have, Spellbeamed is the perfect example of something that requires more thinking and more analysis. Thinking back to our first show, we really didn’t know what to expect. Even while watching the show, most of it didn’t make much sense to us at first. But after thinking in a new perspective and listening to the explanation by the artist it made sense. Spellbeamed was an eyeopener to the kind of thinking we would have to do in this course.