All Rise

Some outings this week prompt a brief stir from my continuing lack of blogging zeal:

Jasmin Vardimon's follow up to Park is Justitia, a fragmentary but compelling courtroom drama dissected through dance and words. It's a lot more deliberate and focussed than its (frankly random) predecessors, to the point of seeming rather over-determined in the first act, but eventually transcends the apparent literalness to reach an abstract and affecting conclusion. Along the way things are athletic, varied and frequently very funny -- there's a spot-on kung fu parody, for instance -- and Vardimon again displays a particular talent for turning stereotypical masculine behaviour into lively choreography.

Nederland Dans Theater's cracking youth company NDT2 showed a programme of three pieces, two by Jiří Kylián, former artistic director and still the defining voice of all three NDT companies, the other -- and strongest -- by his heirs apparent Paul Lightfoot and Sol León. Kylián is rightly legendary, but his Sleepless, though sinuous and pretty, was disappointingly vapid, a series of insubstantial duets driven by nothing much; it would have been better titled Aimless. The self-consciously moderne plinky-plonky score -- "inspired" by a Mozart adagio but retaining no discernible traces of it -- didn't help. Lightfoot and León's Sleight of Hand, by contrast, was purposeful and thrilling, a vigorous formal engagement with a chunk of quintessential Philip Glass, thoroughly involving from beginning to end. The closer, Chapeau, from Kylián again, was a shamelessly happy, celebratory romp, all golden ruffled skirts and coloured hats and fans, marrying a joyous funkiness to the company's trademark precision, detail and muscularity to send the audience out grinning from ear to ear. Delightful. The young performers danced their little hearts out throughout, as always, making even the drab first piece watchable. Bless. You just want to pat their heads.

Moving somewhat downmarket, I enjoyed Spider-Man 3 a lot more than I expected; which of course may just be an advertisement for low expectations. It is terribly long, some kind of deranged messianic mash up of two or three separate summer blockbusters, but given that, I thought it hung together surprisingly well. I do wish they'd be a little less preachy in these things -- and scratch the Stan Lee cameos -- but I suppose that's the nature of the beast. The superhero stupidity (We've just massively irradiated this person. Do they get sick and die? No! They become animated sand!) is somehow feebly justified by an appeal to Morality. Of unspecified denomination, but clearly Christian, because non-Christians can't possibly have morals. Sigh. Still, at least three of the key actors were decidedly cute.
Posted by matt at May 12, 2007 04:51 PM