Caution and calculation have their place in the theatrical enterprise. Having seen their lack on more than one occasion, clearly we want artisans who are careful as they craft characters, sets and scenes, and who treat the plays they encounter with respect. But too much care can give audiences the feeling that we’re guests in […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inArt
The persistence of modern dance
Literary theorist Janet Gunn might be interested to learn that autobiography isn’t the only genre that tries to capture something in the process of vanishing. Dance journalism and criticism does as well. So here’s looking at the closing figures. Seven weeks and three days–not including the pre-season prep. Twenty-two mainstage performances (including nine world premieres […]
Posted inArt
The perfect–and the empty
Thankfully, I was wrong. I refer to the particular misgivings published in our June 8 season preview regarding Bill T. Jones’ work, “Another Evening,” which bowed Thursday night at the American Dance Festival. What necessitates the first critical retraction–at least in part–of the 2005 season? Major changes–and nothing less–in this evening-length work made sometime between […]
Posted inNews
Channel-surfing at the theater?
Why do critics return, month in, year out, to companies or programs that haven’t always lived up to their potential? It’s more than simple masochism. If you dig deep–um, really deep, in certain cases–here’s what you actually find: Good lord. We’re optimists. Who knew? It’s an exercise in faith when we keep showing up, demonstrating […]
Posted inGuides
Valor Award: DSA’s The Laramie Project
After the last performance was over, after 10 protesters with hate in their heartsand over 200 counter-protesterslined the sides of North Duke Street, after newspaper and television camera crews followed members of Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church who’d come all the way from Topeka, Kan., just to picket a show, the actors and director of […]
Posted inNews
Defending the caveboy?
Adam Bergeron puts a lot on the line in A Guy’s Tale, his solo show running through July 20 in UNC’s Hamilton Hall. And that’s to say the least. On some levels, this brand of performance approaches the ultimate in theatrical dares: After all, where do you hide when you’re performing your own script, on […]
Posted inArt
Body facts, and dancing fictions
Since the day had already been quite long, we can’t judge them too harshly, I suppose–the administrators and visiting critics who excused themselves discretely during that intermission between Sara Juli’s solo work in progress and composer Chris Peck and colleagues’ after-hours showing, late Friday night at the Ark on Duke’s East Campus. Instead, we may […]
Posted inNews
Unsentimental Proof?
It’s the same complaint we’ve had with too many productions of The Glass Menagerie. Directors routinely insist on rescuing Laura Wingfield, minimizing her family’s pathology in the padded gauze of memory. They also regularly render a Proof where far too much is proven far too soon. In recent takes at PlayMakers and Triad Stage, Catherine, […]
Posted inArt
Hitting the wall?
Ballet has been with us at least since the 1500s. Modern dance closes out its first century over the next 10 years. Now take aerial dance: A very small handful of pioneers got interested after Terry Sendgraff presented her first experiments with something called a single-point trapeze in 1976. Even so, another decade and a […]
Posted inArt
Salsa fresca? Emanuel Gat’s The Rite of Spring
A new dance for old news? Emanuel Gat’s The Rite of Spring gives Stravinsky a salsa take on the oldest gender saws in the book. Is Emanuel Gat’s version of The Rite of Spring a sexist work, or does it seek to expose sexism instead? If the answer is the latter, where is this sexism […]