Betroffenheit (State of Shock) ★★★★½ Kidd Pivot & Electric Company Theatre American Dance Festival Durham Performing Arts Center closed July 15 Auteur director and choreographer Crystal Pite doesn’t wait long to let us know how far in we’re over our heads at the start of Betroffenheit (State of Shock). With the glacial pacing and intensity […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inArt
At Sonorous Road, Licked Cupcake Is a Sensitive and Savvy Story for the Stage
LICKED CUPCAKE Through Sunday, July 23 Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh www.sonorousroadtheatre.com In a week in which women in the local improv comedy scene spoke out against sexual harassment, the comic drama Licked Cupcake has a far too timely message: it’s already hard enough for women to come of age before sexual harassment or assault is […]
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If Minimalism Did Not Exist, It Would Be Necessary To Invent It. So Lucinda Childs and Her Colleagues Did.
FOOTPRINTS Tuesday, July 25–Wednesday, July 26, 8 p.m., $37.75 Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham www.americandancefestival.org O>ne of the founders of minimalism, choreographer Lucinda Childs is most popularly known for having choreographedand played the title role inthe breakout postmodern opera Einstein on the Beach with avant-garde director Robert Wilson and composer Philip Glass. In 1979, she collaborated […]
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The Legendary Paul Taylor Dance Company Opens Its Ranks to Brilliant Outside Choreographers in Two World Premieres at ADF
PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY: RUSH HOUR THE WEIGHT OF SMOKE Friday, July 7 & Saturday, July 8 Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham www.americandancefestival.org Imagine a world-class visual artist having only four colored pencils and a small sheet of paper to work with, or a brilliant sculptor being forced to ration a six-inch cube of modeling […]
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The Five Mature Women in The Woodstock Tontine Shatter the Stereotypes Lazy Playwrights Favor
THE WOODSTOCK TONTINE Through Sunday, July 16 Burning Coal Theatre, Raleigh www.womenstheatrefestival.com These are some of the people we’ve been waiting to meet: creative B.J. (Verlene Oates), smart Roberta (Judy McCord), vivacious Shelley (Lisa Leonard), world-traveling Trudy (Jennifer Kuzma), and Veronika (Julie Oliver), who always self-identifies as “the German.” None of these five mature women […]
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ADF Review: Pilobolus’s Enigmatic Echo in the Valley Portrays a Murder Mystery in Reverse in a Kentucky Cave—Maybe
Pilobolus★★★ Friday, June 30 & Saturday, July 1 Durham Performing Arts Center, DurhamPilobolus Dance Theater has visited many worlds in forty-six years of producing some of the most accessible works in modern dance. In its latest collaborative work, Echo in the Valley, which premiered at the American Dance Festival last Friday, the veritable first family […]
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ADF Preview: An Oral History of the Early AIDS Crisis Becomes Dance in Sean Dorsey’s The Missing Generation
Sean Dorsey Dance: The Missing GenerationWednesday, July 5 & Thursday, July 6, 8 p.m., $10–$27 Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham What drives someone to devote well over a thousand hours of research, editing, and rehearsal to a single dance? For trans choreographer Sean Dorsey, who makes his American Dance Festival debut this week with The Missing […]
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In Women’s Theatre Festival Opener Space Girl, Alien Love, Alienation, and Roller Derby Provide Bittersweet Laughs
SPACE GIRL Through Sunday, July 9 Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh www.womenstheatrefestival.com There’s incredible diversity among the planets, but nerds and misfits are universal. That’s the semi-comforting truth conveyed in Women’s Theatre Festival opener Space Girl, an oddly touching comedy in which three lonelyI almost said “people,” but I should say “beings”work their way toward one […]
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Theater Review: Struck’s Promising Script Goes Awry When It Doesn’t Trust the Audience to Grasp Its Nuances
Struck ★★½ Through Sunday, July 2 Kennedy Theatre, Raleigh At first, Struck playwright Sandy Rustin seems to have a solid premise well in hand. Her script takes on the unforeseen consequence of a recent advance in social justice, one we can’t disclose without spoiling the plot. A striking, unexpected twist at its center commendably reframes […]
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The Women’s Theatre Festival Responds to America’s Ambient Despair with a Streamlined, All-Comedy Second Season
WOMEN’S THEATRE FESTIVAL 2017 June 30–August 20, Raleigh/Durham www.womenstheatrefestival.com SPACE GIRL June 30-July 9, $17 Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh OCCUPY THE STAGE June 30-July 1, $5 Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh THE WOODSTOCK TONTINE July 7-16, $17 Burning Coal Theatre, Raleigh LICKED CUPCAKE July 13-23, $17 Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh SWEET TEA AND BABY DREAMS August […]