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AUDIENCE REVIEW: Potential Energies

Company:
Nouveau Classical Project and TrioDance Collective

Performance Date:
5/29/2014

Freeform Review:

Knowing what this ballet will be, does not prepare you for what it is. From the beginning, as the stage slowly lights,the cello plucks pensively distracted by its dancer. It immediately evokes tension, pressure, an uneasy harmony. As the light continues to grow, so does the tension and pressure joined now by the other instruments and their dancers until like a crucible reaching the peak of its potential, there is an explosion of energy and what was a slow build becomes a flurry of activity and a concophony of individual noises which together, become music. It is as if to witness creation itself in its earliest moments. It is surprising - a wonder, really - with all the activity and movement happening in concert and suchclose proximity, that there are no disasterous collisions, or any at all.

Throughout the performance, there is constant tension between each dancer and musician as they exchange positions, interact, and trade roles back and forth. It begs and alludes to certain questions as - What is choice? Is expression, the music embodied by the individual, or the individual embodied by music? Can the dancer be like the instrument, with a solo - an unaccompanied monologue? Was this more than just a study on music and movement?

This is why art is important.

—M.S.