If I could show my mom the Flickr cat portal, I would have no trouble convincing her to sign up for broadband access.

posted: 7:05:57 PM  

Ed Tyler's interesting full-length piece of experimental dance theater suggests an assemblage by Robert Rauschenberg as choreographed by Elizabeth Streb. Translucent sheets of plastic are rolled up to reveal a performance space that brings to mind an apocalyptic airport departures lounge, set with molded plastic chairs and walled on three sides with chain-link fencing. The seven dancers, initially clad in exaggerated business suits and bare feet, whip their heads violently from side to side, hurl themselves into the fence, and compulsively rearrange the chairs like passengers on a 21st-century Titanic. Tyler's piece is about the human drive for sanctuary, for "going to ground," and our usually disappointed efforts at finding refuge, whether it be through pills, reversal of gender roles, the obsessive following of fashion, or physical violence. One of the more effective sections of the dance pits a dancer (Kelly Bond) against an improvised punching bag made of a down comforter bound with rope and suspended from the lighting grid. There's also an element of Tyler's dancing, especially the sections for himself, that reminds me of Doug Varone—that buttoned-down, hyperfast frenzy.

After intermission, the piece is lit almost exclusively by a set of portable light boxes fitted with fluorescent lamps, allowing Tyler (as he said in post-show remarks) to focus attention on specific details and to conceal others by simply manipulating the boxes. The second half is sparked by a duet in which each dancer wears one of a pair of fetishistically high-heeled boots and is unshod on the other foot. More danger, more complications.

This is my first experience with GALA Theatre - Tivoli, a 250-seat space reclaimed from the upper reaches of the old Tivoli Theatre, which opened in the wedge of Park Road and 14th Street N.W. in 1924. The building is a short walk from Columbia Heights Metro, at the moment passing between two large construction sites on either side of 14th Street. Seating in the new space is unfortunately stingy with the kneeroom, and house management on this Friday was a little unfocused.

posted: 6:52:30 PM  

The breezy conditions kept most of the sparrows hunkered down on this morning's field trip to Blue Mash with Mark England. But we did see lots of swifts, many of them swooping to eye level. The group got a stunning look at a lingering Blue-Headed Vireo (Vireo solitarius). And we saw a Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis) showing a lot of yellow in the face, holding on for dear life to a dried weedstalk in the gusty wind.

posted: 6:11:24 PM