Boston Symphony Orchestra

The Dancing Orchestra by Holly Moniz

            “It’s important to remember that it’s all a dance,” Ms. Timberly Canale explained at Man in a Case’s post-performance question and answer last Wednesday evening at the Hartford Stage in Connecticut, and as I watched the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform yesterday evening, I believe that she couldn’t be more right. Sitting in the Boston Symphony Hall, listening to Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, Thomas’s world premiere of her Cello Concerto No. 3, and Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3, I was mesmerized by the orchestra’s music, but I couldn’t help but feel that I was watching them dance too.

             From the moment the first instrument vibrated through the air and the sound snaked its way into my ears, each performer bobbed and weaved in unison to the music they were making. At certain points in the performance, it was as though they themselves were a part of the air and the music vibrated through them too.  The cellists seemed to pick up their bows in preparation with the same flick of their hands and the violinists appeared to treat their instruments with the same delicate care as they played; it all just looked so choreographed!

Even conductor, Christoph Eschenbach, leading each instrumentalist looked like he was preparing to dance, arms moving in perfect formations as arms move in a ballet, body leaning from side to side as a body sways to and fro during a waltz. During the last movement of the final piece, Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3, I even caught Mr. Eschenbach jump up and down once or twice to the power of the organ and the crash of the cymbals.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s sense of togetherness was also notable in their playing. I felt as though I was listening to one extremely loud violin as opposed to twenty-something separate violins throughout the entire performance, and the same goes for each other instrument. Their sound was simply breathtaking and had brought tears to my eyes by the end of the night.

If you’re looking for a show to see, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will give you the best of both worlds: classical music and dance. Instead of picturing a ballet in your head to the music, you’ll have the ability to watch a seated one unfold before your eyes. 

MFA Boston, review by Holly Moniz

Big Piece, Bigger Ideas By Holly Moniz

            At fifteen feet tall and thirty-three feet wide, the sheer size of artist Kara Walker’s The Rich Soil Down There (2002) seems to overpower and captivate its onlookers as they stroll through the Contemporary Art wing in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. The cut-paper silhouettes seem to call out, “Yoo-hoo! Come look at us… You know you want to!” Upon closer inspection, however, the smaller details hidden in the black and white silhouettes is what truly keeps the piece’s audience pacing back and forth in front of the enormous gray wall as they try to decipher what Walker’s scene is really saying.

            As is prevalent throughout Walker’s work, The Rich Soil Down There deals with racial tension in history in an oddly beautiful but darkly twisted way, creating an overall sense of doubt and irony.

On the right-most side of the wall, a full-lipped black female silhouette carries a white female silhouette while a castrated black male silhouette carries a white male silhouette. As you continue walking to the left down the wall, you come to understand that the black figures represent southern black slaves and the white figures represent the southern upper class white folk of antebellum America.  But is it really that simple?

            Only using black and white paper forces each onlooker to view each silhouette in terms of their color and interpreted race. However, as you return to the right side of the wall, it becomes obvious that each figure’s race does not strictly correspond to the color of their paper. In fact, all four of the right-most figures’ facial features actually appear anatomically African, even though two were cut from white paper. By deconstructing each of her figures to their outermost shell of a silhouette, we are left looking at the most basic layer of Walker’s silhouettes, just as stereotypes strip each of us of our individuality to allow for the formation of social prejudices against certain groups of peoples.

            Walking back to the left side of the wall, we see the feet of two black figures covered in what appears to be white slime. At first glance, you may wonder “what is that?” but looking up at the far left corner, a black bird comes into view, and the same white slime covering the black figures is falling from the bird’s tail. Suddenly, it all clicks. The black slaves have covered themselves in white bird excrement.  

            Walker uses this image to play on the title of her piece in a darkly humorous way. It’s as though the slaves needed to cover themselves in crap to be white, but Walker refers to the southern whites as “rich soil,” essentially calling the racists of the antebellum time period dirt, crap, or another cruder word along those lines.

            Walker’s approach to depicting a pre-Civil War America in silhouette may be simple, but the ideas she relays are immensely intricate, and I encourage all to venture to Boston’s MFA to take in the entire 495 ft² piece. 

Who’s the Real Animal Here? By Holly Moniz

Who’s the Real Animal Here? By Holly Moniz

A bed hanging on the far wall of a young man’s room, a backlight illuminating the silhouette of a massive insect, a human head peeking through the covers and a mouth speaking to its family while hands press against ears and eyes squint in pain at the “noise” coming out of the young man’s mouth.

At the start of the Lyric Hammersmith-Vesturport production of Metamorphosis, an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novella, the set and the light design of the stage at The Paramount Theatre in Boston, MA make it simple for the play’s audience to understand protagonist Gregor Samsa’s transformation from human son to strange bug, a tremendous accomplishment considering actor and co-director Gísli Örn Gardarsson’s costume never truly changes his human appearance once throughout the play.

Most crucial to this continuously seeing this transformation is the use of a split stage. The audience views the majority of the set as the cross section of the interior of the Samsa home. However, we are shown Gregor’s bedroom from a bird’s eye view, as though we are looking down on a bug crawling across the floor, a choice Gardarsson’s incredibly athletic and acrobatic performance makes entirely believable.

On the other hand, moments of seamless execution of what I can only assume to be precise direction by David Farr and Gísli Örn Gardarsson unveil the real transformation at the heart of this play: the family’s attitude toward Gregor.

From the moment the play begins, the audience gets the uncomfortable sense that the Samsa family pays close attention to the details as we watch the family’s musically choreographed morning routine. Herman Samsa, Gregor’s father played by actor Ingvar E. Sigurdsson, appears particularly obsessed with the particulars, whether it be the manner in which he closes his newspaper after he finishes reading an article or the way he clicks his heels while in uniform after he is forced to find work when his bug-son is not permitted to venture beyond the boundary of his bedroom.

And although the father’s already stern attitude worsens toward Gregor as the story unfolds, sister Greta’s attitude (played by actress Selma Björnsdóttir) undergoes the most significant change in the play, as marked by the simultaneously beautiful and horrific scene in which Greta beats her brother into submission as the lights in Gregor’s room flash on and off in black and white stripes that mimic prison cell bars. While she had initially been the only family member willing to feed and care for her brother Gregor, her inability to understand him frustrates her to this breaking point, and she, too, treats Gregor as an inferior.

The Lyric Hammersmith-Vesturport adaptation of Metamorphosis revitalizes Kafka’s story and artfully addresses the issues surrounding discrimination and dehumanization around the world in a new, never-before-seen way that will captivate its audience members. But while Gregor may have transformed into a literal bug during the first scene of the play, the piece begs the question: Who is the real animal here?