(no subject)
This week appears to be lasting approximately FOREVER and yet at-one-and-the-same-time moving so fast my feet aren't touching the ground. It is a less than awesome feeling. Still. waving not drowning right?
Here are some assorted links to awesome things:
Chicken Shop Shakespeare - Tanya Vital as Hamlet
SO glad to see Chicken Shop Shakespeare back and returning to what they do best. I'd love to see this version of Hamlet!
BFF Comic chapter 23.1
I love this comic even if I do want to pretty much shake all the characters (why won't they just TALK TO EACH OTHER) and I fear there's significantly more angst to get through before any theoretical happy ending but &heart; (if you haven't read it you can find all the previous bits here).
How To Be Everyman, a short film with Inua Ellams
This is a piece the National Theatre commissioned based on Everyman, I don't know how much sense it will make without that context but I think it should and I love that they commissioned poetry based on a new poetic translation/adaptation of a 15th century play.
Fanspeak: The Brief Origins Of Fanfiction
Article on the Tech Times website by J.L. Reich linking the origins of fanfiction (with the usual disclaimer that it's ALWAYS BEEN A THING) to early fanzines. Worth reading just for the Gene Roddenberry letter it quotes.
Went to Sadler's Wells last night and nearly strangled the woman in front of me (if you're on twitter you may have seen my annoyance). She turned her phone on during the second half and went to take a photograph so I touched her arm and asked her to stop and she calmly looked at me, turned round and took the photograph anyway! Thankfully she then turned her phone back off. It's so spectacularly selfish, why is your need to take a photograph so much greater than everyone else's need to see the stage without shiny lights suddenly appearing in the audience.
*scowls*
Apparently this is a thing that people are never going to learn though.
The Car Man @ Sadler's Wells
We had Ashley Shaw & Chris Trenfield as the two leads (Lana & Luca) with Liam Mower as Angelo & Katie Lyons as Rita. And yes I had to look up all those character names as obviously in a ballet you don't really get the names told to you :-P And I'm somewhat trusting their website for the names of who we saw because the pictures look about right but actors in costume never look like their headshots! Especially not when they've changed hair colour like Ashley has.
ANYWAY.
I absolutely love Matthew Bourne's choreography, I always have. I enjoy ballet but I think really my sympathies are with this style of dance which is close to ballet but with less of the formal stuff? It's graceful and beautiful and powerful but you can recognise other dance forms in it and it allows more space for acting (well, in my opinion anyway, ymmv)
Chris Trenfield was fantastic as Luca, incredibly charismatic and his first dance as he arrived, flirted with Lana and then alternately flirted and fought with all the men & women on the stage was just perfect- they might not have liked him but none of them could look away! And he and Ashley made a wonderful partnership in all their duets.
But I think in a way I was almost more impressed with Liam & Katie because as Rita Katie is shy and gentle and very much pushed into the background behind her sister and Liam is being bullied and beaten up by the other men so their first duet is just achingly beautiful as she tries to draw him out and he back away and they clearly care for each other deeply but he never quite gives in to her and then at the end when he's been to prison and broken out there's this awful parody of that duet where he has the gun and is grabbing her and it's awful.
Plus Liam Mower does this incredible thing where he's all hunched over and moving like someone who wants to disappear but after he has sex with Luca (IDK, should I explain the plot? look it up on wikipedia!) he and Lana both dance on stage together and he's so lyrical and graceful and in love and it's beautiful but still very much the same awkward character and I don't know how you do that!
All of the bigger numbers were wonderful too. Mum pointed out that in Matthew Bourne shows you very rarely get the standard corps de ballet. Even when they're all doing more or less the same moves each one is still a character (I'm pretty certain if you saw this enough you could follow other storylines through- like what exactly was going on with the pair of male dancers who were often on when every other pair was man/woman?)
We both also hugely enjoyed the way they'd used the Carmen score and then made it their own, not been tied to the story or the place each song comes in the original but being very true to the emotions and the passion and violence in Carmen.
Also I very much enjoyed the shower scene because I can be very shallow when I want to be :-P
It did make me wonder whether there are any other ballets/dance pieces out there with bisexual title characters? Or any plays/musicals for that matter! (Answers on a postcard or in the comments)
So glad I finally got to see The Car Man though, I remember wanting to when it was first one because I'd seen Swan Lake and just fallen in love with it completely <3 There aren't many Matthew Bourne shows I haven't seen now- Highland Fling? I think we've seen Nutcracker! but Mum disagrees so maybe that.
Anyway it was a great evening.
Here are some assorted links to awesome things:
Chicken Shop Shakespeare - Tanya Vital as Hamlet
SO glad to see Chicken Shop Shakespeare back and returning to what they do best. I'd love to see this version of Hamlet!
BFF Comic chapter 23.1
I love this comic even if I do want to pretty much shake all the characters (why won't they just TALK TO EACH OTHER) and I fear there's significantly more angst to get through before any theoretical happy ending but &heart; (if you haven't read it you can find all the previous bits here).
How To Be Everyman, a short film with Inua Ellams
This is a piece the National Theatre commissioned based on Everyman, I don't know how much sense it will make without that context but I think it should and I love that they commissioned poetry based on a new poetic translation/adaptation of a 15th century play.
Fanspeak: The Brief Origins Of Fanfiction
Article on the Tech Times website by J.L. Reich linking the origins of fanfiction (with the usual disclaimer that it's ALWAYS BEEN A THING) to early fanzines. Worth reading just for the Gene Roddenberry letter it quotes.
Went to Sadler's Wells last night and nearly strangled the woman in front of me (if you're on twitter you may have seen my annoyance). She turned her phone on during the second half and went to take a photograph so I touched her arm and asked her to stop and she calmly looked at me, turned round and took the photograph anyway! Thankfully she then turned her phone back off. It's so spectacularly selfish, why is your need to take a photograph so much greater than everyone else's need to see the stage without shiny lights suddenly appearing in the audience.
*scowls*
Apparently this is a thing that people are never going to learn though.
The Car Man @ Sadler's Wells
We had Ashley Shaw & Chris Trenfield as the two leads (Lana & Luca) with Liam Mower as Angelo & Katie Lyons as Rita. And yes I had to look up all those character names as obviously in a ballet you don't really get the names told to you :-P And I'm somewhat trusting their website for the names of who we saw because the pictures look about right but actors in costume never look like their headshots! Especially not when they've changed hair colour like Ashley has.
ANYWAY.
I absolutely love Matthew Bourne's choreography, I always have. I enjoy ballet but I think really my sympathies are with this style of dance which is close to ballet but with less of the formal stuff? It's graceful and beautiful and powerful but you can recognise other dance forms in it and it allows more space for acting (well, in my opinion anyway, ymmv)
Chris Trenfield was fantastic as Luca, incredibly charismatic and his first dance as he arrived, flirted with Lana and then alternately flirted and fought with all the men & women on the stage was just perfect- they might not have liked him but none of them could look away! And he and Ashley made a wonderful partnership in all their duets.
But I think in a way I was almost more impressed with Liam & Katie because as Rita Katie is shy and gentle and very much pushed into the background behind her sister and Liam is being bullied and beaten up by the other men so their first duet is just achingly beautiful as she tries to draw him out and he back away and they clearly care for each other deeply but he never quite gives in to her and then at the end when he's been to prison and broken out there's this awful parody of that duet where he has the gun and is grabbing her and it's awful.
Plus Liam Mower does this incredible thing where he's all hunched over and moving like someone who wants to disappear but after he has sex with Luca (IDK, should I explain the plot? look it up on wikipedia!) he and Lana both dance on stage together and he's so lyrical and graceful and in love and it's beautiful but still very much the same awkward character and I don't know how you do that!
All of the bigger numbers were wonderful too. Mum pointed out that in Matthew Bourne shows you very rarely get the standard corps de ballet. Even when they're all doing more or less the same moves each one is still a character (I'm pretty certain if you saw this enough you could follow other storylines through- like what exactly was going on with the pair of male dancers who were often on when every other pair was man/woman?)
We both also hugely enjoyed the way they'd used the Carmen score and then made it their own, not been tied to the story or the place each song comes in the original but being very true to the emotions and the passion and violence in Carmen.
Also I very much enjoyed the shower scene because I can be very shallow when I want to be :-P
It did make me wonder whether there are any other ballets/dance pieces out there with bisexual title characters? Or any plays/musicals for that matter! (Answers on a postcard or in the comments)
So glad I finally got to see The Car Man though, I remember wanting to when it was first one because I'd seen Swan Lake and just fallen in love with it completely <3 There aren't many Matthew Bourne shows I haven't seen now- Highland Fling? I think we've seen Nutcracker! but Mum disagrees so maybe that.
Anyway it was a great evening.