(no subject)
One of my choirs had their concert Monday night--HUZZAH--the other is having its concert this Saturday night--HUZZAH--and all this means that for a few months I will blessedly only be singing in one group. (I told my work minion the other day "Don't let me do all three choirs again in the fall, please. Remind me how crazed I was right now." We'll see if I hold myself to that.)
The concert Monday night was funny in a way--we were doing songs of the American composers, and the third to last song was a spiritual arranged by Moses Hogan. I always feel weird singing spirituals, especially when I'm in choirs that are almost entirely white, but apparently we did a good enough job that somebody in the audience was moved to holler during the song, which led the entire choir and the director to blink a lot and look around at each other in confusion because, dude, the audience doesn't interact with us while we're still singing! I kept laughing after the song was over during the wild applause, pure physical reaction to the unexpected emotion. It did make the last two songs of the concert much more fun for all of us, I have to say.
And last night I drove to a town an hour away to watch the dance troupe Pilobolus, and they strongly felt to me like they were coming out of a modern dance tradition (okay, a lot of their movements probably belonged to other traditions, but I recognized some of those moves from my own dance classes), and the group philosophy is about groups interacting and working together as individuals, and I could definitely see that. They were very definitely individuals, and it was a different feel from other dance troupes I've seen that worked much more--harmoniously? Cohesively? It was interesting, but I was usually not as emotionally moved as I am by movement--a bit like that a capella group I saw there last year, that sounded technically gorgeous but had no soul for me.
The concert Monday night was funny in a way--we were doing songs of the American composers, and the third to last song was a spiritual arranged by Moses Hogan. I always feel weird singing spirituals, especially when I'm in choirs that are almost entirely white, but apparently we did a good enough job that somebody in the audience was moved to holler during the song, which led the entire choir and the director to blink a lot and look around at each other in confusion because, dude, the audience doesn't interact with us while we're still singing! I kept laughing after the song was over during the wild applause, pure physical reaction to the unexpected emotion. It did make the last two songs of the concert much more fun for all of us, I have to say.
And last night I drove to a town an hour away to watch the dance troupe Pilobolus, and they strongly felt to me like they were coming out of a modern dance tradition (okay, a lot of their movements probably belonged to other traditions, but I recognized some of those moves from my own dance classes), and the group philosophy is about groups interacting and working together as individuals, and I could definitely see that. They were very definitely individuals, and it was a different feel from other dance troupes I've seen that worked much more--harmoniously? Cohesively? It was interesting, but I was usually not as emotionally moved as I am by movement--a bit like that a capella group I saw there last year, that sounded technically gorgeous but had no soul for me.