I was treated to an amazing performance at Dickinson College on Saturday night when I attended a joint performance mounted by the music and dance departments. The evening drew together modern minimalist music from Philip Glass and others, piercing light show visuals creatively projected on the black main drape, and helium balloons. Taken together I found myself at turns gasping, laughing, and scratching my head.
Sometimes we were in deep space as depicted above. In this piece the dancernaut may well have been working alongside Anne Hathaway in
Interstellar for her ability to move across the stage untethered from Earth's gravity.
Later we attended a cocktail party that viscerally captured the social energy, awkwardness, venom, and gayety one often experiences when music and adult refreshments mingle. When the twirling dancer above was slain by the party at the close I jolted in my seat at her sudden demise.
But my favorite piece came at the conclusion with the homage to one of my childhood favorites,
The Red Balloon.
We were shown this movie year in and year out when I was in elementary school. The entire school was brought together to journey with a young boy and his red balloon through the streets of Paris. No words are spoken yet we come to love the boy, his balloon, and their friendship. Here the dancers evoked that same feeling with the help of real red helium balloons as one dancer discovered, selected, and eventually lost her red balloon. The emotions from the whole movie were beautifully evoked transporting me to my primary school in suburban Philadelphia, circa 1973.
Were it not for my intrepid freshman daughter, Carrie Gillespie, my son -- her twin, Ben -- and I would never have spent such an luscious evening surrounded by light, music, energy, and emotion all showered upon us by the amazing talent on display at Dickinson's Mathers Theater last Saturday night. For more on the performance, go
here.
Thanks to everyone in the performance. Bravo!
