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September 9, 2005
tba05: streb
by gl. at 11:15 pm
sven and I are attending several time-based arts festival events this week. this is the first i've attended, though i've been eyeing their catalogues since i moved here. streb was a free event at pioneer courthouse square last night to inaugurate their third year and act as a farewell for their fearless leader, who's moving to a melbourne art institute (lucky gel!).
sven found us a great spot at the top of the fountain where we spread a blanket and i dangled my feet over the edge. it began with a bang, featuring an energetic drum march down broadway and through the square, departing for parts unknown. and streb's first piece, "wild blue yonder," was a jaw-dropping experiment in trampolines, timing, and tumbling. most of the rest of the pieces failed to carry through on this spectacular start: "spin," "hoops," "rise&fall," "slipnslide," "slapstick" & "fly" required a lot of setup for one-trick wonders that have been done better by other circus performers. but "gauntlet" was another eyes-wide performance that involved walking and jumping and leaping and crawling past huge cinderblocks scything through the air like deadly pendulums -- a terrific piece until they suddenly lost a performer and the lead guy brought the rest up for a hasty bow and ran his hand over his throat to signal the tech guys to kill the lights. yeek. fortunately, after intermission they all seemed none the worse for wear. the other well-done pieces involved interstitials in plexiglass boxes that looked barely big enough to fit a person inside, let alone a squirming one or six.
streb ended in a cloud of bubbles, which streb's director dubbed "antigravity machines." in the lights, they twinkled like stars. speaking of which, in the glare of pioneer courthouse square, it was only possible to see three stars, the stars which make up the "summer triangle": deneb in cygnus, altair in aquila, and vega in lyra. afterwards, sven & i danced fast and loosely in the crowd. and the traffic out wasn't nearly as bad as we feared it might be. all in all, a good night.
posted by gl. | September 9, 2005 11:15 PM | categories: exhibits & events