UPDATED: New Works dance concert

For its size, Santa Barbara has an impressive dance calendar. This quarter in particular, there seems to be alot of modern concerts, guest artists and master classes. Today, I had tickets for the New Works event.

The concert itself was OK. There were some interesting moments (one dance piece had tango music, but modern choreography), and quite a bit of lame/amateurish. I really liked the last two pieces. The lighting designer finally found her groove, instead of just poorly blended areas and ineffective side lighting (the booms were focused too high and had pale colors), she started playing with color and movement. The last piece had alot of magenta and deliberate dark, combined with the remixed industrial music, goth-dominatrix costumes and general Furies intensity. It was high energy, balanced but not symmetrical trio, interesting shapes.

Much better than the autobiographical piece about the dancer's schizophrenic aunt. The music was live and cool, but the choreography + spoken word was annoying. I totally called her as dance therapy/yoga girl. More striking was the difference between them who can dance and them who can choreograph. I was very pleased to see an older soloist, but she is a much better dancer than choreographer. Also exciting - a guy who could do all the choreography of his female counterparts, but still look masculine. I saw my 8AM dance instructor doing his own choreography, and noticed that I only pay attention to faces when I already know them.

Now we get to the truly snarky review: I have no patience for fat dancers. Let me clarify - I love curvy girls; I like seeing actual flesh much better than sinew and bone. Candidly, I don't know how trained dancers can get fat, given how much time they spend moving, burning calories. But if you are too fat to do the moves, that's when I have a problem. There were the fat dancers who couldn't heave their asses on top of their pointes; it looked sloppy. Then again, there were the skinny girls who got away with looking like a dancer instead of actually having good technique. To be fair, I didn't like the anorexic girl in the modern amalgam any better. You need calories to move like that.

What burned me was the total scheduling chaos it wreaked on my day. First, I thought the matinee was at 11AM, for reasons unknown. Then the concert lasted alot longer than dance concerts usually do. It totally killed me at the end when they spent 20 minutes RE-presenting the annual award. It was gratuitous, and totally destroyed the pacing/energy. Instead of leaving after a really rockin' piece, talking it up, we had to sit through a ceremony and then race out to pee and catch up on our days.

Now I debate the merits of going the event next week. But I have to find another $13.