PIFA REVIEW: Miro Dance Theatre’s PUNCH
Apr 22nd, 2011 | By | Category: Reviews
Photograph and review by Kilian Kröll for The Dance Journal
For a second, an industrial lamp suspended from the ceiling flickers on and hums. And so opens Miro Dance Theatre’s PUNCH at the Kimmel Center’s Innovation Studio, two stories below the ground. What follows is a post-modern mash-up of themes and images inspired by Pulcinella, the archetypal trickster most well known in the world of dance by Stravinsky’s ballet of the same name.
Four dancers collectively embody this obscure, bawdy, funny and hypersexual creature, which makes faces, lays hard boiled eggs, slobbers on audience members, humps everything that moves, gets into fights, and passes around money baskets in between numbers. The strategically placed, intermittent balletic beauty of the choreography at times elevates the Punch character to a kind of “noble savage,” but mostly the audience sees creatures unpredictable in their timing and demeanor. The best clown among the company members, Paul Struck, takes the cake. Two little boys clean up the mess.
Artistic director, Amanda Miller, who is on stage herself, choreographs a controlled dance, set to a focused and highly compatible score by sound artist Zeena Perkins, who has come a long way since playing the harp for Björk in the early 90s. The segmented musical vignettes of vocal sounds, spoon percussion, string quartets, timpani and electronic mish-mash maintain the tension set up by the dancers, between humorous pleasantries and grotesque grossness.
Miller’s intimate collaboration with visual designer and co-director, Tobin Rothlein, adds historical layers that are both past and the future oriented. Renaissance images by Hieronymus Bosch flit about: little creatures with nothing but a face, birds swallowing humans, naked men with instruments up their butts. In this case, Rothlein creates tablet screens, which the dancers use to exaggerate their eyes and mouths, at times contorting their coral-colored hoodies to create futuristic screen-faced puppets. Maggie Baker’s costumes work wonders in this context; while James Clotfelder’s lighting and production design pull all the visual elements into an easily watchable flickering menace.
Not coincidentally, Miro’s production comes as a direct response to the Pennsylvania Ballet’s most recent production of Pulcinella at the Academy of Music, both part of the Philadelphia International Festival for the Arts. In the intimate setting of PUNCH, the creaturely nature of the audience itself becomes apparent, so much so that the eews and giggles coming from the second row truly rival the contortions on stage. This is not your typical ballet audience, nor is this a typical ballet. In fact, the physical interaction with the audience pushes at the limits of social acceptability to communicate certain truths about the human culture of our time.
What exactly these truths are remains open to interpretation. How our contemporary society individualistically consumes pleasure and uses hand-held devices as narcissistic avatars might be what PUNCH attempts to critique. But the hour-long piece is also wrapped up in the mode of contemporary communication – everything extreme, in bite sizes, with lots of naked flesh – that it becomes self-referential. What big truth could possibly be revealed in this post-modern depiction of medieval farce? The answer to that might be that post-modern dance has reached a limit, as much as it has gone mainstream.
Ugh, I think the reviewer must have been at a different performance to me last night. Watching this reminded me of the terrible “shows” my kids used to put on at home when they were 6. Nothing remotely funny, bawdy or clever about this at all….utter garbage.
This was the worst show I ever seen in my life! Nothing funny, graceful or clever. Don’t waste your time or money on this garbage. I went there with my family and had to walk out. The show was a complete waste of money! Not only did I waste money to see it but then they had the nerve to pass a collections basket for money in between acts. Don’t waste your time or money people.
As the parent of the twin boys playing the child clown/buskers in PUNCH, I had the privilege of seeing all three performances, as well as some of the rehearsal process. I was in love with PUNCH from the first rehearsal, & was also thrilled my children had the opportunity to work with such giftedly talented — & enormously generous people.
The score is gorgeous, & I look forward to its release. The choreography runs the gamut from classical ballet to creepy & hilarious contortions. All around, it is a creative-mash up of music, dance, & technology that would have made Samuel Beckett proud (& made him laugh).
I will not comment on the performance of my kids (given parental bias) except to say that the busking was timed at significant & very specific points in the show. It was a tongue-in-cheek farce that echoed collection baskets passed during Catholic mass, here accompanied by carnival-esque music & scampering children making puppy-faces or shaking their small fists. It’s unfortunate Ms. Capriles didn’t get the joke.
Further: Ms. Capriles & her family were seated in front of my husband & I for the performance from which they walked out. Taste is subjective & this show might not be for everyone. That’s OK.
What’s not OK is how disrespectful her behavior (& the behavior of the other adults with her) was towards both the performers & producers of the show & the rest of the audience. Rather than leaving quietly because the show was not to their liking, two of them left mid-performance, leaving the remaining family members behind to discuss how much they hated the show (still in progress) for a good 3 minutes before they stomped out. There is “nothing funny, graceful or clever” about such a public display of bad manners.