8A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, February 15, 1999
Merce music overpowers
I
By Julie Munjack
For the Daily
Culminating in two performances
at the Power Center, the Merce
Cunningham Dance Company sur-
prised Ann Arbor with its unconven-
tional move-
ments and
uncomfortable
music. Those in
ImMercesion the audience
who survived the
Power Center cacophonous
sounds found
Feb. 13, 1999 wonder in the
dancers' fluid
precision. Rather
than being
remembered for
its incredible
visual display,
though, Saturday
night will be thought of as the
evening for earplugs.
One does not need to be a profes-
sional dancer to appreciate
Cunningham's innovative choreogra-
phy. The dancers' flawless and pow-
erful movements kept the audience
both interested and amazed. Using
computers to analyze bodies in
motion, Cunningham has mastered
the art of movement.
For more than half a century, the
dance group has left an indelible
mark on its audience. Merce
Cunningham, one of the most influ-
ential choreographers living in the
world, is known internationally for
his unique approach to dance.
Believing that choreography,
music, costumes and decor should be
completed before they are interwo-
ven, Cunningham creates a feeling of
awkwardness and confusion.
Separately, each element has its
place, but when put together, they
create enjoyable chaos.
With multiple actions occurring
simultaneously and every gesture
intertwined with the other individuals
on stage, precision and accuracy
were imperative. As a result, a com-
munity was formed, where every
dancer relied on the other.
At moments, it was difficult to dis-
cern one body from the other.
Twisting and turning over each other,
the dancers create a feeling of togeth-
erness, providing elegant disorder.
As one dancer would leap out of the
sight of the audience, another would
run to fill his place. There was con-
stant motion and unbelievable energy.
The human relationships expressed in
the dancers' movements were so clear
that one could almost touch them.
Although the overall performance
was remarkable, the music was too
much of an obstacle for the audience
to endure.
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Divided into three parts, the
Cunningham Dance Company pro-
gressively lost its audience. It was the
not the dancing, which was impres-
sive, but the terrible music that chased
Ann Arbor residents out of the theater.
Beginning with the curtain rising,
intolerably loud noise already
enveloped the theater and immediate-
ly created a feeling of discomfort.
The music was a compilation of a
number of sounds. It was a combina-
tion of static and the noise that one
would get by quickly changing radio
stations.
Irritating and obnoxious, the music
took away from the dancers' extraor-
dinary performance. After the first
part of the dance, ear plugs were
available, but even that did not keep
the audience in their seats. Those
audience members who were fortu-
nate to get ear plugs used them, but
others placed their hands over their
ears, desperately trying to save their
hearing.
Regardless of the dancers' liquid
arms, strong poses and unprecedent-
ed style, the unbearable music
cleared the theater. By the middle of
the show, a quarter of the Power
Center had been emptied.
While Cunningham's unique
approach to dance has brought him
fame, sometimes his independent
elements fall short of a perfect fit
during a performance.
The Power Center witnessed one of
these collisions Saturday night, when
Cunningham's exercise of freedom
clashed with the music's painful
sounds. The performance would have
been more pleasurable in complete
silence: Maybe then, the
Cunningham Dance Company would
had received the applause they
deserved.
Write for Daily Arts.
Call 763-0379 for
more information.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Catherine McCormack, Sophie Thompson, Meryl Streep, Kathy Burke and Brid Brennan dance outside their home.
Lugblnsta leaves dancers i darIk
By Christopher Tkaczyk
Daily Arts Editor
With the Hollywood onslaught of all things green
and Gaelic, "Dancing at Lughnasa" joins the likes of
Ned Devine and "The Matchmaker." Lughnasa dif-
fers, however, with its dramatic attempts in present-
ing the slightly stable Irish parable about sisterhood
and cultural identity. "Dancing at Lughnasa" comes
not from County Donegal, as is supposed, but from
the theatrical stage.
The film is an adaption of the stageplay, written
masterfully by Brian Friel, a playwright whose work
has been carefullyI
fines of celluloid
Dancing at
Lughnasa
At the Michigan
Theater
butchered to squeeze into the con-
frame. The final scene has been
drastically removed and replaced
with snippets of moments that
relate the characters' outcom-
ings, much like the final scene
of "Animal House." While it
allows for a director to quickly,
reduce total screening time by a
good many minutes, it is anti-
climatic and assumes that the
already-drained audience won't
stick around for any more -
which may be the case after a
few hours of mind-numbing dia-
logue.
Friel's fantasy follows the sad
story of five spinster sisters who
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family name, brings a realistic air to the film, giving
the viewer an objective rendering of the tale.
Together with Kenneth MacMillan, the film's direc-
tor of photography, O'Connor paints the lush earth-
toned landscape of the Irish hills and thereabouts.
Much attention is given to the surrounding world, a
place where societal hush-hush brings the Mundy
sisters more problems than they already have yet to
handle. It seems that Irish Catholic propriety
demands a woman to be married when young and
pure, and a house full of spinsters registers just
above a house of evil. In somewhat humorous scenes,
girls of the town gossip about Kate's spinster
lifestyle.
What isn't showcased is the hypocrisy surrounding
the town's religion. While it seems proper for the
Irish Catholics to conduct themselves becoming to
the good word, they engage each year in a pagan cel-
ebration, "the festival of Lughnasa," where drunke-
ness and dancing by firelight ensues. Kate's younger
sisters are tempted by the thoughts of meeting men at
the spring lust fest, but she scolds them, due to their
grossly aging celibacy.
A device from the play that O'Connor attempts to
use in the film is that of the "Marconi," the humor-
ously-dubbed radio that becomes the sister's sole
source of entertainment and life-pulse. The only cap-
tivating scene of the film arrives when the sisters, in
their last moments of bonding sisterhood, dance a jig
to the tune emitted by the crackling radio.
As they say, when the going gets tough, the tough
get going. So do two of the sisters, who realize that
their presence makes matters more difficult and
decide to head to the big city to pursue careers as
dressmakers.
O'Connor's decision to include a musical version
of Yeat's "Down by the Salley Gardens" over the end
credits is quite fitting, but "Dancing at Lughnasa"
has not transferred poetically to the screen. It's disap-
pointing to see that the film version of the play can-
not even compete with the original script. It might
have been wise for Friel himself to have worked on
the screenplay, thereby allowing for an honest piece
of art.
While the role of Kate adds another dialect to
Meryl Streep's bag of accents, there is nothing par-
ticularly spectacular about her performance. Brid
Brennan, Sophie Thompson, Kathy Burke and
McCormark deliver better dramatic turns as Kate's
younger sisters, making for Lughnasa's only high-
lights. With a dull, slow-moving script, "Lughnasa"
remains a festival not to be celebrated.
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inhabit the family homestead left them by their dear-
ly departed mother. The youngest sister, played
romantically by Catherine McCormack, has forsaken
the family name with her lustful endeavors and has
brought to her poor sisters an illegitamate son, a love
child who must suffer through the over-protective
mothering of five depraved women. When the slight-
ly unbalanced elder brother of the sisters returns
home after 25 years of missionary work in Africa, the
sisters must struggle in order to deal with his pres-
ence. After being thrown out of the church for his
changed and radical religious views, Jack brings to
the home with his collection of tribal memorabilia a
plentiful supply of shame.
Financial matters abound and worsen as Kate's lay
off from her teaching position at the local school cuts
off the family's largest supply of income. When
Michal's father, Gerry, appears for the first time in 18
months of cross-country cycling, another stone is
thrown at the already bruised sisters, as he incites
Kate's wrath and unsatisfaction.
Director Pat O'Connor, Irish by birthright and
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