The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, April 20, 2015 — 5A

‘Silicon Valley’ 
subverts macho

In season two, the 
weirdest workers 
become the richest

By HAILEY MIDDLEBROOK

Daily Arts Writer

“For thousands of years, guys 

like us have gotten the shit 
kicked out of us,” said Rich-
ard Hendricks 
(Thomas 
Middleditch, 
“Splinter-
heads”), 
the 

twitchy 
and 

brilliant 
pro-

tagonist 
of 

HBO’s 
“Sili-

con 
Valley.” 

“But now, for 
the first time, 
we’re 
liv-

ing in an era 
when we can be in charge and 
build empires! We could be the 
Vikings of our day!”

His statement, delivered in 

endearing nerdiness, speaks not 
only to the rise of tech giants in 
our culture, but the shift in our 
idea of “heroes” — especially 
portrayed in media. Stock male 
characters (or TV’s “vikings,” 
if you will) have forever been 
strong, smooth and assertive, 
like President Fitz of “Scandal” 
or Don Draper of “Mad Men.”

But 
in 
“Silicon 
Valley,” 

creator Mike Judge (“Office 
Space”) flips TV’s macho char-
acters on their meaty heads — 
or, more accurately, gets rids of 
them completely. In this world, 
the weirdest workers become 
the richest bosses, pimply pro-
grammers become overnight 
millionaires 
and 
Kid 
Rock 

becomes the poorest guy at a 
tech kid’s sell-out celebration.

The setting creates a near-

perfect backdrop for comedy: 
while the Valley may be the 

“cradle of innovation,” it’s also 
an adult version of the high 
school cafeteria nerd table. 
Heated debates aren’t about 
NFL rivalries, but over which 
Steve (Wozniak or Jobs) played 
the bigger role in Apple’s cre-
ation. After-work parties con-
sist 
of 
cringingly 
awkward 

small talk, nodding into beer 
bottles and slurping delicate 
“liquid shrimp” — a far cry from 
the raucous, drug-fueled esca-
pades thrown by “Wolf of Wall 
Street”-depicted millionaires. 

Still, money pulses on the 

pristine, color-popping cam-
pus of Hooli, the fictional tech 
company à la Google or Apple, 
where Richard works in sea-
son one. While staying at the 
“Hacker Hostel” with crass 
landlord Erlich Bachman (T.J. 
Miller, “Big Hero 6”), sardonic 
Gilfoyle (Martin Starr, “Adven-
tureland”), 
competitive 
and 

gullible Denish (Kumail Nan-
jiani, “Franklin & Bash”) and 
sweet but unskilled “Big Head” 
Nelson 
(Josh 
Brener, 
“The 

Internship”), Richard designs 
“Pied Piper,” an app that allows 
musicians to screen their music 
for copyrighted material.

Though bland on its sur-

face, Richard’s app contains an 
incredible 
data-compression 

algorithm, which catches the 
eye of Hooli CEO Gavin Belson 
(Matt Ross, “Big Love”) as well 
as of eccentric venture capi-
talist Peter Gregory (Christo-
pher Evan Welch, “War of the 
Worlds”). 
Suddenly, 
Richard 

finds himself in a tug-of-war 
between the two billionaires, 
each with different offers: Bel-
son’s willing to buy the app for 
a staggering $10 million dol-
lars; Gregory will invest just 
$200,000 — but will only take 
five percent ownership of Rich-
ard’s company. 

After 
talking 
to 
Monica 

(Amanda Crew, “Charlie St. 

Cloud”), 
Gregory’s 
assistant 

and the lone female in a male-
driven cast, Richard decides to 
keep Pied Piper and build the 
company himself. What ensues 
is chaos — Richard and his pro-
gramming posse, with the new 
edition of the smart but socially 
inept Jared (Zach Woods, “The 
Office”), must build Pied Piper 
from scratch before Hooli out-
does them with its copycat 
product, “Nucleus.” Season one 
ends with a David and Goliath-
like fight between the rivals at 
TechCrunch, a tech competi-
tion. In a frenzy of last-minute 
coding, Richard’s team wins, 
making Pied Piper the hottest 
thing in Silicon Valley. 

Season two finds Pied Piper 

on the rise, as the team is wined 
and dined by venture capital-
ists eager to invest. Along with 
their newfound fame, another 
change has happened: Peter 
Gregory has died in a tragic 
safari 
accident 
involving 
a 

hippo, 
leaving 
fast-talking 

Laurie Bream (Suzanne Cryer, 
“Wag the Dog”) in his place — 
adding another much-needed 
woman to the scene.

What hasn’t changed in “Sili-

con Valley” is its comedic genius. 
Where the show could’ve pla-
teaued after Pied Piper’s mete-
oric rise, it delivers scene after 
scene of the team scrambling in 
dysfunctional perfection — like 
when Erlich states that they’re 
“three-foot cocks covered in 
Elvis dust,” and Richard blurts 
angrily to investors, “I’m a three-
foot cock! I’m covered in dust!”

Elvis-dust-covered 
or 
not, 

Pied Piper isn’t in the clear yet 
— Hooli’s rumored to be suing 
the company, investments are 
murky and Richard still can’t 
keep his lunch down under pres-
sure. But despite their grow-
ing pains (or perhaps because 
of them), we’re still rooting for 
“Silicon Valley.”

A

Silicon 
Valley

Season Two 
Premiere 
Sundays at 
10 p.m.

HBO

HBO

“Do you have an app that will shave my mutton chops?”

Lyon Opera Ballet 
performs ‘Cinderella’

By COSMO PAPPAS

Daily Arts Writer

Ballet and its practitioners 

study the movement of the body 
in an artistic context. Danc-
ers train for 
the 
major-

ity 
of 
their 

lifetimes 
to 

perfect 
this 

amazing, 
strenuous, 
athletic 
and 

codified form 
of movement. 
The 
Lyon 

Opera 
Bal-

let, 
visiting 

Ann 
Arbor 

this 
week-

end for three 
nights, weds 
the rigorous professionalism of 
a world-class ballet company 
to creative, spectacular set and 
costume design in their produc-
tion of “Cinderella.”

The 
Lyon 
Opera 
Ballet’s 

“Cinderella” is a carnivalesque 
retelling of the story originat-
ing (in written format) with 
17th century Neapolitan writer 
Giambattista Basile in his work 
of collected fairy tales, the 
“Pentamerone,” under the name 
Cerenrentola. Charles Perreault 
and the Brothers Grimm later 
took up the story, the former in 
his 1697 “Histoires ou contes du 
temps passé” (“Stories or Fairy 
Tales from Past Times with 
Morals”) under the name ‘Cen-
drillon’ and the latter in their 
1812 collection “Grimms’ Fairy 
Tales” under the name ‘Aschen-
puttel.’

Featuring toy cars instead of 

carriages and rocking horses in 
lieu of their breathing counter-
parts, this crowd favorite pro-
duction of “Cinderella” is a tour 
de force that would make Walt 

Disney blush. All of the danc-
ers are decked out in elaborate 
costumes, the most striking ele-
ments being the “fat-cheeked” 
baby masks. The production is 
set to Russian composer Sergei 
Prokofiev’s 
score, 
composed 

during World War II and pre-
miered in 1945. Debuting in 
1984, the Lyon Opera Ballet’s 
production has been met with 
broad acclaim and is a con-
tinuous hit. The company has 
performed it annually since its 
premiere.

Maguy Marin, the company’s 

choreographer, took a radically 
unorthodox approach to this 
staple of the classical ballet rep-
ertoire.

“Maguy Marin is one of the 

very few choreographers in 
France very much inspired, if 
I can say so, by what we call 
German expressionism. So it is 
a very theatrical dance,” said 
Yorgos Loukos, the artistic 
director of the company, in an 
interview with The Michigan 
Daily. “And what she wanted to 
do was not like a classical ballet 
with beautiful girls dancing on 
points and boys and princes and 
all that. She wanted to make a 
real theater almost in an Ori-
ental way with huge costumes. 
Everybody is like puppets.”

Loukos explained that the Lyon 

Opera Ballet prides itself on its 
international presence and team. 

With an emphasis on the commis-
sion and performance of contem-
porary ballet, they have performed 
works by renowned choreogra-
phers Trisha Brown, William For-
sythe and Lucinda Childs.

With this emphasis on theatri-

cality and exaggeration, dancers 
are faced with the challenge of pre-
senting the same level of nuance, 
precision and expression without 
their traditional means like their 
faces or their exposed limbs.

“It is like a very strange theater 

for children,” Loukos said. “The 
dancers, you don’t see their bodies. 
They have strange bodies and all 
that. So it is a very theatrical thing 
and it works very well. I’m not sure 
the dancers like to do it, since they 
have masks, big hats and wigs.”

But it would be negligent to 

reduce this performance to the 
gimmick of costume and the 
consequent “knockabout pan-
tomime.” For every measure of 
“childlike wonder” that this show 
brings to the table it has the cru-
elty and sophistication to match.

The Lyon Ballet Opera’s pro-

duction of “Cinderella” is one 
that aims to unite the emotion-
al experience of remembering 
childhood and the coming of 
age and to cull methodological 
insights from many different 
kinds of theater.

“It is a very sophisticated 

work 
theatrically 
speaking,” 

Loukos said. “It is a very full and 
rich approach of what theater is 
together with music and move-
ment. It’s definitely our biggest 
success ... We’ve done it for thirty 
years from Moscow to Beijing, 
and from Toyko to New York, 
again and again.”

Ann Arbor will be lucky as the 

only city in the country this 
year to see the Lyon Opera Bal-
let’s innovative, exciting and 
thoughtful presentation of this 
canonical work of ballet.

Lyon Opera 
Ballet: 
Cinderella

Friday, Apr. 
24 - Sunday 
Apr. 26, 2015

Power Center 

$34-$54, limited 

half-price student 

tickets available

“It is like a very 
strange theater 
for children,” 
Loukos said.

EVENT PREVIEW
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