Comments on: Wally Cardona Quartet with Ethel: Everywhere

By: Sara

Sara — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:58:56 +0000

I disagree…I thought this performance was world-class, absolutely breathtaking and riveting in its utter seriousness. I’m a big fan of absurdist humor, but the way this piece commented on urban alienation, disjointed relationships and the confines of civilization without cracking a smile made it all the more poignant and chilling. Watching the restraint of those finely tuned dancerly bodies awkwardly dance between hundreds of close pillars painfully and perfectly illustrated a point I often try to ignore: living in modern society is stressful, difficult and often lonely (and not funny!). I’m glad I live in Portland, where those blues ain’t so bad. I thought of friends in NYC a lot during this show. The music was BRILLIANT!

By: Keir

Keir — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:43:41 +0000

Interestingly, my initial reaction was in line with the two previous posts: that Everywhere was cold, unengaging, and while beautiful in a mechanistic way, ultimately unsatisfying. I even expressed this view to a PICA staff person.
However, I did leave the performance recognizing that there was coherence to it, that there was a unifying structure. At the time, I thought that the structure did nothing to improve on what seemed like the larger problem of celebrating soulless form.
But, suprisingly, having absorbed the performance for a couple of days, I find myself liking it more and more. I found the passage from the beginning (individual disconnectedness almost to the point of being oblivious to the environment), to the middle ( connection but only within the safety of a walled off area built as a reaction to the falling of series of twin towers), to the end (destruction of the walls and reuse of what had been barriers to form a vehicle for seeing into the future) to be simple, hopeful, and profound.
Not bad for a performance which upon first impression seemed so cold and disjointed and disconnected.

By: joahna

joahna — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 06:16:20 +0000

I saw the show myself last night, and have to say I entirely agree with Kirsten’s comments. At the begining I was ready to be amused and amazed, and even into the performance of the first two dancers I thought “ok, I get it… rigidly structured life and the way we move about it… there is apparent randomness and chaos, but also pattern and deliberation. cool.” But at some point after the third dancer joined I lost the thread and, like the blog suggests found myself working too hard and gave up. Oh, and, Ethel WAS fantastic… If they had played throughout the entire piece, I may have engaged to the end?