YBCA presents Myra Melford's Language of Dreams
2013-11-09
Yerba Buena Forum
701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA
8:00 PM, Saturday, November 9, 2013
[8:05 PM lights down, announcements by Debra Cullinan & Isabel Yrigoyen]
I enjoyed tonight's show quite a bit, but aside from the very obvious narrative connection, it was hard for me to detect the influence of Memory of Fire in the musical, visual or dance elements of the performance. What with butoh being a somewhat abstract performance playpen in the first place, I didn't really expect to see much of a connection between Oguri's performance and the underlying texts, and while I enjoyed his contribution to the performance, it was certainly what I would classify as a nonessential element. The visuals were somewhat more of a disappointment. Being for the most part somewhat blurry and abstract, those qualities combined to push me to putting my attention elsewhere for most of the show: towards watching the performers, or simply listening with eyes shut as is my preferred concert mien. Reminiscing about the visuals, I can only recall a few distinct images: the endless blurry loop of slow travel along a road through the forest that preceded the show; several still images of inuit natives during the Snow section of Part I; a montage of night skies and mountain skylines that shifted back and forth between those two primary elements; a panning time-lapse loop across a busy indoor marketplace during Market in Part IV; and a late piece – perhaps from the closing – of icebergs calving from a glacier. I suppose it's possible that Szlaza based his choice of video sources upon the narrative texts in other sections of the work as well, but if so, the connection was entirely too abstract for me to notice!
Turning finally to the music, I'm happy to report that this aspect of the performance was entirely satisfying. The pieces spanned a broad range of styles, from quiet, abstract pieces to marches, blues, and gospel rave-ups. The latter two, in particular, featured marvelous solos from Myra, with the blues piece particularly remarkable because of a clattering and crashing wrist and forearm bashing segment full of tone clusters evocative of Jaki Byard and Henry Cowell. The other musicians turned in masterful performances as well, and the work afforded ample time to all to show off in both solo and ensemble turns.