The
By
Tom Austin
Sun,
May. 06, 2007
'HELL':
The tour wraps this week at the Colony Theatre.
Monday,
May 07, 2007
Emio Greco's "Hell"
Dance Theater based on Dante's "Inferno"
The
ANNOTICO Report
Emio Greco of the acclaimed Emio
Greco/PC dance theater company (won the Philip Morris Arts Prize for dance), is
in the process of wrapping it's American Tour of "Hell"
loosely based on Dante's "Inferno". The troupe, is known for
their extremely controlled gesticulation and articulated shudders in an |ber-modern style.
Emio Greco was raised in
Hell begins
with a shimmering electric arch studded with lightbulbs
-- akin to the entrance of a circus sideshow -- appearing onstage with the
surreal suddenness of the obelisk in 2001:
A Space Odyssey. The dancers walk out on a largely barren
Waiting-for-Godot set, the blankness acting as a
``kind of magma, swallowing everything and creating a new language for the new
era, a world where everything is disconnected, where the media and the Internet
have made the private and public realm melt together.''
Over the course
of Hell, the
dancers embrace the classic ballet vocabulary of
Whew!!!
That's Hell???
On an ordinary
morning in Minneapolis, dancer and choreographer Emio
Greco of the Emio Greco/PC dance theater company --
who will be wrapping up his American tour of Hell, loosely based on Dante's Inferno, this week in (aptly enough) South
Beach -- is taking a break from rehearsals at the Walker Art Center with a
telephone chat that skitters around the past, future and a modern cultural
universe gone mad with deconstruction.
At the Colony
Theatre on Lincoln Road, Miami Light Project will present the company (the
''PC'' comes from Greco's artistic partner, Dutch theater director Pieter C. Scholten) with all due intellectual pomp, though Greco
started out as a gotta-dance chorus boy on the
Riviera, working with topless showgirls in a nightclub that was ''much less
glamorous'' than the flesh and feathers gestalt of La Cage Aux Folles.
``I live in
Now a long way
from the chorus, Greco and his acclaimed company, known for their extremely
controlled gesticulation and articulated shudders in such |ber-modern
pieces as Rimasto Orfano
and Double Points: One & Two,
have won the Philip Morris Arts Prize for dance. And Greco has embraced the
postmodern scuffle of his personal history.
Hell
opens
with a cabaret-gone-disco preamble, the eight dancers dressed in everything
from skirts to caftans, lip-synching, smoking and gyrating to Pink Cadillac, songs by Taylor Dayne and Midnight Oil, and -- what else -- Marilyn
Manson's Beautiful People.
Nightclubs, from cabaret to the techno thump of modern dance palaces, have long
been a metaphor for the underworld, as Greco observes: ``To many people, hell
is unpredictability, life gone out of control, and a peeling away of the layers
that protect our privacy.''
On South Beach,
the ''American Riviera'' that's all about Disco Inferno, cruel velvet ropes and
pitiless pop, Greco is hoping for a certain resonance: ``I've never been to
Miami before, but the image of the city is so pop, all those stereotypes of
sun, beaches and nightclubs, and yet, it's an interesting moment in the city,
with the art community that's there now, and this new voice will hopefully respond
to Hell.''
Hell
truly
begins with a shimmering electric arch studded with lightbulbs
-- akin to the entrance of a circus sideshow -- appearing onstage with the
surreal suddenness of the obelisk in 2001:
A Space Odyssey. The dancers walk out on a largely barren
Waiting-for-Godot set, the blankness acting as a
``kind of magma, swallowing everything and creating a new language for the new
era, a world where everything is disconnected, where the media and the Internet
have made the private and public realm melt together.''
Over the course
of Hell, the dancers embrace the classic ballet vocabulary of
``Like all of us,
they have been exposed by modern life, a nakedness that is much deeper than
simply not wearing clothes. From there, they have to start over, adopt a new
way of thinking and being, and begin a new life.''
On his day off in
IF YOU GO
What: 'Hell,' presented by the
Miami Light Project
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday and
Wednesday
Where: Colony Theatre,
Tickets: $28 at ticketmaster.com
Info: 305- 576-4350 or
miamilightproject.com.
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