Articles & Reviews
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1)
"Sadness, Wisdom Course Through Diablo's 'Veins'"
Review of Robert Moran's "Open Veins" [ballet version of
orchestral work]
2)
"Survivor from Darmstadt"
Review of the premiere of Robert Moran's
work, "Survivor from Darmstadt"
3)
Robert Moran's "Angels of Silence"
Review of a performance of work for
chamber orchestra
1) "Sadness, Wisdom Course Through Diablo's
'Veins'"
Caniparoli dance highlights Zellerbach program
Octavio Roca, Chronicle Dance Critic
Monday, January 15, 2001
The West Coast premiere of a powerful 1997 ballet by Val Caniparoli was the
highlight of Diablo Ballet's return to Zellerbach Hall on Saturday night.
"Open Veins," originally choreographed for the Atlanta Ballet, entered
the
Diablo repertory alongside revivals of ballets by Nikolai Kabaniaev, Norbert
Vesak and Kelly Teo. It was a fine and varied program, and there was a
delicious take on Kabaniaev's little jazz gem "Bach de Trois" danced
by
Corinne Jonas, Lauren Jonas and Richard Marsden. But it was definitely
Caniparoli's show.
"Open Veins" is set to Robert Moran's 1986 score
of the same name, and both
music and dance are inspired by the suicide of Petronius in Nero's Rome.
Neither Caniparoli nor Moran set out to retell the story of the controversial
Petronius or of his great novel, the "Satyricon," but the writer and
his
writing informed the spectacle at Zellerbach.
Minerva's owl takes wing at dusk, wisdom drenched in
sadness attending the
dimming of a great civilization's light. Petronius, who lived and died at the
end of Rome's glory, captured that feeling in ways no writer before and few
since have done. While acquaintance with Petronius' unsettling masterpiece is
by no means a requisite to enjoying Caniparoli and Moran's work, it can only
deepen one's admiration for the achievement of "Open Veins" on first
impression.
"Open Veins" began in silence, with four men
dressed in black showing us the
bandages on their wrists as they walked downstage. The style was
presentational, ritualistic and never ironic: The four unwrapped their black
bandages, offered up their spread hands and then their whole bodies, walked
offstage one by one. Suddenly, as Moran's violent percussion and insistent
strings seemed to explode on tape all over the theater, the men returned. They were feverish, frantic.
Viktor Kabaniaev, Richard Marsden, Kelly Teo and Christopher Young were dressed by Sandra Woodall in open silk shirts and elegant pants. The lighting by Lisa Pinkham, beginning with a spray of red on an empty stage, washed the men in harsh white light until the end, when the redness of blood seemed inevitable.
The moves, too, emerged in their desperation as the only
response to the
music: deep plies resolved in sudden convulsions toward the sky, soaring
jumps and athletic plunges, arabesques with hands cupped together as if in
prayer, curved arms suggesting the memory of gentler times.
The men moved in unison but never touched, each alone in his own death. There
was even a hint of serenity by the end, especially in Kabaniaev's musicality.
The inevitability of each gesture was ineffably sad, the
precision of the
choreography almost cruel in its clarity. The melancholy resignation of
beauty and truth in the face of senseless decay, the devastating sadness and
wisdom that permeate Petronius' novel have found a fleeting but nevertheless
true kinetic equivalent in this dance.
Caniparoli is nothing if not prolific, and this season alone in the Bay Area his ballets have been danced by the Oakland Ballet and the Lawrence Pech Dance Company as well as Diablo, with a world premiere in store from San Francisco Ballet next month. He said recently that he considers "Open Veins" one of his best works, and it was easy to see why.
2) "Survivor from Darmstadt"
by Nora Post
(This article first appeared in the
Journal of the College Music Society, Symposium, 1985.
It is reprinted here with permission. To view the article, please click on the
link below)
http://idrs.colorado.edu/Publications/DR/DR9.2/DR9.2.Post.html
3) Robert Moran's "Angels of Silence"
by Michael Walsh
Music Critic
San Francisco Examiner Newspaper
November 1980
Moran's 'Angels' is 23 minutes long, and consists almost entirely of evenly
spaced, tonally oriented chords that change slowly, tending to be melodically,
rather than harmonically related. Composed for chamber orchestra, the
piece got its first performance in 1975 at the Styrian Autumn Festival in Graz,
Austria, and is the second part of a trilogy that also includes SILVER AND THE
CIRCLE OF MESSAGES (published by Schott and Sons, Mainz), and EMBLEMS OF
PASSAGE, commissioned in 1974 by the San Francisco Symphony.
There is a fine sensibility at work here, and a refreshing non-emphasis on
novelty. We've heard all of these chords before, and they are produced in
conventional ways. Yet the effect is distinctive; you don't feel as though
you've encountered the piece before. The result is ravishingly beautiful.
Gerhard Samuel and the San Francisco Orchestra played it quite beautifully.