Baryshnikov Dance Foundation Presents;
THE SHOW (Achilles Heels)
PRESS REVIEWS
Dance Magazine
Nicole Plett, Germany
Never underestimate Mikhail Baryshnikov’s courage or curiosity. The Show (Achilles Heels), a new commission from Richard Move, the 30-something cross-dressing New York cabaret maverick, has given the White Oak Dance Project a powerful, iconoclastic theater piece that’s made to measure for the twenty-first century.
Previewed at Princeton’s McCarter Theater in June, The Show is a hyperactive danced melodrama, a bastard offspring of the modern dance paradigm that defies its matrix with a heady does of lip-synched dialogue. The action centers on Baryshnikov as a latter-day Achilles, military hero and dallying demi-god, trying to outwit his fate. Beginning with his powerful gesture-laden opening solo, Baryshnikov connects with Move’s movement vernacular like a hacker perfecting identity theft.
The work takes us from Hollywood hyperbole and reality TV to video-game warfare and the macho military leader’s weakness for glamorous gold bustiers and high heels. Sonja Kostich exquisitely portrays exquisitely portrays, on pointe, the isolated hostage Helen of Troy; Miguel Anaya is the playful love interest Patroclus, and Rosalynde LeBlanc plays the Goddess Athena, game show host.Move’s artistic collaborators, composer Arto Lindsay, singer Deborah Harry, and artist Nicole Eisenman give the work its weight.
Two Blondie ballads bookend the action, and Eisenman’s punchy backdrops make us feel we’ve entered the Villa of Mysteries. White Oak premieres The Show (Achilles Heels) on its European tour, wit performances September 26-29 at PACT Zollverein, Essen, Germany
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