[DANCE REVIEW]
THERE IS A GREAT PLEASURE IN SEEING CONTEMPORARY MASTERS WORK ON A SMALLER SCALE
LOVE STORY
{BY STEVE SUCATO}
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Conservatory Dance Company’s ROMEO AND JULIET continues through Sun., Dec. 14. Pittsburgh Playhouse, 222 Craft Ave., Oakland. $18-20. 412-392-8000 or www.pittsburghplayhouse.com
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[EXHIBIT REVIEW]
(GETTING)
BETTER
BUILDINGS Cassidy Burk (right) in the Conservatory Dance Company’s Romeo and Juliet {PHOTO COURTESY OF JEFF SWENSEN}
It’s sometimes easy to forget that Point Park University’s Conservatory Dance Company is a student troupe. The company so easily appears like a professional one in contemporary and modern dance works. In its latest production, Nicolas Petrov’s Romeo and Juliet, the unforgiving nature of classical ballet technique was a reminder that CDC’s dancers are indeed still students. Nonetheless, as a student production, the company’s opening-night performance was solidly entertaining, with wonderful sets and colorful costumes. Originally choreographed for Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre in 1971, Petrov’s two-hour ballet in three acts is a traditional telling of Shakespeare’s iconic tale of star-crossed lovers. Credited as the first Romeo and Juliet ballet in the U.S. to use Prokofiev’s marvelously sweeping and romantic score, Petrov’s choreography for it was nicely paced and dense, with lively, folk-influenced group dances and sword-play. The ballet’s storyline plays out as most do, with the first act setting up the bitter rivalry between the Capulets and Montagues. A fiercely angry Nick Fearon, as Tybalt, led the charge, with former PBT dancer Ernest Tolentino as the Duke, demanding calm between the rival camps. The large cast of knights, lords, ladies and citizens appeared at times a bit sandwiched on the smallish Rockwell Theatre stage, which might have hampered some of the group dancing but did little to stall the sprightly performance of Sean Daly as Romeo’s sidekick Mercutio. Daly’s portrayal was more mischievous Puck than the usual charismatic rogue, but it lent spark to the production. Also of note was the powerfully serious and emotive performance of dancer Rachel Shirley, looking like a dead ringer for Bette Davis. While much of the cast did their best navigating Petrov’s challenging choreography and emphasis on acting skills, dancer Cassidy Burk as young Juliet shone on both counts. The bright-eyed and endearing dancer had all eyes riveted on her from the moment she stepped onstage. Her brilliant performance alone was worth the price of admission. Burk and partner Hunter Mikles, as Romeo, provided much of the ballet’s meaty dancing. From their initial meeting at the Capulet ball, through emotional pas de deuxs during the balcony and bedroom scenes and suicidal deaths, the pair — though they could have danced with a bit more passion and abandon — were thoroughly engaging.
{BY CHARLES ROSENBLUM}
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ITRUVIUS, THE ancient Roman architect and treatise-writer, said one of the most lasting motifs of classical architecture was inspired by an offering at a maiden’s grave. A mourner left votive objects in a basket covered with a flat tile. Soon, an acanthus plant grew from beneath, with leaves enveloping the basket. At least in legend, it inspired the Greek architect Callimachus to create the first Corinthian capital. The theme of architecture promising memory, even life, after the premature death of a young woman is compelling. Surely this is part of why the buildings presented in the Carnegie Museum of Art exhibit Maggie’s Centres: A Blueprint for Cancer Care engage the viewer so assuredly. Maggie’s Centres are a network of currently 16 small buildings — most in Britain, one in Hong Kong — commissioned to provide spaces for “free practical, emotional and social support” for cancer sufferers and their families during times of
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 12.10/12.17.2014
{PHOTO COURTESY OF RAF MAKDA}
Sufficiently quaint, quintessentially Gehry-esque: Frank Gehry’s Maggie’s Dundee
treatment. Maggie Keswick Jencks, for whom Maggie’s Centres are named, was a distinguished landscape designer and historian. She died of breast cancer in 1995 at age 53, but not before leveling a critique of current medical architecture as experienced through cancer treatment. “Overhead (sometimes even neon) lighting, interior spaces with no views out and miserable seating against the walls all contribute to extreme mental and physical enervation,” she wrote.
MAGGIE’S CENTRES continues through Jan. 5. Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. 412-622-3131 or www.cmoa.org
She began the project for the homey and comforting drop-in centers as a response. Located on the grounds of major hospitals, they are owned and operated independently. They are also explicitly critical of the
bloated technocratic atmosphere of contemporary medicine and its architecture. She envisioned and oversaw the first one, in Edinburgh, by architect Richard Murphy, but did not live to see it completed. Her widower, Charles Jencks, has continued the project. He is among the most influential architectural theorists and historians of the past several decades, known particularly for his work defining postmodern architecture and creating vivid timeline diagrams of changing aesthetic styles in the field. Notably, the Jenckses met at London’s prestigious Architectural Association in 1978, when a particularly remarkable generation of architects, including Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Steven Holl, was studying or beginning teaching careers there. These architects, also including Piers Gough, Richard Rogers and Frank Gehry, have works in this Heinz Architectural Center show. There is a frequent expectation, exemplified by the pejorative “starchitect” label