People Are Talking: UMS presents Ryoji Ikeda’s...
Posted: 10/31/14
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All comments by Ji Sun Hwang
People are Talking: UMS Presents Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan at the Power Center:
The beauty of T’ai Chi really failed to hold up well with the way this was presented. The dancers were very skillful and well trained, although sadly unaware of pasties, but the over all composition of the performance was subpar.
Rather than build energy with the opening of the show, it built a disjointed sense and one that clearly lost the audience. Any attempts to suck the audience in seemed to fail and then the constant stream of coughing from the audience was merely the final nail in the coffin. As an aside people, bring cough drops.
The unleashing of the energy was also rather disjointed, discordant and jarring. Lacking much of the smoothness and grace that one expects to see from t’ai chi. It seemed more to be one of those 1970 era movies with the random lights and other things my parents describe as “trippy”. In the end I left feeling that I could have spent my ten dollars on much better things. I can only imagine how unhappy the alums who purchased full price tickets might feel.
On a tangetial note, UMS ushering and crowd control has been terrible this year. During the Yuja Wong performance people were seated late, after she’d begun the first piece, and multiple people snapped photos. Yet no action was taken. At Cloud Gate I saw people using their cellphones and could hear others talking audibly during the performance, yet nothing was done. Things like this destroy the atmosphere and as mentioned above make it an uphill battle for people like Cloud Gate to capture the attention of the audience. UMS needs to ask a few offenders to leave so that the others get the message and behave.