Author: Nicholas Anastasia

What: Alfred Hitchcock’s Academy Award winning film, Spellbound

Where: The Michigan Theater

When: RIGHT NOW

How Much: $10 Adult, $8 Student w/ID (only available at the door)

Why: Thrills, chills, and Gregory Peck…it’s gonna be awesome!

With a combination of charisma and skill, the Deadly Gentlemen lived up to their name Wednesday night at the Ark and put on a killer performance. Puns aside, the music was wonderfully lively–true to their bluegrass roots, and even interspersed with some of their old work from when they were the world’s only “Bluegrass Rap” band (a short-lived enterprise as they admitted to alienating fans of both bluegrass and rap).

The band’s origins were apparent in their attentiveness to lyrics, which sometimes came across as spoken-word poetry. In fact, one of their songs was a poem that they’d put to music, which was a nice touch because thought in the words helped enhance the meaning of the songs. Their instrumental work did not suffer for this, however, as their purely musical pieces maintained the quality of their lyrics. Songs that combined their lyrical and instrumental techniques proved to be great for listening and dancing!

For a band with a guitarist who is known for having “the best vibe ever” (at least according to the band’s website), they met expectations by engaging the audience between songs in conversation, giving the show a casual, comfortable tone. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the Ark’s atmosphere, which was regrettably lacking the enthusiasm one might hope at a bluegrass concert. There was no space set aside for dancing, as the entire floor in front of the stage was taken up by tables, and the audience could barely be roused to clap in time with the music. Even when the band invited people to sing along to the chorus of their newest album’s title track “Roll Me, Tumble Me,” the response was minimal.

Still, the Deadly Gentleman adapted to the audience–starting with smoother songs, before working their way up to their faster-paced repertoire. In a way, this method gave the whole show the feeling and structure of a song that is building to the crescendo. Their songs had a great Happily, despite the audience’s initial attitude, by the end of the show, everyone was on their feet and calling for an encore.

The Deadly Gentlemen were impressive, both in their musical talents and their ability to put on a good show that  raised the spirits of a taciturn audience!

Boasting two child prodigies (one of the mandolin and one of the fiddle), a banjoist who toured with Bruce Springsteen (after graduating with a doctorate from MIT in Molecular Biology), a guitarist purported to have the “best vibe ever,” and a brand new bassist, The Deadly Gentleman are busting into the Ark tonight!

When: 8:00pm (doors open at 7:30pm)
Where: The Ark – 316 S. Main Street, Ann Arbor
What: Bluegrass Jams!
How Much: $13-20 per person (only at-the-door availability, starting at 7:30pm)

“Roll Me, Tumble Me” – Full Album!

As David Tennant takes his post-Richard II performance bow, the audience erupts into cheers. Well, really just one cheer. Okay, it was just me that was yelling in excitement–but can you really blame me? Sure, it might seem odd to be expressing enthusiasm to an actor who can’t hear me (him being an ocean away–alas for unrequited love), but the gesture was probably appreciated all the same. Some people laughed, at least, as they did when the woman interviewing the play’s director, Gregory Doran, joked about the “lesser known” actor performing the lead role.

During the performance, Tennant pronounced the line, “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” Of all people, Tennant should be more careful, given that he spent five years as a lord of time. For forty-seven episodes, David Tennant took on the role of the Doctor in the British television show Doctor Who, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary. It was this show that inspired Tennant to be an actor, when he was only approximately four years old!

Although at that time, he was watching the show under a different name then the one he is known by today, his birth name: David John McDonald. Tennant wouldn’t take on this stage surname until the actor’s union he was joining forced him to change his professional name since they already had a David McDonald registered. Growing up in Scotland, Tennant developed the brogue that he so often has to hide while playing British characters–though in a moment of excitement during Richard II, the Scottish in his voice could be heard quite clearly. He graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and eventually moved to London. There, in 2005, he finally achieved his dream of  following in the footsteps of his childhood inspiration by becoming the tenth Doctor. Climbing aboard his newfound vehicle, the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space), Tennant zoomed around the universe. In fact, on his travels through time and space, he managed to run into Shakespeare, played by Dean Kelly, whose plays Tennant has been performing since joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2008. In the same episode, Tennant had to call upon the writings of J.K. Rowling in order to beat back the impending threat of an alien-witch invasion. As Harry Potter fans know, Tennant pops over into Rowling’s magical realm to play the role of the insane wizard, Barty Crouch Jr.

Tennant’s role in Doctor Who crosses over with his life in other ways, as during an episode titled The Doctor’s Daughter, he met his future wife and daughter of one of his childhood idols, Georgia Moffett. The title is a pun, as Moffet’s father is Peter Moffet, who played the Doctor in 1981 (when Tennant was still only ten years old ). Tennant and Moffet married three years after the episode aired, and are raising three children together.

Now that his time on Doctor Who is over, though he did reprise the role for a special 50th anniversary celebration episode, Tennant has traded the Doctor’s signature trenchcoat for the gaudy robe of Richard II, and will continue to take audiences on travels through time and space with his performances on the stage.

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A female singer from Maize Mirchi, the University of Michigan’s only South Asian a capella group, dominated the stage as she filled Hill Auditorium with a reverberating rendition of the American National Anthem followed by the Indian National Anthem. Her voice and those of her fellow a capella members were not alone, as the audience cheered, shouted, and applauded. Maize Mirchi is only one of ten groups that will be performing tonight for the 30th Indian American Student Association’s (IASA) cultural dance show, Silesha: The Power of Duality.

Duality is such an important concepts in a world that many people understand through binary definition. How do you understand light without knowing dark as well? How can you feel happy if you’ve never felt sad? These binaries, despite being opposites, rely upon each other in order to form each other as well as our understanding of how they operate as part of a greater, overarching whole. As an English Major, I know all about how important binaries are to Structuralism as a literary criticism (I’ve written more than enough essays to know how to scatter in fun, GSI-winning terms like “juxtaposition,” “dyad,” and “dichotomy”). I was excited to see how IASA would utilize dance as a way of embodying the concepts: “dark and light, good and evil, masculinity and femininity, Indian and American,” that embody just about everything!

The nine different dance performances were all inspired by different types of dance throughout India, so while there was some overlap between performances (such as intense, epilepsy-unfriendly, strobe light effects), they each had an individual flavor and style. Starting off the show was the Theme dance “Silesha”, choreographed by Ashwaty Chennat, Prashnath Kumar, and Katie Nucci. Through a mash-up of Indian and Western music, they danced in a combination of the two dance cultures in order to represent the Indian-American identity shared by so many of IASA’s members and performers. When it came to Western style music, however, the Badtameez group, an all-men’s fusion style, was especially memorable with a legion of fedora-wearing, bow tie-sporting dancers who launched into action with Justin Timberlake’s “Suit and Tie”.

As with many styles of Indian dance, the role of men and women came into play throughout several of the performances. Men’s dance moves were generally the more aggressive, though there were moments when dominance was given explicitly to the women. In one performance, a short skit was performed when the men got down on one knee to offer their partner a rose, before being slapped and falling to the ground. This humorous approach was contrasted by a scene when a woman was lifted up in a fireman’s carry and taken kicking and punching offstage. By far, the most explosive example of this particular duality was when the male dancers formed into two groups and charged at each other, brandishing either quarter staffs or swords. The female dancers came and interposed themselves between the male dancers on each side just in time, but the flow between the two groups and the force of the recombination was spectacular to watch.

Another duality that was exciting to watch was that between light and dark, as mentioned before with headache-inducing strobe lights. Other times when the lights would go dark, dancers would be holding flashing led’s of different colors, the Bhangra group holding them in their mouths for their finale and the Gypsy group wearing special led tipped gloves that actually inspired the image that they were using magic!

Still, perhaps the greatest duality of the night was not one that occurred onstage, but with the stage. That is to say, the duality that exists between audience and performers, because without each other, the show wouldn’t exist. I hesitate to say observers and participants for two reasons: one, a cool idea in the realm of quantum physics (of which I know nothing of and understand even less; see again: English major) by which particles are thought to be changed just by being seen, and two, more importantly, that the crowd at the show was going absolutely, wonderfully berserk. Every time in between the performances, the people in the general admission balconies would break out into chants and cheers for the group that was going to be on next, or call out specifically to people that they knew. The energy in the room was practically tangible, and it was on both sides of the stage that the electricity in the air was being felt and produced.

It was not just one factor or one set of binaries that defined this show, instead it was a combination of all of them, coming together in order to generate something that transcended the concept of duality in order to create a whole that was both fun and fantastic. While I could go on and write a thesis on the reductive nature of Structuralism, instead I’ll content myself to say it’s only fair to tell you that I’ve always been more of a Deconstructionist anyways.

Who: the Indian American Student Association (IASA)
When: TONIGHT! 6:30pm
Where: Hill Auditorium
What: Dance/performance
How Much: Tickets available online (with $3 online fee per ticket); $16 main floor, $20 mezzanine, $13 General Admission balcony.

This will be IASA’s 30th Annual Cultural Dance Show, a performance that will be centering on forces of duality. According to their  event page, the goal is to “celebrate thirty years of excellence by exploring these opposing forces that are interconnected and interdependent within our world through song and dance…dark and light, good and evil, masculinity and femininity, Indian and American.”

Here’s a link to a performance from last year’s show!