REVIEW: ComCo The Big Show

Abby Z Leave a comment

When my friends and I grabbed seats near the front of the Lydia Mendhelson theater we had arrived over 40 minutes early to ensure prime seats, and yet the first several rows were already packed with people.  Despite being held in a bigger venue than the past several shows I had been to, the seats started filling up quickly, and even with ten minutes left before the start of the show all I could hear was a dull roar as both the main floor and balcony were filled with noisy students excited for their pre-finals fix of improv comedy.

The show opened with a short video clip that prepped the audience for the show they were about to be treated to.  With a dramatic narration done ala morgan freeman, describing the club as if they were not merely a (very good) improv group, but instead a group of heroes destined for greatness, it sent ripples of chuckles through the audience.

Once the Comco members took to the stage the audience was cheering like mad, ready for the show to begin. They opened with a long-form game called “monologue.” Two cast members would  come up and give short monologues based off of a prompt given by the audience, and then the rest of the cast members would riff off those stories for a god 10-15 minutes, jumping in and out as needed.  Some of the situations and stories were so absurd I couldn’t help but laugh, but the cast members did a wonderful job keeping each scene flowing and relating them back to the previous scenes for added laughter.

One of my favorite games of the night was when two cast members had to act as the arms for another two, either working in unison or sabotaging them, and reacting to whatever scene was taking place. The scene was two passengers in a turbulent air plane ride, one freaking out while the other tried to calm them down, to no avail.  Watching the cast members helplessly going along with whatever their “hands” decided to do was nothing short of hilarious.

I’d like to also emphasize how well the cast members bounced off each other as well as read the audience.  If a joke was ever falling flat they did a good job of picking it right back up or cutting the joke short.  Conversely, whenever a joke was doing particularly well they were able to really play it up, reacting in time to the audience and giving them whatever caused the largest cheers.  That being said my friends and I were constantly cheering  and laughing throughout the night, ensuring that my cheeks were red and sore by the time we were leaving the theater.

One of the most touching moments of the night was when the Comco players said their farewells to the graduating seniors, giving them large posters with every show they had done in Comco on the front, and touching personal notes on the back. Both the comco members on stage, and several audience members were holding back tears.

Finally, after that touching moment it was time to close the show just as they close every show, with the game “I like my men like I like my ______,” allowing audience members to fill in the blank to humorous responses. I especially like that they invite Comco alumni onto stage to complete that game with them.  My friends and I couldn’t stop talking about our favorite moments from the show the entire walk back, and despite this being their very first Comco show, they are raring to go back next year.  Check out Comco at their facebook page, here!

REVIEW: Dance Mix 2017 The Galaxy Edition

Phillip Wachowiak Leave a comment

What a night. I started walking over to the Power Center with my friend five minutes before the concert started to find a building packed with students. Before the first group took the stage, the organizers announced that this was the second sold-out concert in a row.

 

Some sold-out concerts don’t feel sold out. You can spot empty seats and the audience is tame. Not so for this young, rambunctious crowd that hooted and hollered names of friends in the dance groups all throughout the event. Between the energy of the audience and the students moving around on stage, the 2.5 hour event felt like taking a shot of espresso.

When things get hot and heavy on stage

First off, I have to apologize at not being able to keep track of the names of the groups. Every group that took the stage was incredibly talented in their own unique way. Alas, I did not have a program with me during the concert so I could not tell exactly which group was on stage at a particular time.

 

 

 

 

 

I can’t imagine it’s easy to fit a wide variety of student acts into one concert, but Dance Mix 17 pulled it off through smooth transitions between more traditional ballet (top left picture) and decidedly modern hip-hop (top right picture), as well as dancers that both to the melodies of ballads and rock songs alike.

One of the highlights of the group was Revolution and their stringless yo-yo performance. Countless students walked across the stage slinging their plastic yo-yo’s like divine beings levitating rocks. Those plastic yo-yo’s flew across the stage and around the slingers and every trick drew fresh cheers from the crowd. Even the tricks that failed still felt like successes, and I was definitely not the only one entranced by the performance.

 

Later, Photonix performed in the dark with glow sticks, producing images like the one you see in the header photo of this blog. Towards the end of the performance, they unleashed hundreds of mini glow sticks into the audience.
The audience being composed almost entirely of students, everyone went wild.

Another highlight of the night was a Bollywood rendition of Top Gun (by Michigan Manzil I think). The story was a cliche telling of a young fighter pilot who loses his friend in a fight, but this isn’t a Hollywood film and the performance was one of the standouts of the second half of the night.

The Bollywood-esque peformance went through half a dozen wardrobe changes without a hitch, in addition to props and set pieces, and above all it was entertaining as heck.

Rounding out the rest of the night were performances by EnCore (picture below), Outrage, and FunKtion again.

I’m incredibly glad I was able to attend this event, and if you’re reading this blog and didn’t go this year, you NEED to attend next year.

REVIEW- Insurrection: Holding History

Abby Z Leave a comment

Reading the synopsis of this play online had done little to prepare me and my friend for the powerful, and emotional journey into the US’s dark history of slavery that awaited us in the intimate space of the Arthur Miller theater. This interpretation of Robert O’Hara’s 1995 play was brilliantly adapted by the Department of Theater and Drama into a nearly three-hour long production filled with twists and turns.  O’Hara’s play is a time-traveling look into Nat Turner’s 1831 slave insurrection, from the point of view of Ron, a modern-day college student completing his thesis on slavery, and his 189 year-old grandfather, T.J., who was a part of the rebellion himself.

Before the play even began, I noted how intimate the Arthur Miller theater was, and that proved to only add to the emotional impact of the play itself.  The set was minimal and yet entirely sufficient to capture the feeling and multiple locations of the play.

One of my major takeaways was that every single actor had their intensity dialed up to the very top for the majority of the play’s runtime.  There were moments that left me breathless, as the actors went through emotions of extreme fear, anger, sadness in quick succession.  In the second act this was particularly noticeable, as the few moments that were quieter in nature were even more impactful, soft whispers standing in drastic contrast with the high energy shouts and cries of other scenes. Most of the actors also played multiple characters, and I was shocked at how easily they seemed to switch from one to the other.

Additionally, the actors were clearly working hard physically, with a large portion of the play being heavily choreographed or strenuous to do. I noticed that many of the actors would be sweating by the end of a short monologue, which only added to the emotional intensity.  While I know little about stage direction, it was an extremely lively play with never a dull moment, as the actors tripped, danced, and ran around not only the stage, but the entire theater.
I wasn’t expecting there to be the amount or level of comedy in this play as there ended up being.  Almost every other minute the actors sent the audience into a load roar of laughter.  Considering the dark themes of the play, the comedy felt uncomfortable at times, but I assume that was part of the point.  

I highly recommend attending future shows put on by the Department of Theater and Drama.  I couldn’t have imagined a more entertaining or engaging weekend.

REVIEW: A Far Cry with A Roomful Of Teeth

Rachel Leave a comment

Included in the slew of excellent UMS programs this year was last week’s concert featuring string orchestra A Far Cry and experimental vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. The concert primarily represented the music of two groundbreaking contemporary composers, Caroline Shaw and Ted Hearne, as well as 20th century composer Prokofiev and Renaissance composer Josquin. The concert alternated from the ensembles playing separately and together.

The music of Hearne and Shaw, while being quite stylistically different, both boast the mastery of drawing bold, chaotic, and somehow cohesive pictures from multiple stylistic and thematic threads. In their pieces, they both kneaded into the dissonance of two or more disconnected things happening at once. The various techniques that the composers used to handle these dissonances — intensifying them and then abruptly letting them evaporate, drawing them out over a long period time until gradually relaxing them, and more–were a source of thrilling suspense for both of the composers’ pieces.

Hearne’s pieces were “Coloring Book,” performed by a Roomful of Teeth, and “Law of Mosaics,” performed by A Far Cry. In “Coloring Book,” he juxtaposed austere polyphony with more rhythmically driven, unruly, and playful styles. “Law of Mosaics” was packed to the brim with conversational, interlocking parts, such as convoluted rhythmic pulses with sprawled out melodic lines overtop. The melodies and riffs in “Law of Mosiacs” were improvisational and bursting with personality, and A Far Cry carried this energy successfully.

Caroline Shaw’s pieces, while also possessing this similar ‘mosaic’ quality as Ted Hearne’s pieces, stood out in their patience; in both of her pieces, “Music in Common Time” and “La déploration sur la mort de Johannes Ockeghem” (her arrangement of a piece by Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez), she gave gravity to drawn-out drones and slowly moving polyphony, eventually splattering more rhythmic and angular sections overtop. She has a way of inviting the listeners into huge, thick, open spaces/baselines and then working within those spaces in creative and shocking ways.

As an ensemble, A Far Cry radiated a rock-like energy. Not only are they remarkably virtuosic, but they are conversational players; their communication, sensitivity, and clarity of vision as a group packed their performances with electricity, whether it be in a slow, twisted movement of the Prokofiev or a high-octane and rhythmically aggressive segment of the Hearne.

Vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth represented a library of various vocal timbres styles, and tendencies, but the group was able to sound unified while still providing space for the unique colors of each vocalist to shine. Common threads among the singers such as bright vowels and rich but piercing timbres helped to make the ensemble seem like one body. It was exciting to see each performer lose themselves in their own way, especially during the solo sections; it’s not something that you usually get to observe in traditional Western vocal ensembles.

The night was lined with disorienting, chaotic beauty interspersed with more focused and calm moments. This intricate rhythm of tension made the a concert suspenseful and captivating one.

REVIEW: Jukebox the Ghost @ The Blind Pig

kjwuzhere Leave a comment

After waiting in line for half an hour (sold-out show), my friend and I finally got into the Blind Pig, just in time to catch the remnants of Cooper Anstett, one of the opening performers. Cooper Anstett was a duo and sounded like most opening acts that had one guy on drums and one guy on guitar–in other words, though they sounded nice, they were ultimately nothing special and easily forgotten. Not bad music to listen to while you wait for the joint to fill up.

The Elwins

Then there was the second opening act, The Elwins, who have been touring with Jukebox the Ghost on and off for the last several years. Their sound was distinctive–upbeat pop that likes to have fun–and is a clear complement to Jukebox the Ghost. The band also liked to have fun, and various members moved and danced all around the stage, They were in a surprisingly good mood considering, as they informed us, that their beloved van had broken down and they had to travel here in a uHaul. They were all even dressed in black to show their grief–and still they played with an infectious happiness. Towards the end of their set, they told us about how they and Jukebox the Ghost play this game called Brimball, during which they occasionally make crab hands and say “thanks for the Brimball.” After informing us of this pastime, they had the audience complete this motion and repeat those words and took a video to later surprise Jukebox the Ghost. Overall, their performance was engaging, dynamic, and upbeat, and properly warmed up the audience for the main act.

Speaking of audience, they were younger than the usual Blind Pig crowd. Typically, the Blind Pig draws heavily from college students and older Ann Arbor locals, but many members of this audience were high schoolers and I’d wager that more than a few got into the Blind Pig using fake IDs. Still, it wasn’t a bad crowd and had there been more room, there might have been dancing, but as it was, since we were crammed together, the dancing was limited to moves that only needed six inches of space.

In addition to this unusual audience, it’s always interesting to see pop and upbeat bands playing in the dark, cramped Blind Pig. Though the exterior does not take away from the music in anyway, it’s also not exactly the place one pictures a band like Jukebox the Ghost playing. It’s got major grunge vibes going on and one can easily see why Nirvana considered it one of their favorite places to play.

Jukebox the Ghost

Finally, Jukebox the Ghost performed, opening with their bombastic song, “Somebody.” Like The Elwins, they were playful with the audience, and at one point, when their keyboardist and lead singer pulled out a granola bar during a song due to his ravenous appetite, they announced that history had been made bey e. It was a memorable moment. Another instance that stands out is when they played “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which got everyone in the audience channeling their inner Queen. Their set list was long–they have four albums to choose songs from–and they played a substantial amount of songs. By the end of it, though the band kept its energy, the audience was clearly exhausted–still enjoying the show, but tired from standing around for four hours. Thankfully, their encore was brief. They played another cover (chosen from their wheel of songs) which they had to remember how to play first and then closed with “The Spiritual,” a slower, more gospel-like song that ends with the line “let me go in peace.”

REVIEW: Bronze Elegance Fashion Show

Abby Z Leave a comment

I’ve never been the most on top of the fashion world.  When I flipped through the pages of Vogue as a kid I could never put my finger on what made certain outfits so visually appealing. That being said, I was extremely excited to attend the Bronze Elegance annual fashion charity show this year, and see the diverse and choreographed fashion production I had heard about.

One of the things that that became instantly apparent as I walked in the door was how stylish the general crowd attending this show was. Almost all of the attendees were dressed to the nines, with several of the women standing in line with me looking like they could have just stepped off the runway themselves.  After I had a wrist band tied around my wrist, I headed to find a seat to the side of the stage, and waited for the show to begin.  They had  mounted a large screen over the stage, so that everyone could get multiple different angles and views of the models no matter where they happened to be seating.

As soon as the first model walked out onto stage, we were immediately treated to something far closer to a choreographed dance than a runway walk, where each model interacted with the other models walking behind them in some way.  This same alternative and performance-oriented direction  was carried out throughout the show, with each collection having a different type of “choreography,” or element that made it special and stand apart.  My only complaint with the first collection was that the outfits were not cohesive, however later collections were much more cohesive, and fit together perfectly.

Another interesting element of the fashion show was the space in which it was held itself.   When decorated and separated by a large black curtain, the inside of the gym was transformed into an almost entirely new space.  One of my favorite aspects of the venue is that there were large windows on either side of the gymnasium, and as the fashion show progressed we could see the light outside gradually fading into pitch black as the sun set, adding to the ambiance of the show.  Additionally, I liked how the lighting changed throughout, colors picked carefully to complement the  designs on stage.  Perhaps my favorite element of the environment were the fog machines, which were used off and on throughout the show.  During one particularly foggy section it seemed as if the models completely emerged from an entered into a foggy portal at the back of the stage, really adding to the feel of the show!  Later on, as one of the final and most dramatic runway walks, all the lights were shut off as black lights were turned on to reveal glow in the dark body paint over all of the models!

My favorite collection presentation of the entire night came at the end of the first half, where six dancers came out onto either side of the runway, and proceed to do an expertly choreographed dance routine as the models walked through the middle.  After this astonishing performance intermission started, giving me time to mingle and prepare myself for the second half.

The second half of the show also featured two different musical artists performing in between the individual collections. While I failed to catch the name of the first performer, the second performer was a budding musician and former vine star Wolf Tyga.  These music interludes were a fun way to further break up the shows and diversify what was being presented. In general I really enjoyed the music picked for the background of each collection in the show, and thought that the music was picked well to fit with the theme of each collection and further emphasize them.

Every time I thought that the last collection would be the flashiest and most impressive, they managed to change things up and keep me more and more intrigued.  Now I truly understand why their tagline was “A show with fashion” instead of just a “fashion show.”

To follow bronze elegance and get information about their future projects and next year’s show you can check out their official website or their instagram,