Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Experimenting with and transcending form(s): ASUNA’S 100 KEYBOADS at BAM and HOLDTIGHT’s WHAT KEEPS YOU GOING? at the cell

• By drediman
• October 2, 2021
• No Comments

This past week, I attended two performances that experimented with and transcended form(s). Here are my thoughts on these interesting outings.

100 KEYBOARDS
ASUNA / Brooklyn Academy of Music
Through October 2

Continuing BAM’s fall season and following the astonishing opera installation Sun & Sea is ASUNA’s 100 Keyboards (RECOMMENDED), which plays BAM Fisher for a handful of performances until October 2. The brainchild of a pioneering Japanese sound artist, the work is audacious in its simplicity yet obsessive in its fascination with sonic expression in its purist form. Less music concert and more art installation in nature, the experience invites listeners to immersive themselves while observing ASUNA as he singlehandedly activates – via popsicle sticks! – and eventually deactivates one hundred electronic keyboards (each bespoke machines), which are arranged in a circular formation on the floor of performance space. With only the keyboards’ built-in speakers emitting sound, a spacial component to ASUNA’s sonic experiment is introduced, inviting audience members to traverse the space to engage in the nuanced but striking shifts in sound that occur as frequencies hit one’s ears in dynamically different ways. 100 Keyboards also operates as a sort of a metaphor for the life cycles that occur in the physical world – as manifested by the “primordial” first few notes to the eventual vibrant crescendo of all hundred keyboards blaring simultaneously and back again. To participate in that 80-minutes of glacial evolution in real time is in and of itself a profound experience.

WHAT KEEPS YOU GOING?
HOLDTIGHT Company / Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre
Through October 2

This week at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre, I also got the opportunity to attend a performance of HOLDTIGHT Company’s unique production of What Keeps You Going? (RECOMMENDED), an ambitious undertaking that utilizes dance, live music, theater, sculpture, and video/projection design in a relatively seamless manner. If the ultimate point of the show is a bit muddled, it nevertheless viscerally and aggressively engages the senses – which is intensified by the intimate and immersive nature of the performance – turning the experience of watching the show into a vital one. Allegedly, the show explores the liminal relationship between past, present, and future. To me, however, it spoke more powerfully simply as a depiction of the raw emotions (most of which we keep under wraps so as to keep sane) involved in leading human lives. As conceived by Gwendolyn Gussman, the multidisciplinary What Keeps You Going? is performed by a company of five dancer-actors (including Ms. Gussman herself) and a live musician (the Grammy-winning Johnny Butler), who individually and collectively perform the piece on each of the cell’s three levels. Each one gets a moment in the spotlight, invariably demanding your attention with their emotionally naked, deeply personal performances, of which Mr. Butler’s saxophone solo was especially wrenching.