Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Is the age of avant-garde performance over?: Nikos Karathanos’s THE BIRDS and Meg Stuart’s UNTIL OUR HEARTS STOP

• By drediman
• May 15, 2018
• No Comments

Are we living in a world in which the avant-garde is obsolete, a mere caricature of what it has historically been? Or have we simply been desensitized to a degree that makes us immune to experimentalism? In any case, in recent weeks, I attended two performances – both now no longer playing – that have caused me to reconsider the merits and the role of avant-garde performance in the contemporary arts scene.

Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods’ “Until Our Hearts Stop” at NYU Skirball.

I like to think of myself as having a very high tolerance when it comes to withstanding mediocre or even bad theater. When I attend performances, I tend to make sure to note any positive aspects of the experience and segregate them from my net assessment. However, one of the most excruciating evenings I’ve spent at the theater in recent months, hands-down, was the recent hybrid (dance, live music, spoken word) piece Until Our Hearts Stop (NOT RECOMMENDED), an alleged meditation on human intimacy – or the lack thereof – in today’s society, at NYU Skirball Center. Choreographed by Meg Stuart for her Berlin-based dance company Damaged Goods, I was shocked at the pointless and frustrating vulgarity – no need for me to expound – on display. It’s not that I’m a prude. Far from it. But Ms. Stuart’s use of crudeness to distract us from the fact that she did not have much to say was offensive, lazy, and a little sad.

Onassis Cultural Centre’s production of “The Birds” at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

To a lesser extent, Nikos Karathanos’s loose, vaguely amusing take on Aristophanes’ The Birds (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED) at St. Ann’s Warehouse, courtesy of the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, left a similar taste in my mouth. Although far less painful to sit through, this free-wheeling adaptation often felt gratuitous for its own sake (it also deployed an array of performance styles), flailing about as if uninhibited, boisterous bacchanalian behavior constituted art. Luckily, at least the writing and performances attempted to make the production an enjoyable experience, unlike the Meg Stuart piece, which seemed to deliberately sabotage itself with inanity.

THE BIRDS
Off-Broadway, Performance
St. Ann’s Warehouse, in collaboration with Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens
2 hours (without an intermission)
Closed

UNTIL OUR HEARTS STOP
Off-Broadway, Performance
Damaged Goods at NYU Skirball
2 hours (without an intermission)
Closed