Audience Review

By Martha Sherman

I did get up to the Mt Tremper Arts festival (did I mention it’s in the Catskills??) for a remarkable collaborative piece between (among?) Jonah Bokaer, Anne Carson, Peter Cole, and the performers. The first piece was an improv — Jonah danced it (ooh, what a dancer) to Anne’s reading of a lecture/prose poem “Falling” which she’d originally collaborated with Elizabeth Streb to present. The words really fit (and honored) Streb’s work. (Anne’s voice is soft and monotonal, but sort of relentless, especially about fear and danger. It worked). And Jonah’s falling was totally his own. He arched his back achingly slowly, to a place where human bodies are probably not meant to go, and his falling metaphors, not surprisingly, were completely different than anything the Streb dancers do. And it worked, too.

STACKS rehearsal at Mount Tremper Arts

The core piece of the evening was “Stacks”, which had started as a collaboration between the sculptor Peter Cole, and Anne. Peter had stacks of cartons all over the floor (fabulous space! — no columns in the way, high open ceiling, beautiful floor. Fittingly, the audience was all stacked, too — from floor cushions to folding chairs, to high backless stools to the standers in the back). And the weather played a role, too — especially in the segment of Thunderstorm Stacks; the day had been filled with fabulous thunderstorms and the piece had been almost entirely created in this one day, the only time the full cast and collaborators were together and in the space. The performers were perfect….Link to rest of this review on Claudia La Rocco’s wonderful Culturist Blog. (Scan down to comment 13 for this review.)