[DANCE]
NOTHING ELSE REALLY MATCHES ITS SIMPLE GENIUS
FLOWN AWAY
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Shana Simmons Dance performs PASSENGER 8 p.m., Fri., Nov. 14, and 8 p.m. Sat., Nov. 15. National Aviary, 700 Arch St., North Side. $15-35. passenger.brownpapertickets.com
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{PHOTO COURTESY OF SHANA SIMMONS}
Jessica Marino of Shana Simmons Dance
Once they were the most populous bird in North America, accounting for a quarter of all birds. But in less than half a century, starting in the late 1800s, unabated commercial and sport hunting and habitat destruction reduced the passenger pigeon’s numbers from billions to none. Their extinction inspires Passenger, a new program by fledgling company Shana Simmons Dance, staged Nov. 14 and 15 at the National Aviary. The 40-minute modern-dance work, choreographed by Shana Simmons with original music by Ian Green, is part of Project Passenger Pigeon, a nationwide initiative founded by Chicago native Joel Greenberg. Passenger is part of the Pittsburgh chapter of the organization’s local programming (lecture, movie, art exhibit) surrounding the centennial of the death of Martha, the last known passenger pigeon. Martha died in 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens. “It is about extinction,” says Simmons. “The piece takes you on a journey of this morphing between bird and human.” Simmons, a 2003 Point Park graduate, has a master’s degree in choreography from London’s Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. She has performed with dance companies in New York, London and Pittsburgh. Passenger will take place in the atrium of the Aviary. (Seating is limited.) Its three sections begin with its five dancers displaying birdlike behavior. As the work progresses, comparisons between avian and human behavior will illustrate our natural link to other species. Simmons hopes to have audience members contemplating how humans have affected the environment, and thus the survival of birds and other species. The production also features a live performance by opera singer Anna Singer, who will perform Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalize.” Following the main performance, the “free-fly zone” areas of the Aviary will be opened for another 30 minutes for audience members to tour the facility and observe its birds. There will also be impromptu mini-performances by the dancers, who will move about those spaces. “The underlying goal is to promote awareness in one area,” says Simmons. “That will hopefully lead to a discussion about extinction in a broader sense.”
PLA YE R
{BY STEVE SUCATO}
PIA
NO {PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART}
{BY NADINE WASSERMAN}
A
S A VISUAL antic, the falling piano
never gets old. What started with Charlie Chaplin and then Laurel and Hardy has proliferated in cartoons. The beauty of the gag is the instrument itself, a rarified and expensive object, which comes to ruin at the expense of some rascal, deviant or numbskull. Often, the piano meets its own end while crushing an adversary or unsuspecting victim below. In the Hall of Architecture at the Carnegie Museum of Art, a piano hangs suspended by a rope as part of the exhibition Sebastian Errazuriz: Look Again. Curated by Rachel Delphia, The Alan G. and Jane A. Lehman Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, the exhibition is the first solo exhibition for Errazuriz, an internationally recognized Chilean-born, New York-based artist and designer. “The Piano” is one of the best things in the show. Viewing it, you understand the joke immediately, but once you walk beneath it you feel the enormity of that tenuous boundary between life and death.
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 11.12/11.19.2014
“The Piano” by Sebastian Errazuriz
While “The Piano” sets a tone for the rest of the exhibition, nothing else really matches its simple genius. Yes, the rest of Errazuriz’s work is beautifully crafted and clever, but in the end it comes off a little too slick, and meticulous to a fault. There is nothing else quite as impulsive or unruly as that dangling piano.
SEBASTIAN ERRAZURIZ: LOOK AGAIN continues through Jan. 12. Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. 412-622-3131 or www.cmoa.org
The only other pieces that come close in straightforward camp are “Duck Lamp” and “Duck Fan.” Both pieces use taxidermied birds that are, in fact, geese. The choice of the word “duck” by the artist was deliberate because of the way it sounds. But it also seems that the word has associations with cartoon characters such as Donald and Daffy (who, incidentally, have
a dueling piano scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a film whose main human character, Eddie Valiant, hates “toons” because one of them killed his brother by dropping a piano on him). But the duck pieces are more than just comic. They are also alluring, awkward, fragile, and sad yet durable. In the gallery guide, Errazuriz explains that his idea for the lamp was “so morbid and yet so beautiful … naïve and … real ... it’s so wrong but it’s so right.” Just like “The Piano,” the ducks are a simple expression of the brevity of life. Simplicity is also the key to “Personal Registration of Time Passing,” a group of found watches that have had their hour and minute hands removed as a reminder that life is fleeting. Errazuriz’s acute awareness of death has no doubt influenced his prolific output, but ultimately there is too much included in this show. As a result, some of the smaller and more poignant pieces get lost. For example, “La Moneda Fire Screen (prototype)” turns a functional piece into a memorial