Diavolo dances at the Bowl

How many different pictures of the Hollywood Bowl can I take this summer? Not enough yet, apparently - tonight it was the LA Phil playing Esa-Pekka Salonen's Foreign Bodies with Diavolo Dance Theatre, and also Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 on the second half of the program.

(The stage, pre-show: the orchestra was pushed back into the Bowl shell, and a dance floor was laid out at the front. On the open stage, there was a large cube covered with a cloth. The dance space seen here is much more spacious than the room the Bowl used to provide for dance only three or four years ago in the smaller, old shell. And tonight, instead of wearing their usual summer whites, the orchestra was wearing black to blend into the background and make the visuals more theatrical.)

Diavolo is a locally-based dance company that has made a name through highly athletic dance/theatre/gymnastic pieces, often using elaborate props and set pieces. In the piece that I first saw the company in, Trajectorie, they had an enormous half-drum on stage made up to look like the hull of a ship, the Flying Dutchman perhaps? The dancers see-sawed the drum back and forth, and as the rocking reached a violent pitch, dancers started hurling themselves across the boat, using it as a springboard to leap to the other side: into each others' arms, into the wings, into the sky. (Check out the photos on this page - click "more images" under Trajectorie.) It was pretty thrilling to watch, though at the time the newspaper review questioned how much of it could really be classified as "dance theatre" as they purported to be, and how much was an athletic show (they'd audibly count off to each other in preparation for each harrowing leap). Since then, Jacques Heim, the company's director and choreographer, has branched into theater as well, creating pieces like The Stones two years ago in collaboration with Center Theatre Group for its Youth & Family program.

The Diavolo piece tonight was a new piece set to Esa-Pekka Salonen's Foreign Bodies, a 25-minute "imaginary scène de ballet," as the program notes called it. The pairing with the Salonen work was the raison d'tre for tonight's Bowl concert with the Phil, raised to event status by Salonen's stature as the "hot" conductor/composer in the classical world today (the rush of articles from the New Yorker to the New York Times about the LA Phil's recent New york performances can attest to that).

(Dancers emerge from the cube at the start of Foreign Bodies.)

Salonen's music started off quietly and moodily, building into something loud and boisterous that thundered forward with a thumping drive before the piece's various sections emerged as musical episodes, flowing into and out of each other. Heim's visualization began in a similarly quiet fashion, with the shroud on the cube disappearing, and dancers limbs creeping out of the holes in the sides. As the music built, the cube suddenly split into three sections, and the dancers climbed and slid over the now triangular pieces - shifting them around the stage into different formations as the musical episodes began and ended. There wasn't as much of the daredevil flying around as there was in the see-saw work, but the dancing was still very physical, involving lots of jumping and climbing across the set pieces. The movement looked much more like "dance" in the concert dance view of things - lots of partnering moves that I recognized from contact improvisation, and it was theatrical too, in the sense that dancers gave each other significant looks before joining each other for a complicated maneuver or two.

(The cube splits, and dancers climb and dance around the pieces. Sorry for the blurriness...)

I may have been too far away to perceive much more than a gloss of the dance piece. Cameras were broadcasting close-ups of the movement to screens on the side of the amphitheatre, so I couldn't altogether decide where to focus. I decided to watch the live movement instead, catching bits of the "significant looks" on screen. The effect of the set pieces moving around, with dancers appearing and disappearing into them, was mesmerizing and kind of hypnotic; and it was all so ordered and well planned that I also had this kind of refreshed feeling at the end of the piece, having watched something that was so slickly and serenely ordered - or at least something that appeared that way (the dancers probably wouldn't feel serenity while performing). This dance looked far more like a concert dance work than any piece on the see-saw program - is it Heim moving into more "artistic" territory, or is it a function of having a full on "scene de ballet" to work with, via Salonen's score?

(Set pieces in a different formation, for a different 'musical episode' in the music.)

I liked Salonen's music a lot. So far I've heard two of his compositions before, early in my music listening history, and I didn't really "get" them at the time - too contemporary, too atonal, too whatever. But this one worked for me - it had a more clearly defined structure and rhythms, a few discernable melodies. But maybe I also went to it because it had within it a dance impulse, an impulse which Heim and Diavolo picked up on, and since I watch lots of dance maybe thats what worked for me.

(The dancers bowing with Diavolo a.d. Jacques Heim and composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.)

Mahler's Symphony No. 1 closed the program and it was an incredible performance from the Phil, sounding just as good on the Bowl's loudspeakers as I'm sure it would have acoustically. Salonen really throws himself into the conducting, fully swaying his body into orchestral swells and accents. He often fell out of the picture field on the Bowl Conductor Cam: all we sometimes saw was half of his hand waving around, or some flopping hair. I'm starting to move into Mahler territory, having started with the 4th symphony, listened to a CD of the 5th, and now heard the 1st again last night at the Bowl. I've noticed that even though all three symphonies have a massive length, there is something interesting and different about every moment in the music: an interesting melody, rhythm, or whatever that takes its time to develop but doesn't become tiresome. Maybe I've listened to enough classical music for it to not be so tiresome anymore, or maybe its the composer... still workin' on that answer.

There are only a few more Bowl season concerts left: Boris Godunov the full opera on Thursday is the last classical one that I have firm plans to attend. My friend Denise also bought me tickets to the Rufus Wainwright concert two weeks from now, she says I will like it. :-) I will miss the Bowl at the end of summer season. Cheap tickets for great repertory while sitting outside in shorts and flip flops... nothing quite like it. Winter season at Disney Hall brings back the decent shirt and pants with closed toe shoes - great music, but a different experience.

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With the end of the Bowl season comes the start of the "regular" season, and I've been buying tickets left and right - my poor wallet. I usually don't buy so much all at once, but I wanted to make sure I that I got into a few possible sell-out shows:

First, A Catered Affair and Cry-Baby, both in try-out productions in the San Diego on their way to Broadway. Catered Affair looks interesting as Harvey Fierstein wrote the book, while Cry-Baby looks like boatloads of fun as it is being directed by Hairspray director Jack O'Brien (the stage version...) and Millie choreographer Rob Ashford.

I also went ahead and bought four concerts in the LA Phil season - the two Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra concerts that I got excited about last week (they're selling quickly, the box office lady said - and the prices are extremely reasonable); another concert in the spring conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, who both leads the Bolivar Youth Orchestra but will also become music director of the LA Phil in 2009 (ok this one might not sell out but I wanted to be sure I had a ticket to hear Ravel's Daphis and Chloe inside Disney Hall's glowing acoustic environment); and finally the West Coast premiere of Esa-Pekka's Piano Concerto at the end of May. So at least I know that I will get some Phil time in the regular season. As it gets closer, I may also want to hear the Royal Concertgebow from Amsterdam play Debussy's La Mer in January... again, it's that hall.

This morning, LA Opera's production of Fidelio showed up on Goldstar. Bought that up right away, even though my seats are in the Orchestra Ring - very inferior acoustics there, but at least the view will be good.

So I have much to look forward to, in addition to the New York trip. The LA Times' Fall Arts Preview appears this Sunday, so I'll have to make sure to pick that up from the newsstand.

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I've begun to notice that, when I go to see shows, it's really the only time nowadays that I'm not distracted by more than one thing at a time. At a show, all that I'm responsible for doing is experiencing that show until it is over. At home, it's far too easy to hit pause on the Tivo, or put the book down to check email (or blog), or read a text message and chat on AIM. Don't get me started on my office, with Outlook clucking at me every few minutes. Even sleep can turn into a bit of a multi-tasking experience in the city. But sitting in my theatre seat, it's just me and the show... a brief break from the chaos.