Two Views
(an urban ocean has 29 eyes)
“...severely stylish…well crafted and impressively designed... -- Jennifer Fisher, Los Angeles Times, 3/11/03
Things That Are Near Though Distant: Paradise. The course of a boat. Relations between a man and a woman. -- Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book
All warfare is based on deception. Hence...when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away we must make him believe we are near. -- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Gamson's `Views' battles with war on several fronts Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune, 4/6/04
“..."Two Views (an urban ocean has 29 eyes)" draws inspiration from arcane sources: "The Pillow Book" of Sei Shonagon, an 11th-Century lady of the Japanese court, and Sun Tzu's much older "Art of War," a military manual dating from 500 B.C.
Choreographer Rosanna Gamson's lyrical, thought-provoking dance-theater piece... employs these remote writings to explore love and war, the battles of the sexes and the presumably deadlier battles of military combat. She does so with an almost ineffable flair for fusion. ...
Contrast is everywhere in "Two Views," including that of men vs. women, love vs. war, the combative stance vs. quicksilver footwork and ancient culture vs. the here and now.
Yet, the mood, magically, is more one of elegy than conflict. In a dozen or so chapters Gamson presents a disconnected series of metaphoric mirrors: war imagery describing love and amatory language evoking battle.... Gamson's eight dancers can be breathlessly fast, dramatically intense and fetchingly seductive. They take off bits of each other's clothing at times, both an act of seduction and the inverse of soldiers arming each other for battle. That's the kind of subtlety at play here. ”
Music by Shane W. Cadman (soprano, cello, piano, percussion)
Lights by Ted Mather
Costumes by Lilia Lopez
Aratani Japan America Theatre