As it turns out, we might have predicted the strengths and weaknesses of Dwight Rhoden’s Othello when it was first announced in NC Dance Theatre’s 2008-09 season brochure. Before this season, Rhoden hadn’t bothered with story lines in his choreographies, so taking on a Shakespearean tragedy with a labyrinthine plotline would be a quantum leap — compounded by the fact that NCDT was promising a “modern day look” at a classic that the general public hardly knows in its original form.
On the other hand, when you look at NCDT brochures for previous seasons, Rhoden’s name invariably appears with the words “World Premiere” or “Charlotte Premiere” — and no titles at all. Last week marked the first time that Rhoden decisively called what he was bringing to us before the season began. Here was a sharply defined project that Rhoden had a year to brood over, rehearse and refine.
Rhoden’s preparations were indeed elaborate, both in developing his modernized scenario and in incubating his narrative chops. Earlier this season, he dipped into narrative with his contribution to NCDT’s “A Night at the Movies” program. There he took the main characters from Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and riffed on their relationships without paying much attention to linear plot. This time, he took Shakespeare’s characters and reimagined them as cogs in the pop music industry’s star machine — plotting out Othello’s downfall as a music mogul driven to madness by Iago, a one-hit wonder with a grudge who turns the Big O’s passion for his popstar wife Desdemona into murderous jealousy. The character sketches plus the 17-scene synopsis gobbled up nearly four pages in the playbill.
What if you didn’t read them? Well, if you were familiar with Othello in its Elizabethan trappings, following the action would be difficult. If you didn’t know the Shakespeare, you were reduced to following the story through Rhoden’s choreography and the lyrics David Rozenblatt coupled to his original music. Loud rock music with those lyrics, spiced with live improvisations by Arun Luthra on soprano sax, so good luck with that.
Fundamental rookie mistakes mar Rhoden’s storytelling. While paparazzi are easy enough to choreograph, try dancing the fact that you’re a one-hit wonder. Or an investor in Othello’s music entertainment corporation. More critical plot points remain buried in the character sketches: Emilia is a former model and Desdemona’s best friend. Rodrigo is an investor who hopes to buy Desdemona’s love. And Bianca, now a popstar rather than a courtesan, is hot for Othello instead of Cassio? You found out those things by catching up with Rhoden’s playbill text at intermission.
Considering all the gaffes that were engineered into Othello, what remained so stunning and unforeseen was how little they mattered. For this was easily the most visually arresting and dramatically compelling choreography that Rhoden has brought to us. Using ramps and risers, scenic designer Michael Korsch meshed beautifully with Rozenblatt’s score in evoking the pop world of concerts, award bashes, and partying. With Christine Darch’s bold costume designs, the MTV youth culture ambiance fused with the surreal visual language of a Batman flick.
And as the haze of narrative confusion lifted, the basic tensions and jealousies blazed. There was no mistaking the demonic malignity of Iago or his manipulation of Othello — even if Desdemona’s lost handkerchief was modernized into a necklace. If we didn’t exactly see what place Cassio occupied in Othello’s constellation, we could see how Iago played him with alcohol and how he used him ñ with timely help from Emilia and Bianca ñ to goad Othello into paroxysms of jealousy.
Rhoden is clearly stretching the envelope by incorporating video and closely-observed movie mannerisms into his choreography. But perhaps the most unusual aspect of Othello is the choreographer’s use of the 30-person cast as stagehands to keep the action flowing. The movement of the ramps and risers as cast members changed configurations for the 17 scenes — or whisked the furniture entirely offstage — had a poetry and lyricism of its own.
We are sometimes so blinded by how athletic and accomplished the NCDT troupers are as dancers that we overlook how fine they are as actors. Joseph Watson as Othello and Rebecca Carmazzi had all the right moves to convincingly transport the Shakespearean action from medieval Venice to an unspecified new-millennium metropolis. But David Ingram brought something extra — maybe Heath Ledger’s take on the Joker? — to his portrait of Iago. If all the scripted facets of Iago’s wife are an impossible assignment, Traci Gilchrest was still impressive in all the power and nuance she did deliver as Emilia. Unfettered by the chaste constraints of Desdemona, Seia Rassenti preserved the slutty essence of Bianca despite the rehab prescribed in Rhoden’s character sketch. Bless her heart.
If the hero was dark and disturbed by night at Belk Theater, NCDT made sure that our heroine, Snow White, was sunny and innocent by day. No Disney copyrights were defiled in the transformation of the animated Seven Dwarfs into ballet equivalents as they took on such aliases as Shyful, Drowsey, and Sinusy. Having disgorged such pabulum as Carnival of Animals and Peter and the Wolf in recent years, Mark Diamond is an old storytelling hand at NCDT.
So was it really asking too much, when Diamond shepherded Snow and her Prince Likeable© back to the Belk stage, for NCDT to finally patch up its most glaring flaw? Let’s inject some drama into the first act curtain. Ditto the entire second act.
With the Evil Queen lying in a heap and the poisoned Snow White awakened by her Prince, there was just one burning question for the mommies leading their toddlers into the lobby: is the show over, or is this intermission? Fortunately, there were ushers and concessions to settle the issue. When the curtain rose on Act 2, we were greeted by courtiers at the Prince’s place, all gathering for the royal wedding ñ a overlong interpretation of “and they lived happily ever after,” if you ask me. Luckily, they invited Giddy, Scratchy, Twitchy, and their brethren to the ceremony. Along with the cutesy forest animals, butterflies, and flowers.
Sarah James and Jhe W. Russell did all the mushy stuff and pas de deux as Snow and Prince, roundly upstaged by the more colorful supporting cast. Kylie Morton as Grouchy and Steven Boston as Giddy were an irritating lot, but there were compensatory pleasures to be found in Sam Shapiro’s Scratchy, Casie Wheeler’s Sinusy, and Carolina Rendon Okolova’s Twitchy.
With the superabundance of heroic wholesomeness, cutesy flora, cutesier fauna, and one-trick dwarves, Ian Grosh was welcome salt on a gooey, sugary landscape as the Evil Queen. The first magic mirror scene was a special treat: to say that the Evil One took the news badly would be an epic understatement.
Caroline Calouche & Co. did some dancin’ with the Bard on a smaller scale than NC Dance Theatre, allowing Shakespeare Carolina to hitch its wagon to their Spring Forward fundraiser staged last Friday night at a studio off Central Avenue. Not many plutocrats on hand for the festivities — a sure indication that Central Avenue-Plaza Midwood is becoming the happening place for edgier performing arts.
The show by the two companies was quite a potpourri, including a collaboration on a new piece, “Temperature Rising,” with Calouche choreography and Shakes Carolina musicians and original text. Jimmy Cartee and his Citizens of the Universe theater guerillas dropped in to stage excerpts from Gonzo: A Brutal Chrysalis, the Hunter S. Thompson fantasia that ran at The Graduate — at the Central Avenue-Plaza intersection — a couple of months ago. The Mitosis improv comedy duo, who served as the undercard for the Gonzo production, also performed a set of spontaneous skits.
After an intermission, we moved deeper into the funky office space at 1311 Central, where a second studio lurks, nearly as different from the first as Jackson Pollock’s studio would be from an Olan Mills. There the three Gonzo snippets sandwiched two aerial dances by the indefatigable Calouche. “Koi” was an aerial fabric solo by Calouche, and “Taking Flight” was an aerial fabric duet with Calouche and Amanda Rentschler. As impressive as aerial dance is at Booth Playhouse, where Calouche & Co. usually suspend themselves above the audience, watching the performances up close in a studio ambiance definitely enhances the excitement..
Look for Calouche & Co. to put their funds to use this fall. You don’t have to wait half that long for Shakespeare Carolina ñ they’re planning to stage Antony and Cleopatra at Theatre Charlotte in July.
Anyone reading this who might be a little puzzled or quizzical about aerial dancer Amanda Rentschler likely has a long memory. Rentschler distinguished herself in the pre-ImaginOn days of Children’s Theatre as Isabelle Fezziwig in Scrooge! The Musical during the holiday season of 2001 before her apotheosis a year later in the title role in Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. She re-introduced herself to me during intermission before shimmying up the aerial fabric and defying gravity with Calouche.
So now we know what happened to the onetime child star. She ran away to the circus!
This article appears in May 19-26, 2009.
