Published Feb. 11--Think background music of chanted marketing slogans. Think costumes made out of TJ Maxx and Old Navy shopping bags. Think -- dance performance?

Most people probably wouldn't put rustling plastic bags and frantic messages to "buy, buy, buy" together with pirouettes and lifts, but most people probably have never seen a dance performance like the one in the works at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Called "Action/Reaction," the college's first main-stage dance performance of the past four years breaks through perceptions of traditional dance to give audiences something much more theatrical. Through a lens of dance, student performers tell 10 stories about relationships.

"I feel kind of like a proud mom," artistic director Rebecca Katz Harwood said about the production. "Each of these dances has a distinct sensibility, but they all share the desire to be expressive about something beyond the steps."

Despite the central theme of relationships, there is great variety among the pieces. One examines how a child begins to build a relationship with the world; another explores the human relationship to the seven stages of grief; another looks at the past obsession with dance marathons. Several different dance styles and music genres are weaved through the show as well, incorporating everything from modern dance and Big Band tunes to cameos of Britney Spears pop songs and hip hop.

Each had its own authentic creation experience, Katz-Harwood said.

Take the piece "Hunters and Gatherers," for example -- the one that managed to incorporate "Attention, Kmart shoppers" and various other marketing slogans into its final product. Ann Bergeron, a UMD faculty member and choreographer of the piece, said she was inspired by a sabbatical in Africa that allowed her the opportunity to witness the culture of the San Bushmen.

"I was so taken by the beauty of their culture and kind of got this idea to examine where hunting and gathering began with the Bushman and how it has turned into this culture obsessed with consumption of people and things," Bergeron said.

To do that, she had students bring in ads they found and asked them to share their own stories about objects to feed into a script for the performance. Performers chant lines from the script between acting as consumers and objects during the dance.

"I think this will broaden people's ideas of what dance is," Bergeron said about the collection of pieces. "There is pure dance, certainly, in the show but there is also more."

In another piece called "We are Slowly but Surely Achieving our Objective" students worked with guest choreographer Edisa Weeks to develop a piece about how citizens are affected by war. It ends with all of the dancers dying and falling in a heap on the stage.

"I give myself over to the dance and to the music and try and let go of my outside world so I can get into this little world we're creating on stage," Aly Westberg, a dancer in the show, said about becoming a character for the dance. She added that the show will give people a different way to connect to dance.

"A lot of dance is so technical it kind of takes the spirit out of it for me. This really puts the spirit back in," Westberg said. "It's like watching a bunch of tiny little plays told through dance."

Published October 24 2009

Review: UMD Theatres Sugar is delicious

Sugar is oh, so sweet.

It doesnt matter what you pick story, score, acting, singing, dance, costumes or set its satisfying and delicious. And then you have your tommy-gun-toting, tap-dancing murderous gangsters.

The University of Minnesota Duluth Theatre show, now running at Marshall Performing Arts Center, is Peter Stones adaptation of the movie Some Like It Hot by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. The delightful music is by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill.

The silly plot has a couple of Chicago musicians, Joe (Brian Kess) and Jerry (David Horn), witness the St. Valentines Day massacre and seek safety by dressing in drag to join an all-girl band headed to a gig in Miami Beach.

In roles virtually invented by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis for the movie, Kess and Horn walk a wire-thin tightrope, being credible as women for the other characters while remaining men to the audience. It helps that both possess some of the most shapely legs in the cast and navigate in high heels as well as a runway model.

In addition, both possess keen comedic skills and fine singing voices.

As Sugar, the role played by Marilyn Monroe in the movie, Emily Crom joins the rest of the cast in the position of second banana, but fills it gamely and sings well, although she was plagued during Fridays performance by microphone problems that several times had her voice swamped by the orchestra.

Thomas Rusterholz, the lead in last seasons Footloose, strutted his stuff again as Spats, the tap-dancing crime boss. His demise, after being accidentally machine-gunned by one of his own men, is a triumph of tap. Dan Bigwood gave the aging roues anthem, November Song, big voice and high style, and his Beautiful Through and Through duet with Horn was one of the shows highlights as he charmed and wooed the initially repulsed Jerry/

Daphne to a state of, at least, comfortable if conditional acceptance.

Director Kate Ufema has ordered up an old-fashioned, full-dress musical, with delightful dances,fabulous costumes and dazzling sets.

Rebecca Katz Harwoods choreography was fresh and lively.

Costume designer Erin Muhs has clad the cast in the finest 1930s styles of kicky dresses and double-breasted suits, all exquisitely fitted. Kess silver brocade is gorgeous and Hord is utterly stunning in his flouncy white cocktail dress.

Scenic designer Alex Rugowski has conjured up too many scenes to count, including a wonderful Pullman sleeping car, the veranda of a five-star Miami Beach hotel and the saloon of a millionaires yacht.

Theres no need to compare Sugar with the movie. It stands on its own.

Paul Brissett is a Duluth writer and amateur actor who has appeared in numerous community theater productions.

Published March 12 2010

Irish charm bests script flaws in Factory Girls

Despite a dreary story line and some first-play fumbles by playwright Frank McGuinness, Factory Girls is an entertaining and edifying play.

By: Paul Brissett, Duluth News Tribune

Despite a dreary story line and some first-play fumbles by playwright Frank McGuinness, Factory Girls is an entertaining and edifying play.

As directed by Tom Isbell, the production that opened Thursday at UMDs Marshall Performing Arts Center possesses charm in its Irish dialogue and resonance in its centering on working people plagued by the threat of layoffs.

The main characters are five women working in a County Donegal shirt factory, inspecting the finished products, snipping loose threads and folding the shirts for shipping a dozen shirts in 16 minutes, which management wants speeded up to 12 in 13. When threatened with layoffs and abandoned by their union, the women take over the plant managers office.

The instigator is Ellen (Kayla Cooper), tough and outspoken enough to lecture plant manager Rohan (David Horn) on business ethics and the fallacy of pursuing short-term gains. Her co-workers are Vera (Aly Westberg), working to help support a husband and two children; Una (Gracie Anderson), a spinster who lives with her 70-year-old sister and was Ellens rock when the latters three children died of tuberculosis; Rebecca (Cat Brindisi), a cheerful single who fixes her co-workers hair and memorably once coarsely told off an earlier, English, plant manager; and Rosemary (Karli Kolbert), a mercurial teen who keeps the older women supplied with shirts to be checked and runs their errands.

The women pass the time of their monotonous duties by sniping at one another, at times playfully, at others with serious bite.

Shes getting a tongue that could tar roads, Ellen says of Rosemary after the youngster sasses her.

When Una flings a vague insult at her, prompting Ellen to ask, Whats that supposed to mean, Una answers, I dont know, but Im glad it annoyed you.

The ambiguity of the relationships is clearest when Rebecca, minutes after fixing Unas hair, reacts to a comment by the older woman by inviting her to put a plastic bag over her head.

The dialogue is all delivered in an Irish accent that while of arguable authenticity is of agreeable consistency and, more important, doesnt impede understanding.

When Rohan informs the workers that if they dont achieve the higher production rate and possibly even if they can there probably will be layoffs (with Horn superbly expressing exasperation with crushing market forces), Ellen leads a rogue action to take over his office until he relents.

Act II takes place in the office, to which the factory is transformed by a particularly impressive bit of stagecraft by scenic designer Mariya Rose Hawks.

But it is also in the second act that McGuinness drops several stitches. As the women in their self-imposed isolation begin to doubt themselves individually and collectively, Ellen too abruptly and inexplicably abdicates her role as leader and the future of their action is left hanging as the play ends.

The fizzle in the script, however, does not detract from the sizzle of the performances.

Paul Brissett is a Duluth writer and amateur actor who has performed in numerous community theater productions.