Review: Cellist Maya Beiser and dancer Wendy Whelan in a 9/11 work like no other
"Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, six years after 9/11. Though two of the most significant American events this century, they are seldom connected. Doing so Friday at Royce Hall proved then all the more telling when Kristy Edmunds introduced the evening’s presentation by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, which she administers.She asked that we turn off our cellphones, not for the usual reason — that they are distracting to performers and other members of the audience. No, they are distracting to their owners. Just thinking about taking a photo, she said, prevents you from being in the moment, or in this case, in “The Day.”
This abstract new 60-minute performance piece for cellist Maya Beiser and ballerina Wendy Whelan, composed by David Lang and choreographed by Lucinda Childs, is like no other 9/11 work. You wouldn’t even know the 9/11 connection without reading Beiser’s program note or sticking around afterward for the Q&A with the four artists.
“The Day” is not a memorial. It is hardly a requiem, although it ends with Whelan gracefully rolling herself into a gauzy shroud, an affecting image that sticks for its sheer gorgeousness. “The Day” is not about yesterday, even if its text, crowd-sourced from the internet, serves to remind us of what plausibly might be a day in the life of dozens of everyman and everywoman victims of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. “The Day” may be slightly about tomorrow, in that Lang wondered what journey in the Bardo these souls may be on. Our job in the audience then became to wonder how we fill the holes they left behind."— Mark Swed, Oct. 20, 2019
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Los Angels Times website.
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