{"id":4219,"date":"2017-03-01T07:01:37","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T15:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=4219"},"modified":"2017-03-01T07:01:37","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T15:01:37","slug":"shout-out-for-the-art-critic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=4219","title":{"rendered":"Shout Out for the Art Critic"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Our family had an imaginary friend, the Legozwerg, who could be plied with nuts, left\u00a0out overnight, to produce some pretty amazing Lego creations. Nuts for the Legozwerg<\/em>\u00a0became an often used and obviously ambiguous phrase – we were nuts for him, but also left nuts\u00a0out for him.<\/p>\n

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Replace Legozwerg with\u00a0art critic<\/em>, and you have my admiration for what they pull off, particularly when doing performance reviews. Not only do I go nuts for them, they also have tough nuts to crack – given that things move forward in time, need to be assessed quickly and then remembered. They have to attend to so many different aspects of \u00a0a performance, and never more so than when they watch a ballet. The music, the dancing, the choreography, the costuming, the stagecraft, the link to history or the daring deviation from it – my head spins just\u00a0thinking about it and I haven’t even twirled once around my room.<\/p>\n

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I have the privilege of being friends with someone, Martha Ullman West, who writes first-rate reviews; \u00a0I thought I’d link to one that exemplifies for me what good performance writing is all about: critical analysis, deepening our understanding of the emotional as well as the artistic core of a piece, and providing occasion for both learning and fun.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.orartswatch.org\/in-stride-a-tight-bright-nutcracker\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Unfortunately I could not find a videoclip of the OBT version\u00a0that worked in the blog due to privacy settings – but they are out there on VIMEO…<\/p>\n

And while looking for other fitting examples of Nutcracker productions, I learned that there is an “Annual Battle of the Nutcrackers” where you can choose the ballet most to your liking from 4 or 5 contenders (presented by a channel called Ovation. Hhm. ). I picked some more traditional and a contemporary version – hope you enjoy them.<\/p>\n