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Arts & Entertainment
Copyright © 1998 The Seattle Times Company Posted at 05:55 a.m. PDT; Friday, June 26, 1998 Fantastic instruments inspire music, dance by Mary Murfin Bayley Seattle Times dance critic Dance review: "Kinesis,'' Lela Performance Group, (now Lelavision) Lela Studio, 701 34th Ave., Seattle. 206-329-3724. When composer and sculptor Ela Lamblin, who was home-schooled in the mountains of Southern Oregon, was 6, his father made him a deal. He wouldn't buy Ela any toys, but he'd help him make anything he wanted. Lamblin attributes his love of creating fantastic objects to the hands-on environment of his childhood. Watching Lamblin wrest strange and lovely music from his array of goofy instruments during "Kinesis" - now in its final weekend at the Lela Studio - the sense of childhood play, of concentrated horsing-around, is very much in evidence. It's a quality that is an essential element of truly inspired art-making. Not that Lamblin and his collaborator, choreographer Leah Mann, aren't serious. But their work has a freshness and unexpectedness that is essentially playful in its approach. Whether hanging upside down from suspended hoops, or shaking glass jars full of BBs, they convey a sense of discovery. The choreography is built around the idea that the movement, instead of being performed to a musical score, arises from playing the instruments. So when performers Lynelle Sjoberg, Stephen Grassley and Emily Herb (along with Lamblin and Mann) play their rattles, the shapes they take - crawling along the stage floor like commandos in the field, or waving their arms like cheerleaders - are all to emphasize the sounds of their instruments. For an instant, they line up neatly according to pitch, the pitch varying by how tightly the balloon is stretched across the top of the jar, and then spin off again finding other ways to elicit sound. The effect of this concentration on listening is that of seeing sound as shape. The long, drawn-out notes of a bulbous stringed instrument have a round meowing sound at their culmination. The metal hoops ring like chimes as they roll across the stage. Even the summer sounds outside the studio, a loud car radio or a siren, seem to fit in. The finale of the evening, a segment that premiered at On The Boards Northwest New Works Festival this spring, is the playing of a 35-foot harp that stretches across the back of the stage. The metal strings are too thin to see. The performers appear to move randomly up and down or turn in circles as their gloved hands pull long notes from the strings, as if they were inside a harp or violin. The exotic instruments and the sense of charged playfulness make this show a good choice for both kids and adults. |