Went to see Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Savion Glover and The Harlem Globetrotters this month. My wife and I saw them with 3 separate friends with whom we experienced three somnambulistic reactions. LBM at the Tilles Center started out great with their deep-toned syncopation -and then slowly, as the night progressed, managed to put us into a trance state. We, and the rest of the audience, were waiting for some of the Paul Simon collaborations but only one was sung -and all the other tunes were great only if you happened to want to meditate. Our friend Barbara fell asleep and hallucinated. Our African experience at the off-Broadway show, Drumstruck, was the exact opposite. Everyone in the audience got a drum and no one, but I mean NO ONE, got a chance to so much as blink. The activity was frenetic and energetic.
Savion Glover at the B. B. King Blues Club was inexhaustible. His tap-dancing banter with the jazz band on the stage was a remarkable feat (no pun intended) of musical communication. But even here, after a while (close to two hours), we started to feel the repetition of the rhythmic steps and began to wish that there were other elements to the show . The more I watched Savion, the more I compared him to Gregory Heinz... and the more I realized that his steps were "heavier" than Gregory's. Gregory's moves were so much "lighter" and effortless. Savion's steps were loud and "stomped out", pressed hard into the stage floor. Andrea, our friend, became bored. The customary applause was provided and we quietly left the place with the other 200 "tourists" and emptied out onto the welcome chill of 42nd Street. En route to the train, I stopped off at one of the other theaters and what appeared to be "mysterious behaviour" on my part to our friend Andrea and my wife, soon became a remarkable exhibition of faith. I had lost my hat in here, about 8 months ago, and decided to take a chance that it might have been found and remarkably stored for my eventual arrival. AND, it was! Now THAT was exciting.
My wife got 4 free tickets to see The Harlem Globetrotters at Nassau Colleseum -so we asked Arnie and Harriet to come with us to the extravaganza. These guys were good... even though all the basketball clowning was staged... the acrobatics were GREAT! Many cute interactions with the kids from the audience as well as one funny "kiss and tell" adult-moment. We particularly enjoyed the Hot Boys' acrobatic trampoline basket-stuffings. These three guys were unbeliveable in their precise coordination during the half-time show. Globie, the clown was filling in the gaps between periods as "it" pranced around the court for laughs. Yet here too, our friend, Arnie, was "sawing Zzzzzz's"!?! Oh well, maybe the spicy pizza after the show will get him going -one way or another.
... did someone say Winter doldrums?
No comments:
Post a Comment