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The youngest audience I've ever seen at an evening performance at the Lied Center gathered to witness the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange present Ferocious Beauty: Genome.  Long an advocate of innovation and experimentation in dance, Liz Lerman fearlessly challenges our notion of a typical dancer.  Including dancers of all ages and abilities, she features a company of human movers able to stretch the limits of our preconceptions.   It is her focus on understanding what it means to be physically human and her effort to interpret our condition through kinesthetic movement that makes her work so valuable.

The University of Kansas has been actively striving for more cross disciplinary collaborations, particularly between the arts and sciences.  The Spencer Museum of Art and the Lied Center joined forces last year to examine climate change and global warming. Ferocious Beauty: Genome along with the family program Darwin the Dinosaur presented in September, fit nicely into the evolution exhibit at the Natural History Museum and the annual Origin of Species celebration which will kick off next week.

Ferocious Beauty: Genome was a multi-media mix of live dancers and on-screen projections.  The projections functioned as animated backdrops, documentary-style interviews with scientists, power point signage, close-ups of dancers and even mini movies.  They allowed the audience to see details on stage that might otherwise have been lost. For example, the dancers literally unzipped the genome, represented by dancers wearing white costumes with zippers, and revealed the secrets of life written on the each other's flesh. The oversized projections effectively allowed the audience to read the secrets thereby adding an extra dimension of clarity and interest to the performance.   

The dancers were an eclectic mix of souls striving to embody the human story from sub-atomic particles to death.  The writing was well conceived and thought provoking. Among the best bits were when dancers took on characters and delivered monologues that were a mix of performance art and standup comedy.  Miss Tata, clad in a black leather ensemble complete with a whip, represented the importance of sex in the genome.  The whip was her strand and she cracked it with authority.

Unfortunately, neither the projections nor the efforts of the dancers could distract me from the ear splitting volume of the soundtrack.  Just 10 rows from the four foot speaker on stage, I felt like I was at a Rolling Stones concert. After a few minutes I moved to the "bus balcony" where single file seats flank the house.  The floor was vibrating so I headed to "the attic" and chose one of the highest seats in the house to avoid the deafening distortion and it was still too loud.  Escape was futile. My ears were buzzing all of the way home. 

Excessive volume in live performance soundtracks is a health concern for young and old. We only have five senses to experience our world. Losing a percentage of ones hearing at a theater or hall just isn't acceptable.  Audiences are silent victims trained not to move from seats during performances. The high volume level detracted from the performance and put me in physical pain - and I'm sure that wasn't Liz Lerman's intention.  Is volume setting the responsibility of the artistic director, the production assistant or someone on staff at the Lied center?  Whomever IS  responsible needs to be aware of the negative effects this can have on our very sensitive sense of hearing.  Do us all a favor and turn it down, then we can focus on what is important, the dance.


REVIEW:
Liz Lerman Dance Exchange
Ferocious Beauty: Genome
Saturday, November 7, 2009
The Lied Center at the University of Kansas
www.lied.ku.edu

Top Photo by Kevin Kennefick

By Megan Browne Helm

Classical, Vocal and Theatre Contributor

Megan Browne Helm grew up singing, dancing and acting.  Inspired by Emma Kirkby as a high school student in St. Louis she went on to study voice and sing with the Collegium Musicum at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio where she also had a radio show of contemporary classical music on WOBC.  At the University of Kansas she had the pleasure of working with former Kings’ Singer, Simon Carrington in his Collegium Musicum and Oread consort. Years later, she was a choral fellow at the Yale School of Music’s  Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.  She is currently singing with the Kansas City Symphony Chorus under the direction of Charles Bruffy. 

 As a freelance music and culture writer her work can be found on KCMetropolis.org, presentmagazine.com, the Lawrence Journal World, Shawnee Magazine, Leawood Lifestyle Magazine and KC Parent.  She was one of 26 journalists in the country chosen as a NEA Institute Fellow for Classical Music and Opera at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Her current interest is how classical music remains relevant through active collaborations with artists in different fields, including science.  She also sees a connection between classical music, travel and food as a way to engage all of the senses in a 360 degree cultural experience.  She blogs at raworganum.wordpress.com.