Review: Graveyards and Gardens grows new rhythms in its live rendition, via vocoders, violas, and clicking lamps
Caroline Shaw and Vanessa Goodman play with the tension between the human and the mechanical
Caroline Shaw and Vanessa Goodman in Graveyards and Gardens. Photo by Dayna Szyndrowski. Photo courtesy Music on Main
Music on Main and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs present Graveyards and Gardens at the Fei and Milton Wong Theatre in SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts until April 15
IMMERSIVE SWELLS OF human voices and viola strings play off mechanical clicks and clacks in Graveyards and Gardens—a show that finds fascinating new rhythms in its live rendition, presented this week in the round at SFU Woodward’s.
The push and pull between nature and technology—potted plants and moving figures juxtaposed with vintage tape decks, record players, and lamps that circle the action onstage—becomes a driving theme in composer-musician Caroline Shaw and dance artist Vanessa Goodman’s two-hander. That contrast between the living and the mechanical becomes much more visceral and immediate seeing the work up-close and in-person. Audience members sit in the round, a circle of speakers sending the looping snaps and pops of a tape-deck lid opening and closing, ricocheting about the space and blending with the sustained notes that the artists unleash into their microphones.
Until now, Vancouverites have only had the chance to see the Music on Main-SFU Woodward’s coproduction during its livestream premiere in early 2021, when its American half, Shaw, could not get across the border to join Goodman on set. (Back then, the Pulitzer Prize-winning artist appeared by remote on a fittingly retro black-and-white portable TV set.)
Having both magnetic artists onstage brings a new feel of connection to Graveyards and Gardens, the two wearing orange jumpsuits that match the pylon-hued audio cord that snakes around the space. Shaw becomes as much an active participant in the performance as the dancer Goodman, not just vocalizing, but working from a console where she adds electro beats, morphs sounds, and cues found audio such as ocean waves. A few times she plays conductor, too, inviting the audience to hum along with her. (The crowd doesn’t hesitate.) It feels a lot less like a dance work than some new hybrid—an embodied sound experiment meets avant-garde concert meets conceptual-experiential art installation. Reflecting the themes, Goodman’s choreography is by turns mechanical and fluid, the orange cord often wrapping around her legs.
The show pushes into moving themes about how both mechanical devices and human bodies hold memory—but also how they all have a life cycle. Spoken-word in the piece alludes to returning to the Earth, to “marinating in memories”, and “recalibrating” after loss. Graveyards and Gardens explores mortality in associative, nonliteral ways—accessible yet somehow feeling avant-garde and underground (especially in the subterranean Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre).
Another huge benefit of the live experience of the show is bathing in the warm glow of James Proudfoot’s lighting design—the lamps’ sepia light clicking on and off, or dimming and brightening, the objects coming to life around you.
Graveyards and Gardens is at its most mesmerizing when its vocoder-warped voices rise and layer over the mechanical elements in the dreamlike, rec-room-lamp-lit circle. Shaw and Goodman’s ethereal voices complement each other beautifully, and it’s exhilarating as their singing releases and blends across the space. As much as the work is about cycles of life, in its live form, it ultimately feels like it’s a lot about connection and freedom. Catch this cool experience before the lights turn out.
Related Articles
