UMO MUSIC:
It Came Right Through Me*
mp3
real audio
* from the CD UMO Unplugged
UMO VIDEO:
Body Inheritance promotional video produced by Jason Reep
real video
 Photo: Mark Van S. |
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BODY INHERITANCE is a celebration of the body as a vehicle for memories, real and imagined, of family, of culture, and of the earth that are inscribed and imprinted within us. As a seamless progression of poignant vignettes and striking images unfolds, Body Inheritance weaves a rich and vibrant tapestry of raw physicality, poetic text, vocal and sonic virtuosity and dynamic aerial imagery. In a world where elements of nature are sculpted into a breathtaking and musically elegant setting, performers create visual poetry on a circus "cloudswing" - a soft rope loop swing suspended 8 feet above the ground - and a 'Spanish Web' - a vertical counterpart to the cloudswing. In a compelling mix of playfulness, risk and revelation, the stories, wisdom and mysteries we carry in our bodies, from skin to muscle to bone to dust, are revealed. Whether drawing from the rich treasure chest of family histories or tracking and witnessing the movement, stories and sounds inspired by body cells and systems, Body Inheritance is an invocation of the body as a link between the temporal and the eternal. "An archetypal journey from womb to tomb that's fascinating to watch, ...an exquisite balancing of virtuosity and vulnerability." Seattle Times "Body Inheritance displays the qualities that make UMO extraordinary: an astonishing combination of ensemble work and individual expression." -SeattleWeekly "Done with tremendous grace and poignant humor, ...Body Inheritance plumbs the riddles that puzzle us all." -Seattle Post-Intelligencer "The show was beautiful, eliciting 'ooh's' and 'ahh's' from the audience every couple of minutes." -The Stranger, Seattle THE SEATTLE TIMES - Tempo/Theater At One With the Movement Theater review "BODY INHERITANCE" by the UMO Ensemble. Directed by Mary Forcade. Thursdays-Sundays through June 22 (extra show on June 18), On the Boards, 153 14th Ave.;206-463-212& By MISHA BERSON A row of bare, muscled torsos sway expressively in the dim light. A cluster of agile bodies embrace on a swinging rope, like a clan of monkeys on a tree limb or a clump of blossoms on a stem. A woman with a goofy grin becomes a floppy, boneless puppet dragged across the floor and manipulated by another woman. Voices rise in layered harmonies, crooning: "I like death in the aftenoon." Whether singing, swinging through the air or straddling and skidding on terra firma, the UMO Ensemble achieves an intense, multifaceted physicality in its intriguing new work, "Body Inheritance." Every year or two this exploratory Vashon Island-based performing troupe emerges with a new excursion into the quirky and unexpected regions of the mime and movement zone. Riffing on 'bodyjazz' In its current, long-in-the-making work at On the Boards, the company employs an arsenal of movement skills - some airbone, some earth-bound acquired from recent studies in "body jazz," contact improvisation, circus techniques and other physical venaculars. Accompanied by continually strange and arresting sounds on original instruments (constructed and performed by Ela Lamblin), and vividly mapped out for the stage by director Mary Forcade, this dream- like "body landscape" achieves at its best an exquisite balancing of virtuosity and vulnerability. While the echoes here of the dance theater, body-mind experiments of such noted artists as Martha Clarke and Pilobolus may not be too original, they are pleasurable to see. It's only when the performer creators pin words and concepts on corporeal images better left to speak for themselves that "Body Inheritance" stumbles out of the meditative state it also induces. The buffoons and masked characters featured in earlier UMO shows are banished here. Instead the attractively fit and agile ensemble - Esther Edelman and Janet McAlpin (who co-conceived the piece), and cohorts Martha Enson, David Godsey, Kevin Joyce and Bradley McDevitt - appears before us open-faced, bare-limbed and (briefly, artfully) in the buff. They are fascinating to watch. In short sequences clearly developed through improvisation, the performers flex their bodies electric in a neo-primitive terrain designed by Lamblin. A wardrobe of filmy white clothes hangs in one comer. Piles of small stones line the perimeter of the playing area, as if to mark off a sacred tribal circle. Another scenic element is the archway of stones hanging on taut strings, which At another point, a pair of the men tell tall tales, while the female alter-egos sitting atop their shoulders caress, smack and tug at the fibbers' faces.
Phantom figures
A rope "cloud swing" and a horizontal trapeze afford displays of limberness and freedom. And when garbed in their gauzy white garments, or dusted in powdery chalk like Butoh dancers, the moving figures become eerie, phantomlike.
In spurts the performers speak, too, chanting and shouting non- sense phrases ("I'm digging a hole and shouting into it!"), names, desires. The words add little, though, and sometimes break the overall spell.
While "Body Inheritance" could be analyzed as an archetypal journey from womb to tomb, the show sits much better when allowed to settle in subliminally where its sensual pleasures float free.
More press:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, interview 11 Sept. 98
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