Pretensions wasn't sure what to expect from this avowedly avant-garde dance production. Not being a great fan of the modernist movement, she was drawn to this concert by the music; a blend of Mozart's classical "Requiem in D Minor" and the more modern Preisner "Requiem for My Friend". Dancers in swimsuits meet classical music and modern film-score composer? A recipe for dischord? Not necessarily. The Slovene National Theatre Opera chorus dealt admirably with both Requiems (which were sung in turn), giving them a rich full-bodied sound, although they weren't always quite in sync with the S'pore Festival Orchestra. Having never heard the Preisner before Pretensions found it very moving, drawing on the best movie music traditions to evoke the emotions. Musically, the evening was a triumph, from the sonorous tolling of church bells in the Preisner, to the high peals of the trumpets announcing judgement in the Requiem; it was easy to get lost in the soundscape. The soprano soloist, Sabina Cvilak, did particularly well; her silvery tones perfectly matching the dawning of everlasting light in the Mozart and soaring over the chorus in the Preisner. The abrupt ending of the Mozart Lacrymosa in darkness was a shock and statement in contrast. Choreographer and dancer Edward Clug seems to have a dystopian view of society, judging by his dancers' twitching limbs and jerky spasmodic movements. Pretensions found this most disturbing in the opening movement of the Mozart where the movements seemed to fit neither the music or the words. However, the coordinated body tilts in the Rex Tremendae seemed to fit his view of a disfunctional society that fragments appropriately in the Confutatis. Some scenes basically collapsed into a bedlam or Bedlam of Parkinson-like body twitches and prone bodies. The dancers wore swim caps and swimming costumes which made them appear strange gender-less objects. The swim gear was covered initially by natty purple dresses and suits which were discarded during the Mozart. The end of the Mozart was heralded by the entry of a lady in White who proceeded to unwind a tape across the end of the stage; the first of a series of such restrictions that eventually divided the stage into a tic-tac-toe grid, each with a single or pair of dancers that had their own time in the spotlight. The Lady in White added her own percussion to the Preisner by dropping stones into a tank of water at regular intervals, a technique that worked better at some points then others. The water motif returned at intervals, with a dancer standing in the tank for the finale, while the LIW padded dramatically across the back of the stage scattering water droplets over the prone dancers. The Esplanade Concert Hall was certainly not full and Pretensions heard people ask the ushers about moving down to occupy empty seats, but given that this was only an hour plus performance with no interval, it hardly seemed worth making a fuss. Those that were there certainly seemed to enjoy it 'tho, and to her surprise, Pretension s was one of them. The Architecture of Silence returns for one final performance on Saturday 31st of May.
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The speaker, Vladimir Mironov, is a medical doctor and research scientist at the Medical University of South Carolina. He has pioneered techniques of robotically placing aggregates of cells on specially treated slides, which then grow together, more or less keeping the shapes they'd been put in. In this way, he has managed to obtain facsimiles of branching blood vessels and even kidney tubules. Other researchers coined the term organ printing, because they adapted ink jet printers to squirt the cells onto the slides.
