Dance: Daring Different
If the world of dance has you feeling complacent, Keigwin + Company is coming to the Leeward Community College Theatre to shake things up. Their style is playful, snazzy, wild, the result of founder Larry Keigwin’s own exciting background – dancing on Club MTV, choreographing for the Rockettes, staging models at New York Fashion Week, and dabbling in gymnastics and circus training. And so he allows his dancers to experiment, lending their own fun and funky ideas to the creation process.
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“The group’s promo video (at LCCTheatre.hawaii.edu/keigwincompany.html) gives a sense of what is so appealing about these guys,” says theater manager Joe Patti. “What I like about Larry Keigwin is that he takes his inspiration wherever he finds it and doesn’t seem to worry about something being widely acknowledged before he uses it. One reason the company might be attracting younger audiences is because he is willing to go out on a limb and experiment mixing M.I.A. with Steve Reich – he integrated music Juilliard students were dancing to outside of practice.”
The process of choosing to feature Keigwin + Company included partnering with UHHilo and Maui Arts and Cultural Center to review DVDs, travel to conferences, view the performances and talk with the artists. By the end of the three-month process, the group had hands down settled on making K + C available to a Hawaii audience.
The four pieces that will be performed include “Caffeinated,” which, according to Patti, “involves a lot of coffee cups,” and is set to the music of Philip Glass; “Love Songs,” set to Roy Orbison, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone (“All love songs, of course!,” says Patti); “Contact Sports,” set to songs by Eartha Kitt; and excerpts from “TRIPTYCH,” with music by Jonathan Melville Pratt.
“I don’t know what the company would say the theme is,” says Patti, “but they dance to some of the coolest, soulful musicians around.”
the KEIGWIN COMPANY
When: Jan. 19 at 8 p.m.
Where: Leeward Community College Theatre (96-045 Ala Ike St.)
Cost: $15-$30 (discounts with advance purchase)
More Info: 455-0385, LCCTheatre.hawaii.edu
ALSO SHOWING
Sexy Farce
When you’re standing under an awning during a downpour and you finally have to run through sheets of rain to get to your car because you realize it’s never going to let up – that’s what the actors had to do at Manoa Valley Theatre’s Boeing Boeing. The laughter was so continuous, the actors paused a bit and finally had to deliver their lines over the uproarious bellowing.
After a lull of a production with Speed the Plow, Boeing is a welcome blast into the new year. In the superb, comedic hands of Elitei Tatafu Jr., the show grabs hold of the audience from the opening scene, and with a mix of sultriness, fast-paced action, hilarious characters and stage stunts that require split-second timing, he keeps the house transfixed right till the curtain closes.
Mathias Maas as Bernard is not quite the heartthrob who’d get the hearts and pantyhose of a trio of winsome stewardesses (not flight attendants, this is the ’60s) all in a tizzy. Perhaps not casting an Adonis lets Everyman picture himself rotating a fetching French sex kitten, redheaded, red-blooded American and wildcat German in one door and out the other, literally, according to their flight schedule. And that’s where the action ramps into overdrive. The latest Boeing aircraft technology makes for a faster jet, causing a timetable mess for Bernard. Shannon Winpenny sets the tempo as maid Bertha, shuffling the wall photo and menu according to the mistress at hand. Her character is the exclamation mark that precedes every belly laugh. Ken Roberts as Robert, an old friend of Bernard’s, turns up by happenstance and quickly finds his orthodox values crumbling as he becomes embroiled in the passionate goings-on.
The production runs through Jan. 27, with tickets costing $15-$30 (988-6131, manoavalleytheatre.com).
