Word: dionysian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ballet did have some rough edges. For one thing, it was simply too long--the Dionysian assault upon the senses that is the work's major strength cannot possibly be sustained at full intensity throughout all 27 sequences; some of the texts could be eliminated without doing violence to the whole. And not only did the movement often bear a purely arbitrary relation to the music, but also it was internally inconsistent. There were occasional bland passages of traditional ballet figures, as well as moments of apparently random borrowing from other styles, such as Indian dance. Finally, the Harvard-Radcliffe...
...dream and nightmare, and the corresponding balance of the two directorial approaches, becomes evident. The second act opens with a fairy dance, choreographed by Cynthia Raymond. As dissonant, atonal music fills the room, dancers gyrate on stage, suggestively entwined. This sequence, no doubt intended to lend an erotic and Dionysian flavor to the production, never fully involves the audience; it is contrived and artificial...
...lead drummer (Junior Tshabalala) plays with galvanic fervor and propels the best number in the show, a warrior dance into a Dionysian frenzy. The cast appears to be having the best time of its urban life. It's a pity the pickets cannot see the show. T.E.K...
Your drama critic says that Glenda Jackson [May 5] has reduced Hedda Gabler's "Dionysian will to freedom" to a case of "suburban jitters." Is that a "travesty" or an updating? Hedda was trivialized before Ms. Jackson took her up. The "unfulfilled woman" has become a cliché, and that is indeed a tragedy...
...important of all, Hedda's self-hatred translates into a destructive hatred of others-her academic clod of a husband, George Tesman (Peter Eyre), for example, and her onetime lover, the writer Eilert Luvborg (Patrick Stewart). Her wrath stems from the fact that she has betrayed her own Dionysian will to freedom. She is an older Nora who failed to slam the door on parochialism, co vention and hypocrisy. Jackson reduces all that to the level of cocktail-party sarcasm and suburban jitters...