Word: prayerful
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...vivid sense of the Kowalski's home with minimal fuss. On side of the stage supports a grainy two-story photograph of a typical French Quarter house, which contains the entrance to the Kowalski's apartment, as well as the neighbors' window to which Stanley offers his infamous anguished prayer, "Stella!" The other is devoted to the apartment, accurately sketched through concise set decoration and attention to period accessories. Heidi Curran's costumes (notably Blanche's, from a chic Brattle Street boutique) further locate the piece in time and place...
...performance is Alvin Ailey's famous "Revelations" (1960), set to the music of a number of African-American spirituals. This piece examines all manners of religious feeling, from tormented writhing and running of three men trying to outrun the flames of hell, to the unity of a prayer group, excitement of an impending religious celebration and the joy of a church meeting...
...Revelations" is amazing. Its African-inspired movement is fluid and stunning, with the dancers forming shapes evocative of religious fervor, from prayer tableaux to crucifixion. The dancers move regally in gorgeous unison as the light bathes the stage, moving from sunlight to moonlight. The joy of the final church meeting segment is infectious, and carries through the ending curtain call. Tuesday's audience was wildly receptive and rightfuly...
...much in vocabulary and gesture to Liszt and Wagner. But the seams show, and the intended grandeur is painfully strained. On the other hand, a charming violin fantasy anticipates Debussy. And the songs--which were written mostly between 1861 and 1864 (though the moving Prayer to Life dates from 1882) and set to poems by Nietzsche himself, Ruckert, Pushkin and others--are genuinely affecting...
...climactic paintings of the early '60s, like Monastery, 1961, and Monsoon, 1961-62, abstractness prevails more, but there are still traces of figures within the cells of Monastery; a kind of prayer hum seems to emanate from its gray congested surface, suggesting collectivity through the soft friction of forms. Monsoon encases a memory of the nightmare raft trip, with a disjointed white calligraphy playing, slower than lightning, over the darkness behind it. Its movements seem just on the point of incoherence, as though an already indeterminate Cubist space had been subject to unbearable stress. But it doesn't fall apart...