Aurélia's Oratorio

[magid]

I scored last-minute comped tickets to tonight's opening night performance of Aurélia's Oratorio (Aurélia Thierrée and Victoria Thierrée Chaplin*) at the ART. It's... I'm not sure what it is, exactly. The closest thing I can think of is Cirque de Soleil, with a lot fewer performers, and a lot more clothing play. In fact, fabric was central to this, whether it was the performance silks, the dresses the man danced with, the elaborate robes of the sedan chair bearers, the "snow" that kept falling and falling, the curtains that had such fantastical properties, or the clothes that kept being changed, sometimes worn by two people at once. With a smaller side obsession with tassels (I totally grok that).

The show is a mixture of contortion, dance, silks, puppetry, physical humor, music, and random bizarreness. It's practically wordless (the few words I caught I think weren't designed to be heard, really, since I barely heard them from the second row), everything told through actions and expressions. It's a series of shorter pieces, lightly linked together (another reason I thought of Cirque). Aurélia's character has strange things happen to her, inanimate objects acquiring a life of their own, as she happily meanders through.

Highlights:
* funny contortion in a bureau, three drawers high, as she put heels on and poured red wine
* her partner's apparent fascination with dancing with women's clothes instead of a live partner (and the time with the shoes and the fringed shirt)
* the curtains with all sorts of smaller openings
* the back curtains getting together and generating a baby curtain
* a reversal of the person in the puppet stage, with puppets forming the audience
* creepy puppets (now I'm thinking of the Dr. Who Talons of Weng Chiang adventure, which creeped me out in similar ways) overwhelming her
* clothing that was thrown off-stage in one direction only fall onstage from the other side
* climbing the curtains, and aerial moves (the moves not nearly so intricate as those by Klingonlandlady and Frobzwiththingz, but with interesting rigging)
* turning into dust in an hourglass
* upside down sedan chair with elaborately dressed bearers (those strange hats! plus beautiful robes)
* watering the laundry (I think I cracked up more than most; I wonder how many people in the audience have actually hung their laundry out on a rack like that)
* a pas de deux with contention over the ever-shifting double-sided coat
* sharing pants and a suit jacket, the colors carefully chosen to give the impression of one person (really, it was cooler than this sounds)
* the alarm clock music (all I could think of was the Muppetones)
* a model train going around and around and around... through her midsection
* human-size 'puppet stage' with ever-falling snow piling up (amazing quantities of patterned sheer white cloth), and white lacy marionette animals

Our seats were in the second row, which meant we could see a lot of detail (a definite plus), but there were things that definitely would have been better from farther back, either because I could see a bit too much of the things I wasn't supposed to focus on, or because the piece was better appreciated from a slightly higher angle with the stage. Still, it was an amazing performance! Two thumbs up. (And there are half-price tickets through ArtsBoston, if you're inclined to go :-)

* Yes, related to the Chaplin; his daugher. Aurélia is his granddaughter.

Show colors: red, black, and white (beautifully so, not in an oppressive way)
[d'oh: that should totally be "black and white and red all over"!]