Showing posts with label shuttles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shuttles. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Paper moon

Satyagraha was utterly magical.  That's the Times review, click through and watch the video if you have some spare minutes - I don't know that it conveys how lovely the music is, but it does give some approximate sense of the beauty of the mise-en-scene, especially the puppetry and the use of paper and other inexpensive props (I do not know that I have ever seen a better use of paper in a stage production).  It is later in Gandhi's life than his South African career that he would become strongly associated with the handloom, but there is a particularly beautiful scene that involves something like tape being wound back and forth across the stage like the warp on a simple mechanical loom - it is beautiful!

(I often think during a good masters swim workout that the pool exudes an industrious vibe much like a loom - this opera, too, gave me the feeling of structure and variation that is part of what I particularly enjoy about a very good swim workout.  Expansive, opening, industrious!)