"Gravel combined challenging contemporary dance, new music reminiscent of Death Cab for Cutie and other twee indie artists, rock and roll music, classical music, silence, rock show lighting, champagne, formal wear, and personal addresses to the audience that made for a visceral experience unlike any other I’d had in a long time."

Read a review of Usually Beauty Fails at the Catherine Blake Smith blog.

The context of personal memory, experience, and where you are currently at in your development as a human has everything to with how you view and digest art. For most of you ready, I am sure that is a given, but just in case… During this piece, I just couldn't seem to get out of my head when the piece really wanted me to get into my body.  I mean there is rock music and nudity for Christ's sake.  I can see why OTB asked me to blog about this show.  Aspects of this piece were like looking into the mirror at my artist self in my 20's.  The piece had a very promising beginning.

The piece was a minimalist in its expression of emotions floating in the ampleness of physicality. In some way I felt it was an idealized world of perfect young bodies, yet it never lost its openness to emotional vulnerabilities – like a delicate bubble of dreams, one second everyone was beautiful, healthy, and wild, and the next second nothing felt much real and the party became emptiness walking in high heels. 

Generally I get overly excited to see shows, however, I have been finding recently that my excitement sets me up for some sort of disappointment so yesterday as I was walking into OtB I tried to completely enter as a blank slate, which was hard to do yesterday as I was completely exhausted and a bit bummed that I was flying solo to the show, but regardless I tried really hard….so just to give you some context.  

Here are my thoughts after sleeping on the show: