One of my best friends since college has been visiting me. He was a double-degree Music Composition and Philosophy major and is currently learning to play the cello. For the past few days, we've been talking a lot about Bach. I brought him with me to x2 last night, filling in the details of Mark's past work, including the first version of 2 at NW New Works a few years back and, fittingly, The Goldberg Variations. Not surprisingly, after the performance, our conversation turned to repetition and variation.

There's a giant intellect hammering away inside the slim form of Charles Smith. Angelic troubadour on display along with the other old world instruments merrily pinging small hammers, filling our entrance into the studio theater with a birdsong of lilting, sweet thrumming. Warming up, his delicate, precise hands nevertheless apparently sometimes hit the wrong keys...as his face will tell you. Grimace, eyes widening, a shrug, slight sigh...begin again. The performance is already afoot as I can see personality at play and in connection with his instrument.

What better time in history than in our currently tea drenched political landscape, littered with the detritus of the American Revolution, could choreographer Dayna Hanson find an audience willing to throw themselves overboard for an eccentric piece of choreographic historical revisionism?

by Mary Hubbard