The Boston Globe has a full report on a new comics/dance collaboration, to wit: Art Spiegelman, lit comics mainstay, is teaming with the famed Pilobilus dance troupe for a “multimedia homage to early-20th-century cartoons” called “Hapless Hooligan in ‘Still Moving’,’’ which premieres Thursday at Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center for the Arts. The piece will feature characters based on Happy Hooligan, and Little Lulu and includes an homage to early animator Oskar Fischinger. Pilobilus is known for its abstract, athletic dance, and this piece includes dancers interacting with projected word balloons and other comics elements.
Spiegelman had to get comfortable with the translation of comics to the three-dimensional world, but he explains it in highly quotable ways:
“Animation is so locked in,’’ Spiegelman says. “It’s as if these six dancers had a seventh dancer, and the seventh dancer is an absolute idiot and can’t, like, adjust his movements to them, so they have to keep trying to keep that moron from looking as stupid as he is. And it’s really hard for them, because it’s so precise.’’
The three-night run is sold out, but tickets may be released Thursday and Friday. More info here.
Wasn’t there a Krazy Kat ballet in the 1930s?
I remember Art telling about wanting to stage a “opera” at one point– another time a “liberetto” that was about ten years ago–glad to see it has finally come to fruition in this form…I couldn’t imagine how he’d pull it off, and wondered over the years if he was still trying to do it…looks cool.
I’d rather have Chris Ware sing about Architecture…
/wonders what Frank Zappa’s review would’ve been
Paul: Art’s opera or musical was “Drawn To Death.” I don’t think this is quite the same concept; that was more about the EC stable and their ignominious fates. I saw a preview of it in 2000 & wrote a series of articles for Savant riffing off the ideas behind it. They seem to be gone from the Savant site (which still irks me somewhat), but you can find them at these links:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080605155148/www.savantmag.com/28/rant.html (You’re actually mentioned in this one.)
http://web.archive.org/web/20080605155158/www.savantmag.com/29/essay.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20080605155229/www.savantmag.com/31/action.html
as a theater professional and a love a comics, i want to see much much more of this
and much much less about “spiderman the musical”
Whatever happened to Art’s “Comic Rock Opera”?
Hey Ken–thanks–I’ll follow those links and catch up.