Word: monke
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...CELEBRATION SERVICE By Meredith Monk At Sanders Theatre April...
...about the 350 pages you haven't read, your roommate endlessly analyzing why Miss Right never looks at him in the e-mail line at Lamont, or the "Spare Change" man by Au Bon Pain going "ooh, beautiful ladies!" someone's always talking. So maybe that's why Meredith Monk's "A Celebration Service"--an interdisciplinary performance based around Monk's powerful non-verbal vocalizations held at Sanders on April 23--was so refreshing...
...maybe it was that my feet hurt. A hectic Harvard schedule, three-inch heeled boots and hard cement walkways don't usually combine to produce happy feet at the end of the day, and Friday night was no exception. So when a satin and linen-clad chanter from Monk's ensemble recited a 20th century Hasidic saying in a soothing voice, I felt like I was receiving free counseling for the world-weary. "Put off thy shoes from thy feet," he chanted as contented audience members rustled with laces, "put off the habitual which encloses your foot and you will...
Certainly Monk is not the first to deem this ground holy, as any number of euphoric pre-frosh wandering around last weekend demonstrated. But one of the hallmarks of the performance was Monk's uncanny ability to infuse the everyday with a simple, unadorned spirituality. The Service, according to Monk's literature, "celebrates the universal quest for spirituality" with a mixture of seemingly simple choral chants, organ music, processionals and poems that span both history and religion. With the combination of these differing elements Monk successfully avoids the always enticing "universal answer for spirituality" so popular with televangalists...
...idea of "sacred spaces"--spaces that Monk says can be "everywhere and anywhere"--is a constantly recurring theme in Monk's work, a reflection of her 15 years of meditation. In "Celebration Service", Monk used the space offered by Sanders completely, placing singers at the edge of the upper balcony, in the aisles next to the audience and at one point even placing the two chanters on the catwalk above the stage...