Word: tans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...dance breaks offer some of Tan's best images. Ambiguously titled things like "The Happy End," or "Lethargy" or "Mundanity," they are well-choreographed interludes of modern dance movement. The music includes David Byrne, Brian Eno, and Philip Glass...
Straightlines moves from extreme to extreme, at times engaging us with excellent visual images, at times tiring us with repetiton. Tan could have edited and shaped the show to be more consistently stimulating...
Some of the images Tan creates are effective portraits. In one piece, called "Positron," two twins, one wearing white, the other black, slowly dance to Philip Glass' "Metamorphosis One," and exchange clothes. Then one twin carries the other off the stage...
Even if we occasionally wonder if some of the scenes were created around what Tan found in the American Repertory Theater prop room, we are often startled by their power...
...with a different set of expectations and a little patience, Straightlines is an enjoyably different and sometimes extremely creative performance. The purpose of art, is has been said, is to disturb, not reassure. Tan will not reassure us with convention. This is not a "regular play," and if the playwright leaves us shifting in our seats and glancing at one another, maybe it is we who should readjust...