This is what it was like in the wake of The Orpheus Project. I say wake because that was what it was-I wasn't cursed with the typical tiredness and post-performance apathy towards the material that I usually encounter when I attend any number of concerts or performances, student-run or otherwise. It was like I had fallen face down in it, churning waves and rippling tides behind a boat racing underneath a bruised and violent sky. The world was literally having thunderstorms and earthquakes while Palko and her crew were making this come into fruition, claps of disaster flanked by beauty. I found it apropos in the spirit of creation and, moments after the lights went down, it became a context that was indeed all the more fitting.
Presented by amherst works (alongside a David Henry Hwang piece, "F.O.B.") and produced by the now ubiquitous Jamie O'Brien '02, The Orpheus Project was written, directed, choreographed and costumed by Palko. Based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (think Ovid, Edith Hamilton, etc.), the Project is a momentum laden synthesis of ballet and theater which explores all those things that make a world with love in it great-you know, obsession, death, the underworld, all of that stuff. Palko's undertaking is all the more impressive when you consider how much original work was put into all of the devastatingly beautiful details.
The costumes, designed by Palko and sewn by herself and the dancers, were brilliant. Some were simple (Joe Gallegos' '05 Orpheus garb makes him look like a Gap ad), some were ornate (Alex Palermo '03 as Persephone wrapped her breathtaking visual seduction in deep, flowing reds and a lovely tiara designed by Anne Kemble '02)-all were gorgeous. Michael Baumgarten's (a lighting/production designer on staff for the Theater and Dance department) lighting scheme was the ultimate complement to Palko's costuming-a mercuric background of whites to blues and greens to reds-tastefully driving home the points that many other productions sans scenery fail to deliver. Original music by Brad Tilden '02 was the icing on the cake and Palko provided her audience with some haunting selections from the collective soundtrack of modern music (Björk, YoYo Ma, Danny Elfman and bits of the score of "Moulin Rouge" are all employed).
The first scene, "The Ball/Funeral," is an interesting and almost self-consciously playful introduction to the fascinating myth and to the performance itself. Gallegos and Jessica Maratsos '04 make a charming Orpheus and Eurydice, but there's certainly more to this cast than the leads. More sinister characters begin to file in, bellowing their respective songs over the gravelly (and rather creepy) strains of the "Moulin Rouge" update on "Roxanne." From what sounds I could discern from the mouth of UMass junior Joshua Chelmo (who played Apollo), I only wish I didn't have to struggle so much to detect their voices over the music. Gautam Bhan '02 was equally powerful as Hades, drawing Eurydice away from the living as an enraged Apollo watches Orpheus dance about with a spritely Lyre (Palko).
But the next few scenes were the ones that to this day tug on my heartstrings in a deceptive dance that is all too delicate. "The Initiation," set to the pulsating basslines and the tenuous vocals of Björk's "Homogenic," centers on Palermo's Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. Presiding over a gaggle of her brides of death, she is bathed in blue light, surrounded by the ebb and flow of a choreography that is nothing short of genius. Linked in a strange, modernist sort of motion and with white sheaths of mesh covering their faces, the brides of death are reminiscent of some sort of eerily Beckettian train of many bodies acting as one. I marvel that they are perfectly in time with everything about this scene and this concept and I swear that somewhere I can hear the iambic pushes of a heartbeat resting within the music and their steps.
Following "The Initiation," Tilden's music takes center stage with the dancers as they trace Orpheus' journey through the underworld. The sirens (Palermo, Evelyn Israel '02 and Amanda Gabai '03) realize Tilden's notes perfectly and, as their strangely atonal prophecies are realized in a sea of green, blue and grace, there is an intensity building like that of the stillness before a storm. Here, you could look out into the audience and find at least one out of every five people moved to tears. I was counting for a while, but I had to tend to my own.
The scene continues to build in every way possible-Heather Werner '03's aggressiveness is perfect in her role of Charon the Ferryman and the striking collaboration of the pieces of Cerberus the three-headed dog made me sit up with a red-tinted jolt.
The plot (and the dancing) continue to spiral in every-which-way, a nearly entropic road to an exothermic climax of grand proportions. Bodies continue to throb to both the literal soundtrack as well as to that of love and desperation and, you know how it goes, Orpheus eventually has to high-tail it from the underworld, empty handed and heartbroken.
This is all there, summed up within the rough push-pull of grace and violence and all that is so beautifully human, even in mythology. The triumphant story of Palko, her assistants, her cast, her vision-that's all there, too. It's hard to swallow, visually, emotionally, even sometimes on a sonic level-this is not a cheerful story. But there are other levels, here, too-levels of light, levels of happiness, levels of something so incredibly and unbearably real that you can feel it speeding from your brain down to your stomach and your lungs, gradually infiltrating your bloodstream and your swiftly thumping heart of hearts: a complete absorption, all so that you can understand what it means that from Orpheus' early cries of protest to his crestfallen exit, we are reminded in the face of all of this that "surrounded by beauty, we'll never be lonely."
For three days in April, we were surrounded, too.