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Chen\u2019s counterpart hardware is an iPhone strapped to one forearm. He also maneuvers a large hoop about the stage during \u201cThe Glance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my imagination,\u201d Hege explained, \u201c(the hoop] is the way that Hades is managing sound movement in the underworld. It filters the sound of the underworld, and we can hear that through his movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy\u2019s tethered costume visually reinforces the ways in which Eurydice is bound by external forces, a constraint echoed in her music.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the first act, Eurydice can only sing within an octave range, from the note D immediately above middle C to the D one octave above. She is limited in her relationship with Orphea (yes, a woman, sung by queer experimental vocalist Carmina Escobar) who treats her abusively. They\u2019re not the blissful couple of the original Greek myth, and it\u2019s Orphea, not a snake, who kills Eurydice.<\/p>\n
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![\"Michelle]()
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Michelle Kennedy as\u00a0Eurydice in\u00a0a\u00a0workshop for \u201cThe Glance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don Fogg\/Laptopera Productions<\/p>\n
Thus, \u201cThe Glance\u201d reinterprets the Orpheus and Eurydice story as one of intimate violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hege noted that her late father, a physician, believed the myth was about surveillance and mistrust. In that story, Orpheus, unable to fully trust that Eurydice is following him out of the underworld, looks back and loses her. Here, in the second act of \u201cThe Glance,\u201d the story focuses on growth and transformation, as Eurydice is freed of the tethered skirt and begins to assert herself.<\/p>\n
Lest this sound dry or mechanical, the music of \u201cThe Glance\u201d is anything but. There is a vocal score for the singers and little processing of the voices. Meanwhile, there is a deep electronic musical track reminiscent of chant or a passacaglia\u2019s repeating bass line, and some of the laptopera\u2019s music is improvised by the singers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The interconnectedness of the elements in \u201cThe Glance\u201d is a natural outgrowth of Hege\u2019s interests and studies. She wrote her doctoral dissertation at Princeton University on embodied cognitive theory and how performances speak to the body.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Her path to these subjects ran through composer Meredith Monk, whose works Hege had encountered as an undergraduate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHer talk about starting with the body, starting with these kinds of embodied rehearsals, creating things for specific singers and their bodies, made complete sense to me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Hege\u2019s process, like Monk\u2019s, is highly collaborative. Chen, who has performed with Monk, commented that he, Kennedy and Escobar come from different musical backgrounds and that working on \u201cThe Glance\u201d has been \u201ca really fun, collaborative environment. Let\u2019s figure out what we each are bringing into the space, and how can that inform what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Carmina]()
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Carmina Escobar as Orphea in Laptopera Productions\u2019 \u201cThe Glance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Don Fogg\/Laptopera Productions<\/p>\n
Where Kennedy draws on her Baroque background to add ornamentation to Eurydice\u2019s music, Escobar approaches the role through improvisation and extended vocal techniques.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cI was always attracted to weird sounds,\u201d Escobar said, acknowledging that audiences may find it \u201ca little bit more chaotic\u201d because of the nature of the tape machine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The result is an experimental work where technology provides the framework, but the singers\u2019 performances give \u201cThe Glance\u201d its historical resonance and emotional force.<\/p>\n
Lisa Hirsch is a freelance writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Courtesy Anne Hege Michelle Kennedy as Eurydice, lef,t with Anne Hege in a workshop for \u201cThe Glance.\u201d Don…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[329,331,330,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-332712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-classical","tag-music","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}