It says here in the program that Lavender Grace Kent has
been performing since she was four. From the excitement of Saturday night's
sneak preview of her musical review "Enthusiasmos" (a fine
Greek word that means "inspired utterance" and "god within"),
looks like she's learned a thing or two. As events billow across the
Matheson Performing Arts Center stage in Mendocino, we see her as singer,
dancer, musician and charismatic founder and leader of Lavender Grace
Productions, of which this is number one.
In little
more than an hour, she and her fellow performers take us from Asia to Albion
and back, several times, pausing in the urban canyons of sophistication to
lament the rigors of the Lush Life, as immortalized in the ballad of that name
by jazz icon Billy Strayhorn. The troupe sits on the stage, drinking and smoking
with terminal boredom, while Lavender sings the story of what's really happening
behind all those half-closed eyes. The costumes are subliminally reminiscent
of the Eleanor Roosevelt era, but the people also hold that new-millennium
appendage, the cell phone, on which they have evidently unsatisfactory conversations.
This is
a passing moment. Minutes ago, these same people were dancing the dances of
the Mid-East, all undulating belly, sassy thrust and twitch of hip and all
those dips and whirls of allure and defiance that make you wonder if the people
of Arabia are as bluenosed as the today's radical-retro Islam make them seem.
How could they be? Anyway, Lavender and the others of the Trillium Tribe, as
the review's dancers call themselves, have those moves down!
The slim,
dark actor who goes by the name MyQ provides the through-line for all this,
reading from a big story book that could be the Thousand and One Nights but
instead is entitled "Enthusiasmos" and follows Lavender's journey
of discovery of the world and it arts. He starts the review, unseen, voice
booming into the furthermost corners of the theater, announcing the imminent
appearance of the troupe like a circus ringmaster.
Those of us who remember the sudden appearance of Paul Simon's "Graceland" and
our astonishment at hearing the blends, as he ripped apart one region's
music after another, music of every conceivable kind, remixed them, and
served them up in tunes like, say, "Diamonds in the Soles of her
Shoes" or any of those über-brilliant cuts, have a special
susceptibility to the mixes Lavender & Co. serve up in their review.
No rules—dance, song, recitation, whatever—if it works, do
it; so you're not surprised when you've been unthinkingly tapping your
foot to those insinuating eastern rhythms and—wham!—you're
grooving on a jazz riff Keith Abrams or Richard Cooper's pulling out
of the piano.
Lavender stars. She does this thing. Though you can't see the audience—or
hardly can—when you're onstage with bright lights on you, her dark,
sharp eyes search the crowd as she moves through their routines. Either
she can see us out here or she's doing a great job of faking eye contact.
The effect of this is to make it seem she's giving this line from her
torch song, this flicker of a knowing smile, this dip or swirl directly
to somebody in the seats. It personalizes her actions in a tantalizing
way.
Her voice is changeable. She does a folk song in a clear, lilting soprano,
but she switches to a lower, smokier sound when the mood is lowdown.
In the dances, she is precise.
She didn't pull all this off without mucho entusiasmo from her fellow
troupers. David Brown, Johnny Qwest and Jan Hinson provided pre-show
music, warming us up for the Orient Express we're about to board. The
aforementioned Abrams and Cooper, switching instruments as needed, kept
everybody musically on track. The Trillium Tribe are Lavender, Elika
Freeman, Theresa McNeal and Holly Newstead, and the Rhythm Church of
Albion, whose singing and persussion are by Lavender, Lynne Butler, Josué de
Jesus Rodriguez Dos Santos, a musician from Brazil, and Cindy Triplett.
The backstage wall was draped by Linka Roland. The costumes and lighting
were extravagant.
I don't need to carp about anything in this debut-preview. An expanded
version will be offered between February 22 and March 1 next year. I
don't doubt the company will be studying minutely the video of Saturday
night and picking out more nits than I could find. This is the beginning
of what Lavender Grace Kent intends as a globetrotting phenomenon, mining
the bright vein of talent we have here, refining and crafting it for
stages near and far. The energy and quality are ready already.