DANSPACE PROJECT and BIGMANARTS present
JULIUS CAESAR SUPERSTAR
Choreographed and Directed By Lawrence Goldhuber
Original Music By Geoff Gersh
Additional music by Handel, Vivaldi, and Vandross
Video By Janet Wong
Lighting Design By Kathy Kaufmann
Costume Designs By Liz Prince
Technical Director: Mandy Ringger
Editing Advisor: Valeria Vasilevski
Assistant to the Choreographer: Tony Wicks
Technical support: Mitchell Wagenberg / Street Vision
Starring (in alphabetical order):
Rhetta Aleong, Arthur Aviles, Sydney Boone
Eric Stephen Booth, Alberto Denis, Loren Kiyoshi Dempster
Marcelo Rueda Duran, Thom Fogarty, Keely Garfield
Lawrence Goldhuber, Robert La Fosse, Rosalynde LeBlanc
Valentin Ortolaza, Hapi Phace, Micki Saba, and Micki Wesson
JULIUS CAESAR SUPERSTAR features ballet star Robert La Fosse in the title role, surrounding him with eight 300-pound performers as the conservative senators who murder him. The show, choreographed, and directed by Lawrence Goldhuber, moves from the Roman baths through to the U.S. Senate of 1950’s McCarthyism, with ambition, power, and betrayal around every corner. Original music by Geoff Gersh (of Straylight) is combined with excerpts from previous interpretations of the Caesar story to deliver a driving soundscape. The cast includes musicians, a soothsayer, muscled men performing as soldiers, slaves, and statues, as well as a surprise appearance by the evil Lady Macbeth who escorts our hero to the afterlife. Vibrant costumes are designed by frequent collaborator Liz Prince. Gregory L. Bain’s sleek production design and Kathy Kaufman’s brilliant lighting complete the creative team.
The creation of JCS was made possible, in part, with funds from the Danspace Project’s 2004-05 Commissioning Initiative with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
BIGMANARTS is supported by The Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial and in recognition of the valuable cultural contributions of artists to society.
JCS was created during a residency provided by The Joyce Theater Foundation, New York City, with major support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The original and live music for this evening’s performance was commissioned by The American Music Center Live Music for Dance Program.
JCS has received generous funding from The Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, and from many individual donors.
These performances are made possible in part by the Manhattan Community Arts Fund/New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
JCS is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA),
a 501(c)3, tax-exempt organization founded in 1971 to work with the arts community throughout New York State to develop and facilitate programs in all disciplines.
These performances are dedicated to friend and colleague Gretchen Bender,
who passed away this winter. She was to have participated in the creation of this show and she is greatly missed.
Special Thanks: Laurie Uprichard, Kathy Kaufmann, Mandy Ringger, and everyone else at Danspace Project for their ease and clarity, Robert La Fosse and the entire cast and crew for the months of work, Janet Wong’s talent, Mitchell Wagenberg’s generosity of spirit and equipment, Tony Wicks for filling in, everyone at The Joyce SoHo, Bruce Imber /Monkey Hill, James Schriebl Photography, Ellen Jacobs, Heidi Latsky and Stephen Jones, Liz for the endless additions, GLB for coming through, Anna Smith at the American Music Center for the extra help, and both Robert Byrd at The Jerome Foundation, and Linda Shelton and Martin Wechsler at The Joyce Theater Foundation for their continuous support.
An extra special thank you to all contributors: Pierre Apraxine, Connie Beckwith, Gretchen Bender, Susan Blankensop, Mark and Linda Brinkman, David and Carlene Cedoz, Paul and Sheila Cohen, John and Sage Cowles, Lauren Cramer, Amber Denker, Geoff Gersh, Jerry Goldhuber, Stephanie Goldhuber, Ed and Susan Gitkind, Mary Gridley, Kenneth Grosjean, Carol Holding, Bruce Imber, Joseph Jaros, Sarah East Johnson, Doris Klapper, Mary Kusian, Julie Landman, Robert Landman, Claire Leffel, Janet Lilly, Steve Mendelsohn, Eric Menkes, Ray and Fran Osinoff, Susan and Shelly Osinoff, Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, William and Joan Peak, Nicolas Ramirez, Jeanette Resnick, Nat and Bunny Ritzer, Jeffrey Seller, Bea Scherer, Keven Scherer and Shari Vice, Benedicta Schwager, Sidney Schwager, Cindy Sherman, Todd and Clare Smith, Jerry Spano and Danielle Violi, Jack Sparrow, Megan Stager, Rose Storin, Bonnie and James Summerford, Susan and Fred Tapper, Anita Tierney, Valeria Vasilevski, Micki Wesson, Mitchell Wagenberg, Martin Wicks, and Wallie Wolfgruber. Thank you many times over.
BACKSTAGE DANCE REVIEW
BY LISA JO SAGOLLA
Lawrence Goldhuber is an ingenious theatrical director. His latest production, “Julius Caesar Superstar,” is a highly entertaining hourlong dance piece distinguished by biting humor, stunning visual effects, and slyly crafted movement drama.
Presented at St. Mark’s Church, the work makes exquisite use of the venue’s spatial idiosyncrasies to create marvelously atmospheric settings, including a steamy Roman bath (complete with sensuous nude “statues”), a frightening McCarthy-era courtroom, and a rousing Republican National Convention. Goldhuber’s version of Caesar’s story begins historically — featuring a cast of eight 300-pound performers as the conservative senators who betray their leader, apparently because of his overappreciation for homoeroticism. However, Caesar’s murder takes place at a trial held in the conservative climate of 1950s America, and the fat men’s victory celebration is depicted as today’s Republicans hailing the conservative politics of George W. Bush. In what is perhaps the funniest finale we’ve ever witnessed at a dance performance, Goldhuber sends his “fat cats” into a patriotic hullabaloo of a production number. They sing and dance gleefully to a sickeningly upbeat pop song as flags wave, confetti falls, and a cheesy sign-language interpreter performs to hilarious effect.
The choreographic highlight of Goldhuber’s work occurs just after the killing of Caesar. Portrayed by ballet superstar Robert La Fosse, whose graceful, boyish interpretation of the role appropriately imbues the powerful character with a haunting vulnerability, Caesar is visited in the afterworld by Lady Macbeth. They dance an edgy pas de deux built of engagingly off-kilter actions suggesting betrayal, guilt, and fear.
Enhanced by Geoff Gersh’s original music, Liz Prince’s right-on-target costumes, and Janet Wong’s penetrating video of Caesar’s oversized, agonized countenance, “Julius Caesar Superstar” is indeed a super show.
DANCING WITH EVA YAA ASANTEWAA: EXCLUSIVE REVIEWS
Review No. 25
Posted: May 16, 2005
Lawrence Goldhuber/BIGMANARTS
Danspace Project
May 13, 2005
Exhilarating! Lawrence Goldhuber’s new dance drama, Julius Caesar Superstar, does everything on a grand scale. Sure the piece has a cast of heavyweights playing Roman senators who, like the famously portly Goldhuber, carry considerable heft either through natural endowment or fat-suit enhancement, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
By “everything” I mean choreography, musical score, video, lighting, and costumes-all contributing generously to a great, sweeping work that comes on like a vest-pocket Broadway smash, all packed into the space of an hour. The production moves swifter than you might expect and never flags-just like Goldhuber and his senatorial co-conspirators. Even its excesses seem purposeful. That’s some kind of magic!
Julius Caesar Superstar takes us back in time to make a point about the present. The clownish Roman senators-among them the delightful Goldhuber, Thom Fogarty, and Rhetta Aleong (yes, a woman in drag), open the evening with lively and intricate circle dances, red-trimmed togas aswirl. Their joyous dancing spans the length of Danspace’s floor and, along with Kathy Kaufmann’s lighting, opens it up and enlivens it in ways I’ve never seen before. In fact, nearly every part of the space gets pressed into service-the arched, stained-glass windows momentarily illuminated, the balcony visited by trumpeters to herald the approach of a war hero, the sanctuary steps turning into a sybaritic, raunchy display, the risers transformed by a wide scrim into the steamy baths where towel-draped senators casually stroll, snooze, and plot revolution.
Julius Caesar Superstar, played by that good-looking ballet superstar Robert LaFosse (ABT, New York City Ballet, Tharp), is attended by bare-legged prancing soldiers. (Or should that be, soldiers with invisible prancing horses?) These are played, in snappy high spirits, by Arthur Aviles, Alberto Denis, Marcelo Rueda Duran, and Valentin Ortolaza, Jr. Let’s support our troops and praise these wonderful guys. Not only are they brilliant as Roman guards but they take other roles, too. As boy servants, for instance, they have their own ritualistic circle dance (with wine vessels) featuring comely, synchronized moves and delicate crossing steps. Goldhuber’s work here is particularly gorgeous and witty. Later, the four will also play classical sculptures in the bath-how do they hold those contorted poses so long?-as well as Abu Ghraib-type guards and political convention cheerleaders.
And then there’s Micki Wesson, the real heavyweight of the show-moral heavyweight, that is. As the mysterious soothsayer, she points her crooked staff, silently speaking truth to power. She’s got Caesar in her sights. He may cackle in scorn, but he’s a goner.
The senators, realizing that Caesar is a drunken, power-mad libertine, begin to plot against him, distancing themselves from him as he lolls about in the steam of the bath. For some dazzling moments, the scrim displays a black-and-white video of LaFosse’s face with a paranoid or death-mask expression. The image is huge. Its cold glow spills from the scrim onto the wooden floor, making the entire scene vibrate with light.
Fast forward to America of the McCarthy-ite ’50s. Caesar, stripped down to a loincloth, gets roughed up by a pack of senators (wardrobe updated to slacks, shirts, suspenders, and ties). He’s stabbed numerous times. Goldhuber kisses him square on the mouth-hard and long-before driving home the fatal wound. Caesar survives long enough to play out a rather involved death scene culminating in a beauty of a duet with Keely Garfield as a severe but loving Lady Macbeth. What? You don’t think that Lady Macbeth might greet Julius Caesar at Death’s door and help him cross over? Listen, they’re terrific together!
In the twinkling of an eye, we’re at a red-white-and-blue political convention complete with sparkling confetti. Which party? Maybe it doesn’t matter. But the big number-“Can’t You Feel the Brand-New Day?”-intensely sung by conventioneers who seem just short of rage, is entirely too reminiscent of Bush’s oft-repeated “Freedom’s on the march in Iraq!”
Goldhuber now wears Caesar’s wreath. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
