The three performances in the Reade Festival of Alternative Music caught audiences off guard this past weekend with their bizarre styles and displeasing cacophony. Alienating the few audience members they drew, the productions of this year's Festival tested the definition of performance art.
The individual artists who contributed to the series have received many positive reviews in the national theater, but Dartmouth students generally seemed unimpressed.
Opening the series on Thursday was Patricia Repar's "Studies in Survival" a collection of images which at times felt like a simple slide show from her vacation in Ecuador.
The projection of images ranged from buses to melons to statues of the Virgin Mary. Though the slides themselves displayed interesting demonstrations of color and repetition, they failed to prove their purported significance in the survival of Ecuadorian cultures.
The choreographed sequences puzzled audiences. Repar's frantic writhing, in what was apparently a nightmare, accentuated the incongruity of the performance.
A highlight of the performance was the music of the calabanfo, a stringed instrument with a basin-like body which refracted Repar's voice.
Twisted Tutu's pieces flip-flopped from ingenious to irritating. The recitation of poetry against a background rap beat and clanking synthesizer recreated the chaos of the city.
Pianist Kathleen Supove appeared puppet-like as she hunched over her keyboard, beating on it with flat palms as though they were bongos. Her voice only tainted "One Tough Lama," a piece presenting the dilemma of the Dhali Lama's body guards -- whether to practice nonviolence or protect the religious figure in the event of an assassination attempt.
Among the group's successes was "Tahoma," which experimented with the violin as a percussion instrument. As Supove tapped upon the strings of the violin with tiny sticks, Eve Beglarian plucked the strings producing a delicate, soothing sound. This pleasing harmony dissipated suddenly when Beglarian drew a fishing line across these same strings, though the rough screeching did not detract from the piece.
Twisted Tutu demonstrated the problems of high-tech music with a system shut down which delayed the performance for over three minutes. Once "Wonder Counselor" finally began, it pierced the audience with painfully high notes. The jumble of synthesizers and recorded sounds, including bird songs and a woman's moans of orgasm, left listeners stunned.
The audience of 30 streamed out of Saturday night's Dr. Nerve concert. Although the group began with two impressive pieces of a Rage Against the Machine meets The Mighty Mighty Bostones style, the music quickly shifted to a harsh, grating heavy metal.
In spite of impressive riffs from Guitarist Nick Didkovsky, who at one time studied under Dartmouth College Music Professor Christian Wolff, the overlaying of heavy metal and distorted brass generated a manic, jarring sound which alienated listeners.
