Underland, Featuring the Music of Nick Cave
I just ran across this event coming up in Portland on March 13th: You’ve got yer Nick Cave music and your modern dancers and you mush it all up with costumes by Imitation of Christ and that’s what you’ve got.
Here’s a really over-compressed short video about the show.
Some of the songs included in the program are: Wild World, Mercy Seat, The Carny, The Weeping Song, The Ship Song, Stagger Lee, and Death is Not the End. The dance opens with a reading from his novel, “And The Ass Saw The Angel.”
Songs Least Likely to Appear In A Nick Cave Dance Program: Scum, 6″ Gold Blade, and Little Empty Boat.
Postscript: Wow, was I wrong about not using Stagger Lee in the program! When it started as a very intense, Apache-style duet between the brute and the maiden, and the first F-bomb dropped in, I heard the row of nice fifty-year old ladies in front of me take in breath sharply, and I thought, “wait until we get to the line about crawling over fifty good p*ssies to get to a fat boy’s assh*le.” A couple disgruntled ballet fans walked out, but I think the fifteen year old dance students were pretty psyched about a getting to hear a filthy dirty song. My review of the ballet is a million, jillion gold stars, flecked lightly with blood. It was so super, I can’t tell you. If you hear about it coming through your town, I highly recommend it.