A Review On Sagittarius A

Sagittarius A on Friday, October 12 is the  world premiere of Yara Travieso’s immersive theatrical experience designed for the EMPAC Concert Hall. It approaches a SA in three different ways with the help of different media usage. They combine dance, narration, projection and audience interaction together to make a great complex performance.

It started with Strips of cloth hang from the ceiling and converge in the center of the stage as the lights begin to dim. Then a woman named Ana began to dance as the narrator began to recount the story of the goddess Sagittarius A. Sagittarius A  was a powerful being with many arms who creates the universe.

Then a wolf appeared. The wolf was jealous of Sagittarius A’s power. Four pieces of cloth were tied on her to represent limbs and the wolf consumed all of her limbs. This was like a myth story and after this we entered the second part.

A lecturer, Dr. Amalia entered from the back of the hall and interrupted this story. She gave a lecture on the death of a star and the formation of the black hole. This was one of my favorite part because it’s very funny and unexpected. Dr. Amalia’s lecture was supposed to begin at eight and she is late. Her overflowing folders of lecture notes gave her lots of troubles. She dropped them many times. Her performance contrasted heavily with Ana’s performance of elegance and beauty.

Then the projection upstage switches from her lecture slides to the view where we saw the dancer left. The camera followed her and began to introduce her life. She was being watched by her predator and she was being chased and attacked. Leaving her scared and wounded. And when she cleaned her wounds, all of the water turned red, which took this story from relatively believable to surreal.

I like this show because it is nothing I saw before. It is unlike those boring stage shows, the use of multimedia adds depth to this performance and made it very interesting. Yara Travieso used the every part of the hall in her performance. From the back to the stage and the lighting control room. It gave us a stunning feeling and it felt like we are part of this performance too.  The combination of live performance, live video and recorded video just blows my mind and make me realize that a show can be this complex and interesting. I think the music is good, but maybe I am too into pop culture music and not a big fan of those kind of music. I like saxophone though, no matter what it plays, it sounds amazing.

Overall I think this performance is awesome. It definitely worth seeing and it gives me an excellent, enjoyable experience. It also opened my mind on how performance can be so different and unique. I rarely attend any performance or show and this brings me interested in those things. I want to say thank you to all of the performers and everyone involved. They put a lot of work in this and it is greatly successful.