Member-only story
REVIEW: FOUR QUARTETS AT BAM
Recently, BAM presented the Bard College developed multimedia dance, music, poetry, and art piece, Four Quartets at their impressive Opera House. T.S. Eliot wrote the poem as the war in Europe was brewing over a six-year period and it was subsequently published in 1941. It is a cultural homage to mankind. One might say to the primeval origin of infinite time in human consciousness. It is a dense work that requires a lot of focus and in my humble opinion, it should be read to oneself before listening to it read to an audience out loud. It can seem a bit of a drone albeit with or without the great Kathleen Chalfant no matter how good an actress she is, besides a lot can be missed.
This is a daunting task to make the poet’s deep intensity come to the surface with the same visual intensity as it was thought into a poem on the page by T. S. Eliot, felt and written at the time of its conception. Then to complement it with modern, angular dance; this didn’t seem to speak to the prescient and fluid nature of Eliot’s intention. It deconstructed the poem by way of being angularly incongruous and worked against its fluidity.
The set by Bryce Marden did little or nothing to raise our consciousness to the intention of the text which is the foundation of or should be for this piece. When spoken and not illustrated by dance, as we are looking at the abstract parallels and while at…
