I started the second day of Fringe with a chamber quartet, The
Chanson String Quartet to be exact, who played pieces focusing on death so
gingerly and gently that the audience in the near-empty Xerox Auditorium (the
TheatreROCS Main Stage) didn’t quite know where or when to applaud. The group
played Camille Saint-Saens’ “Danse Macabre,” naturally, and one of my favorites
— didn’t think I had one, did you? — Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain.”
Those and a few other selections made for an overall peaceful death.
That was the only performance of “Dance Macabre” for this
year’s Fringe.
I hung out for the rest of the day at Parcel 5 which seemed
to act as Fringe Central for Friday on the Fringe. The space was occupied
by every type of humanity you can think of, from the starry-eyed and hopeful to
the criminally insane.
First at bat was The Buddhahood who played a
delightfully aggressive set with Nate Coffey playing his head off and
essentially leading the charge. He is one of this town’s most underrated
guitarists.
The Sisters of Murphy played a tight set of music
culled mostly from its latest CD, “Working Stiffs Unite!” The crowd really started
to pick up during the show, and by the time they were done, several hundred had
become several thousand.
Celebrating its 30th anniversary, STREB — choreographed
by Elizabeth Streb (a Rochester native) — performed SEA (Singular Extreme
Actions), a piece on three large stages that had the audience squealing in
delight.
I too was gob-smacked, but it also awoke something dark in
me. While they were defying gravity, and flying through the air, and doing impossible
feats of balance, I kind of wanted to see something go wrong, someone falter or
slip. It’s kind of like wishing hockey players will start slugging it out on
the ice, or watching NASCAR: without the accidents, we’d just be sitting there
watching traffic. That urge aside, the act was a mind-blowing spectacle.
KOPPS concluded and positively rocked the joint with a
dynamic set including synchronized dancing that could rival Beyonce. But what I
really like is the band’s organic output as is intermingles with the cyborg
within. Tight and precise, but you could sill hear the people in charge.
The real star of the night has to be Parcel 5. I’m leaning
toward keeping it open for events like Fringe. Let’s hope the City
of Rochester doesn’t step on its dick with this one.
Saturday on the Fringe will fill Parcel 5 again, with
performances by STREB (5 p.m., 7:30 p.m., and 10 p.m.), Mansfield Ave, and The
Demos, and the Fringe Street Beat competition. Free. Appropriate for all ages.
This article appears in Sep 14-20, 2016.
