Premiere New York Premiere
Production Language English
Country of Origin United States
Description We've become accustomed to experiencing media in bits and pieces. Whatever the form—music videos, reality TV, Hollywood blockbusters, formulaic sitcoms—we are adept at making some kind of sense of what we see, no matter how brief the snippet. How did this happen? And how, asks composer Mikel Rouse in his groundbreaking pop-opera The End Of Cinematics, has the rise of corporate-controlled entertainment affected how we experience the art of cinema?
Inspired by two of Susan Sontag's essays on film, Cinematics is the final installment of Rouse's "opera verité" trilogy that addresses Americans' attitudes about religion, spirituality, and pop culture. The first two components, Failing Kansas and Dennis Cleveland (hailed by The Village Voice as "the most exciting and innovative new opera since Einstein on the Beach..."), looked at the societal ramifications of mass communications. Cinematics turns to the apotheosis of entertainment media—film— while employing innovative three-dimensional technology to redefine both cinema and theater for a new century.
A sensual multimedia discourse drawing from cinema's bygone silent era and today's omnipresent hyper-reality of surround sound and kaleidoscopic images, Cinematics juxtaposes walls of layered vocals, hard-driving alt-rock beats, and gorgeous visuals: city streets, subways, skies, nighttime Paris, and people, whose onscreen images are echoed by onstage performers. The effect is at once seductive and chilling. If we're drawn to anything that flickers, story or not, what does that say about us?
Identifier 2006f.00852
