Introduction to Cat's The musical.

Synopsis:
One night a year, all the Cat's gather for a special event, The Jellical Ball, where Old Deuteronomy will chose the most worthy cat, who then go to the Heavyside Layer where they will be re-born. Each cat gets a chance to prove why they should be chosen, Grizabella gives her story of being the outcast, because she's not 'Grizabella The Glamour Cat' anymore and she is eventually chosen to go to the Heavyside Layer to be reborn into a whole new Jellicle life.

Cats is directed by Trevor Nunn, with Gillian Lynne as Associate Director and Choreographer and designs by John Napier. Book is by T. S. Eliot with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Cats, one of West End and Broadway's longest-running shows, it received its world premiere at the New London Theatre in 1981 where it then played for 21 record-breaking years with almost 9,000 performances. The production won Best Musical at the Olivier and Evening Standard Awards . In 1983 the Broadway production became the recipient of seven Tony awards including Best Musical, and ran for eighteen years. Since its world premiere, Cats has been presented in over 26 countries, has been translated into 15 languages and has been seen by over 50 million people world-wide. Both the original London and Broadway cast recordings won Grammy Awards for Best Cast Album. The classic Lloyd Webber score includes Memory which has been recorded by over 150 artists from Barbra Streisand and Johnny Mathis to Liberace and Barry Manilow.

About: 

Since its opening, CATS has been presented in over thirty countries and over three hundred cities, including such diverse destinations as Buenos Aires, Seoul, Helsinki and Singapore.

Within two and half years of the London opening there were productions in New York, Tokyo, Budapest and Vienna, and the first of tour US touring productions had hit the road.

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats – on which the musical CATS is based – was written by T S Eliot during the 1930s and first published in October 1939 by Faber and Faber, with illustrations by the author himself on the cover. It cost 3 shillings and sixpence a copy. Although Eliot generally intended his cat poems to be for children, they were appealing and amusing to adults.

Many of the cats were modelled on other literary figures (Macavity is styled on Moriarty, the infamous villain who challenged Sherlock Holmes and Skimbleshanks on a work by Rudyard Kipling – The Long Trail).

It was the first European production that didn’t play at usual theatres but used a tent that was specifically designed for this tour with the set NAP 19.There had been tent tours in Australia and Asia before.

‘Memory’ has been aired on radio and television in the United Kingdom 46,875 times and over a million times in the USA (if you listened to the song non-stop 1 million times it would take five years!).

The touring show requires 8 forty-foot trucks to move it from theatre to theatre, transporting the sets, musical instruments, and sound and lighting systems, together with hundreds of costumes and wigs and over one hundred lamps for the lighting rig.A team of over 70 people will work around the clock to ensure the show is ready for the opening night.Since 1981 the crew has replaced over 6,124 seats, added 96,525 new screws, used over 36,625 posters and 356 gallons of varnish to cover the floor, replaced the wood for the star trap 6 times a week and used 3 litres of cleaner a week (2,316 litres).

The sound department has used 30 new microphones a year (450 in total), 50 new aerials a year (750 in total) and 50 batteries a week (39,000 in total).

Stage Management has used 1,000 plastic cups a month, 2,000 elastic bands a year, 50 painkillers a week and 449,280 throat lozenges in total. They used a pint of milk a day (not for the cats) and over 200 loo rolls a week – for everything but the loo!

The wardrobe department has replaced 5 pairs of shoes a week (3,900 pairs), sewed on six knee patches per night. In total they sewed 3,450 costumes for 262 different performers, using 11,954 lbs of wool and 2,825 miles of cotton.

The stage electronics department has changed 23,166 bulbs in the London auditorium (there are 1,166 bulbs in total, 30 are changed per week and each has been changed roughly 12 times) and used 22,405 feet of cabling.

The make-up department has used 10,800 sponges and 72 batches of each eyeshadow, pencil, blusher, lipstick and mascara per year. Cast members get through a box of tissues each every week.

The London Box Office has used 1,179,800 envelopes, 772,200 paper cups and 31,875 headache tablets!

Rosas Danst Rosas Review

Rosas Danst Rosas, choreographed and staged in 1983 by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and was originally performed by 4 members of the Rosas company. In the 1997 film, a shorter version was portrayed by 18 female dancers in total including Keersmaeker, directed  by Thierry De Mey. The film is set in the former school of architect Henry Van de Velde in Leuven and De Mey takes full advantage of the spatial and geometrical quailites of the building, its as if the building helps give a certain feel to the dance piece, the ghostly corridors and sense of emptiness or abandonment. 
 The dancers perform in and around the dormant rooms and walls. Their costumes are  various dull colours, grey over sized shirts with black skirts, to me its not dissimilar to a hospital gown for a mental health institute, the uniformity also links back to the location in which it is in. 

Repetitive, minimalist, pedestrian and abstract styles are used throughout the film, a signature style for Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and the Rosas company, The dance has eight different sections, Moving In, Floor, Chairs, Building, Glass, Lying Down, Inner Court and Coda. I will be focusing on only 3 sections, Floor, Chairs and Glass . 

The dance opens with a long shot of a corridor, four dancers run in at different moments and face away from the camera,then suddenly they drop to the floor in unison. The movement in the floor section opening the piece is very slow and accompanied by not music, as such, but of every sound they could hear whilst recording, such as the heavy breathing of the dancers, and the sounds there bodies make against the surfaces they are working in such as, running across the floor or sliding their arms across the floor when they lower to the ground. Key movements involve rolling in both canon and unison, pushing up from the ground and falling back towards it, the camera angles used in this section work together with the movement to entice the audience, it brings you in to each dancers personal space, and as a viewer you feel more linked with piece, it creates a more intense quality movement structure and heightens the atmosphere. Linking back to the building used, it is quite a hollowing experience.

This whole floor section is 8 minutes long and nearing the end of the 8 minutes the movements suddenly become very fast and sharp, their breathing picks up and over takes everything you hear, it intensifies the atmosphere surrounding the piece. I think the use of extreme opposites of speeds made it very effective when combined with the close up camera angles. 

In the chair section of Rosas, the women repeat a selection of motifs, creating a growing routine (they'll do one movement, then repeat that movement then add something else to it, then do the first and second movement and adding a third) whilst sitting on chairs. The music changes from just their breathing to include a beat. The whole section is representational of a storm, the way it builds up and becomes more and more hectic.