Sparks from the Fire » theater

MOMIX’s Botanica

Peter Link — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:15:36 +0000

Last night I sat transfixed and totally inspired at a performance of MOMIX’s Botanica.

Known internationally for its ability to conjure a world of surrealistic images using props, lights, shadow, humor and the human body, MOMIX is a Connecticut-based company of dancer/illusionists under the direction of the brilliant Moses Pendleton. Mr. Pendleton’s illusionist dance company has unveiled a dazzling new show at the Joyce theatre in Manhattan entitled Botanica.

MOMIX Dancer

Botanica is billed as a ‘herbal remedy and natural aphrodisiac for our current universal blues’ and features fantastical costumes and mind-bending concepts of illusion and dance.

One of the founding members of the ground-breaking Pilobolus Dance Theater in 1971, he formed his own company, MOMIX in the early 80s and has been its artistic director since 1984.

I went because I have been working on a huge environmental Radio City Music Hall type musical extravaganza for a number of years now with producer and fellow conceptualist, William Spencer Reilly, called H2O. Bill rightly thought I should see this production of Botanica to consider the work of Moses Pendleton.

This was one of those longed-for moments in creativity where all the ducks suddenly get in line, where all the pins drop in place. I looked at Bill after the show was over and said, “Wow, this is exactly what we’re looking for.”

It was an evening of awe. Beyond dance, it told stories, made you laugh out loud, made you think, all while entertaining you completely. I couldn’t take my eyes off the stage and the elegant sensualism of some of the pieces was simply overwhelming.

It closes its run here in New York this coming weekend. It will surely tour internationally. Watch for it in your city. Don’t miss it.

Even More Inspiration

Random Thoughts – On The City Of Inspiration

Peter Link — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:10:53 +0000

New York, New York: A place so big you have to say it twice.

New York New York is a wonderful town
The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down
The people ride in a hole in the ground
New York New York is a wonderful town

I live two blocks from Times Square, one block from the Broadway theater district and in an apartment on the 38th floor with a spectacular southern view of Manhattan – the Empire State Building to the left, Wall Street, NY Harbor and the Statue Of Liberty head on, and the Hudson River landing strip to the right. In between are buildings, buildings, buildings.

On Saturday mornings the QE2 and the S.S. United States sail up the Hudson and park in our side yard. Last month I watched people stand on the wing of a jet plane landed in the river and get saved from my dining room window. Standing on my terrace you could have watched the World Trade Center go down in my front yard and on New Year’s Eve if you lean out far enough, you can watch the ball drop and hear the roar of the people.

It’s a historic and inspirational view. We love it, live in it, look out at it and appreciate it every day. I open my living room door and walk out on my terrace and stand on the edge of the universe, its bright lights blazing before me, its millions of people scurrying below. It is a city of wonder.

Sometimes I miss Mother Nature. When my son was seven I took him to his first Yankee game. After the game as we were moving through the crowds to the subway we passed through a parking lot where there was a small divider plot of grass. “Look Daddy, grass! Can I go run in it?” And so he did. Two little laps. “Now can I roll in it?” I checked it for broken glass. And so he did. It’s what he remembered about the game.

From my studio window I watch the fog roll in, roll out. This morning the sun rises and the city is pink as a baby’s bottom with light.

Sometimes I’d leave and live in the mountains or on the sea, but I can’t. It’s the talent that keeps me here. A few calls and I’ve got the best in the world standing in my living room, singing and playing in my studio. The talent is addictive.

I watched a new disaster movie the other night. The end of the world. Once again it’s NYC in the final moment that gets blown to smithereens. Why is it that it’s always NYC? Any thoughts on this one?

You bet it’s expensive to live here; but then again you make more money. It evens out.

I live on 9th Avenue. Within a 6 block radius you can eat (reasonably for NY) any kind of food you can imagine: Turkish, Afghan, Italian, Chinese, Mexican, French, Peruvian, German, Russian, Jamaican, etc. A true melting pot. My son grew up with eclectic taste buds. No McDonalds for him.

Walking the sidewalks in my neighborhood is a trip. The tourists clog the concrete, all, necks craned, looking up in wonder, running into each other. The New Yorkers take to walking in the streets – impatient to get to work.

“One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.” – Paul Simon Oh so true. Sometimes I think about the 37 apartments below me – layouts all the same. Some day I’ll organize a D line open house where we can all visit one another and check out how we’ve each decorated the same space. Most of the time I’m totally oblivious to living on top of all these folks. Weird!

I don’t know the last names of any of the people who live on my hall. We live so close, we maintain our privacy.

I wake up each morning in a city that doesn’t sleep
I’m not king of the hill, but I’m definitely on top of the heap

Last night I went to Steinway Hall and saw a classical music concert. On the way home passed by Carnegie Hall, Birdland, The Schubert Theater on Broadway. It’s the hood. It’s a city of inspiration.

~ Peter Link

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For more inspiring music you can download
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

Sacred Song Writing

Peter Link — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:12:08 +0000

I come from the theater. Oh I grew up on rock n’ roll and folk, but my real training in lyric writing was in the theater. It wasn’t until then that I really began to grow as a lyricist, as a storyteller.

The lyrics of a theatrical song have to have movement, they have to go from point A to point B dramatically. Otherwise they just tend to sit there on the stage, no matter how beautiful, and often end up getting cut from the show because they don’t move the plot forward and are too much of a stage wait.

So when I began to write sacred songs it was only natural that I wrote in theatrical traditions: Start with a problem, the more difficult, the better, and then, in the course of the song, work out the solution, or at least come to some point of change, some realization, so that a solution is in sight. Then you have drama and I know, in all of art, without drama, things tend to get a little thin or shallow. Drama is what holds people to the moments, keeps their interest. “What’s going to happen next?”

But (turning point) I found that sacred songs tended to not follow this tradition. They were often either all positive (mostly the case) or occasionally all negative. They often lacked the dramatic movement that I so naturally looked for in a good song lyric. I also found that they were not necessarily shallow and were quite often rich with content and inspiration, but, for me, just somehow did not go all the way in giving the listener what I felt they deserved.

So it is still my belief, still my natural style to write in the more theatrical tradition. I have to force myself to adapt the other and occasionally do. In the case of hymn writing, the older tradition is what is expected and so I’m probably not much of a natural hymn writer. But solos or choral pieces are a different story.

I like to think of these as musical testimonies. Start with the problem. End with the healing. And along the way illuminate how the healing was realized. Then, dramatically, you shed light on the subject and pull the listener through the dramatic story. The following song presents just such a dramatic surprise.

Where Were You
Music and Lyrics: Peter Link

Once I walked with you
How I burned
You were always there for me
And then I turned
So I walked alone
Through the cold
Wearied by regrets
A thousand fold

Where were you?
I tried turning the time back
Searching the ashes
Looking through stones unturned
But where were you?
I kept trying to find you
Tracing my footsteps
Searching through all I’d known

Where were you?
And where was I?
I kept passing through shadows
Searching the moonlight
Lost in the dark of night

Once I walked with you
Then I turned
I dared to go it on my own
But then I learned

You were there
All along in the sunrise
There in the moonlight
There in the rain with me

Where were you?
Always there in the forests
There in the waters
There in the children
There in the skylark
There in the lamp light
There in the dark

Always here in my life with me

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For more inspiring music you can download
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.