This August, five groups of Teen Reviewers and Critics (TRaC) ventured out into New York City to take in some culture. After attending a Thursday performance, everyone wrote reviews, then reconvened the following Tuesday for a discussion and workshop. Our work is published here in the first of a five part series featuring writing from the Summer TRaC!
Summer TRaC Session 3 (A and B) attended the 3rd International Body Music Festival, presented as a part of Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors. Check out the excerpts and full reviews below….
“Seeing the International Body Music Festival was [not a] “must see while you’re in town” [… but] it’s nice to hear music coming from our selves alone, and not just with the assistance of instruments or objects or high-tech sound systems.” – Samantha Karp
“At first, I thought that the throat singers were very weird, but I got used to them after they started sounding like many instruments using only their throats.” – Chloe Silversmith
“Sharing one microphone, they stood merely inches apart, noses touching, and turned oddly-pitched guttural grunting into strangely beautiful melodies that left me both intrigued and somewhat disturbed; though the act was described as a popular game, it seemed so incredibly intimate that it made me feel almost uncomfortable to watch.” – Dakota Blackman
“[…] SLAMMIN All-Body Band […] combined simple, everyday movements, a stomp of the foot, a slap of the knee, a hand clap, and put them into such a sequence that music was created. The Band had fun and it spread to the audience […]” – Maeve Kerr
“The only way to describe what they did is “Step-Up” meets doo-wop meets college a capella meets soul.” – Abby Barr
“[…] their attempt to do dance theater with a slapstick routine (“Tea For Two”) wasn’t great and […] my [8-year-old] brother and [6-year-old] sister would be better suited for this.” – Genevieve Shorter
“Many of [Barbatuques’] songs had a “quirky mystic” quality: there was lots of animal hooting, bubbly cheek clapping and finger snapping that frequently transitioned into darker and heavier body playing, stomping and clapping.” – Hyemin Yi
“These engaging performers get the audience involved […] Their first half hour on stage proved just how slammin-good they were but after that, it seemed to drag on, making the audience lose focus.” – Julian Aldana-Tejada
“[…] no rhythm instruments were allowed due to fear […] This makes me want to start to cry […] we people used our body to make sounds and movement, and then in the future its created into something big and famous.” – Jazzlynn Bennett
“However, in an attempt to fill the two and a half hours allotted for nighttime shows, the performances were stretched beyond the limits of the audience’s attention span. […] When eccentric audience members become more interesting than the main event, the show should not go on.” – Mollie Forman
“You could say it was an a capella line-up of outrageous individuals, recreating the primitive music of our ancestors. […] Some music always needs to be performed live to be heard.” – Carol Szwei
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