7th Annual Red Chair Affair
7th Annual Red Chair Affair
Arts & Cultural Alliance of Central Florida
Directed by John DiDonna
August 27, 2011
Bob Carr Performing Art Center
Orlando, Fl</strong>
It’s nice to see we can still pack 2000 arts aficionados into the Bob Carr for an old fashion variety show full of tap and aerial acts and pie-in-the-face comedy. The Arts & Cultural Alliance of Central Florida (which desperately needs an acronym – ACACF? AC2F? ) is the current incarnation of the old Theater Alliance and acts a marketing body for anything in Central Florida that feels arty. The Red Chair Project is its annual season kick off and fundraiser for the Art Season, but what constitutes a “season” is a bit open. I’m busy year round.
The parking lot is filling up early, and looming over us is the soon to be demolished, not yet paid for Amway Arena. Sold as a boon to revitalize down town, it was never much more than a monolith in the center of a backing parking lot, packed for sporting events, desolate the rest of the week. At least the Carr is paid for but it may face the same fate soon, but tonight its charmingly bad acoustics and mile long rows of seats is just the spot for this dance heavy evening. I park, I walk, I hand a ticket to the attendant, and after grabbing a heart stoppingly expensive drink, I find a seat on the end behind the Orlando Fringe Festival director. It’s amazing how many people I can identify in silhouette just from their hairstyle.
Autumn Ames runs the ACACF, and comes on stage in the mandatory red dress to gives us a short pep talk. The program begins, but there is no Master of Ceremonies; each segment was introduced by unctuous short film telling us a bit about the producing companies. The only one I enjoyed was from Sak Comedy Lab, they admit they don’t have anything prepared because improv artists aren’t SUPPOSED to prepare.
Dance dominated the evening. Fully half the acts were dance groups, and half the remaining acts presented choreography heavy shows. There was modern dance (Yow, Voci, and Orlando Ballet if you stretch definitions), ethnic dance (Orlando School of Cultural Dance), tap (Winter Park Playhouse), Flamenco (Flamenco del Sol) and you could argue Orlando Aerial Arts was doing some sort of vertical dance. Aerial Arts was clearly the most impressive show on stage, three women rolled and climbed up and down sheer cloth streamers up the fly loft 30 feet over the stage. With no visible safety equipment, this was scary and impressive, and while the intro film claimed anyone could do this, my thought is “yeah, right…”
On the theater side, Winter Park Playhouse tapped its heart out with excerpts from the upcoming “Anything Cole” show, and Florida Opera Theatre presented “The Completer History of Opera (Abridged).” Narrated by Eric Pinder, we learn all about opera in five minutes; all the way from a caveman’s “Ugh” to “La Traviata.” Speed opera – its here now.
The opening number from “Little Shop of Horrors” highlighted the Garden Theater’s season, and the Orlando Repertory Theater put up two numbers from “Power Chords.” One feature of Red Chair is the American Sign Language interpreters Eli Sierra and Debby Drobney. All evening long they appeared as needed and took turns translating, but on the Power Chords closer “Proud Mary” they translated in harmony, which was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen in weeks.
As to pure music, the Orlando Philharmonic did a nice number on three marimbas called “Woodworks.” It’s rare to see three of these instruments, and I’m hoping one is lead, one is bass, and one is rhythm. Later, part of the Orlando Gay chorus did few numbers from “Rent,” and tonight’s comedy came from Sak. They may not have prepared anything, but when they made fun of Roy Alan’s dancing by chewing on pocket change, it nearly brought down the house.
All of this added up to a high quality sampler of the area’s performing groups. Just remember – not everyone in town dances. But the groups that do, well, they do it very, very well.
Find more information on all of central Florida’s art groups as well as discounted admission at www.redchairproject.com/
