STREB SLAM Open Rehearsal (2/16/24)
I am woefully behind—apologies.
This was a STREB SLAM Open Rehearsal. Checking in was a bit problematic. The event was sponsored by Open House New York, and there were OHNY volunteers when I arrived. Unfortunately, they couldn't check us in as attendees; they finally resorted to writing our names down on a paper pad. Mind you, I had already gone to the library to print out my reservation with the requisite QR code, which was completely unnecessary. But on to STREB SLAM.
What is STREB? Good question. I can't find a good answer online, so I'm going make up my own. STREB seems to be a person (Elizabeth Streb) who teaches a technique incorporating dance/gymnastics/tumbling/circus performing.
The open rehearsal I attended had a crew of 12 or 13 performers bouncing on trampolines one, two, and three at a time. They would leave the trampoline and appear to splat face down on gym mats. This was a recurring theme throughout the morning. Since this was a rehearsal, the performers were in warm-up clothes (i.e., not in costumes), and they essentially did a mark through of the performance piece—talking, describing, doing a few moves—but not really doing a performance. Then they would go back and do it as though it were a performance. Seeing the juxtaposition was quite interesting. They did this pairing with two more set pieces.
They moved on, after replacing the thick mats with thinner mats, to what appeared to be more like a team gymnastic floor routine. The performers brought out props (wooden doors/walls) that some of the members crashed against before bouncing off. Sometimes the wooden partitions were manipulated to twirl so that a performer would be propelled from one side of the space to the other. Fun fact: The performers did all of the set changes themselves, since they'd figured out that they could do them in half the time than stagehands could.
The Gizmo.
For the finale, they brought forward a metal contraption (The Gizmo) that was triangular at the bottom (but very tall) with a metal wheel that could be rotated and walked atop (carefully) or ridden/walked upon on the interior. The permutations were intriguing. At times, performers would launch themselves off The Gizmo into an aforementioned faceplant. At one point, there were two people in the inner wheel with one person on the outer wheel, and two people on the triangular base. Where to look? Who to watch? It was intriguing theater/dance.
The cool thing was that they were introducing this new program to take to a festival in Los Angeles for a week before going to a festival in Australia. Having performed in an Australian music festival many years ago, I hope they had a great time and created many wonderful memories.
ConcertMeister
