The disapproval has extended beyond the shows onstage. The Shed comprises five spaces for shows and exhibitions, with its two main spaces being the Griffin, which can seat 500, and the McCourt, a cavernous theatre 120 feet high offering up to 1,200 seats for theatrical spectacles and 2,000 standing for rock concerts.The latter space can also disappear entirely, as a movable outer shell retracts onto the building to create an outdoor plaza for “large-scale, site-specific” works.Ĭritics have given mixed reviews to the Shed’s work so far, from a performance piece in the Griffin, Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, featuring Ben Whishaw and Renée Fleming, to the “kung fu musical” Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise in the McCourt. Fourteen years later, a Brit named Alex Poots is running a $475 million response to the question, situated on Manhattan’s far West Side. How, in a city that already has 1,200 cultural institutions, can a new one stand out? That’s the question Michael Bloomberg posed when he was mayor of New York City. The most high-profile changes at the moment are in Manhattan. “I do not even know what state-of-the-art means anymore,” confesses Joshua Dachs, a principal of the New York-based theatre design firm Fisher Dachs Associates, currently involved in projects under construction around the world. And that redefinition is reflected in the buildings themselves. Both meanings, and the connection between the two, are currently being radically redefined. By all means, let’s look beyond this martial arts muddle in anticipation of The Shed’s next major endeavor.In English the word theatre refers both to the art form and to the place in which it is being presented.
#Dragon spring phoenix rise seats free#
(I suspect that plenty of free tickets are destined to be disbursed during the show’s month-long run.) It is not unusual for fledgling performing arts centers to need some time to find their artistic bearings, and this appears to be the case for The Shed’s first season. The event is performed in the McCourt space at The Shed, which has been configured to seat 1,200 spectators. Perhaps connoisseurs of kung fu artistry will be able to appreciate Zhang Jun’s martial arts choreography, but otherwise Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise is a work of staggering inanity. Ceaseless waves of pretty, if pretty busy, colored and patterned lighting manage to animate these proceedings considerably more artfully than the script, music, staging, or performances. This leaves plenty of room for frequent martial arts mayhem upon the floor, which is accented by water and fire effects, and occasional aerial flights traveling up and down an 80-foot height. There also are two interludes at night clubs where gyrating dancers wear what appear to be futuristic pajamas.Īnyway, the twins meet up when they are 18 years old and their nearly incestuous reunion on the dance floor leads to even further kung fu combat and, improbably enough, a happy ending.Īll of this transpires within a cavernous open space that is overhung by a pale forest of fabric streamers and which features a semi-circular stage, a modest outcropping, and a spindly elevated skywalk. The details of some rigamarole concerning a legendary key to eternal life escape me, but whatever it signifies will motivate a duplicitous marriage, a mortal betrayal, a ritualistic funeral, and, of course, various exhibitions of kung fu fighting. Set in and around Flushing, Queens, of all exotic locales, Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise centers on fraternal twins, boy and girl, separated as infants and reared to be martial arts warriors by their murderously estranged parents.
In the meantime, it is impossible to tell whether the show’s 20 performers are lip-syncing or actually singing.
By no means do these numbers illuminate the tale or push it along. Half a dozen pop songs composed by Sia, such as “The Greatest” and “Courage,” here excessively remixed and heavily amplified, provide the canned soundtrack. While this world premiere features plenty of simulated kung fu combat, a musical it is not. That wild, high-octane, immersive spectacle, which enjoyed a 2007-2016 New York run, dealt out a lot more entertainment than Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise, a show that desperately strives to thrill audiences at The Shed and fails to do so majorly.īilled as a kung fu musical, Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise offers a two hour-long mishmash of martial arts fighting, antic club-style choreography, aerial doings, laser-like strobe effects, and, oh yes, a clunky story vaguely written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who co-conceived this farrago with Chen Shi-Zheng, who stages it. Golly, where’s Fuerza Bruta when you really need it? The finale of Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise.
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