Sunday, August 4, 2019

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2019: "Magic Girl"

Day: 3

Show: 10

Title: Magic Girl

Category: DANCE / DANCE - MODERN / PHYSICAL THEATER / SOLO SHOW

By: Emily Michaels King

Created by: Emily Michaels King

Location: Crane Theater

Summary: A very personal solo performance told through dance, spoken work, and sound and lighting effects.

Highlights: Friends, I don't think I've ever seen a more fearless, vulnerable, honest, personal, and emotionally raw performance than this. In what she notes in the shiny program is the performance that is most her, Emily Michaels King bares her heart, soul, and body. What more can you ask from an artist? It's also super weird and out there, in a Maureen Johnson performance art kind of way, and I didn't understand half of what she was doing. But what I did understand was the raw emotion of the stories she told about her life and of the movement accompanying the very specifically chosen sounds and music (from Paul Simon to the Spice Girls). In fact when it suddenly started pouring, I wasn't sure if the sound of the rain on the roof was part of the show or real, that's how much under her spell I was. Emily uses microphones and hand-held lights for startling effects as she references several traumatic events in her childhood and adult life, without saying exactly what they were. This "ode to Rainbow Brite" is really an ode to to her child self, and the child in all of us - the purest truest part of ourselves before life has had a chance shape, hide, and destroy it.

Read all of my Fringe mini-reviews here.