Nah. After "When the Saints Go Marching In" hit its last little flourish, a triumphant Deacon re-emerged and plugged in a cable. (The emergency vehicles had vanished, after answering a 911 call for a patron who'd passed out but recovered just fine.) No orchestra, just a tiny iPod Shuffle, a slew of pedals to mangle his voice, and a couple of power strips' worth of lights. He led the crowd in a "Beat It"–style dance-off and organized a group scalp massage. Sure, the audience had thinned out by the halfway point, and maybe his homemade set-up isn't yet ready for prime time, but there were still plenty of boos from true believers when at 12:50 am (well past the scheduled midnight conclusion), the ICA pulled the plug on him mid song.
"Not my fault!", Deacon yelled through cupped hands, but no one was complaining. They all knew the last laugh was on the ICA, and it belonged to the ghost inside Deacon's brain.
Related:
Photos: Dan Deacon at the ICA, Keep moving!, Snacks, More
- Photos: Dan Deacon at the ICA
Super Secret Summer Surprise with Dan Deacon at the ICA
- Keep moving!
Sharp sounds all over the state
- Snacks
The most substantial item in the assortment of dances by the Trey McIntyre Project last weekend was an oddly proportioned 20-minute meditation on climate change and Glacier National Park. McIntyre, whose company appeared at the ICA as part of the CRASHarts series, has gotten a lot of press exposure as an up-and-coming choreographer with serious ideas.
- Final countdown
Everyone should be more like Dan Deacon.
- Here comes the Whambulance
The Baltimore loft once known as Wham City is long dead, its inhabitants evicted in 2007, but the twisted DIY art movement it housed has flourished nonetheless.
- No small feet
As a mob of scruffy Wham City fans and I mill around MassArt’s Pozen Center last Friday, the air is thick with excitement, as well as some pungent BO.
- A small, good thing
It's no surprise that Fred Frith, who's one of the world's leading improvising musicians and a wildly inventive composer, would form a group called Cosa Brava.
- Year in Dance: Reusable histories & durable trends
Conservation is a good thing in these times, and some of the most interesting performances drew on the uses of history — personal history, performance history, and even some inventions that sought to overturn history.
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Kind of like one long Rorschach test, Ultimate Reality is a collaboration between experimental music producer Dan Deacon and visual artist Jimmy Joe Roche.
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"Young people, and artists especially, respond to authenticity. And whether he's just very good at seeming authentic or whether he's really authentic, I think he has a lot of us convinced."
- Review: Andrew Witkin, Doug Weathersby
Over the summer, José Luis Blondet, curator at the Boston Center for the Arts, invited Boston artist Andrew Witkin to do an unspecified project in a hidden corridor at the BCA's Mills Gallery.
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Topics:
Music Features
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