Variety - Review of Stage Left, October 21 2011
SF Chronicle - Review of Stage Left, October 2 2011
…an exciting overview of the last few decades’ leading talents–a must for dance-on-film showcases, and also meriting attention from general-interest fests, arts-oriented broadcasters, and adventuresome rep programmers. …‘Artists’ is a well-paced package that captures its subjects’ idealistic zeal without becoming too fawning.
Variety review of Artists in Exile, September 21 2000(Stage Left) is a fantastic chronicle of the very vibrant and often incredibly innovative work of Bay Area theater artists.
Zoë Elton, Mill Valley Film Festival programming director, on Stage LeftThroughout, Austin Forbord’s live videos contributed excellent tonal nuances and a sense of at times almost painful intimacy.
Rita Felciano, San Francisco Bay Guardian, on Joe Goode Performance Group Stay Together
Austin Forbord’s videos are perfection.
Mark Taylor, KQED Arts & Culture, on Joe Goode Performance Group’s Humansville
The media projections were expertly executed by Austin Forbord, though at times they distracted from the dancing simply because they were so interesting themselves. They definitely added clarity to the piece as a whole and solidified what the movement was trying to convey.
Lisa Claybaugh, CriticalDance.com, on Robert Moses’ Kin’s Word of Mouth
Austin Forbord’s video design both challenges and extends the many thematic connotations. Pelton and his collaborators are to be congratulated.
Voice of Dance on Stephen Pelton’s September for Sale
The role of Mann’s collaborators should not be underestimated. They understood what she wanted and gave her what she needed. …the suggestive video images by Forbord on three huge screens blew open ODC’s cramped performance space.
Rita Felciano, Dance Magazine, on Contraband/Sara Shelton Mann’s Monk at the Met
Austin Forbord’s Motion Study for the Grief Cycle was one of the evening’s simplest, but purest pieces. The live video feed created double perspectives which competed for attention… most intriguing, was the way it posed questions about shifting planes of reality.
Rita Felciano, DanceViewTimes.com, on Rapt Performance Group’s Motion Study for the Grief CycleEnsemble Parallèle’s oft-devastating, 90-minute multimedia wow of a production was whole and complete unto itself…Media artist Austin Forbord and set/lighting designer Matthew Antaky furthered unified the effort, creating a cumulative impact greater than the sum of its considerable parts… As Duykers lectured and hectored his deeply troubled servant, an onstage video crew projected his every grimace and eyebrow raise in perfectly focused black and white on a screen behind the duo. The portrayal, mesmerizing in its obsessively lurid detail, emphasized the weight of Wozzeck’s burden in its larger-than-life proportions. That the video was fed through a computer program that projected it slightly out of synch further heightened the hallucinatory aspects of Berg’s score… Several images and scenes continue to haunt the memory. One is the…constantly shifting, faintly projected parallel lines in the background, symbolic of everything from the ensemble itself to the instability and lack of connection between characters, were something special.
San Francisco Classical Voice, on Ensemble Parallel’s Wozzek
Ravishing and delicate, haunting and playful, somber and romantic, the production fused story, music and stagecraft into an engrossing evening of music theater…As Glass’ music hall-inflected score built an air of exuberant congestion, a bank of tilted video screens above the onstage orchestra refracted the gaiety into Orphée’s inner fever dream.
San Francisco Chronicle on Ensemble Parallel’s Orphee
Ensemble Parallel’s production of the Philip Glass opera Orphée was a many-splendored thing. Not only did the production feature the usual operatic suspects (vocals, instrumental music, set, and costume design), but the audience at Herbst Theatre this weekend was also treated to elements drawn from film…Staufenbiel found compelling ways of enlarging the boundaries of the stage…using video screens to show action that would have necessitated different settings.
San Francisco Weekly, on Ensemble Parallel’s Orphee
