Half a Great Show: Malashock Dance’s “Without a Net” at WOW

Though the circus artists mostly occupied center-stage in “Without a Net,” the dance smartly complemented them, setting an edgy European-circus mood. I was primed to see something weirder at the midpoint in the 80-minute program, when my half of the audience switched places with folks who’d been at the “Side Show.” Weird, it was.

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Theatre Comes to Liberty Station

There was no shortage of things to see at the La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls (WOW) Festival 2019 held at Liberty Station, last Thursday through Sunday (October 17-20). The array of site-specific and immersive theatrical experiences offered plenty of entertainment for theatre fans.

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The “Point Loma Pause” as Art: Ikaros at the WOW Festival

It’s called the Point Loma pause: the 10 or so seconds when a plane roars over Point Loma, and you have to stop mid-sentence. Every time it happened during “Ikaros,” the piece that Third Rail Projects created for the WOW Festival, the three performers went into stillness and looked up. I looked up, too, seeing this everyday occurrence as if with fresh eyes; marveling at the miracle of flight.

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“4×4 TJ Night” Kicks Off WOW

When the Tijuana dance company Lux Boreal made Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch in 2008, I wrote that they were raising the bar for dance in Tijuana. And, whether or not it’s Lux Boreal’s influence (I suspect it is), the six mostly-from-Baja works in “4×4 TJ Night,” curated by the company, were super, the best of them showing complexity and wit, as well as serious technical chops.

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