eNewMexican

Ideas, Not Theories

LIVESTREAM PERFORMANCE

— J.L.

Ayoung boy sneaks into an abandoned warehouse and begins to tap dance. Soon, he’s clapping rhythms all over his body, overcome with joy. It seems like a spontaneous performance, but it’s part of a composition for percussion that Reynaliz Herrera wrote for Ideas, Not Theories, her Boston-based theatrical percussion company. In a livestream performance, Herrera (who plays the boy) and four other performers make music with water, brushes, tapping board percussion, and bicycles, as well as traditional drums and marimbas. Three are fanciful, humanoid characters that come from the boy’s imagination, and the fourth is a security guard-antagonist, trying to spoil the fun.

Ideas, Not Theories recalls Maurice Sendak’s surreal, playful children’s stories, especially Where the Wild Things Are (1963) and In the Night

Kitchen (1970). The dreamlike characters that join the boy wear peach-colored outfits, which are reminiscent of drugstore Halloween costumes. They are part human, part animal, and part alien — but endearing, rather than scary.

Despite the sense of playful improvisation in the performance, each movement in Ideas, Not Theories is a formal composition. Herrera is especially interested in the bicycle as an instrument and has created a notation system that indicates what part of the bicycle to hit to make a specific tone or sound — the handlebars, for instance, or the wheel spokes. “My background is in classical percussion, but I always liked writing for unconventional instruments and experimenting,” she says. “I wrote the different pieces separately, and I also wanted to do something theatrical, so I figured out how to meld it all together.” 7 p.m. June 25 and 3 p.m. June 26, currentsnewmedia.org /events/ideas-not-theories

RANDOM ACTS

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2021-06-18T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-18T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://enewmexican.com/article/281775632113434

Santa Fe New Mexican