Aluminum Show Plays The Jorgensen May 18-19

Aluminum Never Looked So Alive- Wednesday & Thursday, May 18 & 19, 2011, at 8:00 p.m (Rescheduled from February 2011)

Consider aluminum. Yes, it's like gold when you need to wrap up your leftovers, but do you give it a thought otherwise? Do you think of it as warm, animate, able to communicate human narrative without words? If not you probably haven't seen The Aluminum Show, a dance theater stunner that will energize Jorgensen's stage Wednesday and Thursday, May 18 and 19, at 8 p.m.

The secret behind the animation is the Israeli dancers, who create the effects through movement from within their foil cocoons. Special effects, creative mechanisms and acrobatic dance combine to blow life into the inanimate objects, where figures move solely through human manipulation without the use of any remote control mechanism. In this fast paced production, masterminded by Israeli choreographer Ilan Azriel and special effects guru Yuval Kedem, aluminum is inflated into pillows, shredded into streamers, shot out of cannons, floated in mid air and turned into hand and stick puppets.

And the shiny element also is transformed into dancer habitats. One segment features two dancers-in-ductwork performing a pas de deux that can be described only as a mating dance of Slinkys. Later, crawling from a black velvet screen stretched across the stage, little aluminum inch worms sing and dance to a medley of "Stayin' Alive" and "Ghostbusters."

The audience, on many occasions, ends up interacting with the aluminum tubes, since they wriggle and climb over the spectators, and in one instance, consume an unassuming member of the crowd. But don't look for a plot line, only the stories that pop into the viewer's mind during this engaging piece of kinetic theater.

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts is located at 2132 Hillside Road on the UConn campus in Storrs. Regular tickets are $45, $38 and $34, with some discounts available. For tickets and information, call the Box Office at 860.486.4226, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., or order online at jorgensen.uconn.edu. Convenient free parking is available across the street in the North Garage.