By
Lonnie Burstein Hewitt
Photos
by Maurice Hewitt unless otherwise noted.
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| Bandaloop’s thrilling performers turned a tall wall into their dance floor. |
My
husband Maurice and I have been going to WOW festivals since the very first one
in 2013. WOW stands for WITHOUT WALLS,
and La Jolla Playhouse’s idea of presenting an array of immersive artful and
mostly outdoor experiences every two years became so popular that it turned
into an annual event. We were at the Rady Shell in 2023 and were eager to
return to the UC San Diego campus where WOW began for this year’s four-day fest
April 4-7.
All
performances are now free, though some required pre-registration. They were
staged in three different “hubs”, circumventing on-campus construction, and the
two hubs we found most inviting—Epstein Family Amphitheater (outside and inside
the Design & Innovation Building) and Revelle Plaza—were a 20-minute walk apart.
Happily, we love walking, and managed to avoid the rain that started as a heavy
drizzle late Thursday afternoon and continued on and off Friday but ended
before our planned showtimes.
What
we could not avoid was the wintry temperatures. Dressing for a ski trip was
helpful, though taking notes and photos with gloves on at night wasn’t easy.
Here are some of the things we enjoyed, weather or not.
Bandaloop
If
you saw the recent LJ Playhouse premiere of the musical “Redwood” in which
Idina Menzel not only showed off her stellar pipes but also her impressive
tree-climbing skills you may know that she was trained by this Oakland-based
company, who not only taught her to climb an actual redwood tree but also the wall
of a rather tall building.
Here,
at the top of the D&I Building, a colorful duo of Bandaloopers started out
with some cool moves, which were followed by a sextet on another side of the
roof, then a riveting solo down the first side and finally an all-out
performance by the six dancing acrobats who seemed to fly up, down, and out
toward their rapt audience. They call it “perspective-bending dance.” It
certainly was.
Inside
the building, I had a chance to step into the Fish Phone Booth Playtest,
a prototype of a piece by Ash Eliza Smith and Robert Twomey whose
final version will ultimately be installed in the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Inside the
booth, I became the “pilot” in a closed-eye descent into the depths of the
ocean, where I heard and responded to the sounds of fish and whales. No visuals
yet, but inner vision is encouraged, so it was a meditative experience, which
left me interested in following the booth’s progress over the next year and
ready to head back outdoors.
Duo
Outside,
the weather had grown colder, but a crowd was assembled for more acrobatic
dance at ground level: a skillful duo from Acro Physical Theatre in Taiwan portraying
an evolving relationship. Some of their moves were unusual—she actually stood
on his head—but like many relationships, it went on too long. If they’d cut
their 45-minute performance in half, it would have been twice as brilliant.
Three views of Duo
Still
watching the dancers, but trying to keep up our body heat, we stepped up to the
Bird Rock Coffee Roasters stand where Aaron, the manager, made us a special half-sweet
version of Spiced Mocha. It was warming enough for us to stay for a second
Bandaloop performance before walking over to Revelle Plaza for Spectrum,
Society of Wonder, a puppet pageant by San Diego’s master puppet-makers Bridget
Rountree and Iain Gunn, aka Animal Cracker Conspiracy.
Spectrum was a gorgeous spectacle of
giant and stilt puppets, accompanied by a San Diego Symphony string quartet. Viewers
were invited to create star lanterns beforehand so they could be part of the
show. It was seriously cold that evening but we were glad to be there.
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| Star-makers (Photo: Lonnie
Hewitt) |
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| Star-makers closeup (Photo: Lonnie
Hewitt) |
Two Scenes from the Puppet Performance
On Saturday, we had a long-awaited opportunity to re-visit one of our favorite Stuart Collection pieces, Fallen Star, which had been closed to visitors for some time. Created in 2012 by internationally acclaimed Korean artist Do Ho Suh, this tilted house atop seven-story Jacobs Hall offers an experience of a changed reality that you won’t soon forget. If you’ve never been inside it, now is your chance, since it’s open Wednesdays and Thursdays, and you can sign up for a time slot in advance.
Two views of Fallen Star
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| Street Level |
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| Inside, looking down ( Photo: Lonnie Hewitt) |
From there, we went back to the Design & Innovation Building for Folding Futures, where we were taken on a tour by crew members of a company called Origami Air. They use Virtual and Extended Reality to create adventures that encourage imaginative consideration of possible futures. Our group of ten was introduced to various characters who led us into an elevator up to a room where we were outfitted with headsets that gave us entry into a world 40 years from today. It was a fun trip, but impossible to photograph, and I look forward to seeing what else OA’s folding futures may unfold.
We had several other VR experiences in the D&I Building, though I soon discovered that my stylish glasses did not work very well with the headsets. So I had the choice of not being able to access all the immersive visuals or taking off my glasses and settling for a blurry-eyed view.
I chose the first option in the virtual fashion realm of Samantha Olsen and Melissa Phan whose Augmented Threads installation explores the future of fashion in the digital age. Both just received BA degrees in a new major at UCSD: ICAM (Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts Major) and kindly emailed me some of the images I missed. Here’s one that even looks great in 2-D.
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The show room of designer Elsa Schiaparelli.
(Courtesy of Augmented Threads design team) |
I
left my glasses off for Pigments of Imagination, and
though I couldn’t interact with objects I didn’t see clearly, I appreciated the
colorful scenery and had a good time dancing around to the music. It turns out
that Pigment’s co-creator, Tim Gmeiner, who kept me from bumping into
things, was a performing music artist for 20 years and is now pursuing a PhD in
Computer Music at UCSD. This is his first VR piece, in collaboration with Eito
Murakami, an ICAM degree recipient currently enroute to a Master’s at
Stanford.
We end these Adventures in WOW Land by returning to
Animal Cracker Conspiracy’s Guiding Bear. Think of him pointing the way to next
year’s WOW Festival.
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| (Photo: Lonnie Hewitt) |
Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning
author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyles in
San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net
