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Madisons "Guest Performer"


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"The Spanish gypsy Carmen lives only for sensuality. Love drives her from passion to passion. After she has loved many, she is attracted by the sergeant Don José, encompasses him with her wiles, and leads him to mutiny and desertion, so that finally nothing remains for him but to join a band of smugglers of which Carmen is a member. His fate is endurable as long as he retains the love of Carmen, but when she turns from him he is sunk in a pit of grief. Called to the death-bed of his mother, on returning he finds his still passionately loved Carmen before the arena in Seville with the bull fighter Escamillo, to whom she has promised her love if he is the victor at the fight. She is approached by José, who asks her to return to him, and when she coldly refuses him and tries to escape to Escamillo he furiously stabs her to the heart."

This is an actual review of "Carmen" the Opera production. Now one could argue that if she did have a rifle or flag , she may have been able to defend herself from Jose. :worthy: BUT , its just not the way the original production plays out.

I think Madison has made her sensual, as she was meant to be played ( twilling rifles or flags is not sensual) and obviously the center of attention as she was in the Opera production

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Well I think the debate about how distracting or not distracting Carmen is can be put to rest by the Overall GE scores -- which are at least half a point over their next closest competitors from the San Antonio show..

Having seen the show a few times and watched them rehearse for a few hours before the Cedarburg show, I can say that IMO, she's NOT distracting.. in fact, the whole interaction between her and the rest of the guard is pretty enthralling.

If you're not a guard or visually driven fan, you're probably going to think it's "distracting" to always be watching what the guard is doing. When in fact, the idea of the designers was probably to draw your focus there in the first place.

I guess it's working.

Great show!

Stef

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I've not yet seen Madison, but the question has risen, how do you do "Carmen" unless you have Carmen?

Well, The Cavies did 007 last year without a single Bond Girl appearing and it worked, it really worked.  Though I did lose a bet with my sister - I was sure one or more Bond Girls would appear by the end of the season!

True, but the Bond girls weren't the main character. Carmen is, so I can see why it's necessary to bring her character in, even if you've got an all-male corps. Madison took a big risk doing this, but it appears to be paying off.

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"I think Madison has made her sensual, as she was meant to be played ( twilling rifles or flags is not sensual)  and obviously the center of attention as she was in the Opera production[/color]

OK I concede the idea of a flag or rifle but a flag like scarf to reel the guys in and then push them away may be doable. I really do love this show and I do like the whole Carmen concept it is entertaining in both the visual and music arenas. Thank you for the Carmen Cliff Note.

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(twilling rifles or flags is not sensual) Let me correct you on a few things here. I'm going to assume you meant twirling. That being said, most guard members prefer the term 'spinning'. Now, as for rifles and flags not being sensual, I beg to differ. Have you ever seen the Alliance of Miami Winterguard? Oooozing sensuality. State Street Review? Sensuality. Blasts version of Carmen? Sensuality. The list can go on and on, but I think you get the picture.

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Though she was on the field for less than half of the show, I thought the whole thing worked. While she doesn't do any equipment work like Phantom's guy, she still pulls the whole guard production together. Bottom line - it just works for them.

Mike

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What's great about this show is that for the first minute or so of Carmen's appearance, you can forget about the rest of the corps entirely and enjoy the presentation of the story. The guard's role playing here is top of the line, and the periodic use of spoken words is really smart. You have to really listen for them, and they tell you just enough about what is going on without ever approaching the cheesiness of full corps singing, narration, or even "drumspeak" (which, as much as I love the Bluecoats this year, is pretty annoying and sounds like it's trying really hard to be cool).

So Carmen is by no means a distraction. They integrate the guard as such so that it would turn your attention to what was happening in the guard at the time. And with the way I see it, any time a corps dosn't tell you where to look for important show events indicates a failure in the design of the show. (There are a few great examples of this being successful this year: Look at Bluecoats, like halfway through the show. The upper brass winds up into that little traingle on field-right, and the pauses while guesturing toward the guard on field-left while they do some cool flag work).

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