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Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries
Mojalet Dance Collective (San Diego, USA)

Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries is a one-act dance/theater work, commissioned by Mojalet Dance Collective and created and directed by Patricia Sandback with the dancers. This raucous work, featuring Artistic Director Faith Jensen-Ismay and her outstanding company of dancers, prompted Janice Steinberg of the Union-Tribune to exclaim “...and then something extraordinary happened in the choreographic process between Pat (Sandback) and Faith (Jensen-Ismay)”!

For this project Sandback gleefully borrows images and content from opera and TV to examine life’s big questions of “why are we here and where are we going?” Dancers Faith Jensen-Ismay, Kathryn McLean. David Hanlon, Lyndsey Gemmell, Alyssa Kinnear, Mandy Langen, and Robby Johnson join forces for an event of dance, theater, and song that fully embraces the message “live and laugh at it all.” Soap opera characters dance, talk, and sing their way to an inevitable tragic end, foreshadowed by the appearance, on tricycle, of Albrecht, the evil troll.

The diverse music selections for the piece include those by the irreverent jazz artist URI Caine, The grooving Les Yeux Noir, a treat from the brothers Strauss, opera from Cosi Fan Tutte, La Traviata, and more.

Ms. Sandback had been thinking of creating this work for more than two decades before its premiere in 2007. She embraces opera for the music, the spectacle, the extravagant setting and illogical storyline and will admit to a time in her life when “soaps” were an additive daily diversion. For Sandback, these narrative forms seem rich in metaphor and meaning are embedded in our collective social and cultural life. And then, to set the piece within the context of TV, opened another door. Come and celebrate the foibles of life through a work that was chosen in the past to be part of the U-T Ten Best Dance Performances of the year.

Duration: 60 mins

Age suitability: All Ages 

Audience Warnings: None