A Scathing Review of Sarah Michelson's Tournamento

I'm a part of this organization at my college where we go to local art and music events in the cities. So far, I've been to three events: two dance performances at the Walker, and a Sybarite5 Concert.

Two of these were very enjoyable. The first one though is the one I want to talk about.

Sarah Michelson's Tournamento was a torturous experience. It had no redeeming qualities.

Okay, before I get too excited about this, here's what it was:

Not dance, first of all.

It was, however, a tournament. Four teams competed in some invented game that only the players and judges understood. So, to the audience, the entire two hours were dancers jumping around the stage and yelling out letters and numbers. Oh, and Michelson herself screaming "Let's Play!" at intervals, startling the audience. The game might have had some elements of battleship or chess-- who knows.

Any messages the performance might have been trying to make became clear within five minutes: This is what sports are like to people who don't understand them. Or, this is how arbitrary and pointless sports are. Or, how arbitrary and pointless art is. Or, maybe, how inaccessible art can be (let's hope it was the last one). But whatever the message-- it went on for two hours.

Past the one hour mark, my boredom ended and I actually became crazy enough to start to understand what I was seeing unfold on stage. It became interesting-- and that made me hate it even more.

This performance is basically impossible to explain to anyone who didn't have to experience it themselves. There is no way to capture my agony in words.

Once I had my freedom, all I wanted was to find a particularly scathing of review of this so I could find some closure. (I thought I saw an art critic taking notes.) All I could find though was one review that concluded that Tournamento wasn't for the audience. Which, well, is bullshit.

Even if it wasn't for the audience it would have been nice to be included, instead of alienated and tortured. I can't watch sports anymore without being triggered.

And I'm only slightly exaggerating.