"A fiercely beautiful historical pageant of music, movement and shadow play that reanimates these lost African combatants, who principally served as porters under British, French, Belgian and German command...This musical work is a more pressing, even ferocious production, with immediate relevance to today’s debates on the endurance of colonial legacies in our views of recent history."
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"To give you a sense of the stupendous scale of William Kentridge’s 'The Head & the Load' at the Park Avenue Armory: I watched it, rapt, for an hour and a half, and I completely missed an entire marching band and a set piece the size of a baby elephant...The frenzy of beautiful noise has been exquisitely orchestrated to overwhelm us without any obvious sonic assault...On every level, 'The Head & the Load' is a feast."
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“Grand, sad, and ferociously disjointed...A 90-minute collage that, if it doesn’t rattle you into existential despair, may at least send you to consult Wikipedia to see what the whole thing’s about...’The Head and the Load’ explodes complicated history into so many urgent fragments that it feels like a frenzied dream...I don’t mind....a nonlinear artistic experience, but when it feels like I’m supposed to be digesting a historical argument at the same time, my brain goes on the fritz.”
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"A superb assemblage of performers is juxtaposed against giant drawn, animated or historical video images...In Kentridge’s collage style, disparate elements are layered to create a powerful unity. In one indelible scene, the shadows of a procession of people carrying the materials of war are cast on the screen behind, where they mix with video shadow images of other carriers, an endless parade of cannon fodder. But Kentridge ensures that these shadow people also have voices."
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“Kentridge's production is overwhelming, forcing us to feel the immense weight of a subject few of us have ever paused to contemplate...Our heads dart from side to side trying to keep up with Maqoma's dynamic choreography, which synthesizes West African dance with military drills...The aural landscape is just as vast...The result is a violent cacophony that occasionally settles into harmony of unspeakable beauty.”
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“A stunning artistic achievement on an overwhelming scale...Jaw-dropping spectacle...An enormous ‘installation art’ piece – a synthesis of music, movement, sculpture and shadow play...The visual impact is stunning...The effect is overwhelming...The marvelous multi-national performers’ names are too numerous to mention here. Please go...to pay respects to their heroic artistic achievement, as they themselves honor the unsung heroes of the past.”
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"The play covers so much ground it’s hard to describe it without making it sound like a crazy mishmash—it’s as much a living sculpture as a traditional play...The musical performers are all outstanding...As each new event within the performance unfolded, it felt like turning a new page in an old scrapbook, full of ephemera and odd snapshots of a lost world. If Kentridge’s intention is to expose the colonialists’ shameful conduct, he succeeds with this beautiful and poignant piece."
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“An unusual and startling hybrid piece, where it uses a cacophony of words and images, music and dance to bring us the war as it played out in Africa...Powerful moments are interspersed throughout the bombardment of a show that presents history as chaos...The program offers...historical context...Without such grounding, one’s attention might drift. Yet it’s worth it, because a story so full of horror should not be lost to history, and because it’s being presented with such theatrical audacity.”
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