Arts & Entertainment writers offer capsule comments on this, that and the other thing ...

'Black Nativity'

Holiday cards come in all sizes and shapes, as do holiday productions. But "Black Nativity" holds a singular place in Pittsburgh's seasonal stage displays.

Loosely based on the 1961 Broadway production that drew from the Gospel of St. Luke and combined the poetry of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, this song play traces the traditional story surrounding Christ's birth, then, in a leap of faith, jumps to the oral traditions of the contemporary church for the second act.

Produced by director Oronde Sharif and The Shona Sharif African Dance and Drum Ensemble, "Black Nativity" started to lag in the middle of the second act at Sunday's performance at the University of Pittsburgh's Alumni Hall Auditorium.

But the cast maintained a spiritual glue in its exuberance that held things together through to the end.

It came out with a quiet force in the narration by Jonathan Berry.

It came out in the colorful costumes, resounding drum displays and choreography by Greer Reed and Ayisha Morgan-Lee that, although sometimes formulaic, transformed a strong student dance ensemble from Pittsburgh's High School for Creative and Performing Arts.

And it rang out in a stretch of uplifting gospel songs, delivered with fervor by an able-bodied chorus and an array of talented soloists.

This was community theater with an emphasis on community. More than the theater, drama, movement or music components, it was a legacy. "Black Nativity" provides a chance to grow, year after year, with a timeless story.

-- Jane Vranish,
Post-Gazette dance critic

'Flamenco'

If the audience at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild was to be believed on Saturday night, flamenco was back in a big way. Jazz music's hothouse was playing host to a production under the artistic direction of Edwin Aparicio, who heads the Arte Flamenco company in Washington, D.C., and local sponsorship of the Guitar Society of Fine Arts.

Although the heel-clicking popularity of flamenco has never matched Jose Greco's heyday in the '50s, the torrid flames of this Spanish art form periodically erupt in Pittsburgh, most notably with Pittsburgh Dance Council's "Noche Flamenco" and Pilar Rioja and the Poetry Forum's "Mano a Mano," with Samuel Hazo's original script based on famed toreador Manolete.

Aparicio brought "Entresueno," described as "a world between waking and dreaming, where memories blur and mix with imagination, and reality gives way to dreams."

Pocketed with slow swirling walks, the theme provided a loosely bound reason for a series of vividly athletic solos, accompanied by guitarists Richard Marlow and Pedro Cortes, who provided a riveting original score, and vocalists Jesus Montoya and Felix de Lola. Three women accompanied Aparicio -- the firebrand Anna Menendez, the supple Genevieve Guinn and the uncommonly sinuous Nelida Tirado.

While the audience was wildly receptive from the start of Marlow's free-form guitar solo, Aparicio took it to another level in his final dance. He resembles speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno in a way, and delivers another kind of speed, along the lines of Irish dancer Michael Flatley, with flurries of repetitively athletic rhythmic patterns.

It was a kind of flamenco that was vividly muscular and somehow essentially American.

-- Jane Vranish

Pittsburgh Camerata

Pittsburgh Camerata artistic director Rebecca Rollett has crafted the 24-voice professional choir into a gem of an ensemble that merits a bigger audience. The Camerata strutted its stuff on Saturday evening at Sixth Presbyterian Church in Squirrel Hill. The program, titled "Tidings of Christmas," was a series of exquisite miniatures spanning five centuries.

The concert opened with Guillaume Dufay's "Conditor alme siderum," a splendid example of 15th-century organum that the Camerata used to set the stage for the evening. The tuning of the octaves, fifths and fourths was pure and exciting, and the group responded to Rollett's conducting with spot-on precision.

Tuning remained perfect throughout the show, and blend and balance were exceptional in all but the highest fortes, which were slightly overborne by the sopranos. However, the tenors were weak with their entrance in Peter Warlock's "Tyrley Tyrlow."

One doesn't need to see Joseph Wilcox Jenkins' name on a score to know the music is his. The Pittsburgh composer has a compositional language that has remained fresh and distinctive over his long career, combining decisive harmonic progressions with lilting Celtic modalities. The Camerata embraced the shifting harmonies of his "As Joseph Was Awalking" but was careless with the text.

Rollett elicited elegantly shaped phrasing in contemporary composer John Tavener's "The Lamb," 16th-century composer John Sheppard's motet "Reges Tharsis" and a 19th-century arrangement of "In dulci Jubilo." The Camerata displayed superb German diction in Rollett's arrangement of "Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern."

The seamless ebb and flow of the concert was broken only by a cheesy sales pitch arranged by Rollett to the "Wassail Song." The program repeats at 8 p.m. Friday in Smithfield United Church, Downtown, and at 8 p.m. Saturday in St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Highland Park.

-- Eric Haines
is a freelance writer.