Philadelphia City Paper reviews Hurdy Gurdy
The Hurd was already Gurding as the audience was filing in on Hurdy Gurdy with the statuesque Amanda Miller positioned center stage in a lingerie-bodiced gown that flowed over the stage of the dusty Plays and Players Theater. She twitched that fabric around her body in the arresting prologue to a three-part ballet based on letters and recorded dreams of composer Gustav Mahler, whose music is at times brilliantly deconstructed by Philadelphia composer Uri Caine. The famous Adagietto movement of Symp 5 is choreographed by Jessica Lang in a hot-house duet with Rick Callendar and Miller, who eventually peels off that gown. Miller choreographs a comedic central act for a quartet of dancers to carnavalesque accordian. The side-by-side duets - one achingly somber by Callender and Melissa Toogood and one punch-drunk giggly by Renee Robinson-Buzby and Andre Zachery - were riveting...
... any Mahleresque heavy-handedness was avoided, due not in small part to the subtly beautiful film elements incorporated by artistic director Tobin Rothlein.