Skip to main content
A woman's voice floats down from somewhere above unseen. Samita Sinha is opening Cipher with a kind of call to worship as she rounds the third-floor balcony of the Winningstad Theatre.
Her performance as part of PICAâs Time-Based Art Festival is a world premiere, and its greenness eventually shows.
As the lights dim, Sinha calmly enters the stage, where a triangle has been set out in twine in the center. Three tiny digital controllers hang on equally tiny platforms peppered around the triangle.
Unfortunately, her stage movement was not as well-distributed: Sinha spent half of her hourlong performance on stage left. Audience members seated on the balcony had to lean over the railing to see her sing lilting melodies interrupted by prehistoric growls and yelps.
At times, as when she stuck to closer to the Indian classical and American blues music templates she outlined in Cipherâs workshop, her performance enthralled. But at least one patron was observed nodding off at other times, and somethingâmovement beyond a kind of international sign language, or a more compelling electronic accompanimentâwas lacking.
That Sinha has done the scholarly legwork to be granted entrance to highbrow arenas is undoubtable. She just struggles, as many academics do, to translate theory into practice.
GO: Samita Sinha is at the Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway. 6:30 pm Saturday, Sept. 13. Tickets here.
WWeek 2015