Stage: Our Critics' 10 Favorite Moments of 2011

8) There was a whole series of related moments—wonderful and painful—as the Merce Cunningham Dance Company visited on its farewell Legacy Tour this October. We had known since before his 2009 death that Cunningham wanted his company to end with him; he was already shifting his repertory to an archive and changing the performance model (e.g., Cornish College's minEvent). Still, watching that transition was fraught with emotion. Besides the ancillary Cunningham movies and panels onstage at the Paramount, I particularly savored his company's luminous Rain Forest. Joni Mitchell was wrong—we did know what we had before it was gone. SK

9) Physical comedy is humor in its purest form. Dude walks into a door. Guy steps on a rake. It's the kind of stuff that's been popular from vaudeville up through America's Funniest Home Videos. However, it takes a talent like recovering circus clown Lorenzo Pisoni to remind us that physical comedy can actually be elevated into an art form. In his one-man show Humor Abuse (staged at the Rep this fall), Pisoni moved effortlessly from one setup to the next, often involving the audience in his cleverly worked-out schemes. While Humor Abuse is ostensibly the tale of his joining the family business (the Pickle Family Circus), his stage memoir also included intricate bits of clown pantomime—including a 10-minute tour-de-force involving nothing more than a ladder, a bucket of water, and his promise to dive into it. KP

LAURIE CLARK PHOTOGRAPHY

Tim Smith-Stewart’s sissy-boy in Milk Milk Lemonade.

KEVIN BERNE

Daisey performed Agony here months before Jobs’ death.

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More About

• Marius Petipa
• Doug Fullington
• Steve Jobs
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Ballet

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10) Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey have been working hard at working together for several years, trying to integrate dance and visual art, rather than presenting them side-by-side. They've had notable successes in the past, but this month's A Crack in Everything (at On the Boards) was a giant step forward. Scofield has continued to refine her kinetic style, a kind of feral articulation where movement is both impulsive and highly crafted, nesting it inside Shuey's environments, which combine the latest in video projection with old-fashioned stagecraft. SK

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