Lip-synching is everywhere: in movie musicals, on venerable TV programs like Soul Train, Solid Gold, and American Bandstand, and in their descendants, music videos. Outside of those contexts, why do we condemn as fakes musicians who mouth the words to their songs? I suspect the root of the public (in this case, anyone over 15) aversion to the computer-driven, digitally enhanced Boy Band or Pop Diva du jour is a perceived lack of risk or obvious work in the performance--thus all those spastic dance routines. Indeed, part of the appeal of live performance is watching someone else work. So upon entering a dark room filled with strange sounds, it's no surprise that newcomers to performerless sound art (before recordable CDs, we used to call it "tape music") listen reluctantly and, unsure of what it "means," skeptically.
New York composer and performance artist John Moran has inverted the equation, making lip-synching essential to his performances. Moran fuses music, snippets of conversation, and sounds from everyday life into a dizzying, often humorous soundtrack, and then has live actors lip-synch the words. Freed from singing, a task that has compromised the acting in countless operas, the performers (in this "greatest bits" show, Moran and the protean dancer Eva MĂĽller) have greater freedom of movement and serve as visual anchors for the sound. Helpful, too, is Moran's tendency to repeat words and phrases, easing into sly juxtapositions and revealing through repetition the multiple meanings in his extracted texts. Impossible to classify, Moran's hybrid of opera, dance, and experimental sound is surprisingly accessible, witty, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. CHRISTOPHER DeLAURENTI
John Moran and Eva MĂĽller perform Thurs Sept 26 through Sun Sept 29 at 8 pm, with additional late-night performances Fri and Sat at 10:30 pm (On the Boards Studio Theater, 100 W Roy St, 217-9888), $18.
