The Beginning of the End

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• Susan Sontag
• Arsht Center
• The Beatles

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For jaded hipsters looking to tear into 2007 with some avant flair, the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts’ bold salute to the new year looks improbably good. Tonight the Big Orange’s miracle near the bay is featuring Mikel Rouse’s The End of Cinematics, cosponsored by Miami New Times and Coast 97.3 FM.

Rouse’s opus is a hot blast of innovation that seeks to cut through the fragmented hall of mirrors to melt contemporary notions of the fading flicker show. Inspired by two of Susan Sontag’s essays about film, Rouse’s metatheatrical work is part of an opera vérité trilogy examining the effect of pop culture on American society and spirituality. It blurs the boundaries between art, film, music, and ideas, inviting us to reconsider our typical movie house experiences -- or how we absorb the ways music, video, and dialogue are typically interwoven -- through the process of deconstruction. In Sontag’s words, Rouse’s current piece is “a cinema that eats cinema.”

The brainy composer has mined everything from old Tinseltown faves to predictable sitcoms to MTV programming to commercialism’s impact on the once-dynamic medium. Revel in a show that is described as a “post-MTV-hyperedited-video-theater-universe where lovers meet, hearts break, and life is reconstructed in cyberspace to the tune of a Beatles-influenced, hip-hop-flavored, electronica-popping soundtrack” -- all while serving the world notice that you have some couth. Showtime is at 8:00 at the Ziff Ballet Opera House. The first 300 ticket buyers score complimentary pretheater cocktails and appetizers as well as free admission to the Pawn Shop Lounge for a ritzy cast party following the show.
Fri., Dec. 29, 8 p.m.