Aymeric Hainaux and Francois Chaignaud: Mirlitons

You found this. Be the first one here.

Halfway through you stop being able to tell which of the two men the sound is coming from, and that confusion is the entire point rather than a side effect. Hainaux works as a beatboxer the way a percussionist works, building rhythm out of breath and lip and throat with no instrument anywhere in the room. Chaignaud is a dancer who sings while asking his body to do things that ought to make singing physically impossible, and he has spent a career refusing to let audiences separate the voice from the labour that produces it. A mirliton is the little reed pipe handed to children at carnival, the kind that sounds nearly like a human voice and never quite gets there, which is a fair warning about what these two are after. Two nights only, in a room small enough to hear the breath between phrases. October 23 and 24 at 8 PM, the Nimoy on Westwood.