Arts & Entertainment writers offer capsule comments on this, that and the other thing ...

Sergio and Odair Assad

It was cold in Synod Hall Saturday night, cold enough that a space heater had been hastily purchased and brought onstage for Sergio and Odair Assad. But you wouldn't have known it from the performance by the Brazilian guitar duo, which radiated its own heat.

On a bare stage, the bearded, moustached musicians (younger brother Odair sported a pony tail) brought a relaxed yet intense mastery to Old and New World music, including harpsichord pieces by Rameau, a two-guitar work by Rodrigo, and the Brazilian composers Radames Gnattali, Egberto Gismonti and Villa-Lobos.

Cruelly difficult passages sprang easily from their fingers. Having played together for about 40 years, the brothers could intuit each other's slightest shifts in dynamics, phrasing and time. They melded, producing an unstoppable rhythmic drive in the up-tempo sections and a graceful, uncanny rubato in the slow parts.

While classical guitar concerts too often seem a connoisseur's exclusive club, even a novice in the sizable crowd would have been transported by, say, the sexy, doom-laden tangos of Piazzolla.

Two of the most compelling works were by Sergio Assad. "Tyyhhiia li Ossoulina," with its Middle Eastern mode and Brazilian syncopation, paid tribute to the brothers' Lebanese-Italian-Brazilian background. For an encore, Sergio announced it was time to calm down the audience, and the brothers finessed his simple, beautiful ballad, "Farewell."

This first concert of the Guitar Society of Fine Art's new season was not without glitches -- the brothers were apparently told to start performing before the audience had returned to their seats after intermission, and a planned post-show autograph signing never materialized.

And don't get me started on the four times (four!) cell phones started ringing. In spite of it, the Assad brothers kept their instruments singing.

-- Peter B. King, Post-Gazette staff writer

Labco Dance

Labco Dance had one of its strongest Black Box Series showings, using a formula where veteran choreographers were bolstered by young talent.

At Sunday's performance, the always-welcome Jennifer Keller, notable for her grounded physicality, meandered onto the floor in an uncommonly glamorous way, her strong back highlighted by a slinky black halter dress and hair tied tightly at the nape of her neck. In this "Video Tango," Keller toyed with a couple on screen, then with her own video image, one that was both deconstructed and delayed in this delightful dance essay.

Keller then turned the tables in pants, shirt and tie during a Nina Martin solo, "Match." This dancer has learned to say so much with so little -- her economy of gesture is something to be savored.

Another veteran not often seen on the Pittsburgh dance landscape, Joan Wagman, unveiled a preview of "By Descending," set to be performed with Liana Dragoman's video during Spirit Unfolding at Carnegie Mellon University on Oct. 28. Created in two parts, dancer Allie Greene first showed a soft fall, as if in controlled flight, then the fear of an uncontrolled drop, with a rare lack of balance in Wagman's beautifully chosen moves.

A newcomer, Kristin McClintock-LeBeau, scored with another pair of solos. The native Pittsburgher first dipped into an emotional response to her brother's leukemia diagnosis. Then she turned her emotions into the "Facade" that we can all drape over our bodies, slightly contained as she was nurturing and pensive, yet whimsically haunting.

Soprano Adrienne Totino offered a trio of jazz standards with David Weitzman at the piano. And finally, in a nod to the future, two university dance programs were well represented. Penn State's Elisha Clark brought "What Remains," where the phrases were passed, one by one, among five wonderfully trained dancers who then played with the phrases in different combinations. Slippery Rock closed the program with student Dawn Bohn's "Exposed," where a quartet of dancers spilled about the studio in a strong, yet fluid motion.

-- Jane Vranish, Post-Gazette dance critic