The Cooking Show: Dance, Music, Soupmaking April 24, 2009

On April 24th and 25th, 2009, Margaret Cromwell and Ben Finley present a culinary and kinetic event that merges dance and live music with vegetable soup. Their genre-bending brainchild, “The Cooking Show,” thrives on the unexpected combination of vegetable soup with theater and the pairing of modern dance with music ranging from jazz to funk. Taking place at the intimate Temescal Arts Center with a 7pm and a 9pm showing each night, “The Cooking Show” capitalizes on the smallness of the venue to provide an evening of both visual and gustatory theater.

With “The Cooking Show”, Cromwell and Finley simultaneously engage, entertain, and eventually feed their audience. The vegetables are chopped, sautéed, boiled, and seasoned on stage by the dancers throughout the 40-minute performance, and finally served to the audience at their fruition as a vegan, organic vegetable soup. While the soup is cooking, various dance vignettes take place that parallel the soup’s progress. The music is live, performed by “The Cooking Show’s” own “Paprika Sneakas.”

Official Website: http://www.thecookingshowoakland.blogspot.com