The Cashore MarionettesLife in MotionFriday, February 8 - The Earl Cameron Theatre at City HallA live performance of puppetry is likely new for many of us, but it is an art form that has been evolving for thousands of years from China to the pre-western-settlement Americas, and throughout the world.The magic is in making the inanimate animate, right in front of our eyes.And for the Cashore Marionettes the very special magic is the depth of emotion that acclaimed puppeteer Joseph Cashore’s animation instills, accomplished with his community of beautifully crafted puppets works of art in their own right and then his absolute mastery over the spider’s webs of strings with which he breathes life into them.The artist brought his puppets from Pennsylvania to perform in the Bermuda Festival on Friday and Saturday evenings at the Earl Cameron Theatre at City Hall.The 13 individual scenes were performed almost entirely without the use of words. They were, however, filled with sentiments of all kinds: joy, sadness, ebullience, contemplation to name very few of the gamut through which he ranged.And extraordinary as this was, it was the dexterity of the scenes that aroused the most awe a youngster coaxing a kite to fly ever-higher; Cyclone the horse galloping around the stage chased by a gnat; violinist Mastro Janos Zelinka’s meticulous performance of Vaughn Williams’ ‘The Lark’.Music accompanied most of the scenes, and the selections were varied and appropriate. A wild-haired youngster playing heavy metal on an electric guitar, complete with pyrotechnics, transformed Matt Mazurek’s recording into a rock concert, and contrasted with Aaron Copland’s ‘Corral Nocturne’ for the wretchedly homeless Old Mike in ‘No Address’, while ‘The Foggy Dew’ was exactly right for the sadness of Maura’s visit to a grave, we assumed her husband’s, in ‘Last Farewell’.The dainty and meticulous violin performance of Maestro Janos Zelinka’s opening scene was immediately compelling, with strings linking either end of the action. Perhaps that focus provided the audience with a subliminal clue to keep in mind the strings, seemingly connected to every muscle in every puppet.‘The Stand-In’, where a youngster replaces an acrobat at the circus, took the performance beyond the fingertips. Mr Cashore’s handling of the puppet demonstrated his control to the point that the boy gracefully executed everything you would expect of a trapeze artist, ultimately hanging from his feet, and all to the rhythm of ‘Blue Danube’, Johann Strauss’s famous waltz.That, in turn, was beautifully contrasted by puppets of a mother and tiny baby in ‘A Lullaby’, where a mother rocks her baby while the newborn’s arms and legs tremble with realism until she eventually calms him.From a school girl continually distracted from her homework, to a spiritual yogi’s contemplations, to an African elephant mourning over the bones of a deceased relative, the magic of this performance is to show just how clearly our bodies express themselves and how those expressions of emotion, in the hands of the master puppeteer Joseph Cashore, can be interpreted through his marionettes with such precision.