Fame or Famine

Many thanks to BeckyLoooooo for providing me with yet another reason to go to Seattle: Point Break LIVE!
Now, here’s the fun part: this is actually one of my favorite movies. Specifically, the part where the lead jumps out of a perfectly good aircraft without a parachute just to make sure the bad guy doesn’t get away. That’s dedication!
Only slightly less scary, I think, would be the way they actually break the fourth wall:
“the starring role of Keanu will be selected at random from the audience each night, with the lucky winner reading their entire script off of cue-cards. This method …read more

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Can you imagine what someone like Tarik would do with pants like this?

Reminds me of some of the work of Troika Dance…

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I’m far behind in my posting to this blog, and at least part of it is the fault of several talented women who comprise Foxy Veronica’s Peach Pies. I performed with one of them (the Betty Wantsme who has been seen in this blog before) for one performance, and the audience and the directors liked it so much they invited me to continue to be part of the group. I’ve done 4 shows now, for audiences ranging from goth kids to Japanese businessmen to a benefit for a Catholic Charity, and it’s a lot of fun.

Let’s get something straight, first: …read more

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Last night my friend Betty Wantsme (yes, she’s a burlesque performer, why do you ask?) took me out to the High Noon Saloon in Madison, WI to see “Screamin’ Cyn-Cyn & the Pons.” “I’m not sure if you’ll like the music,” she warned me, “but I know you’ll like the performance.”
I knew I would too, just from watching them set up. The drummer was sitting there, smiling and twinkling-eyed, twirling his sticks and patiently waiting for his mates to finish their tuning and stuff so he could start banging on things, his bass drum bouncing with little McDonalds Playland balls. …read more

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I’ve mentioned the talented Shan in this blog once or twice before, because her blog is a source of endless delights and several times has provided me with content for this blog.
I’m happy to say this time she, herself, is the content. She recently posted a short video of a performance where she experienced a costume malfunction, and while she is (like every artist, present company included) overly self-critical, I think she doesn’t give herself enough credit for the graceful way she dealt with this:
 
And for yet another view of her talent, from a bit of a different angle:

And I’m …read more

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This is the third try at this post. The other two crashed my computer. I don’t know why, but I’m desperate, and late, so:
Go look at Snappy Dance Theater. Note how they’re cool. Then go to Boston and see their new show "String Beings". It, too, will be cool. And with luck, my computer won’t crash again.

"Now in its 10th year, the company has toured to 18 States and was chosen as one of three US companies to perform at the “We Love Dance” Festival in Tokyo, Japan, in August 2004. In June 2004, the Celebrity Series commissioned and presented …read more

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Via Turbulence (the page my browser always opens first) I learn of "mech[a] output", which is as big a mashup of sources as I’ve ever seen:

"mech[a] is a dance of restraint, based on koosil-ja’s study of the dances of the Noh-play DOJOJI. Through rigid adherence to the original choreography of DOJOJI, she treats the form itself as the subject, rather than as a medium. Simultaneously, the group transposes the work into their own aesthetic context."

"The group" is a conglomerate of punk rockers, dramaturgs, engineers, software designers, video artists, and choreographers.
One of the reasons I think that this piece, more …read more

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Reading about this, part of me screams that there are so many better uses of resources, both in terms of effect on the environment and in terms of money that could go to theatre groups and supporting artists. I mean, really, the idea of a one-off piece of this magnitude is, well, staggering in its hubris.

Lepka’s group, Lawine Torren, performed Hannibal on top of the Rettenbach glacier in the Austrian Alps earlier this month. With massive, snow-covered mountains and elaborate snow architecture as a backdrop, roughly 300 performers and 43 machines dramatized the story of Hannibal and his men against …read more

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Guess who was in Madison this week? The Bread and Puppet Theatre. Guess who had to work both nights they were here? Me! Grf.
At least I just got hired to be stage managing the upcoming UW-Madison Dance Department Anniversary Gala (my alma mater). Hopefully some good interviews will come of it.
Meanwhile, a blast from the past: the Bread and Puppet theatre from before I was born:

Tags: bread and puppet theatre, political theatre, activism, Madison, UW-Madison, Dance

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I don’t have much more to wrap up the SEAF performance review. The Sinner Saint Burlesque group, including Dane (who was also the MC for the auction, and hosts his own Seattle show and podcast) did a version of "Mein Herr" from Cabaret that was spirited and fun– I have to wonder if the troupe, so used to working the audience in a more direct and bawdy way, had difficulty with the kind of detached haughty disregard required to do that number right. As far as precision dancing went, though, they were right on, and I think they did a …read more

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