If I owe my career choices to anyone, I owe it to authors Spider & Jeanne Robinson and their novel Stardance. In fact, one of the most life-changing events in my life was spending a weekend with them on Gambier Island in Vancouver. Jeanne, who is both a dancer, a choreographer, and a zen roshi, was a vibrant and dynamic woman. And the idea of blending dance with technology, put forth in their novel, is literally what caused me to decide to major, in college, in Dance/Interarts Technology.
Making the Dream Real
Much to my joy, I find that Jeanne is making the dream real, putting Stardance into movie form. The complications of choreography in zero gee are immense, and not the least of it is the problem of, well, getting into zero gee in the first place. However, she and her main choreographer, Kathleen McDonagh, managed to get up in one of the zero gee planes and…well, they did it. They danced. They began a zero-gee movement vocabulary. And I can’t tell you how amazing I find that. It’s the most inspirational thing I’ve seen…well, ever.
Thank you, Jeanne, for making me believe in dreams yet again.
As we come back to following the progress of July 20th, the GREAT BLOG OFF around the globe, we come to Newfoundland, home of Artistic Fraud. Specializing in “chorus based work,” the group is directed by Jillian Keiley and Robert Chafe.
All About Numbers
As the video on their site will tell you, in the past 9 years Artistic Fraud has called for:
81 school desks
32 flourescent semaphore flags
790 maps
36 vibraphone keys
2400 square feet of polyester wedding dress lining
Over 300 performers.
You can see a short film about the relatively small production Fear of Flight on YouTube now, and hear the ensemble as they blend and create their vocal stagescapes (score by Jonathan Monroe). It’s fascinating how the score backs up the dramatic collaboration of the characters on the stage…
After working as a stage manager for independent theatre in Toronto for almost a decade, I was lucky enough, in the summer of 2006, to be working at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a show from Volcano. We were performing at the Traverse theatre for the last two weeks of August - one of my favourite theatres to work in.
I’d been to Edinburgh with the same company back in 2002, when I had the chance to see a show from a Russian physical theatre company, Derevo. That show was called La Divina Commedia, took place in a circus tent in an industrial part of the city and was at the time - and still to this day - an example of some of the finest, most dreamlike and Boschian performance work I’ve experienced.
That’s Right: Boschian.
Theatre in the round, four blocks of audience with a tower between each block. A tightrope at least twenty feet up across the stage. A woman, naked from the waist up, immaculately muscled, pale and dusted white wearing faun legs and curling ram horns summoning the three other performers as rabid dog animals only just prevented from attacking the audience. I looked closely at one of those dog-people and for a moment saw nothing at all that was human there.
The show in 2006 was entitled Ketzal and took place at what is well known as one of the most exciting and innovative performance venues at the Fringe, Aurora Nova. This year it’s unfortunately not a part of the festival which even though I’m not going to be able to be there upsets me tremendously. Ketzal, however, was a fitting way for me to end my relationship with the venue.
Again, the imagery is amazingly dreamlike, severely disturbing and unlike anything you’ll have seen on this side of the ocean. They have a complete mastery of environmental design - as soon as you enter the theatre you are, without a doubt, somewhere else. Mark Monahan from telegraph.co.uk reviewed Ketzal in 2006 and said, “Quite simply, Ketzal, the company’s latest show (named after the Naguan for “bird”), is one of the strangest, darkest, most mesmerisingly beautiful things you may ever see.” Frankly, I couldn’t agree with him more. If you EVER get the chance to experience a performance by Derevo, do not pass it up. You can also see their video and still image work at their e-life site.
Guest blogger Karl here again…one of the more fascinating aspects of the Internet to me is the
ability to explore areas of my past to see how they’ve changed and grown over the years. I moved out to the state of Wisconsin when I was 12, but I’m originally from the twin cities of Lewiston/Auburn, Maine. Recently, I spent a fair amount of time on a lazy afternoon retracing my childhood haunts using the closest Satellite view in Google Maps I could get away with (I anticipate a lot of time wasted when they get around to implementing Street View in that area.)
Scoping the Arts
In the same vein, I thought I’d mine the Arts and Entertainment section of the local newspaper as the
basis of my post on the Eastern Time Zone, the Lewiston Sun Journal which serves the Central Maine area.
The website itself is pretty standard for its type, nice to see it’s keeping up with the times and not all
blink tags and comic sans font. Nothing surprising in the headlines: someone plagiarized off the Internet (sigh, so 1999), some notable local court cases, and some discouraging news about homeless crackdowns and shelter protests.
But, there is the “Encore” arts section under Entertainment in the left navigation menu. And under
that, a link to the World Refugee Day in Kennedy Park. And that does a lot to lift my heart. You see, while there were a lot of nice small town aspects to the Lewiston/Auburn area that I left as a child, I also recall that on the whole it was extremely conservative, extremely religious, and very ethnically uniform in its Franco-American Heritage.
A Hope for Cultural Maturity
As I said earlier, I’ve peeked in from time to time over the years. There was a Harry Potter book burning in the same park some years ago that I still shake my head about. But on the other hand, I’ve also read about the migration of Somalis refugees to the area. I have to admit at first I was skeptical, but this festival gives me hope that the area as a whole is slowing joining the world around it. Hope, which while not universal to all art (nor should be, I’d be the first to admit), is certainly one of its best abilities.
So, if you’re in the Eastern Time Zone today, in Central Maine in general, and Kennedy Park in Lewiston in particular…please go to the World Refugee Day festival. Listen to their experiences, enjoy their local foods and drinks, and as you listen to their music and watch them dance, look up or sideways. With hope, I’ll see you on Google.
Believe it or not, I do have a personal connection to this. You see, I’m not the only dancer in my family. My little sister Ti is a fantastic choreographer and dancer and, like me, a Star Wars geek (yes, our parents raised us well). So for one of her pieces she choreographed a ballet for storm troopers and Darth Vader (in black fishnets, of course). So I’m sure that she would love this bit. Watch it at least to the third dance. If you can do it without spitting out your coffee, I give you credit for immense self control.
(yes, I realize this falls outside of the time zone idea for the blog-off. But it’s too good to pass up, so let’s call it a “stardate”).
Howdy, guest blogger Karl here. This post takes the Mountain Standard Time Zone literally, with a look at the Mountain Standard Time Performance Art Festival.
Now, I’ll admit that I found this by googling “Mountain Standard Time Arts”, but a causal browse on
their website revels a lot beneath the generic title. The first festival was in 1971 in Calgary, AB Canada. Since then, the festival has specialized in combining traditional art forms like film and dance with more modern ones like video and multimedia, as well as covering everything else under the “performance art”
umbrella. I know that this will be of particular interest to my friend Gray, who has a lot of experience with combining video with dance to create new and interesting performance pieces.
They don’t have the current program for this year’s festival up yet, but going to the Program navigation
link on their website does bring up links to past artists that give a sample of what the festival has to
offer. The artists range from Camille Turner, who uses her performance as beauty queen Miss Canadiana as a way of mirroring the society around her; to the Nihilist Spasm Band, who specialize in creating their own unique sounds using a variety of low and high tech instruments and items not normally related to music; to Mono Logical, a monologist who incorporates video and audio clips into his monologues about urban space and global economics (among other things.) And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
If you’re interested in how performance arts are performed in different parts of the world, you could certainly do worse than checking out this site.
The Mountain Standard Time Performance Art Festival is being held October 3rd-17th, 2008 in Calgary, AB
(Alberta) Canada. http://www.mstfestival.org/index.html
I’m actually out camping in the wilds of Wisconsin this weekend, so I’m afraid while I’m able to Blog Off I am going to miss America’s Best Dance Crew tonight. It’s interesting to see how this show has captured a lot of audience that seems perhaps burned out by the pomp and circumstance of So You Think You Can Dance? (note: that link goes to what I consider the snarkiest review ever. When you spend a page complaining about the fact that you have to review something in the first place, you’re pretty snarky. I’m just sayin’).
Still, there is something very special about watching the dancers move in unison, and watching the process, emotions, and teams that are built as they compete for the $100,000 prize. I’ll be sure to catch up with the broadcast online later, but if you have any thoughts during this Blog-Off, please let me know.
Remember, this post is part of the Great Blog Off here at B5Media. If you’d like to help us contribute to the Actor’s Fund, please use the following link:
Welcome to the first post of the Great Blog Off here at B5Media! It’s part of our charity drive to raise money for the Actor’s Fund.
Even though it’s technically still the 19th here at Fame or Famine Central, I’m starting the Blog Off now because in England the clock just ticked over to the 20th, the day we are going for one blog post per hour. We have a few different bloggers set to guest post here, including a wonderful in-depth article about the Screen Actors Guild.
Nina is the Swedish singing waitress who plays the Lady of the Lake in the London production (yes, ironic, that). Here’s a hilarious excerpt from a BBC tv show about her:
Blog-off posts: one down, twenty four to go (three, sire) twenty three to go!
Reading about the genesis of the Phoenix Performing Arts group in Tonga is incredible, and inspirational. Founded by Siosiua Tofua’ipangai and Shiara Astle, both were dancers (Siua an ethnic dancer, Shiara ballet) who had been injured and unable to continue in their chosen disciplines.
Adapt & Overcome
In spite of being bound to a wheelchair, Siua succeeded in his dream of creating a dance company. He drew from his University experience to apply the following precepts:
appreciate art on its own merit
study arts from a critical standpoint
articulate arts in practical and theory
separate emotion from the intellectual aspects of arts
Joined by his sister, middle eastern drummer Kuinivia McCloud, the company is profiled by the London Fale here.
This is not that company, but it’s a glimpse of the traditional Tongan dance.
Out of New Zealand comes the performing arts group Soul Speed, a combination of artists from dance, live music (traditional and classical), costume design, and theatre all with a mutual concern for the environment. They draw inspiration from Awe Waiwai, or ancient essence.
A Collaborative Approach
“The power of theatre and dance as a catalyst for positive action and change is what drives Soul Speed’s performances. We work collaboratively, drawing inspiration from who we are and where we live,” says Ardre Foote, the director. ” Our performances are kaupapa (vision) driven with an indigenous contemporary approach.”
It sounds like quite a vision: the instruments alone include Taonga Puoro (traditional Maori instruments), cello, flamenco guitar, percussion, and vocals. Their dance is equally eclectic, and it’s all tied together into some of the most amazing theatre effects I’ve seen. Take a look for yourself.
If you are interested in more, they can be reached through Director Ardre Foote at ardre.antonio @ xtra.co.nz
Whether its the latest reality show or medical mystery, the newest book, the wildest music or your favorite TV show, we can entertain you. Follow the best the entertainment industry has to offer spoilers, recaps, star sightings and more.
Recent Comments