Archive - Aug 2006

Chita Rivera! Down Under

Some people like to drop their surnames: Kylie, Madonna, Jhuny... Rarely do people deserve an exclamation mark!

But Chita Rivera! owns it!

Chita Rivera! isn't fabulous despite her age, she's hot because of it. She had worked with just about everyone, done just about every musical role worth punctuating about. She knows how to fill out a Roxy song, even though she was Velma. She has all the aura of a diva but, even while she's dishing it out to lesser mortals following her footsteps (like Catherine Zeta-Jones), she seems terribly down-to-earth. Whatever happened to class? Well she still has bags of it.

There was talk about Chita Rivera! dropping by the studios to check out our rehearsal but by morning she had cancelled. And no wonder; she gave it her all to us the night before.

Thanks, Chita Rivera! You're a dead-set legend.

Tags: Chita Rivera

(according to Arts On Tour NSW) A few statistics about the Clan/Spirit tour 2006:

• 6 states and territories (actually, 7: all but South Australia)
• 8 coach transfers
• 13 Taragos
• 14 venues (of all shapes and sizes)
• 22 performances (is that all?)
• 33 flights (how many frequent flyer points?)
• 66 days on the road (it seemed longer)
• 290 motel rooms (how many stars?)
• 300 cabcharges

And, tomorrow, it all comes to an end (but not before blowing a few more cabcharges!). Gathering, The Australian Ballet and the injury seemed like a long time ago. But with only (???) a UK tour in Sept/Oct, it seems like its all coming to an end for 2006 even though its only August. Its even strange when we've just picked up a new program which is starting to hit its stride here in Ballarat, and now we have to go back into rehearsal mode again.

Tonight we were at the historic Her Majesty's Theatre in Ballarat. It has a mean rake and, with so many stairs and corridors, it feels more like a rabbit warren. There has been sign of "tour fatigue" at this venue, not helped by the extra-large full moon yesterday, but it'll be good to spend an extended time at home.

Technorati Tags: Bangarra, Tour, clan, spirit, statistics, Ballarat, Victoria, Her Majesty's Theatre

• Madonna's film clip for Get Together looks like a Winamp visualization.
• Nelly Furtado's Promiscuous is so ordinary, it could have been done by any one of the BEP wannabes. I'd rather she'd just released Man Eater worldwide, though you've got to appreciate the effort of releasing three different tracks for different markets. No wonder she was reduced to silly little giggles on Rove the other night...
• I prefer tone396's version of Lily Allen's Smile better than the official release version.  It's such a cute song, though.
• They had a report on Ten (?) last night about there being too many sexy music videos like Pussycat Dolls' Buttons but, to illustrate their point, they included a clip of The Aphex Twin's Windowlicker which was was strange choice to make and in any case they should have shown the part where the women all start to morph into the Twin himself.  Hot.

A random on-the-spot list of hot songs of the moment:

• Mary J Blige and U2 - One
• Lily Allen - Smile (tone396)
• Beyonce ft Jay-Z - Déjà Vu
• Scissor Sisters - Don't Feel Like Dancing
• Londonbeat vs Moby - Thinking About Lifting You (DJ Tripp mashup) (though I have to say that Moby's vocals really shit me; it's not uplifting, it's a dirge. I do like the beats, though, and thank god Londonbeat come back to pick it all up again...)

Technorati Tags: music, pop

Choreography doesn't get any better than this!

Tags: music, video, OK Go, treadmills, choreography.

We're stuck in some motor inn on the main road of Ballarat and so were only required to fill out a Personal Form.  Ripped off, we only got to answer questions
 about ethnic background, education, employment, and whether or not I did unpaid domestic work (yes, I did tidy up my hotel room that day when I slept in 'til lunch...)  There was that optional question about religion and, not wanting to seem all 2001 and put "Jedi", I just went for the "no religion" option.  Possibly the hardest questions were about how many hours I worked last week (how long was that flight to Hobart again?) and where was I living five years ago (what's the post code for Menora again?) but, besides that, it was disappointingly straightforward.

JPB back home had a more interesting experience:  what is the status of our relationship?  Just eight days shy of our first-date one-year anniversary, his suggestion was to have me down as "rent boy".  Cheeky.  Anyway, it didn't seem enough to cross the "de facto" box; although a simple cross-reference to an earlier question would uncover just as much, it seemed more appropriate to exploit the "other" box to state clearly: "same-sex defacto".  Sure, this is tainted slightly by the notion that such a relationship is an "other".  But what else is there to do?  Apparently there is no questions specifically about orientation so this is it.

In any case, its better than "rent boy": my limit is only five hours a week of domestic work...

On second thoughts, I think we should have just went for de facto.  A computer better understands a marked box than handwritten letters.  Oh well, better luck next time.

Technorati Tags: Census, Gay, JPB, relationship status

Anatomy for Beginners (SBS)

Stop cutting
I said STOP CUTTING

But it was no use. After a brief segue to the live model, being drawn on to make sure that the audience knows EXACTLY what we're talking about, Doctor Gunther had completely removed the entire reproductive system from the cadaver. He had to saw through pubic bone to get it all out and even then it all came with "extra" bits, like the bladder...

What else didn't I need to see? Oh yes: the dissection of a testis, the incision into the erectile tissue, the entire long and stringy vas deferens... with the organs splayed out on the tray with the prostate and seminal vesicles exposed, it looked less human and more like something out of Alien and yet when I look down into my lap I know that that's what I've got down there...

Trust me to tune into this series when they were discussing the reproductive system. Horrible to look out but like the proverbial car crash...

But that's nothing compared to the Doctor himself. Sure there's little he could do about his accent but he could have at least ditched the black hat to try to make himself look less like a mad German scientist. And lets not mention the accusations made against him about the illegal possession of dead bodies from Siberia, Kyrgyzstan and China. So we won't. But you can read about that in Wikipedia, not that anyone would suggest that it was 100% reliable! Doctor Gunther denies these accusations in his site.

Interestingly enough this show, when first televised in the UK, was implicated for being partly responsible for the fall in the number of cadavers donated in the UK.

Funniest moment of the show: when Doctor Gunther fondled the live male model and made his testicle move up and down. A bit of full-frontal male-to-male tickle isn't a new thing on SBS but in an educational context it was quite novel. Having an artist draw vas deferens and fallopian tubes on your nether regions also earnt a giggle.

Tags: Television, Anatomy for Beginners, Gunther Von Hagens.

Its not all sandstone in our second oldest city!

I didn't end up venturing far from the centre of town. On the morning of our departure I headed down to the Salamanca Markets to get two more balls of wool for my fluffy scarf; in the end my total spending from three visits to the Tasmanian Woollen Co was $52, which I guess isn't too bad considering the amount of wool I ended up with. The real bargain was the rather large hank of wool that still smells of sheep for $15. I don't know what I'm going to make out of it. There wasn't much happening at the markets but I guess everyone's still hibernating. My casual meandering meant that I got back to the hotel a bit late for our call to the airport; I don't know there must be something in the clean fresh air that slows you down...

But a few hours later and a couple of coffees at lb just off Chapel Street and I was back in big-city mode, impatiently power-walking past the big-label shoppers.

Tags: Hobart, Photos, Salamanca, wool.

It was a bitch getting to the airport. I had to drop my car off at PT's place again but had to pick stuff up along the way which took longer than expected. Made it with forty minutes to spare, not before witnessing the aftermath of an accident where a truck's trailer had toppled over. At the very least I made the flight, unlike some ;) but when we got to Hobart I realised that I had left my flexy bowl (tupperware) at home, my breakfast bowl. Bugger. Also left my razors at home, too.

Anyway, Hobart really is quite lovely. The people here have been so nice, recognising that we're Bangarra and wishing us luck (break a leg, which really isn't the most appropriate thing to say to a dancer but the sentiment was appreciated). Its not even that cold here; Canberra was worse. Anyway, on the first night I wandered down to Salamanca Place and Battery Point via the piers. There are some very cute looking shops, not least Tasmanian Woollen Co, but I also want to check out Astrolabe and Klektik. And the fairy lights on the trees are delightful. Oh how quaint! After wandering around taking random photos I stopped by Fish Frenzy to find some of the Bangarra mob finishing up dinner.

We had rehearsals at St Michael's Collegiate, a school well-decked out for the performing arts, before heading off to Theatre Royal for spacing. Australia's oldest working theatre, like the rest of the place it was small but oh so cute! Its a bit of a squeeze onstage but at the very least we're not flying rings, light boxes and sheets of corrugated iron in and out, and we're not stringing the place up with elastics and dancing under thick mats and balancing tins on our heads whilst chucking bags of flour across the stage...

Technorati Tags: Dance, Bangarra, Spirit, Hobart, Travel, Tasmania