Archive - Sep 2006

(This was written ages ago but it's not until now that I've had a chance to transfer it from my laptop to a computer at an internet cafe. More stories to come...)

These Northerners are quite proud of their city, aren’t they? The Manchester folk that spoke to us after our opening night at the Lowry were insistent that I check out the centre of town, after I had dared to suggest that I didn’t have the energy to be a tourist as London had tired me out. I didn’t need to see another old building or some slanting wall of glass or whatever. Besides, there was enough Modern going on around Salford Quays where we were staying and performing, with the colourful The Lowry and the oblique curves of Libeskind’s Imperial War Museum across the water. My favourites were the NV Buildings, apartments that seemed to be bending in the wind. But, apart from that, the Quays were as desolate as Homebush, not quite on the same scale but similarly dearth of any form of life. Planned to death. There’s a ghostly outlet mall and cinema complex, a few restaurants, but nothing that would actually sustain any kind of community.

Manchester was described to me as the “cradle of the Industrial Revolution” and, without the governmental and cultural significance that London had through its history, it looked very mediocre indeed. Old factory buildings are rarely architectural masterpieces. Part of my disappointment was that, being described as England’s second city, I was expecting a lot more. Melbourne is Australia’s second city. Los Angeles (or Chigago?) is America’s second city. Despite its significant contribution to the UK music scene, Manchester seems to define itself in terms of London, albeit in its staunch declaration that it is able to “look London in the eye and show it how it’s done” (or something like that, I forget how the quote goes). It’s a city that has an inferiority complex, that it’s constantly trying to prove itself. I only had a few hours on our last performance day to check out Manchester and places like Oldham Street (and, reportedly, Affleck Palace) showed some promise of an alternative, stand-alone identity from the long shadow of that great southern city. But further wanderings up through Arndale and Deansgate and Cathedral destroyed all that potential, covered it up with concrete, slabs of grass and your standard fare of high street fashion labels that you can get along London’s Oxford Street. I also came across the Urbis, which tried so very hard to convince me that, yes! Manchester is a vibrant and modern city. The more it tried, the less I was convinced. The music: yes. Everything else: no.

On the plus side, the Mancunians seem to be much friendlier than their World-City counterparts down south, and they were much more open to what we had to offer (well, the few people that did bother to turn up!). Also, to get some perspective on the matter, I guess I was mistaken in my assumption that the city was bigger that it is; for a city of less than half a million, I guess it’s doing pretty well for itself. And I do tend to reduce my evaluations of cities in terms of visual elements, the available shopping options, and quality of expresso.

Tags: Manchester

I haven't actually taken very many pictures of London. It's simply too spectacular and full of sights that there doesn't seem to be enough time to stand around and compose pictures. That and I didn't really want to exhaust myself being a tourist when there's a job to do. When I get back from Aldeburgh I can devote more of my energy sight-seeing.

Lloyd's has to be one of my favourite buildings on the planet. To me, this is just a blatant statement: "Money Factory". How appropriate. It's such an intriguing sight, especially down a street full of sandstone. That being said, London also has more than it's fair share of modern architecture (not to mention the Gherkin just around the corner) and the urban landscape seems to be in a constant state of renovation and construction.

St Paul's is also quite fascinating. It's on such a huge scale and yet it's so hidden by the surrounding buildings, it's one hundred plus metre dome playing peek-a-boo with the pedestrians.

Listen: Start the Dance 3
Read more about it here.

The number of people here in London from Perth is intriguing (if not quite staggering) to the point where you could almost say that it's an unspoken rite-of-passage to pack your bags, one hand clutching your bit of paper from WAAPA, and head straight for the great English capital. And why not? Its a pretty exciting place and there's no shortage of the best dance in the world (I mean, hey, even Bangarra has performed here!)

Last night Bangarra opened Bush at Sadler's Wells and a handful of enthusiastic fellow alumni were in audience. As far as our performances go, it was possibly a bit too excited. It was our first performance for about a month after extensive cleaning and sensing the importance that comes with performing at this venue I was trying so hard to keep calm. "It's just another show." Am glad to get that first show out of the way now.

Other issues relating to peforming here at Sadler's:
- with the distinct lack of eucalyptus trees in England we had to order gum leaves from a florist! They were undoubtedly quite pretty but it would have been better if we got a few rough branches in with the bunch.
- the venue hosts ballet companies as well as contemporary, with the results being that their rosin covered tarquet made performing our show quite difficult. Who cares if the odd ballerina falls off their pointe, when we're unable to slide across the floor? Ban rosin, I say!
- and what's with London's distinct lack of decent air-conditioning? Ditto refridgeration: luke-warm coke is such a disappointment. And I'm not happy Jan about not being able to find decent coffee here either, you'd think that being such a large and diverse city there would be a few people able to do a decent latte without over-steaming the milk.

Besides that, London, you're brilliant! Brilliant!

I had reached the end of Oxford Street and decided to pull up some grass. People were lazing about in Hyde Park on a beautiful cloudless sunny Sunday afternoon. I was enjoying my first banana in months, tasty and only fifty pence...

It could have been a standard weekend outing except that I happened to be in LONDON.

This city is exciting in a way that a wannabe World City like Sydney can never be (at least not for at least a millennium). London positively reeks of cutting-edge contemporary and a sense of never-ending possibilities. It is so jam-packed with diversity as it haphazardly mixes oblique glass panels and towering shafts of steel with centuries-old buildings, languages from across the globe compete with the mother tongue. In a strange way it all starts to get a bit repetitive: there’s always going to be a beautiful historic building down that anonymous alley-way, or some memorial, or a tiny Square of grass where suits are jostling with the creatives and the stylish and the down-on-their-luck for sitting space. I’ve given up taking pictures because there is so much juxtaposition and contrasts in the one frame that capturing it all is becoming tedious. Its crazy, yes, but I’ve only got 512MB on my Memory Stick.

And with all this beauty and design, there is also the ugly and the dilapidated. Take the Kings Cross area, for instance; the quaint and stylish bars are no match for the cheap-and-nasty fast-food outlets and flat and faceless hotel chains (of which one of them we are staying!). Yesterday I headed down to the Barbican, which is a monstrous example of self-contained urban planning. A village of brutal and seemingly alienating concrete blocks and towers, it is tempered by hanging flower-gardens, water features and a dark-ages (?) church. Oh, and a renowned symphony orchestra and two galleries. It is one of these galleries that was the reason for this visit, it was exhibiting the changing vision of the Future City from the fifties to the present, showing various urban projects (completed or otherwise) that at times seemed to be as isolating as the building complex that houses it.

Last night was capped off accompanying a friend to a photo exhibition down Portobello Road in Notting Hill and a couple of glasses of wine at a pub.