Culture

I was at the Lord Roberts for a bit of a Lamb Burger when I checked my phone. There's a message from my sister up in Darwin asking me if I was going to be on Dancing With The Stars next week. Almost immediately it dawned on me: DB and WB, the poster children are going to be on DWTS. When the rehearsal director pulled the couple aside just before lunch we all joked that they were in trouble (that they had to go to the Principal's office because they were naughty children, or something like that) and, because they were the poster children, they were simply required to do another publicity thing for True Stories. Nothing special.

I thought that maybe I just missed the announcement that they had this gig, I try not to think too much about work things during lunch, I rang to confirm. Maybe WB was to do Moth with DB; boy there would have been hell to pay if that was the case. But, no, they're going to be doing new choreography, which is far more appropriate considering that we're opening in Melbourne pretty soon.

Anyway, it's pretty exciting for them. And the rest of us have been fielding enquiries from friends and relatives for the last couple of days: "no, we're not all going to be on the show, just the poster children". But we'll all be down at the local pub eagerly watching twist and tangle into the various headstands, lifts and one-arm-cartwheels-on-partner's-bended-leg movements.

Oh, and why on Earth is Tim not in the final??? Him and Nat are easily the best couple in the entire series, there is no justice in the world.

Puppet Up! @ The State Theatre

It was slightly eerie to walk along Market Street to The State during Earth Hour. Sure the CBD away from George Street is always quite dead on weekend nights but on this particular night the city streets were, well... dead-er, would you believe. Even the glittering entrance of the State seemed less radiant. Maybe it was just because I've got this cold that's been lingering on for over a week now, everything already seemed slightly muted without CBD businesses flicking off their lights.

It's not really feasible to turn off all the lights at the State. The show must go on, and all of that and, besides, the puppets freak out in the darkness so one of them made a statement of apology and switched off the lights for five seconds, which as it turns out was as much as the puppet could take before they ended up in hysterics.

When you combine puppets with adult themes, you're pretty much set up for laughs. And I barely stopped laughing for the entire show. After a snappy lead-in song with the puppets and a quick introduction by host Patrick explaining what would happen (think theatre sports but with puppets), the scenes came through thick and fast. Uncovered, the puppeteers performed in front of a camera with the footage projected onto screens on both sides of the stage and to see them create the scene is an experience in itself. You just have to be impressed by their ability to take just about any suggestion from the audience and make up something funny on the spot, over and over again, night after night, I'd rather have it choreographed thank you very much.

Too many highlights to mention all of them and, besides, they probably won't ever happen again, such is the joy of improvisational theatre. The puppet singing an apology for saying another puppuet's face looked like a vagina, the Zimbabwean yodellers and knife-throwers, the milking of the cow, Tom Cruise snogging L Ron Hubbard... we could have had the Opera about Tourette's Syndrome but they had that one the night before and the cast don't do repeats...

Umm... actually, they do:

Chunky Move - Glow

It's unnerving to have the choreographer of the show that you're seeing sit next to you. Especially when the people accompanying you usually make it quite clear and quickly whether or not they liked the show and they are not aware that the creator of the show is sitting within earshot. Such outspokenness is a good quality to have, don't get me wrong, because if a dance work is shite then, well, you can't really blame someone for saying so.

But I still would have found it an awkward situation to be in...

Thankfully Glow wasn't crap. The effect of the technology was beautiful and intriguing; and after only twenty six minutes, it didn't have enough time to get tiresome. Though despite the obvious technical ability of the soloist, her execution of the distorted and fluid movement phrases, the real showcase was her shadow. The visual tracking mechanism employed, that registered her every movement and influenced the projection beamed back onto her writhing floor-bound body, created some startling effect on her shadow that would not normally be possible. At times, her shadow would manipulate the spirograph-like loops of light that were projected onto the floor around her. Other times, the mechanism would remember her movement and leave black imprints on the floor, as if her ghostly shadow was delayed and was slowing catching up to her. Then there were times when her shadow would smear across the floor, disrupting the parallel lines that were drawn across her body. Beautiful, understated effects that have immediately obvious potential as theatrical devices.

Twenty six minutes doesn't give you much time to get bored but it can certainly leave you wanting more. It's a beautiful technology but there's certainly more scope for it to be used better. What little theatricality is shallow and unsatisfying. The speaking-in-tongues sits oddly in a show that seems primarily concerned with visual effect, though halfway through I realised that perhaps there may have been a concurrent audio feedback process happening, where the dancer's screeches were being recorded and manipulated by software, to be incorporated into the soundtrack. THAT would have been intriguing but it wasn't clear that this was happening and, if it was, it wasn't really taken far enough.

As installation art, it was sublime. As a piece of theatre, it fell quite short. The technology is extraordinary. Now it just needs to be used.

UPDATE: click here to see a snippet of Glow. Thanks to Doug Fox for the link. It was good to be reminded of just how visually striking it was to watch. Certainly something not to miss...

SCOPE (Securing Career Opportunities and Professional Employment)

A month ago I was busy updating and submitting my resume. And this is the result: acceptance into the SCOPE program. Cool. Now I can finally get some concrete web development skills instead of fumbling around and pretending to know what I'm doing... hehe...

I had missed all the information seminars and only heard about the program a week before the application was due but, lucky for me, I already had a good idea of what I wanted to do. And all I needed was a program like this to fill in the blanks.

Even now it's amazing to think about what this program is about, it's an extraordinary idea. Having already been implemented for elite athletes for fifteen years, the transition of this program to professional dancers is a neat fit because of the similarities in two different fields. What are you supposed to do after your professional dance career, when you've trained your body so specifically and with so much dedication? This thought has been with me pretty much for my entire dance career because I do have quite strong interest in lots of other things besides dance (and don't get me started about whether or not I'm still committed to my current profession because, with this program, nothing has changed in that respect; this is currently a very sore point with me...) and I don't see why I don't just explore that.

Although I must admit that when I was writing my application, I felt that I didn't really know WHAT this program was about. Sure, there was enough information on the website but I guess I was in disbelief that a program like this actually exists. It promises so much, it couldn't be true. But I took their word and finished the application regardless.

The induction was fun, had to take some time off work to attend and, conveniently enough for me, was at the Bangarra Mezzanine. Strange feeling, though, to be networking and occasionally glancing down at the dancers in a rehearsal that I would normally be present at. The dancers chosen for the program were all so diverse, some with more concrete ideas for what they want out of the program than others, but there was one thing common amongst us all: none of us wanted to leave the dance profession. Indeed I applied so that I could STAY in dance, and that was the same for everyone else. Alot of us also shared my amazement at the existence of this program and, through the induction, we were reassured that, yes, everything is as it seems. (On second thoughts, I was probably the least sure about the program because everyone else seemed to have attended the information seminars...)

So all I have to do is sign the contract and off I go. It's going to be an interesting year!

Okay this blog is all a bit Clan this and Clan that. Time for me to talk about something different.

Like, what's on my iPod?

Yes I do listen to a hell of alot of mashups, to the point where I sometimes don't even recall how the originals go. Is that a bad thing? Oh well. Currently the ones that are getting the most iPod time are these tasty eighties-flavoured ones:

- Cassie vs Yazoo - Me & You & Yazoo (DJ Matt Hite Extended Mashup)
Case in point. I can't quite recall how Cassie's Me & You goes but from what I remember I think it was pretty boring.
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs vs Madonna - Do Ya Want My Burning Heart (DJ Paul V Final Mix)
- Falco vs Sean Paul - Temperature Calling (DJ Schmolli Mashup)
- Madonna vs Cassius - Toop Toop Groove (Loo & Placido Mashup)
- The Cure vs The Boomtown Rats vs New Order - Don't Like Mondays, It's Friday (Go Home Productions Club Mix)
- Wolfmother vs Gnarls Barkley - Daddy and The Thief (team9 Mashup)

After compiling that little list I've decided that I really need to update my iPod! Some of these are pretty old.

Anyway. On to *real* music.
- Mika has a terribly cute album at the moment in Life in Cartoon Motion. It would be rude to say that Mika is ripping off Scissor Sisters because, hey, Jake and his mates are too busy *taking inspiration* from heaps of other acts (and doing a darn good job of it, let it be said). But it's hard not to make that comparison, especially when he does tracks like Relax, Take It Easy. But I do love it when he "tries a little Freddy", Grace Kelly instantly puts a smile on my face, it's a great way to start the day.

- Forget about the gay guy that's friends with the gay guy that used to live with that red head chick in Manhattan and think more what a Robbie Williams album would sound like if it was produced by The Streets and that would sort of come close to describing Just Jack's Overtones. Ooops, did I just offend you Jacko? It's not true! You're alot more laid back, less aggressive, but just as observant as Skinno. Especially love the dramatic strings in Mourning Morning. And I Talk Too Much has a great 8-bit C64-style intro.

- Speaking of the C64, how's about the whole furphy with Nelly Furtado and Timbaland ripping off some obscure track remixed for the C64. See the evidence here, and Timbaland's response here. How hard is it to acknowledge your sources? I like what he's done (in fact the whole "Nelly slutting herself off to the mainstream" has grown on me enormously since the last Sound Observation) but, geez, how hard is it to footnote and post that cheque?

And that is all, for now...

Anyone who saw the Australian Dance Awards last year would be familiar with movement and the design of this but it all works well with the music too. Soon to be broadcast on TV soon but you can enjoy it here.

Mr Jigga - Garage Party
Directed and Choreographed by Anton, DILM Films
Produced By Gavin Jarrett
SFX Owen Norling
Performed by Dirty Feet
Shot By Dean Tocchini and Evan Papagergiou

Had a pretty eventful week. My back that I sprained last week hasn't given me too many problems but that's because I've had quite alot of treatment on it (and getting a back rub about every second day isn't something that I'm going to complain about much...) What's been frustrating is that rehearsal director is erring on the side of caution and not pushing me in rehearsals much, which is bad because I really do need the practise! And if my back fails now, it'd probably be better to know sooner than later. On the plus side, wow have I got a great team to support me and my ageing body, I think I'm getting great treatment from the two guys that I'm seeing, my osteo and my masseur. They've been indispensible. Got one more massage before the opening of clan which at this moment, according to the Countdown block on this page, is only two days, twenty hours, 52 minutes and two seconds away!

I had a massage on the Tuesday and the guy that I see is in Woolloomooloo. Great. The place is jam-packed with people saying hello to Mary, I've never seen so many people down there. Afterwards I had to go back to the Opera House to see a show at 7:30 which, of course, happened to be the time when the OTHER Queen was docking. Cabbed it but Macquarie Street was jam-packed with cars and people. Made it to the show just in time, though I guess it didn't help that I was busy taking photos.

Snuck into The Studio late for David Hoyle's SOS, while he was busy bitching about the two Queens and encouraging us to take matters into our own hands and blow them up. Ooops! I had my camera hanging off my neck and hoped that he wouldn't ask me to show him the pictures that I'd taken. Brilliant show by the way, he urged us to "kill, if necessary" people like John Howard and the gay clones, to blow up those big floating bits of metal the Queens, to level the Pyramids of Egypt (he much preferred the modern Sydney Opera House, which he was thankful to be performing in). We the people of Australia that, apparently, waited for the pedestrian crossing lights to turn green, had to be wary of being complacent because life here is so easy, that the most we have to worry about is kids on skateboards knocking us down on the street. Singing is his forte but there was, er, contemporary dance and abstract painting in there for good measure.

[On the Friday, David and two other guys got gay-bashed in North Hyde park by a group of ten guys. Bloody appalling. But, with only one more show to do for this season (and it might be a bit morbid to say this but) it would have been intriguing to see his last show, to hear what he had to say about it. Apparently he didn't dwell too much on it though.]

On the same idea of Australians being too complacent, we went and saw The Gates of Egypt. Could barely keep my eyes open for the first twenty minutes though less because of the show and more because I was pretty tired. But the show itself was pretty ordinary anyway. Yes, we the people that wait for the lights to turn green and only need to worry about wayward skateboarders must not become apathetic citizens of the world but... I just don't know. I'm supposed to care more about what's going on in the world, yes, but I certainly couldn't care all that much for the play.

Though this week we did have a chance to show how much we do care about what's going on in the world, with the arrival of Dick Cheney. "Kill, if necessary" is what we were told by David Hoyle and, I'm telling you, if I had a rocket launcher I would have shot down a couple of helicopters. They were giving me the shits. On the Friday morning the noise from the helicopters over the harbour was disrupting the meditative mood of our morning yoga class. Sounded like we were in a war zone (sorry for the hyperbole). 350 Anti-war protesters clashed with the police as they marched down George Street, disrupting traffic but apparently it's okay for ONE person (the US Vice-President, yes, but still just the ONE person) to cause road closures through the city. Put him in an unmarked car and make him wait in traffic like the rest of us, I reckon.

Last night we had a cocktail party, which was modestly attended but there was good food and, with less people arriving than expected, there was more alcohol to go around. Wasn't feeling too well the day after.

And finally, my parents called me up about the website I'm doing for their shop (Johnny's Electronics). The layout is pretty much finished and all I need is content. Dad asked if I had a couple of spare weeks to fly up and take photos for the site. AS IF! Have you seen our Bangarra schedule? Besides, there's nothing stopping him from taking the pictures himself and emailing them to me...

And now it's next week. Gotta go to bed now.

I had installed an audio feature to allow y'all to download my mixes but unfortunately posted the link to Blentwell. The result being a massive increase in downloads which shut down the site. Oops!

Lucky for me it all happened near the end of the month so I only had to wait a couple of days for the bandwidth usage level to reset. Even so, I was anxious to have it offline even for that short amount of time. Just in case I have disabled the download feature for now, which is a real shame because I really wanted to have it all come from here. So much for trying to get a little bit of extra traffic!

But do enjoy the mixes, even if they are being kept elsewhere!

Sydney Festival 2007
Wow it's been a terrific start to the year in Sydney. As far as festivals go, it's right up there with the time when Stephen Page was running the show in Adelaide and Bangarra was the headline show... thankfully we didn't have to perform here in Sydney so I got to see heaps of things. And what a program it was! Here is my top five festival events:

5. Lou Reed - Berlin
Not my cup of tea, to be sure, but the musicianship was unquestionably good. Guest vocalist Antony, who was here for last year's festival, blew us away again, with his soaring voice. It was standing room only at The State but it was worth it.

4. Australian Dance Theatre - Devolution
The dancers of ADT are superhuman and are appropriately matched with the un-human robots. It was like we were on board the Nostromo, battling Aliens. It's undeniably spectacular, ambitious and mind-blowing but, like the soundtrack, it all runs at volume eleven. Halfway through you become thankful for the beautiful calm projections, as if someone had turned the volume down to about three, so that you can take a moment to breathe again. Strangely enough, and in contrast to alot of other reactions to this work, I wanted to see more robots, or at least more interaction with them. The two large robots entering the dance space to inspect the dancers, and the large tentacle-like robotic appendages protruding from the dancers' torsos were highlights, teasing the audience to believe that we would actually see a devolution where the dancers would become totally integrated with the robotic mechanisms. It never happens, though, instead we get to see an explosive finale full of daring acrobatics at warp speed. Am I expecting too much from them already?

The next three I couldn't decide between them so they're all equal first!

=1. Back To Back Theatre - Small Metal Objects
This production turns the theatrical experience on its head and manages to effortlessly deal with improbable contradictions in less than an hour. It is sad and funny at the same time. The audience becomes the stage for random passers-by to watch as we laugh at them and their silly human ways. Actors intermingle through a sea of *real people* in transit, some intrigued by the spectacle of a full audience stand while others simply ignore it as they get on with their lives. As one of the performers stares blankly into the audience (he's a bit wrong in the head, apparently) he becomes a people magnet, attracting the passers-by to stop and watch us, oblivious to the fact that there's a personal drama being acted out in this most public of places, The Circular Quay train station. You can't help but laugh when tourists stop to take photos of us, and there was a hilarious moment when a couple of toddlers took the opportunity to run up to the audience and do their own little performance. Seemingly incongruous to the fact that we are watching a rather large drug deal but, then again, where better to supply gear than a train station? (not like I'd know) Intriguing theatre.

=1. Lucy Guerin Company - Structure and Sadness
Guerin amasses a talent pool of dancers to match ADT but the production is on a much smaller scale, the cold robotic metal replaced with the ordinary slabs of wood. But boy is she meticulous about the wood! I could watch the dancers build that house-of-cards structure all night, knowing that the domino-like collapse of the building was inevitable. And unlike ADT, Guerin delivers on the title of her work: there is a structure and, after it collapses, there is sadness. Simple, really. There's also rebuilding, a coming-to-terms with the disaster, that's quite touching.

=1. La Clique
The Tennis-Racquet guy was especially hilarious. This was a perfectly entertaining piece of theatre, perfectly staged, and was amazing the whole way through. I felt like I had gone back in time, to the era of burlesque theatre (whatever era that was...)

Not to forget:
Akhe Russian Engineering Theatre - White Cabin: No discernible story. More like an excuse to get onstage and get drunk whilst spilling lots of wine and burning things and getting a bit wet. I have no idea what I saw but was more than happy to experience it. Those crazy Russians!

Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Antony Gormley and Nitin Sawhney - zero degrees
This could have been a good work but I went on opening night at The Carriageworks and, along with about 95% of the audience, couldn't see what was going on. Thankfully it all got sorted by the time I went to see ADT. Love the venue besides...

Tags: Sydney Festival, Dance, Theatre, Music, Australian Dance Theatre, Lou Reed, Antony, Back To Back Theatre, Lucy Guerin, La Clique.

Terrible, isn't it? December has barely started and I'm already on holidays. Yay! Even so, my "to do" list is preventing me from feeling like I have time to relax. There are things to do that I had put off, y'know, the fun stuff like my tax return. And there's still the seasonal pressure of present-buying, which is GREAT when you're as indecisive as I am.

I also have to find time to jump out of a plane!!! courtesy of JPB in honour of my new-found thirty-ness; a strange choice of present because, now that I'm officially over the hill, it's not like I need to go any faster on the downward spiral of life.

Anyway, so far the start of the holidays has been pretty eventful. It began with a punk-themed Christmas party that I feel like I've only just recovered from. On Monday BO-A showed me a video she filmed on her phone of the party and I honestly cannot remember that happening but the evidence is clear. The only downer was at three in the morning the cunting Stonewall door bitches were enforcing their straight girl quota policy thinly disguised as an anti-"open-toed-shoe" policy which meant one of my dear friends that I had been having such a good time with went home early. Nevertheless, the night up 'til that point was awesome.

Also went to see Branch Nebula's Paradise City, which was a terrific mash of performance skills. A skater, a break-dancer, a BMX rider, an acrobat, a dancer and a fallen diva... facing each other off (as you would do on the street, y'know...) and it was great to see them at times taking on each other's qualities in their own way. Worth seeing. That as well as Emio Greco | PC on the Friday, not to mention James Bond on Monday, and I'm having a pretty good serve of culture... Sure makes doing an end-of-year Top 5 list of performing arts events even harder (what did I see this year again???)

Anyway, I'm rambling. Sorry about the post going nowhere...

Technorati Tags: Holiday, Party, Stonewall, Branch Nebula, Paradise City, Theatre, lists

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