Shut Up and Dance

T’ other night I was in the audience for NYID’s Strangeland and was sitting right behind the dozen-odd teens from Belgian company Ontroerend Goed’s Once and for all we’re gonna tell you who we are so shut up and listen. Boy, were they acting up. They were chattering away and clambering over each other and one boy started scrolling through photos on his iPhone for the second half of the performance and I’m pretty sure one girl actually climbed down under her seat and dropped down behind the seating bank so she could run off.

Not proper Melbourne theatre behaviour at all, and when the lights came up afterwards someone to my left remarked that they’d “wanted to punch them in the head”. Corporeal punishment clearly isn’t dead.

I enjoyed Once and For All a lot more than Strangeland. The performers were pretty much acting the way they had in the audience, except on a stage. They were sometimes irritating in the way the youth of today and every day are and that was what made it enjoyable. We in the audience were the oldies and that was the soul of the piece. It was stupid and pointless and yet totally relevant theatre that didn’t seem to be trying to mythologise adolescence or make these people’s lives anything other than what they were.

More importantly, though, it featured a short sequence in which the kids began dancing and, being Belgian, they danced jumpstyle! Long-time readers here will obviously know what I thought of that.

It’s been a while since I posted something on Geographically Specific Youth Dance Trends, but here’s an interesting article on Jerkin’. Jerkin’ is an LA thing that’s been around for a year or more; it’s like a lot of other dance styles except that its proponents blend hip-hop with skinny jeans and tatts and mohawks and other things more closely associated with dorky white indie rock and Euro street dance. It’s like tektonik if tektonik was actually cool or krumping if krumpers were lanky fashionistas who weren’t that great at dancing.



But even though it’s kind of lame and probably became popular because it’s easy and has its roots in a whole pile of earlier dance styles that jerkers wouldn’t even know about, the article above makes a good point about how dancing in public, for a lot of teens, is something to be regretted afterwards, when you’re old and realise what a fool you looked.

“With Pavlovian response, the students form a makeshift dance floor and do the Pin Drop, the Reject, the Sponge Bob, the Dip ... jerkin’. This might be sponsored by the BSA, but the spontaneous locomotion has kids of varying ethnicities and dance abilities covalently bonded by their love of dancing, incandescent color and constrictive denim. Only teen culture could birth something imbued with such unselfconscious, unironic joy. Who in their right mind wouldn’t jerk? This is fun.”

Me? I’m old, like Beckett. And like Beckett, all I want to do is sit on my arse and fart and think of Dante.

Inherent Voice

My favourite author Thomas Pynchon's new book Inherent Vice is due out in Oz mid-September (Shhh, I have a couple of proof copies) but it's released in the US today.

Penguin has put together a promotional video.

This wouldn't be much news if it weren't for the fact that it's probably Pynchon's voice narrating the clip. And Pynchon doesn't do publicity. No confirmed photos of him for 40-50 years; no interviews; nothing really, apart from the two bizarre appearances he made on the Simpsons (with a paper bag over his head).

Watch the clip here.

The book is an easy read but it's also curiously autobiographical. The setting is a thinly fictionalised Manhattan Beach in LA in 1970 - where Pynchon lived while writing Gravity's Rainbow - and if you're a Pynchonomane you'll also notice that the house he lived in at that point is in the clip above.

Anyway, if nothing else the book has switched me on to some amazing surf rock of the 60s/70s. Check out "Mongoose" by Elephant's Memory and after a few listens the chorus will be firmly lodged in your skull.

In other news:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Dominic Philip's Book Habit
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

A Painted Ship Upon a Painted Ocean

A ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION ON THE STATE OF THEATRE CRITICISM LED BY SUNDRY MARITIME CHARACTERS

Hey dudes, much obliged you could front up at such short notice, dig. Let’s get quorum, hey?



Allow me to laugh scornfully before jumping off this barrel. Ha HA!
Also: ‘present’.



Present!

PRIVATEER SAYS HULLOOO!


...

Stowaway?


[present]


From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!




Y- I’ll count that as ‘present’. So I wanna discuss your, uh, critical methods here, today?


Our what?



Is what I mean is, is how you deal with the whole ocean-faring and stuff? Oceans and ships being, maybe, a metaphor? For like…?




All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks! If a man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. He tasks me; he heaps me, I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principle, I will wreak that hate upon him.


Wait… dude… so you’re saying the, uh, whale is, like, art? And you’re like, hunting the art to – uh, I’m losing my wave here… cos I thought the ocean was… uh… and our vessels were like the art…




Ah! Avast, as someone once said. So if your vessel is the art, then I board your vessel and commandeer all that I find to my liking, leaving the rest ravaged and afire. My aerobic displays may be fearsome but I accomplish them as if engaging in some kind of fun obstacle course. I take all of worth and leave you with nothing save the invaluable lessons that trail in my wake. My comments all the way are sharp and unmerciful, though none can fault my dextrousness and firm thighs. My truth is unsparing, for I am beholden to no one. This is my critical method.


I AM TOTALLY OFFICIALLY AUTHORISED TO DO THE SAME THING! EXCEPT THEY PAY ME TO DO THIS!




Rilly? OMG.


"I SHIT YE NOT"

I’ve got my boatswain and my chain-gang keeping all the daily crap running smoothly while I kick back and enjoy the ride. There’s totally a thing to put my feet on and all. I’m the one you all wanna be, am I right? My sails got rims, I got an aft spoiler and I when I pull a rope and kick in the hydraulics I can make this thing jump like a mofo.



I just do it to eat. I should look into that.


A contract, flake-man, that’s what you need.



I have no vessel to call my own, but can always find a place stowed in someone else’s pile of unused rigging, scrounging my meals from whatever crumbs are dropped by passing passengers. Nobody knows me and my voice is all but unheard. Thus, I take up the only arms available to me: silence, cunning and exile. From beneath a cot in a dark stern quarter I simply watch them come and go, talking of, oh, what have you, noting down the players and their conversations while avoiding detection. Only rarely do I dare venture to the foc’sle-


LANGUAGE!




In striving not to intrude, I maintain an invisible purity. Like god or mouse, you will never see me; merely the traces I leave behind. Sorry about that time I forgot to flush, by the way.



TRIFLES! You must split your lungs with blood and thunder when you see the white whale! Break your backs and crack your oars, men, if you wish to prevail! This ivory leg is what propels me –


I was going to ask about the whole peg-leg deal –



I don’t think past injuries should play a part in this line of work and this obsession with elusive white whales representing a deeper reality doesn’t sound at all healthy. In my own practice I value consistency and transparency. My motivations are clear from the outset, being a shark, and my methods are informed by a long genetic tradition of shark-like behaviour.




I have a variety of fascinating scars and will discuss their origins at length in some iniquitous gin-house if you would care to stand me a drink. This one here, well, see, I was swinging from a grappling hook with a cutlass clenched between my teeth and you know what? It’s harder than it looks. Those things are hell sharp and the pirate gig doesn’t actually promote healthy dental hygiene –




Tell me about it. But I do believe it’s my white-whale-given right as a shark to take a bite out of pretty much anything I see, and if we’re being brutally honest here I’ll admit that it’s not always for sustenance. The faces of your surfie types when I do my “Here’s Johnny!” routine are priceless.



Harpoons thrust in the sky!
Aim directly for his crooked brow,
And look him straight – in – the – eye!!!



You want a take a hit from one of these bad boys, mah man? Looks like you could use a little R&R in the cabana.



The ocean itself is the medium in which I move. Without it I do not – could not – exist. It is the answer to an unaskable question. Otherwise, I’m pretty much a ‘go-with-the-flow’ kinda shark, y’know.



WHITE
WHALE
HOLY
GRAIL!!


Shoosh!



Righteous, man. I gotta ‘fess that my only experience with art is along the lines of the criminally underrated The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini (1966) and half of the 1937 thriller Sh! The Octopus. I dunno how I should be striking through those masks or how inscrutable they were…


What was their profit margin?



Who knows? And man, what is surfing but a connection to something beyond our understanding? Can’t catch the same swell twice, ‘k. It’s always on the move. But when you’ve got a 20-foot meat-grinder bearing down on your ass, you ken?, that rush, that moment’s what reminds you that you’re alive, right?




To be alive is anathema to my practice. If I attract attention to myself it’ll be the end of me. Aren’t we all just stowaways in this business? Peering between the cracks and scurrying in the shadows? If we’re caught the whole venture will be compromised. Best to become as small and silent as possible and let the ship take its rightful course.


Word! Plus I get PAID!




That’s chicken-shit talk, Stowaway. If I may quote Bertrand Russell’s law of the excluded middle: “Everything must either be or not be”. Our task is simply to determine whether something is or is not – and, ergo, is it good? Or is it not?



You can’t be a very good critic, shark.




Tell that to the gent on the mast.



Turn home, the sun goes down; swimmer, turn home.
Last leaf of gold vanishes from the sea-curve.
Take the big roller’s shoulder, speed and serve;
come to the long beach home like a gull diving.

For on the sand the grey-wolf sea lies, snarling,
cold twilight wind splits the waves’ hair and shows
the bones they worry in their wolf-teeth. O, wind blows
and sea crouches on sand, fawning and mouthing;
drops there and snatches again, drops and again snatches
its broken toys, its whitened pebbles and shells.

SORRY WE'RE LATE TRAFFIC WAS HELL WHAT'D WE MISS?

Give My Apologies to Susan Boyle

A "talent contest"?!

If this is what you get during a "talent contest" in Ukraine - ie an expertly executed, beautifully framed experience of live sand animation exploring cultural memory, collective trauma and ongoing grief - well, Ukraine's got talent to spare. I can't imagine this ever happening in Australia.

Here's a rough translation of the textual elements:

@0:00 -- Peace, Love
@1:30 -- Original announcement of the German Army invading the country
and bombing the cities
@4:10 -- Perished
@5:00 -- Most people don't know where their loved ones were buried,
hence the obelisk which signifies the remembrance of everyone who gave
their lives during the World War II.
@8:20 -- "You are always close. 1945"

Some Public Service Announcements

I keep forgetting to mention this anywhere: Zoe Barry is an acquaintance and former mixed-netball teammate of mine (true fact) who is also a wildly talented musician. She's worked with Rawcus and also does her own thing too. Here is one of those things:

"You're an inspiration Jeff Buckley!": Words Yelled At Bands - A Project
Zoe is looking for tales of times when you've felt compelled to yell something at a band on stage, or things that have been yelled at you while on stage.

"Apart from the fact I love hearing people talk about music experiences, underlying the concept is my interest in moments where art overtakes and overwhelms the audience, those moments where you experience an "unmotivated upsurge of the world". And the music gig being one of the rare places where people often articulate those moments, impulsively, loudly and in strange utterances."

Given my own obsession with audience behaviours in theatres, I heartily commend this project, which doesn't have a fixed outcome yet as far as I know. If you have a story, email it to wordsyelledatbands@gmail.com

In a weird coincidence, another acquaintance just dropped into my shop and mentioned that she's joined the ensemble of Rawcus. How strange.

IN OTHER NON-NEWS: I've been going through the hundreds of bookmarks on my computer and have only just realised that some of them completely baffle me. Why have I bookmarked this poor quality version of a song I don't know by a band I've never really paid attention to?



WHAT'S WITH THE CURSE OF THE LOVE SWEATER? There's a superstition among knitters, apparently, that making someone a sweater will lead to them breaking up with you shortly thereafter. I like that this wikipedia entry actually goes into the possible mechanics of these situations, rather than dissing them as fantasy. In fact, the proposed explanations make a bit of sense.

A WHILE AGO I found myself up at 5am researching Baba Yaga for no reason at all except that I couldn't sleep and was thinking "Baba Yaga, what was with her?" I came upon the art of Ivan Bilibin and I love love love it.

Bilibin was a vastly important illustrator who also worked as a stage designer, including with the Ballet Russes. I wonder if the Australian Ballet research project into the BR has anything on him.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN CATS AND/OR THEATRE then you will find this piece very enjoyable. It details the history of theatre cats - in Britain, at least, there was a time when no self-respecting playhouse would be without a moggie prowling the wings and occasionally wandering onto the stage.

IF YOU DO NOT LIKE BOOKS then you will find this piece equally enjoyable. You'll probably find it enjoyable if you do, too. Books can be put to other uses besides reading.

ANT FACT MONDAY

Today we hand over the reins of Ant Fact Monday to someone who doesn't necessarily want them. Dom Romeo coincidentally posted his own ant-related material today and there's enough in there to keep you hungry ant fanciers sated. (I know Dom and I don't think he'd mind the link). Off you go then.

While you're away I'll ponder his suggestion that "ants must be the animals least conducive to comedy." Possibly true, that.

But I have some work to do.

One Brain

A few months back I was thinking about posting something on Famous Bald Artistic Geniuses until I realised it was a boring topic and in fact I was boring myself just thinking about it. Today I was sent something that reminded me of one of the people who would have made that ill-fated list had I ever bothered to cobble it together (I think I got as far as Steven Berkoff then went to make some toast).

I've long thought Brian Eno is a bit of a genius, but reading this thing I was set me straight. Not that he hasn't produced some amazing art, but he calls for a rethinking of the term 'genius' and it's replacement with the notion of 'scenius':

"Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius."

When he was programming the Luminous Festival in Sydney recently (which I had mixed thoughts about - a bit unadventurous, but then I didn't actually go...), he elaborated the concept a bit further. You can read a snippet here that sums things up nicely. "Let’s forget the idea of 'genius' for a little while," he says, "... let’s think about the whole ecology of ideas that give rise to good new thoughts and good new work."

Anyway, I got to this by reading a great post at The Technium, which I'd never heard of and which features some really provocative ideas. In fact, I got caught up reading a lot more of the site than I'd intended to. It's definitely worth visiting though - for instance, in discussing 'scenius' The Technium actually lists the specific conditions in which such creative cultures can arise, and notes that they can't be deliberately manufactured as such. This is worth pursuing, since of course the general scenius concept isn't really new, and anyone who knows anything about art history will know that the Great Man theory of history only came about relatively recently.

Go Eno.

Space Whales

Some forms of animal anthropomorphism make a bit of associative sense - owls wear glasses, roosters are vain, turtles are patient. Frogs playing banjos, as we have discussed, are harder to work out.

But I was just thinking about whales and realised there's an inexplicable subgenre of bad art involving whales in space. It goes along with the banjo-playing frog in terms of weirdness. Perhaps I will start a regular Marine or Amphibian Tropes That Confuse Me series. Probably not.



I guess Space Whales can be explained according to the law of cool, as this site suggests. Space is cool, whales are cool, Space Whales are exponentially more cool than either. It's the same logic behind dinosaurs with lasers or robots who breakdance.

That's all. Back to work.

EXCLUSIVE!

It takes a lot to rouse me from my sedentary lifestyle, which is largely spent pottering around the rooftop conservatory tending to my elusive black orchids; strumming my banjo absent-mindedly in the once-grand ballroom long overtaken by moths and regret; or browsing the library filled entirely with novels about crime-solving cats.

But it seems that down in the streets there’s some kind of enormous love-fest going on with MIAF as the object of adoration. Yesterday I pointed out what I saw as a shortcoming in the 2009 program, but it so far seems to be the sole voice of dissent, excepting a few comments over at Theatre Notes. I’m certain this will change in the next few days but I may as well continue riffing in the same vein, if only to offer some kind of contrast.

My first criticism was the lack of cultural diversity in this year’s program. Here are another two issues I have, and they’re at the core of incoming director Brett Sheehy’s stated vision for the fest:

Sheehy’s twinned goals are to showcase *every* art form, and to make the festival as exclusive as possible – that is, to ensure that events at MIAF won’t be repeated in Sydney or Brisbane or Adelaide or wherever. I’ll get back to that second point, but firstly…

If the 2009 program isn’t very regionally diverse, it’s not too artistically broad either. It’s silly to promise “every” art form in the festival, since you’re never going to get stand-up comedy or musical theatre or other commercially successful but low-brow forms. But I wouldn’t have minded a bit of circus (beyond Strange Fruit’s opening thing) and I can’t see any puppetry in the program.

Theatrically, funding two MTC shows isn’t casting your net very far, either. I know one’s a Lally Katz piece and no disrespect to her – she’s a friend of mine – but wouldn’t the MTC have put this show (and the Bovell one) on anyway? Is that where MIAF should be throwing its dollars?

Anyway, I take bigger exception to Sheehy’s idea of exclusivity. He had to collaborate with other states in order to get the London Philharmonic out, but he otherwise wants it to be as Melbourne-only as he can. I just love it when that happens – when all of the amazing international bands playing the Big Day Out are barred from doing sideshows, or when artists play in Sydney only and I can’t get there because I don’t have the time or money to take a few days off and fly interstate. It makes me feel valued.

What benefit does Sheehy’s exclusivity offer? For anyone besides MIAF’s coffers, low-cost airlines and Melbourne tourism industry, that is? Does restricting access help artists or audiences in any way at all? I suppose it makes you feel special to have caught something that others will miss out on, the way I feel special whenever I have something someone else doesn’t (money, food, shelter). It’s a worry when art is deliberately restricted for no other reason than to increase its cultural capital – and that’s exactly what’s at stake here. This is culture as commodity.

I’m not disputing the worth of the programmed works: but you know what? I’d like it if people in Adelaide get to see Sasha Waltz or Hofesh Schechter or whatever. That’d be good. Maybe they’d be enriched by it and we would meet up sometime and be able to share the experience.

And maybe if MIAF was more about collaboration rather than competition, the program would be even better – different states could join forces in order to help get those big names out here. At the opening of Balletlab’s Miracle last night (INCREDIBLE GO SEE IT NOW), Australian Ballet boss David McAllister announced a new development between the AB and Balletlab. Balletlab’s Phillip Adams explicitly stated that without this kind of collaboration, he couldn’t do what he does. And what he does is, I think, create the most important and exciting dance in the country.

Australia’s artistic community is founded on collaboration and cross-pollination, mentoring, workshops, development, discussion, accessibility, exchange.

To my knowledge, Mr Sheehy barely even allows interviews.


I scratch my noggin.

If it's all white with you, it's all white with MIAF

So this year’s Melbourne International Arts Fest program has been launched, and if it’s aaaaaaall white!

Seriously, what the fest? 2009’s program is almost entirely sourced from Anglo Europe, North America and Australia.

The only exceptions I can find are Festival regulars The Black Arm Band (now with Added Jimmy Barnes!); a Japanese multimedia artist collaborating on the three poetry nights at the Planetarium; a Brazilian art movement retrospective; an art installation from six African-born artists; and some music acts aimed at the young folk in the Becks Bar “Rumpus Room”.

This in a festival with hundreds of performances, exhibitions and events over 17 days.

Otherwise:
Theatre: Australia, Belgium, Belgium, England/Germany, Ireland, Australia, Australia.
Dance: Australia/Iceland, Germany, Belgium, Israel/England
Opera: Germany
Film: US, UK (there’s a doco on an ex-Iraqi heavy metal band)
Visual Art: France, Australia/South Africa, Australia, UK, France, UK/USA, US, Australia, UK, Australia, Australia, Australia, Australia, ad nauseum.

Why are non-whiteys pretty much confined to the music section? And apart from the Black Arm Band, they’re all in the Rumpus Room (which sounds just like the MIFF club, and is in the same location, but has an infantilising name). The serious music - there's a heckuva lotta classical - is all Bach and the MSO and some American organist guy whose repertoire will include a piece from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

I scratch my noggin, I really do.

TRADITION

Goodness me - I was always a bit suspicious of the high-falutin' claims that Michael Jackson was a one-of-a-kind pioneer whose contributions to dance bore the stamp of unique genius. This clip (via Monkeys for Helping) only adds to these doubts. Michael Jackson certainly didn't invent the moonwalk. It's rad:



How did MJ keep his balance? That I can tell you in one word!

ANT FACT MONDAY

This is intruiging but sad. It took me a while to work out what was going on but the eventual reveal turned a kind of beautiful thing into a minor horror. Can atrocities be ant-sized? Does catastrophe escalate through magnitude, or can a small, tiny, 100% replaceable thing's destruction still mean something? You know what they say about how killing a man makes you a murderer but killing a million makes you a conqueror. Or perhaps a scientist.



I am proud that I managed to embed a video from a website entirely in Polish, however.

The next ANT FACT MONDAY will be more upbeat, I promise. Perhaps it will focus on the Yellow Crazy Ant. Do the words "multi-queened super-colony" set your heart a-skipping? If so, remain tuned.

Speaking of which, I still can't believe there are people out there who don't use RSS feeds (such as bloglines.com) which make reading things like this easier. I don't like the idea of people bothering to come here and being disappointed by the lack of ant fact updates. Get a bloglines thing happening and your time on the internet will be so much less wasteful and pointless. Which will still make it fairly wasteful and pointless, but hey, talk to the hand because I just drew an ear on my hand and want to know if I am secretly magically powered.

Good, clean, clear tones

A while ago I saw the excellent filmic adaptation of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, and one scene in particular held me. The protagonist, David, is trying to write an opera about Lord Byron, and is sitting in the ugly, grey-walled courtyard of a pet shelter. The little homeless dog who has adopted him is sitting nearby, watching. The disgraced David is plucking at a banjo, composing, thinking. Some kids stick their faces over the wall and laugh. They might be laughing at him, or with him, or there might be something else going on.


I left the cinema and bought the book. It's a great book.

The banjo scene is different in the novel.

"Seated at his own desk looking out over an overgrown garden, he marvels at what the little banjo is teaching him... It is not the erotic that is calling to him after all, nor the elegaic, but the comic. He is in the opera neither as Teresa nor as Byron nor even as some blending of the two: he is held in the music itself, in the flat, tinny slap of the banjo strings, the voice that strains to soar away from the ludicrous instrument but is continually reined back in, like a fish on a line.

So this is art, he thinks, and this is how it does its work! How fascinating!"

In a letter to the Editor of "The Cadenza" magazine in August, 1901, some guy called Vess L. Ossman wrote:

"The banjo will live and become more popular every year, even if the whole world takes to golf and other games. Banjo music is to the ear what the sun breaking through the clouds on a dark day is to the eye; and to my mind there is nothing to replace the good, clean, clear tones of the banjo. This in defense of the banjo from one who loves the instrument".

I love the banjo too, now.



BUT: why the association of banjos and frogs? I've never thought about that. It predates Kermit by more than a century, at least. And I know there's a kind of frog known as the banjo frog (because of the banjo-like sound of its croak) but it seems to be native to Australia.



Perhaps I'll never know.