27 posts tagged “dance”
I am a wreck right now. Physically tired, emotionally wrung out, over-caffeinated, under-rested. YOU KNOW. Making performance work is SO DUMB. You shun all your friends for six months straight so you can make a show for them to enjoy, you work yourself into a frenzy to make sure it doesn't suck, and then you stand around drinking wine and pretend like you were just Making Art For Yourself. God. Seriously. WTF. WHO DOES THIS.
In any case, make my year by showing up at MAYBE tonight:
MAYBE
Dances by HIJACK & Mad King Thomas
Thursday, June 18 (TONIGHT!), 8 pm, pay-what-you-can
Friday, June 19, 8 pm, $15
Saturday, June 20, 8 pm, $15
Sunday, June 21, 7 pm, $12
RedEye, 15 W. 14th St., Minneapolis
Mad
King Thomas has been working with HIJACK for over a year now, and it
has changed my brain, changed my relationship to dance, changed a lot
of things. Now we've got an evening of work to show you: Two halves
that go best together. I've been busting my butt to make this show as
awesome as possible and I hope you can spare an hour to check it out. Seriously--it's only an hour AND there is a reception after every single show. Free wine, beer & food! What's not to love!?
Here's a video on the show: Obviously the video below is too ginormous, so here's a link.
I fell off the 8 Days of Happiness wagon, and I'm three shows behind. Quickly, then! To the reviews!
Show #11: The Success of Failure (or, The Failure of Success), Cynthia Hopkins, Walker Art Center.
I left the theater in a pretty weird mood and then wrote some trippy space-time, life-death, faith-knowledge stuff that I am too shy to post (plus, I don't have to! This isn't some kind of writing workshop! Ha!) The second half of the show is raw. She is honest and there's rebellion in her. Watching someone enumerate their failings for you in clear, judgmental, but accepting tones is going to make you feel a little crazy and dangerous afterward. I'm not sure I liked it. I'm not sure I didn't.
Show #12: My Never Being Loneliness. Two works by Melissa Birch & Molly Van Avery, Open Eye Figure Theater
I hate to compare shows to one another, but these three all bear the comparison, since they are meta-autobiography-fiction (you know it when you see it?). It was great to see that genre done in three different ways--the extreme fiction/truth spectrum of Cynthia Hopkins, the poetic work of Melissa Birch, and the funny, surreal writing of Molly Van Avery. I am proud to live in a community that supports these two (and their collaborators, Maren Ward and Arwen Wilder).
Show #13: The Infinite Multiverse, by Chris Yon, Bryant Lake Bowl
Man, Chris does not shy away from precision. Daring to hit sound cues so perfectly. It sounds ridiculous but it's true--there didn't seem to be room for error, but it didn't matter because everything in the Ballad of Angry Dad seemed to click together perfectly. In I've Got the Heebie Jeebies, there was a long sequence of unison movement and I couldn't figure out if I was more astounded by the perfect unison of the performers or the shadings of difference that flared up because they were all doing the same thing. It was a trip, and uh, need I mention that his dancers (Justin Jones, Kristin Van Loon, Taryn Griggs) are crazy good at what they do?
(Pardon me for stealing my title from Trent Reznor's first tweet of today: "trent_reznor: HAPPY!" which I just find so hilarious and adorable.)
First, it started off with great news! Mad King Thomas was chosen for the best dance performance in the Twin Cities! By voters! People who vote! I don't know who they are, as I didn't know the awards were to be given, but whoever you are: what an excellent start to the day! Thank you!
Best Dance Performance in the Past 12 Months
Mad King ThomasIt's good to worry a bit when you go to a Mad King Thomas show—not about whether the artists might get hurt or what the critics will say, but how close you should get to the action onstage. During a Mad King Thomas program, the fourth wall is broken down with a sledgehammer, and everybody in the audience bears witness, at close range, to the glorious mayhem unleashed by the Sage Award-winning trio of Tara King, Theresa Madaus, and Monica Thomas. In January's Love Me, Love My Questionable Art at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, MKT shared the stage with dancers Sally Rousse, Hijack, and Galen Treuer. The evening's high jinks ran the gamut from high art to low, from twisted family stories to a doughnut auction—plus a post-feminist fashion show for good measure. King, Madaus, and Thomas owe their aesthetic to performance art icons like Karen Finley and Dancenoise, but they certainly have their own voices, and right now these women are using them to roar.
YES AWESOME HOORAY DELIGHT
Then...THEN I was in contact improv class and I got to start off with a warm up with KVL and EDL and we all giggled and it turns out I like giggling in the morning. And then some other fantastic dancing and flying and rolling around and sweating (augh, I love the pure, clean sweat of an early morning, post-shower work-out). We did handstands and cartwheels and I accidentally did a backbend but I feel GREAT! And then I meant to take the bus to work, but I accidentally just biked the whole way because the weather is unbelievably perfect!
Also, for yesterday's day of happiness, I saw my first daffodil AND it was Mad King Thomas' anniversary of being official! Even though I didn't see my other two, it was a good day to celebrate and be happy about.
Well, I'm totally not seeing shows this year. Lucky for all of you. I think last year I was in five shows by the time March rolled around.
In the 2nd 9x22 of the year:
- Taja sang a song that stuttered back and forth between lovely and panicked; I really enjoyed the pacing of the sound score. I wondered about what life was like before Hooke invented the second hand.
- Seeing so many shades of beige made me think a lot about whiteness and how monochromatic most human beings are. Jessica talked a lot about her influences and feminist theory; I want to see more of her work and figure out where the theory comes into the dance.
- I love Georgia Stephens. I love the way she talks to things and people, the aliveness and casual nature of her onstage conversations, and the deep mystery I feel in her work. Plus Theresa was great in it. I hope Georgia keeps up these investigations of....whatever she is investigating.
The thing about dance is that it only exists while it's happening. There are no scripts or other artifacts. The fact that I have written down the names of the choreographers somehow lends the whole endeavor a bit more body. It is so sad that a single, off-the-cuff sentence about a dance is more than most dances get.
Two other notes:
1) This is apparently what I look like at 9x22 (monkey in the middle).
2) Georgia asked the audience about moments that made us sit forward in our chairs, and moments that made us sit back. Aside from it being a ridiculously smart way to talk to an audience full of kinesthetically-intelligent but orally-jumbled dancers, it's just plain smart. Try it the next time you're at a show or a movie, and I bet you'll find yourself sitting forward during the best parts. Coraline had us all squirming. It works!
Continuing the log of shows, I saw:
a) 9x22 at the Bryant Lake Bowl on 1/28/09. The featured artists were Cathy Wright, Tim Cameron, and Brinsley Davis.
b) Petrouchka at the Southern Theater on 1/29/09. Choreographed by Sally Rousse, with additional work by Morgan Thorson, Penny Freeh and Nicolas Lincoln.
Reducing the number of shows I see seems to give me a more generous eye. Some people have a much greater appetite for performance than me; I suppose I should see more, given that I want people to see my work and that I have friends in many of the shows I don't see. I'll be seeing three shows by the end of this week, and I know I'm missing at least one performance (that, of course, some friends are in). Every weekend is like this, and I just don't have that kind of stamina.
Beautiful moments I've seen this week:
-A hand stretching out from behind white cloth
-A lanky boy struggling to jump, with his ankles held to the ground, and a button on his pajama top flying off in the attempt
-A woman doing the best damn dancing-bear imitation I've ever seen
-The most charming/hilarious/overt seduction scene I've seen in a ballet
-Great costumes for Petrouchka, the Charlatan especially
-Hearing the ding of an elevator and feeling slightly afraid...maybe this is the last time you'll be getting on an elevator, and maybe you don't know where exactly the elevator is headed.
-Seeing Morgan's fleet of angels and thinking about Puritans and Isaac Newton
-The drummer blowing Sally across the floor
Here is a promo shot for the upcoming Mad King Thomas show at the Bryant Lake Bowl, called Love Me, Love My Questionable Art.
January 7, 11, 14, 2009
7 p.m.
$8-12
I will write more on the show later, but you should click through to Megan Mayer's flickr page because there are scads of pictures of us being ridiculous in our heart costumes!
Srsly. In real life. We actually did! Mad
King Thomas is now the proudest recipient of a 2008 Outstanding Performance
SAGE Award for Premium White Morsels.
It went like this:
Monica, Theresa and I buzzed around my apartment, frantically dressing, squeezing into vintage clothes, sweating, drinking tequila, swearing, looking for jewelry, picking out shoes, late late late. Paul calmly dressed.
Fast walk to the Walker Art Center, because we’re running late, of course. I wore tennis shoes and carried my shiny faux-snakeskin shoes, and my sequins were uncomfortably flashy in the sunset. We got there, changed shoes and put our practical items in a locker (we even thought ahead to bring a quarter!) We hustled into the theater, snuck into our seats and wham bam the ceremony was moving ahead.
Caroline Palmer opened the ceremony. She introduced the panelists, some of whom I know and love, but many of whom were happy surprises. We had the privilege to see 35 high schoolers dancing to Phillip Glass. And I LOVED it. I loved seeing SO MANY young dancers. I loved seeing them dance a style that I have abandoned but still deeply enjoy in some post-ironic fashion. I loved that, at an evening designated for professionals and grown-ups, this flood of new faces reminded me where I came from and where we are heading.
All of a sudden Jennifer Ilse of Off-Leash Area was on stage announcing some category. I was admiring her green and white dress because it matched ours. She said something about "guerrilla-dancing" and a group. I think I recall her saying that the first winner of this year's Outstanding Performance award was for a show about whiteness and femininity in a racist society. After that it is blurry. I think I heard "anarcho-" attached to something. I don't really know, because I was trying hard not to yelp or otherwise embarrass myself. We got to the stage, I unwisely brought my spangled fashion cane, and now I've got the award...and my cane, and a lot of lights in my eyes.
People cheered! A lot of people. We passed the mic and tried to make jokes and not forget anybody. We returned to our seat and palpitated and fibrillated and smiled in the dark as they announced the rest of the category.
All in all, I'm fine with acting like big, awkward
dorks, since that's what we do, but I wish we had taken the moment to thank
everyone who saw and supported the show, because we worked so hard.
I wanted to run back down to the stage and shout: Thank you! We
really appreciate you! Thank you thank you thank you for what you do! Not even
for this award, but thank you for being so good at art that I can live in a sea
of geniuses. Anyway, I just said it to the internet.
It's almost good enough.
There is a tiny heartbreak that all the work in this state can’t be celebrated the same way. There were many incredible performances over the last year that deserve to have people stand up and clap one more time.
Then it was over and we were in the Skyline Room, receiving congratulations and drinks and hugs from many of the people who re-introduced me to dance after a long, slow burn-out in high school, and who constantly remind me why I make dances here.
As Charles Campbell wrote:
… the very human depth and variety demonstrated at the Sage awards, the obvious fact that the art/work is the motivation and justification and reward, the self-supportive and forward-looking investigations in both pedagogy and in practice, the perfect blend of self-respect, humility, humor, with a healthy disregard for the conventions established by the powers that be, give me hope for something worthwhile surviving the plunge to the lowest common denominator of the bottom line that is all the rage.
I'll try once again: Thanks to everyone in the dance
community, for dancing, choreographing, going to shows, giving artist
discounts, being friendly, working hard on your dances and in all other aspects
of your life, asking hard questions, supporting MKT, and generally fighting the
good fight. Thanks to everyone who isn't in the dance community, for
supporting dancers, seeing shows, taking risks with your time, attention and
money, asking questions, giving hugs, forgiving me when I don’t show up to
social events for six weeks in a row (hi, game night),and being curious,
intelligent, funny people.
She's...you know....kind of a big deal. I've seen a handful of her work now:
Rosas Danzt Rosas
Once
Fase: Violin Phase (video)
Fase: 4 movements to the music of Steve Reich
Tonight I saw the entirety of Fase. I often worry about classics and seminal works; no less with this one. I've liked her work in the past but never come away breathless or tearful or anything. I doze off (sorry!) occasionally--the repetitive movement and music not quite keeping my blood pressure up.
Fase was ... I don't know. I am having a hard time talking about it. It is sticking in my brain. The music is repeating, the movement is repeating. It's not common that I want to write about a show I've just seen.
Two dancers stand. They lift their chins. They look at each other. They nod. In the beginning you have a magical moment, when you realize the shadow in the middle is in fact two shadows, from two people, overlapping. And there I had the "in" I needed. On the wall I could watch the rhythmic variants, the similarity and difference. There was something confounding and magical about the way they would phase in and out of sync with each other. One moment they are in perfect unison....moments later, they are mirror images, one swinging out, the other in, and all the while nothing has changed. They are still pivoting.
"Come Out." Sitting down under lamps, they look vaguely militaristic. And the movements seem bloody, like the music. They seem fleshy and wounded. And as always, they repeat, they vary, they coalesce, they diverge. Occasionally they hold it--and somehow these moments are the strongest. Anne Theresa is riveting--she licks her lips, hesitates (on her face only), breathes, sighs. You see the decision as it is being made. The dance is happening here and now; I don't care how often she has rehearsed and performed it. It is happening here, now, for me, for the first time.
Those swirling dresses--the humans didn't swirl, but the dresses did. I think my favorite was Violin Phase, despite being unimpressed with it on video. The whole show is tight, contained work. It manages. It knows what to do. It knows where to go. It makes form from chaos. And periodically in Violin Phase these glimpses of Ms. de Keersmaeker show. You see her looking to hit her mark. You see her dress fly up. The choreography pauses after a turn just long enough to let the dress wrap itself around her body and start to unwind as she flies in the reverse direction. Tension and rhythm. Her outward self is all calm composure and it becomes a delight to see her smile or catch her breath. Never losing control, just showing a bit more. The flip of her skirt over her hips. The casual cigarette gesture. The unending circle pattern, static...but you never know which spoke she will choose. The fouettes, casual, student-like...so loose in the hip and tight in the direction. Towards the end she starts to get bigger and bigger and suddenly you start to wonder if she's going to lose it, but instead she stops, perfectly with the music, fists clenched and shoulders hunched. [Aggravatingly enough, I can't find video of this one.]
In Clapping Music, I wondered...is she tired? She looks sloppier, bouncier, the precision I've found so fulfilling is missing. And as they come closer, moving inexorably downstage right, I realize she is not tired, she's playing. Her partner is rigid, still perfect, but Anne Theresa is playing. She is bouncing up and down like a kid, not a dancer. Her arms are recoiling from the landings, flailing effortlessly. She reaches out, almost to put her hands on the other dancer's shoulders.
This one isn't in the show I saw, but I like it, so here it is anyway....check out the extremely long single shots:
If that isn't something to take away from a show, I don't know what is.
I want to go to Australia (Brisbane) to visit my sister.
That's all well and good, and was quite simple, until I realized that it would be great to perform there.
This is the stupidest idea I've ever had.
Lone Twin did it, in a spectacular way. I just want to know how to be Lone Twin.
What I'm looking for is either mired in government bureaucracy (how to get a working visa, how to get a grant, how to fund it) OR it's some underground arts organization that is impossible to find (just like MKT is impossible to find). It ain't easy to be making contemporary live art in this work-a-day world.
Film & TV writers are on strike, which means everything except reality TV could halt production. Do you support the strike? Are any of your favorite shows in jeopardy?
All I can think about is how little dancers get paid and whether or not anyone would care if we just stopped doing our jobs. I feel like they wouldn't--so, we'd be unhappily not dancing, and still not making money. There's a reason we work for so little, and that reason sounds noble but is not really.
So, really, I kind of can't give a crap. Most of them write schlock, anyway.
(Well, okay--I'm really kind of jealous. I just wish we could strike. Good luck to them.)
