a little more Light Hits The Glitz

I couldn't find it in me to drop this piece. SO we are bringing it back in a few spots around town:

On Stage Philadelphia!
Monday, February 8th, 7-10PM

@ Plays and Players (3rd floor Skinner Studio)

$10

We will perform a full version of Light Hits The Glitz. It will be on a shared bill with a bunch of sweet dance and theater groups.

http://www.playsandplayers.org/performance/onstagepreview

Friday, January 22nd till the AM of Sat. Jan. 23rd

@ The Annenberg Center on 36th and Walnut

Light Hits the Glitz excerpt on the "micro-stage" @ 11:15PM?

Pink Hair performs twice more @ 12:15 and 1:15.

Come see us and this play cause it sounds insane!

http://www.bratproductions.org/events/24-hour-bald-soprano

thoughts on light hits the glitz

So "Light hits the glitz" was my fringe piece. I am reworking it for Zornitsa's Current Show which will be free at Mascher space on Saturday, Nov. 14th. I am so excited. Annie is in the piece now, and I can't wait to see the whole thing re-imagined. In rehearsal on Monday I tried to figure out and explain to Kate, Ash, and Annie what the intent of the piece is. But explanations are always lacking and I circled around and around blabbering productively, but not coherently.

So I tried again in email and here is what I came up with:

• images of icing, marhmallow fluff, layers of delicious but extra sugary stuff added. Image of marshmallow fluff or icing smeared onto a person's arms or legs picking up shiny beads or sequins or glitter off the floor.
  
• images of kids named Esme and Sophie and Kaylin and Emma walking around disney world with their parents all bright eyed...They spend 5 days there going to each theme park...it rains each afternoon. They get soaked waiting in line for the rides and attractions. Their parents buy them yellow slickers and glittery princess water bottles and wheely backpacks.
• some kind of idea of "What is a fair Give and Take in art/dance?" How much do I want to glitter and glitz? Do I want people to wait in rainy lines for my art? Do I want people to expect it to be layered with thick sweet icing. Do I want people to run to Sam's club to buy it? Is Disney World a land of IMAGINATION? What is the nature of Imagination? Why do we associate it with children or things that awe us? Shouldn't "make believe" or "pretend" be taken seriously (as adults) not necessarily as fantasy or Lord of the rings or some elaborate sex porno fantasy, but make believe...like the brain/sensory process that fuels what we do every single day. I know a woman who "made believe" that she did not have a tumor the size of a basketball growing inside of her. When we rehearse at fidget, we make believe that we are in mascher space to figure out spacing....
• so I guess a piece that comments on the glitz and fluff and requires the audience to invest in actual imaginative tasks by Kate annie and Ashley and then use their own imaginations to deal with what they see. deal with...not understand, or be awed by...
• oh...and I am getting closer to what I actually mean. I think it is stupid that imagination is always supposed to make us feel good. It is the sole thing that is responsible for making us feel good, outrageous, awkward, ridiculous. I guess my point is that imagination is not marketable...we can't make an infomercial about it...but let us try to anyway. shall we?
  
• oh as for merce, and least common denominator, and such...I want to ask: can we be imaginative and not embellish? We don't have to tell a story with our eyes or expression or gestures or spinal undulations. we don't have to show whimsy or emotion in the face. I we just show really simply "annie ashley and kate thinking and imagining", that is enough.
• as for the Hole karaoke. there is something still really valid about that 7th-grade-alone-in-my-room-self that was all about over emoting andwhat I want to consider being way corny. Hole is so glitzy but so cornily harsh and abrasive. It tries to be irreverent . I just feel like it is a nice layer. The kind of complex feeling of not wanting to make the audience feel turned off or awkward, but genuinely wanting to make eye contact and express and over-emote.
  

Ha. Annie said at rehearsal, "So could you put what you are trying to say in one sentence?" Well, this is my attempt. (NOT) ...one bullet pointed, long ass sentence.

Come see the show. The piece will take half as long as it took me to think of those bullet points. I promise.

chaos has no kickstand

I love how I always start out my blogs talking about how I haven't blogged. It is kind of like when I used to go to confession at C.C.D. "Father forgive me, for it has been ______ since I have last blogged." I kinda stare through that weird shade/screen thing - my eyes level with the shadowy potbelly of the priest on the other side. I think of how he probably just gorged himself with meatballs and spaghetti but mostly meatballs. And I wonder if he has ever had the urge to fart or belch in that tiny dark booth and how bad it must smell, and I wonder if I should confess to him the these comic book-type images. But before I can get that out, he gives me my penance. "Say three Hail Mary's, two Our Father, and for Christ's sake, I check your blog daily and it's really been a let-down. The writing...when you actually do write, it all tries to hard...it kind of hears itself, comments on itself...and for Christ's sake if you use one more ellipsis, I think I'll scream."

I am not sure whether to say "Amen" or "Thank you Father", so I just leave the confessional quietly hoping to leave him wondering if his comment caused me to: faint, disintegrate, or will myself dead and straight to Hell.

So this blog was supposed to be about a performance art piece with a bike that I am thinking about, BUT I guess I got off on a tangent. So the next blog will be about the bike piece.

yearning to bitch/remembering to blog

I haven't blogged for a while. I'd love to get my ideas and ramblings on my fringe piece up in some kind of cohesive manner, but for right now, the ideal place for them is in a notebook, on a napkin, and other lovely places. I just picture myself, at some point in my life, at some European airport. Hey, if dreaming big is allowed, perhaps I'd be coming back from some kind of choreography residency in Berlin. And then, because I always attract crunchy hippies (not that there is anything wrong with crunchy hippies (I've eaten my share of granola and gone braless more than once)), I'd be at customs chatting with a few Bob Marley look-alikes about rebirth and Art. The person at customs would be suspicious of us all and before I'd know it, I'd be in some shady backroom being strip-searched by some large German woman and feeling her awkwardly strong German fingers searching in wrong places for a ziplock baggie of weed or two. She'd be shit out of luck, but out of my cavities she would retrieve pieces of crumpled paper with lots of choreography notes scribbled on them. She would be the one feeling "high" as she stood there like some surreal version of a magician pulling programs, blank pieces of printer paper, tissues, napkins, and receipts all graffiti-ed with my sloppily jotted thoughts on dance, life, and art out of my body.

That is a nasty exaggeration of my disorganization and abstract means of brainstorming, so please know that I do not actually stash dance notes up my ass!!!!

Well, Philly, as much as I love you...as much as I can't think of any other city I'd rather live in... here are some things that I'd like to bitch about:

1. As of August 16th, you drained the public pool on 18th and Catharine of its water and closed it down for Fall. Last time I checked, the rest of August/hottest part of the Summer was still yet to come.
   
2. Washington Ave. (my main means of biking to and from work every day) and Delaware Ave (my main means of biking to and from Mascher Space Co-op.) both have bike lanes the whole way!!! That would be lovely...except bike lane does not = place to sweep all of the road's and sidewalk's glass, trash, and other dangerous objects! You know those red bins at hospitals and doctors offices for sharp objects' disposal? I feel like city workers or fairies or trolls of Brotherly Love must go out at night and sprinkle the contents of those bins in the bike lanes.
   
3. Speaking of bikes, my friend Christine's beautiful new custom bike got stolen. They literally sawed the pole to steal it. That's something to bitch about!
   
4. The guidelines for the Philadelphia Cultural Fund Grant (the grant that PHA applied for and recieved last year) are not even posted on the website because the whole thing is in limbo due to the city's decisions about Budget cuts and funding. The deadline is Sept. 25th (probably), and I just got off the phone with the secretary at Senator Dominick Pillegi's (spelling???) office. The well trained voice of complacency softly told me that she would pass along my message of concern to the senator. I mean what else could she say? BUT STILL...its frustrating.
   

Well good, I've successfully set up a climax of negativity. The weird thing is...I am in a great mood today. No honestly I have an awesome rehearsal, free snacks (maybe?) at a grant meeting, a night off,and a homemade dinner with Paul and friends to look forward to on this sunny day. More thoughts on TENSE MAG to come...in case you thought I forgot about it/gave up!

"TENSE MAG.: not stiff but Present"

I recently had a conversation about starting a "dance" review or zine...Something like Contact Quarterly in that it would have articles, interviews and innovative free flowing discourse that critically thinks about issues in contemporary dance. Nice...right?

But what an administrative nightmare...finding grants, shuffling and filing paperwork, promoting it, creating a buzz around it, seeking help, recruiting advertisements and sponsors...

I'd probably need a board of directors...I'd definitely need contributors, oh and editing and images, oh and printing and wow...that sure sound like a hell of a lot of work.

I'd probably have to hire some eager college-age interns, maybe a few naive carrier pigeons, an in-house hipster bike messenger, a blonde bombshell personal assistant...a new psychologist to help me cope with the extra load of stress, a massage therapist who could help further relieve my stress and advertise in my zine all in one shot.

I'd probably need to hire a ninja or two to scale the freshly power-washed walls of city hall...scale all the way up to good old Billy Penn, and secure in his hand a larger-than-life neon light-up billboard advertising my brand spanking new dance zine....BUT the sign wouldn't say "dance zine".

No. It would be more mysterious by revealing just the title which would be (drum roll please...) "TENSE MAG.: not stiff but Present". There would be a buzz around Philly, and people would not put 2 and 2 together until they started seeing copies all over the place...It could be like in Las Vegas where you can't walk anywhere without a few pages of the "slutty naked lady zines" getting skewered by the skinny heels of your stilletos. "TENSE MAG." articles would be strewn across Philly. You'd go for a walk, step in some gum, and before you'd know it, you'd have an article entitled "Finding the Sits Bones: Philly's Prime Movers Discuss Pelvic Halving and the Head Tail Connection" stuck to your new Puma's.

So...stay posted...more to come on "TENSE MAG.". If you are a dancer who likes to hear herself talk, a talker who likes to imagine himself dancing, a dreamer who likes to dance herself to sleep, or a talker that likes to force others to the point of sleeping and dreaming , then "TENSE MAG." is for you!!!!!!!! If you are none of these things...go read the Wall St. Journal.

Here are some pics. of rehearsal for SomeAnyOverItch.  (courtesy of Bill H.)  

We have a week until our show at Mascher (Friday, May 29th @8).  I can't wait!

I still haven't ironed out the talking stuff, but I just got back from rehearsal with Ashley, and movement-wise, it feels really chill and exciting.  Tonight we rehearse again and will have some people there to watch and act as audience members that we can be terrified by when we attempt to talk.  I keep thinking of the talking in Miguel Guitierez's work which most definitely is in some way previously written down.  It isn't usually improvised (from what I've seen), but there is something about the way stuff is said or read that seems so real and vulnerable.  Or even in John Jasperse's Misliable to Use of Persecution... the talking is very imaginative and his sensibility and gentle intelligence are so clear.

That is my ultimate goal for the talking, but I am okay with it being awkward, theatrically horrible, corny, blah blah...etc.  I would rather try something, commit to it, and have it not work, than to bull shit and cop out of doing anything that feels less than comfortable.  I also liked the writing on stage and reading stuff that Jen Nugent and Paul Matteson did at the Mascher show last month.  That was weird, but good- weird cause I could appreciate the fact that they were trying to get at something, and they almost seemed to acknowledge that they hadn't completely found an effective way to get at it.  I feel like a lot of choreographers are wanna-be poets (I totally am) but they realize that poetry is hard.  really freakin hard.  It feels nice to string words together and make images and linguistic choices, but when it comes to editing and honing in on making an actual poem, I am always like, "Uh...that was nice while it lasted, but lets just dance. k?". (well, not "jUST dance", but you get my point) 

So with all that said, I think it will be interesting trying the stuff I have in mind at tonight's rehearsal.  Some talking inspirations/images that come up are: awfully awkward artist talk-back sessions, the language used by a yoga teacher or meditation leader, gumbley-gook artsy bullshit talk over wine on first friday, a professor to his freshman seminar class, Becket's Waiting for Godot, Albee's The Goat, The Sasha Baron Cohen Bruno interview of the fashion show people and of the psychic.  

Well, its gorgeous out!  I am going out to play.  

Idea for duet

The duet I have been working on since September is really a huge huge work in progress. It kind of reminds me of a tumbleweed...in that it has been rolling/blowing along since September. It started as a poem...a concept for a site-specific duet that takes place nowhere...and along the way it has picked up so much stuff. Maybe its less like a tumbleweed and more like a swiffer in a really dirty apartment of a crack addict. The work and the process have accumulated so much stuff. I turn the swiffer over to look at what is there and woah...(lots of hair, dust particles, grass, bits of tiny glass and plastic, those paper things you pull off of bandaids, advil tablets, candy wrappers, gum wrappers, shards of a stick of gum, cat hair, toe nails, mouse droppings, tissues, cigarette butts, dried up gummi bears, chip crumbs, sugar crystals, soft pretzel salt granules, confetti, ashes, notebook paper ragged edges, pencil lead, receipts, dried bugers, dried bloody bugers, scabs, flakey skin, and more.) Well, the swiffer is just a metaphor but here is a list of the somethings Ashley and I have played around with. It seems like each rehearsal we try some stuff out. some stuff sticks, some doesn't, but I truly believe it is in the act of trying it and doing it/forgetting it that informs us and our beings as artists and then hopefully, informs the piece:

• moving across the space with isolated initiations (just head or just extremities or just pelvis) to Crystal Castles
• push, pull, give into momentum
• manipulate your partner's pelvis...close your eyes and do it
• Doug Varone-like spatial pattern. finding dimension/opportunities/space connections
• false starts
• energy modes established randomly from improving freely. Maintaining energy mode. Distill it/make a phrase with it (Jennifer Monson style)
• learn this set phrase and do it...now don't do it on the counts of the music
• trust games, lead each other eyes closed...initiations
• Surreal initiations...free association sensations. jumping from one absurd image to the next without overthinking it.
• try to contact improv adding and subtracting new rules. fuck the rules. just contact improv without stopping or talking. Do it for 10 minutes straight to the Fugees cd.
• Improvise together and apart..be real, be fake...just don't be precocious.
• Do Curt's warm-up. Add qualities...do it like caramel or a slug or a cracked out jazz dancer.
• Manipulate each other through curt's warm up phrase, almost treating it like bodywork for the other person. Even the masseuse is dancing. Take this and improvise it across the floor.
• Be gay...gayer. Basically take time to listen to the other each other's body before responding...the same amount of time we'd take to listen to our boyfriend's body. Or a significant other that we'd be interested in getting schnazzy with. have this sensitivity when dancing with each other without actually being gay or maybe really do be gay for a moment or a while. get the homophobes up in arms...cause they deserve to be shaken.
• do a ballet barre or yoga warm up facing away from each other but imagining the other person there with you the whole time. Imagine balancing on their upside down body's toe. Imagine them there.
• Make a film for yourself while improvising. zooming in and out and pausing and finding what in the space interests you and how you can change the look of the space by changing your movement and thus changing your vision.
• write down surreal skits that will guide the audience to ideas of nothingness, nowhereness, no oneness, notimeness. Also throw in something, everything, anything; somewhere,anywhere, everywhere; someone, anyone, everyone; sometime, anytime, everytime. Write about specific, fantastical, ridiculous things and imagine a dialougue of us saying them.

Thats all the stuff we have done! Here's all the places we have been developing the work:

• UArts
• my apartment...her apartment
• Last Drop
• Rittenhouse gym
• Studio 34
• Mascher Space
• the streets of philly
• the in/out box for text messaging on my phone/her phone
• emails...facebook

Anyway...lists of stuff! Please know that if you are reading this still, that it is not meant for reading enjoyment, BUT more for my own narcissism and artistic process. I apologize if you are reading this still. Your eyes are probably glazed over.

I envision incorporating tape recorders, with our audience surreal talk on them

I envision the audience sitting very close to us on the floor and on risers

I envision a black backdrop

I envision a new end to the piece. An end in which the two of us do a set minimal rhythmic unison and canon and chopped up phrase. we repeat and repeat and then go back to our side-by-side gimmick recognizable photo-op shot. the music changes. we slowly walk backwards together toward the audience. slowly take off our shirts. we have lots...probably like 50 or more little white people taped to our backs. We reveal this and stand there and slowly rip or pick or brush some of them off. they go flying through the air or falling or whatever. the song ends as this is all happening.