award show

if (gulp) were famous, we would most certainly get ourselves featured on this site...we already have the dresses!

go fug yourself

and if we ever made it to the Oscars, we would certainly go all award show

the big brother-style apology

Goody, who had criticized Shetty's accent and cooking, apologized by saying: "I know that what has happened has not been nice for you . and a lot of stuff got said the other day from you and from myself. I didn't say it in a racial way . I do not judge people by the colour of their skin," she said."I know that, I don't think you're racist," Shetty said, and the two hugged.

The irony is that CBC refers to it as an apology: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story/2007/01/19/big-brother.html
(thanks to steve for this...)

for the record

blogs have made space for recording and making public the personal and otherwise unrecorded... so, below, a few remnants from the show, stuff not easily quantified but gives satisfaction of a special kind:

- the woman who came to our contact class for the first time AFTER having seen the piece
- a colleague said that we just might have cured his aversion to contemporary dance
- a colleague and video artist who liked the video
- someone telling me that she laughed her ass off
- Julie taking notes to share with us after the shows
- the volunteers and friends who came out to support us
- a reimbursement cheque from the theatre - (worth more than the amount on the cheque!)

gulp pins in the blogosphere

My colleague Robyn pointed me in this direction... ah but the world is a small place!

But it is a reminder - gulp pins and tshirts are for sale!!! give us a buzz if you want some!!

pics pics and more pics

all photos: Lorne Finley

re:views

With the premiere over with and some recovering (and xmas goodies) under our belts, i was thinking it time to post reflections from the whole shebang.

The Dance Current has posted a review .

Thanks to the DC for continuously putting them out there.

Some fun reading from Eye magazine on art speak, because well, now there's time to read again!

Photos to follow....

the trying to talk show

2 down, 1 to go...

opening night was a blast. A few unintentionally comedic moments (wardrobe malfunction, anyone?) but a lovely appreciative crowd and an energetic performance. 2nd night was a bit 2nd nightish - lower energy and a few problems, mostly to do with my vocal cords... gak. They are about to blow. But overall both shows were great.

Just finding it extremely ironic that I should be losing my voice during a piece called Talk Show. There's some sort of devilish humour in this. I'm drinking copious amounts of hot water with lemon and honey and trying to stay quiet. It's actually interesting - I lose my voice fairly easily (bad throat!) and it always reminds me of how much we say that we don't need to. Once you start to edit down to the essentials, there isn't that much that absolutely has to be communicated. The rest is icing...

Last show tonight. Rest, recuperate, revive...

world premiere

it seems we should be spinning some hyperbole today...but most of all i just want to enjoy it
for tonight we seem to have answered the question about where to put the television ;-)

oof

Long day... but all went pretty well. The techs seemed to think it was pretty fun and they are the toughest audience so that's good.

We have THE MOST FABULOUS costumes. Unfreakinbelievable. No, we're not posting photos of them - you have to come see the show if you want to view the splendor...

Body and head hurt. Hope I can shake the cold by tomorrow. Oh, well, if not, that's what the wonderful world of drugs is for.

the most fun you can have online

wow

open the envelope and ready your speech, try not to gloat if you win and look gracious if you lost

as we go into our last few days before the show, and as it is, after all the season of giving thanks, that's what I'd like to do

thanks to our coaches for helping us find ways through ideas and possibilities:
Peter Ryan, Lisa Twardowska, Naomi Sparrow

thanks to the technical help of many:
Tasha Waldron, Shainna LaViolette, SAW, Artengine, Arts Court, Zan Chandler - oh, and the insurance lady and our accountant!

thanks to our funders:
the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Ottawa, the Community Foundation of Ottawa (extra big thanks to Peter and the Council for the Arts in Ottawa for helping us secure the CFO money), James Missen's liberation 30 fund

thanks to our board for signing on and seeing us through

thanks to our friends and families for putting up with this year's obsession... at least we haven't made you do nearly as much work this year as in previous ones!!

thanks especially to our artistic collaborators Uta Riccius and Katherine Gillieson for making helping us make art out of a bunch of ideas

and, because i'm writing this, I get to say thanks to Elizabeth for, well, everything

(cue the music and bring the blond model out to escort me off the stage...)

what's in a name?

Doing the media interviews (et en français!) we sometimes get asked, rather understably, about our name. There's a piece brewing out of google alerts...but a little search this morning pulled up one, which i just found plain funny. The expression our moniker reflects seems to come from articles about - you guessed it - politics, sports and entertainment!

private in public

Things coming together ... some new ideas, new twists, more clarity. Hash & rehash.
Two neat online versions of mediating the private in the public:
dandelife
popularity dialer

The private in public. Seems like a pretty big divide. But we breach it all the time, just at different angles.

packed up right

platitude scrabble

Bit of a mind-f**k but fun - attempting to create installation art out of boxes, words and space. Now if only we could get the boxes to fly, it would open up so many possibilities...

For me, one of the interesting things about this process has been the balance between the "dance" and performance aspects and the other more installation elements. Trying to negotiate between these and attempt to find some sort of throughline. Also, the difficulty in bridging very different body-mind states - going from an embodied state to a very motor oriented moment of making something (video etc) happen. In the immortal words of Trish Beatty, it's like "trying to thread a needle on a mountain top".

I have to admit to some anxiety these days about the show - I think that's probably all good and natural that I'm feeling like, ohmygodhowtheheckisthisallgonnawork... so I'm trying to trust that what will be will be. Funny how I rarely feel this way about our more "improvisational" works. This piece has so much complexity (both technical and content-wise) and also so much of us personally invested in it.

Glad that Uta will see the whole thing today.

meh

I'm more excited about this expression making the lexicon than i probably should be. But, with the schedule we now have, it will do us well to keep the sense of humour intact. That would be our "pleasantly offbeat" sense of humour ;-)

trust

another cold and rainy morning (you'd swear we're in London, K!)

day 3 of intensive creation/polishing, and i just want to put up a little message, something about finding how to "get out of the way" while still figuring out where we're going.... and falling back on trusting the fact that if nothing else, we're easily bored, and wouldn't possibly invest this crazy amount if it didn't matter somehow. Trusting that the work has now "emerged" and making the shift to give over to what is. Trusting ourselves to stop going in and start putting it out there. Trusting ourselves to pull it off... which wouldn't be scary if it wasn't a risk.

i'm glad i walk past a couple of bridgeheads...serious caffeination will help the warmup.

loading the gear....

just a reminder

So... we have a show coming up -

TALK SHOW
Dec 12, 13, 14 - 8pm
Arts Court Theatre, 2 Daly Ave
in Ottawa

lots and lots to do but it's all good

running through

Oof! We did our first run through yesterday... sketchy, full of holes and connections that still need fleshing out but it's there. A piece.

Hopefully funny, definitely weird.

A bit of reading for a snowy sunday morning

lipstick on the pig

Just looking at the unspeak blog again... there's got to be something we can do with the latest post (Oct 27) - lipstick on the pig! - to go with dogs that aren't actually in the room perhaps ;-)

greater upstate law project

another language category for another piece

huh?

well, since we're not getting very big "P" political with the work, here's a little post - and found in a bit of an unlikely spot - you never know what you find at the crossroads of technology, art & culture...

on this note, gotta go to work!

Straight up, no irony

I have to say I wasn't as impressed with The Forsythe Company's Three atmospheric studies as I was with their crazy group table dance last year. Not because I'm one of those plebs who like a bit of brain candy over substance in their entertainment; just because a whole evening of feeling angst about the world with no way forward isn't my idea of a really intelligent or original statement through dance! (Maybe the fact that Forsythe is making the statement through dance IS the original aspect. Sad.)
So anyway, these 3 pieces are obviously a statement on war, and especially on the U.S. war with Iraq. The first piece is not set to any kind of music or sound: a mesmerizing coordinated-random group event that allowed us to pick out individual agency in this large group but also to see synchronization in stop-motions mimicking the expressions of civilians caught in a cross-fire.
The second piece was a strange theatrical performance which I found a bit heavy-handed: there is a danger in trying to present such a straight anti-war message with no irony, and I found the non-postmodernity (er, modernity?) a bit much, except that the whole thing is punctuated with about 5 minutes of totally bizarre screaching and contortions by one performer, 'the mother of an arrested civilian', the mike sounds distorting her voice as she writhes around on the spot, pulling some awfully creepy faces -- this was very effective.
The last study was again a bit preachy, the members of the group playing different roles, and vaguely dressed to represent police, military, civilians, or politicans. Very loud explosive sounds played throughout, and a woman was declaiming the whole time in the role of an American spokesperson. Interesting use of sound, with the mikes in various dancers' possessions, their distorted chest-pounding creates a convincing atmosphere of bombardment and chaos.
Overall the pieces were a bit too political in a way I'm not crazy about, as a raging politico myself. Then again I'm not even keen on war movies - I don't see the point unless you're prepared to go out and do something about it -- it just comes across as a bit of whinging! Ok I'm being too harsh here. There are some excellent clever bits in here that make it very worthwhile. And that's my review!

politics of dancing

and then there's this

Suddenly, dance can be an open forum again, with the versatility to accommodate politics, dissent and protest. "Art can and does do whatever it wants to do," says Jones."Not what connoisseurs would like it to do. That is the lifeblood of art. Art breaks rules, even rules of what is considered most beautiful." For many choreographers, it is precisely the unruly, undancerly political aspects that appeal. "Dance excluded all the life concerns I was interested in: religion, politics, sexuality, psychology, class," says Lloyd Newson, director of DV8. "The people who come to work with us don't want to just keep dancing for the sake of it. They want to keep thinking."

Clear, articulate, thoughtful, with historical context. And space to write it in.

a war on reason

One of the things that occurred to me the other night is how we’ve not gone into some of the more contentious issues around the perversion of language – this may be a way of “escalating” our rhetoric in the piece (see this blog: http://unspeak.net/). The use of phrases like War on Terror – can we have, say, a War on Anxiety? Or a War on Complacency? What would be the weapons in those wars?

Q&A

Q: What is your inspiration for this project?
A: Hockey, language, and late night television. Orwell. Awards shows. Poorly-written press releases. Platitudes and power. Brad Pitt.

Q: Can you describe how this piece is being developed?
A: It is a lengthy process, but we'll get there in the end.

Q: What can the audience expect?
A: Tokens of our appreciation. It's important to recognize everyone's contribution.
It's a lot like watching the hockey playoffs - you all have to cheer the team on.

Q: Is it dance or physical theatre?
A: We'd say you can't really categorize it. Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other?

take 1, take 2

a couple of different takes on the poster - obviously not with these pics but with images just as blah and ironic... just to get the discussion ball rolling.

Uta will come and do some photos of us sometime soon.

non-denial denials

You might say so. I couldn't possibly comment.

soothe me, delight me, leave me alone...

the blurry lines between information and entertainment, and why sometimes you just want to watch crap

doh!

perhaps not a surprise but a lovely use of statical comparison

meow

God, it's hard to know what to say about this show : it's got everything, nasty women, talk show format, live meltdowns, befuddled guests... I've never seen it but guess I'll have to!

talking right & left

politics and the english language?

power of punctuation

enough to strike terror into one's heart...

the art of endings

Very interesting article about the tension between finding closure in an ending to a work of art (mostly talks about films but also music, ballet etc) and forcing an audience to find its own ending and draw its own conclusions.

the scarcest resource

sorry for these short posts...i guess such is the attention span at the moment for me.... i wonder how this relates to live performance/art?

50 people see...

a flickr stream by "brevity" - averaging photos from 50 flickr users...
very cool.

i like the blend of individuality and social commons. Sort of a shared private/public.

low filter days

it's nice to find out that everyone has them

two of our favourite subjects in one rant

dance funding and bad pr!!!
thanks Article 19!

meridian stretching

close replicant of the stretching series we've been doing as warmup/centering exercise for rehearsals...just thought it would be fun to post here.

i'm going to spend more time with the family

apparently this phrase is used in the press twice a day ...
hmmm....

video pitfalls 101

One of the things we've been discussing is how to avoid the big ol'screen smack dab in da middle of de stage. Where the video is totally extraneous most of the time and when it's not playing you have this ugly white square dominating everything.

Saw a piece tonight by Sylvain Emard called Temps de chien (you can watch a video excerpt and see some great dancing) that had some beautiful solutions. The screen was a piece of steel on wheels that could be easily moved forwards and backwards, creating angles and dimensions. It served to reflect the light sometimes and the dancers other times or as a projection space for video - not video of dancing but actual abstract video art. Quite beautiful. The dancing went on a bit (lovely but after a while, it's like Mozart, too many steps for me) but the staging, lighting and video were masterful. It made for a show. A real, all encompassing show.

showing

Very short post - more anon...

We showed a few excerpts from TALK SHOW last night at the Dance Network's Stepping Stones. Fair number of people came despite the heat and the fact that it was Sunday night.

Comments and reflections
- the Capital I/eye piece had the most reactions, not surprisingly but rather surprisingly (for me anyway) the interpretation of the relationship between me and the eye was different. People felt I was avoiding it, not being subjected to it. That's the thing when neither of us can actually see the work, we can't actually read the full image.
- comedy - well, we can certainly make people laugh. The Jay Leno/Brad Pitt piece was appreciated - Ken noted that our movement choices became more and more habitual as we had more difficulties with the text.
- comedy again. Alain felt like there was also a lot of comedy in the manipulation score (E has her eyes shut and I'm moving her about the space - she gradually takes on more autonomy with her eyes still shut - becomes small power struggle). Also others noted that the power dynamics weren't cut and dried, that the agreement of joining the game gives E equal power.

ok - more later...

subtlety floats

today i attended the subtle technologies conference in Toronto. Lots of thought provoking stuff - not necessarily all applicable to this project so maybe i'll go post some on (burp)...ahem. or maybe just float them here. Some of it had neat implications for collaborations and interdisciplinarity, even if the themes of architecture and biotech were at times a little too far out of my sphere. Sub-theme of "self-organizing" principles and understanding order in complexity resonated with the group improv stuff we did at FIP too.

some floating thoughts...or points

* flow drives organization
* tissue is structured through a cell's sense of spatial distribution
* environment drives both function and disfunction; architecture dictates and drives behaviour
* we tend not to be creative in rapidly changing environments because we are caught up in our a priori assumptions about the way things are - this stops us from really making use of the unique properties of newer technologies because we haven't shifted our normative frames and standards based on old technologies. While our culture celebrates the new we usually end up subordinating it to the old.
* having to move across many topics means you work more in information than in knowledge...
* "enactive knowledge" - from developmental psychology is how we learn through body movement (kinaesthetic knowledge) actively coupled with surroundings
* when we think about technology and culture, where is public art?
* in interactive art the public is not only audience, they are also the medium
* how do you structure participation? is it empowering or hindering engagement?
* interactive art in digital space tends to privelege anonymity or creation of alter egos, whereas interactive art in physical surroundings makes things more "personal" and make the individual more identifiable. so how do these 2 work together?
* how do you get people to think big?
* at the molecular level the boundaries between the natural and the synthetic are extremely permeable.
* 3 ages of science: 1) problems of simplicity (Newton: action, reaction); 2) problems of disorganized complexity (Brownian motion); 3) problems of organized complexity (Fibonacci spirals, fractals etc.)

Something i can't articulate about collaboration was the repetition of biochemists saying things like "of course architects understand this" and vice versa. It's like the dissolution of the barriers between what we think of as material and organic are dissolving the more people are using simulation models and can see far into the structures of cells etc.

like i said, not sure what this has to do with this specific piece, but maybe if we float it a bit....

capital eye/i

capital eye 1
Originally uploaded by little bit1000.

this is a video still from this weekend's technical rehearsal at which we memorized an interview between Jay Leno and Brad Pitt and played with video..

:-)

this pic is my eye live looking into camera as i try to control the size of the projected image and keep my eye still enough and sometimes look as if i'm looking. What we like about this score is the immediate intimacy and vulnerability - exposure - combined with the "blind" public eye and the challenge of this kind of physical/psychological exchange between performers....

it will be *much* easier with a tripod...

versatility of choice

Just came back from FIP - excellent workshop with Nina Martin. There was a lot of really engaged dancing and discussion which is both rejuvenating and exhausting all at once. The work is very simple and so of course extremely complex. Reducing choices to the most pared down version and then being faced with the multitudes of variation within that tight frame. It opens the consciousness of consequence and allows more sophisticated choice-making.

In terms of the work we're doing on this project, there was a lot of relevance in the movement material and also in the care needed in staging relationships (how easily power dynamics are set up).

one of the best quotes of the weekend:
low ambition in high-risk situations

Other things - I got pointed to a classic book that I'll have to find The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Erving Goffman 1959) and to a radio program: Thinking Allowed (in particular the episode Identity and Self-Imitation) that might be relevant to our work.

all good stuff

moving targets

Getting ready to go to rehearsal...thinking about how ideas manifest in movement. How or why, i suppose. What are the connections between thinking and moving, moving and thinking that makes sense? We use language to mean something, to give meaning, but there's visual language and kinetic language too. I've always considered dance/movement as a way of knowing the world - just like so many things are ways of knowing, or being, i guess. Thing is, sometimes what we think we know turns out to not be how we want to be. So here's to knew connections, wherever they might be lurking.

hyperbole, part 3

in the same vein as book cover blurbs: what about the way that newspapers and magazines write their headlines? i've never understood the necessity that media people feel to make puns and otherwise corny turns of phrases in newspaper and magazine headlines (though some are fighting back) this also happens on television with the text 'summing up' the story or statistics being discussed by the newscaster. why why why? is there some inate fundamental human desire to cheese everything up??

process images

apologies for the poor quality - images taken with my web cam which has no focus... this is some of the process work done on Sunday. Mapping ideas and looking for links, gaps and themes.

some words:
shame/blame
struggle
artifice
false modesty
intimacy and vulnerability
being viewed
power dynamics
revelation
armour/padding
deception
confession
collusion

more hyperbole

One of the ideas that we're playing with has to do with platitudes uttered by celebrities and what they can actually mean:

"I'm just so honoured to be among the nominees" = "If I don't win this year, I'll kill my agent"
"I'm leaving politics to spend time with my family" = "Someone caught me with my secretary"

I also think the idea of testimonials and over the top praise is interesting - read this - and relates back to the press releases that claim that a show will change your life.

geekspeak

Working on the latest proposal for $, and playing in the studio last night (very fun - the playing, not so much the writing) this is what we've come uip with, which i think is gradually becoming clearer....

TALK SHOW is a new performance piece by collective (gulp) dance projects. An evening-length performance, it will be the culmination of a year-long creation and development process. TALK SHOW is about communication and how it permeates the boundaries between private and public spheres. Drawing from the worlds of pop culture, politics, sports and public relations, TALK SHOW explores how language is manipulated to different ends and can be used to conceal our true intentions as much as reveal them. At turns cheekily humourous and others darkly serious, TALK SHOW takes a look at the conventions that surround how information is shared and consumed. It looks at the vulnerability and exposure inherent in public life and what happens when the masks we use as defenses start to slip.

Use of Technology

The integration of technology into TALK SHOW will be achieved through the use of real time video manipulation and a specially designed screen that will be used as a set piece for delineating the performance space inasmuch as it will be used for projected images.

The use of video in live performance projects presents a challenge if we are to avoid some of the pitfalls inherent in the juxtaposition of live performance and video, as one almost invariably upstages the other. The power of a moving image on a big screen often overpowers live action on stage due to its ability to cause us to ignore whatever is going on outside of its frame. Conversely, if the video is insufficiently relevant to the action on stage its overall “flatness” can cause it to become mere backdrop. However, in a world that is increasingly “mediatized”, integrating projection into performance works provides the opportunity to introduce some important reflections on the nature of contemporary experience. Furthermore, using video in performance can bring elements into the work that would otherwise be impossible through the different angles, close-ups or images of far away or fictional places or characters that simply would not be achievable by other means.
Finally, the contrast of the solitary experience of video-watching and the communal experience of going to the theatre fits perfectly into the themes we wish to explore in this project.

In TALK SHOW we are concentrating on developing improvisation scores for both dancer and computer operator (one of the performers and/or an assistant) so that the relationship between the live stage action and the video is always relevant and palpable. By designing a screen that can be easily moved and converted during the performance we will be able to break the convention of having the live stage action always happening in front of a static rectangular screen.

hyperbole

more about really really bad press releases and media strategies

reflections on seeing stuart & lachambre

We went to see the Meg Stuart/Benoit Lachambre collabration "Forgeries, Love and Other Matters" at the nac

* get the audience's complicity as soon as possible
* do it until it's done
* you really don't have to make pretty, as long as you make real
* frame
* legitimize
* be aware of power structures
* things don't have to come back to make a thread
* no to artifice (thanks YR)
* set, props, sound
* this is not about character
* do less

great stuff. man, i want some brown plush to roll on....

see... anyone can dance

i just thought this was an interesting idea... not hugely relevant but i liked how it allowed multiple interpretations of simple instructions, like the best improvisation scores

dance, text & theatre

interview on Stan Won't Dance's web-site about text and dance, dance/theatre, vision...etc.

"... positive response to their debut has backed up the pair's belief that there's a market for work that's both powerful and accessible, but it's proved a tougher challenge than either realised."

"...We wanted to deal with something that dance doesn't deal with anymore. Dealing with real stories in a way that people relate to...."

"....it's difficult to combine text and movement, for one thing it uses the same side of the brain. It's a real technical challenge.’

get used to it

couple of links here - use + acceptance = "new normals" ...and other slippery slopes....
Urban Dictionary
Word Count
Collins Living Dictionary

PR

Another thing is of course the press release ...while i totally admire the ability to write a really good one, there are some egregious examples out there....um, particularly in the arts world.

As Orwell put it, there are some "mental vices" the English language falls prey to. 50 years on, it seems only to be more treacherous territory.

Might be interesting to explore physical interpretations of the "verbal false limb", "pretentious diction" and "dying metaphors"....

Talking hockey

what is talk show? it's a (gulp)-like look at how folks communicate - the visible public stuff, and the internal, unspoken and yet equally important stuff - more anon on the project as a whole

one of the things we are working with is different forms that are used by different practices: the post-show chat, the hockey interview, the media scrum, the talk show, the political debate... the protocols around language and demeanour and what lies behind

hockey interviews I find really fascinating in the juxtaposition of an incredibly violent, passionate and competitive sport and the way players talk about it - the monotone, vague descriptions and the detachment from the energy and emotion they show on the ice...