September 12, 2007 Archives

Posted by: James Maxwell
I want to begin by giving credit to the entire Portland Cello Project for having such a unique platform and strategy to bring their music to more diverse crowds and smaller venues. I think it is an awesome idea to give artists a chance to collaborate with the ensemble that normally would not have the means to do so. With that being said, in regards to the Project’s Tuesday Night Performance at the Works, I personally have some mixed opinions.
I found the ensemble to be much more powerful and moving without the selected and apparently struggling singer/songwriters. The best moments of the show came from the pieces that involved purely instrumental work. The Pianist piece at the beginning of the show was genius and could have been a soundtrack to my life, no joke, I was taken to a good place. The lead cellists were terrific and were truly a master at their skills. I loved the intimate setting the Project provided at the beginning.
My problem with the show did not begin until a number of singer/songwriters jumped on stage ready to “wow” the audience with their personal strife and insight. I mean it just got a little much with the melodramatic lyrics and cliché sorrow looks on stage. I will give the Seth Rogen look alike props for his semi-witty cocaine joke but the lovers staying in bed lyrics lacked originality. And to the brilliant cellist who decided to venture to the front of the stage and sing about the hurtful American hands and guns destroying our world, we all know our country blows right now the lyrics are by no means a revelation.
I do not mean to be a hater and again I am certainly not trained in instrumental performance, I was just a guy trying to enjoy my $3 PBR and was disappointed with the collaborations. I respect the Portland Cello Project for their original ideas and talent but was more entertained with the conversation in the beer garden then the night’s performance.

Posted By: James Maxwell
I will be the first to admit I do not have the most experience or credentials in regards to critiquing contemporary art. So when I received the opportunity to take part in the TBA Festival this year as part of the press core I not only wanted to use my journalistic background to review the exhibits and performances but also the people and their attitudes at the events. Which brings me to my first performance I viewed this year, the smooth talking, talented, creative god of hip hop soul that is Marc Bamuthi Joseph.
Never before have I personally witnessed a man that could make a group of awkward white folk bounce their heads in such unison to his unique words and beats. I could see that every one in the audience became completely entranced with the flavor The Living Word Project provided. Through out the entire sixty-minute one-man show Joseph moved and spoke so effortlessly while touching base on numerous relatable life lessons and journeys. From trying to defeat the dark “All Nigger Mentality,” learning to tap, the joy of fatherhood, and his funny and touching time in Africa the show brought it all. I was taken on a one of a kind journey with the performer’s beautiful words and movements.
The Living Word Project was so powerful everyone from retirees in Krocs and hipsters in too skinny jeans were screaming “word, word” for Joseph with as much soul we had in us. When I thought the show was coming to an end and could not have been better, Joseph, of course breaks out into a fresh story on the artist once again known as Prince. Completely nailing the beauty and mystery surrounding the legendary musician with his genius and original poetic piece, making us the audience members both laugh and squirm in our seats. So Bravo Marc Bamuti Joseph for such a beautifully orchestrated and original performance that gave us an inside to a piece of hip hop culture. You are truly one of a kind and please keep making us awkward white people bounce are heads!

Tuesday night’s performance by the Portland Cello Project demonstrated the group’s commitment to blending the classical with the contemporary, pop music with the avant garde, and world influences as well as local artists. The 12 members packed the Wonder Ballroom as they worked their way through an eclectic mix of music with grace and power. One chair in the center allowed each performer to lead a song.

Several guest artists played, including Adam Shearer (John Weinland), Nick Jaina, Laura Gibson, and Musee Mecanique, among others, adapting their own music in collaboration with the cellists. Often these simple orchestrations added weight to or deepened the emotional intensity of the original songs. Their performance of “Take Five” was a stellar foray into jazz, as was their performance of “CelloBop” music in collaboration with Gideon Freudmann.

After the intermission, four members played a solid rendition of Barber’s Adagio for Strings in honor of the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I always associate this song with the movie Platoon, which features it several times, and I remember reading once that it is the most performed piece of music in American repertories (a claim which I cannot verify, though it was rated as the saddest piece of classical music by listeners of the BBC’s “Today” program).

It was a treat to see the Portland Cello Project on such a large scale, and in such a large venue with a crowded house. Their music is well-suited to the space and I look forward to seeing and hearing them again. Plus, they played the themes from The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers between sets! On cellos!

Posted by Dusty Hoesly

Without reading any of the press for tEEth’s normal and happy – hell, we didn’t even get programs tonight – I can blissfully blog based entirely on my experience and what I saw over the heads of the people sitting in front of me (note to self, Winningstad Theater is not ideal for viewing contemporary dance).

I have read several of the blog posts about Andrew Dickson’s Sell Out, which I didn’t get to see, and I kind of have to laugh when I wonder to myself “how could dance artists sell out?” Seriously. There is no money to be made in dance. No fame and fortune. I suppose you could be a back-up dancer for Beyonce and/or strip, but isn’t selling out what you do to make fat bank, make your parents proud, and become a family guy, all rolled into one? In dance, it seems to me that “selling out” is more often “transitioning into other career paths”. When you do stumble upon the rare dance artist who people are willing to throw money at, like the famous and fortunate Barishnikov, he goes and does something incredibly philanthropic like build an arts center in post-9/11 Manhattan. Damned dance artists.

Why do they do it? Someone blogged about Misha’s humility as a dancer. All dancers are humble. They are someone else’s paint, for god’s sake. And again – no fame, no fortune, even if you do dance until you die. I don’t know why I’m going on and on. I was about to go off on a tangent about Homer Avila, who had cancer and finally got health insurance when he started dancing for an opera company. He died in 2004, at age 49, after having his leg amputated in 2001. He performed on a Friday and died on a Sunday.

Forgive my gravity here.

Writing about dance is ridiculous. I’m not going to give you a book report about “what happened”. You have to experience it for yourself. And thankfully, people turned out in droves to see (and hear and experience) teeth for themselves. Whether they liked it or not, it happened. I doubt that there was anyone who did not feel strongly one way or another about the work – which, in my book, is a signal of success. (For validation by the rich and famous, by the way, Misha said at the lecture that he wants to be moved by a work of art, whether positively or negatively.)

I don’t know what motivates Angelle and Phillip and their nameless (remember, no programs) performers and collaborators to soldier on, but I’m grateful that they do. For the record, I loved it. Thank you tEEth.

Posted by Nancy Ellis

Kassys tackles theatre, film, television, genre, and grief in Kommer, a multimedia performance that is as humorous as it is heartbreaking.

Kommer begins with six actors milling about on a spare stage, talking quietly and drinking Perrier from tall glasses. Behind them sit six plant boxes with dour green plants, forming three “walls” of the stage, on a white rectangular floor. Six stacked chairs, two small tables, a tray of sandwiches, and a stereo complete the set. A simple scheme of white lights filters down on the actors, who stand in mostly dark-toned office clothes. A picture of Dutch minimalism.

Quickly the talk turns into distress, as each actor stoops over, in turn, looking sick and somber, before exiting the stage and making an agonized loop back onto the stage. Meanwhile a brass band plays a mournful, inspiring tune akin to “Danny Boy.” They arrange the chairs into a semi-circle around a stereo on a table; this process is hilarious, as some butt in and others are left out. An absurd scenario follows as they turn off the music (the play’s first line is: “I like this music very much but I don’t think it’s appropriate”), then play a compilation CD, listening to some of each song before one of them skips it (“The Rose,” “Candle in the Wind,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Imagine”). They glance at each other awkwardly, before turning off the music, then dancing muted, uncoordinated dances.

Their somber faces, hesitancy, and courtesy show the primacy of personal space and a preference for following rather than leading. These traits inhibit each character from expressing deeper emotions, submitting all reactions to propriety, and ultimately leading them to perform drastic feats for attention: eating plants, humping plant boxes, destroying plants. These destructive attempts at grief are a result of sublimating emotions, of contemporary banality, and perhaps of depression. In Dutch, “kommer” means sorrow.

The play's dialogue is lifted straight from a soap opera, and delivered in deadpan, static voices: “I can’t believe he’s dead,” “How can I move on with my life,” “It’s too late now,” “He knows how much you love him.” One character, Ton, says that “everybody is empathizing,” but this is apparent only through the dialogue (which is mediated through media representations of grief) because the characters’ recital is so indifferent. Even Esther’s epiphany, “Live each day with intensity,” is said apathetically.

Momentarily, things pick up when one character, Mischa, begins sobbing and is consoled by the others. One character invites them to “walk around the block,” which eventually leads them all to walk off the stage and out the exit, leaving the “reality” of the drama behind, and breaching the fourth wall between audience and actor. Soon they return, however, to eat sandwiches, and as they do so they turn from laughing to melancholy. Esther, to relieve their sorrow, offers each character a choice of two actions, which they begin, an effort at breaking down so they can build up something new.

Soon they are standing and the screen lowers, the pre-recorded film mirroring the actions of the actors on stage, and introducing a new element into the play and into theatre itself. Kassys has broken down the old traditions and built up a new framework for theatre, combining humor with sadness, the immediacy of theatre with the artifice of film. The film follows the actors backstage as they self-referentially discuss the audience’s reactions, leaving the audience to laugh at how they are being perceived by the actors.

While the film portion likewise has little dialogue, it seems more genuine than the cut-and-paste dialogue of the stage play, and the performances are more affecting. We see each actor living a lonely life, however, stranded, suicidal, endangered, unhealthy, solitaire. Not that the film is without humor; one especially funny bit follows Esther as she destroys an airplane lavatory, and another captures Ton alone eating a mass of disgusting foods with his fingers. I am not sure what to make of the presentation of sorrow in Kommer. Even if the narrative is not complete, even if these are small images of loneliness let to stand alone, I wonder what Kassys wants us to think about sorrow and our own lives today. Perhaps we are merely left to reflect that even within melancholy there a lot of funny moments, and that even in an age where we reproduce what we see in the media as our own true feelings, there are opportunities to break out of the monotonous and build something new.

Posted by Dusty Hoesly

Posted by Chloe

Sun. Sep 9th: Mirah & Spectratone International: Share This Place
I had seen an earlier version of this twelve song cycle about the secret lives of insects inspired in part by French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre, but it's now fully realized and accompanied by enchanting (even if sometimes gross -- liquefied slugs, eww!) animation by Britta Johson. Projected full-bleed onto a circular screen, it gave the effect of a moving vignette on stage. I loved this convergence of musicians, singer, animator, subject and inspiration and was thrilled to see it again in all its glory. You can buy the record here.

Mon. Sep 10th: Kassys: Kommer
Running late for the play, I skipped the restroom and the water fountain and ducked into the theater just moments before the lights went down. It was hot up in there, I needed to pee, wanted a drink, and to complete my sensory onslaught a woman behind me had made herself at home by taking her shoes off and putting her feet up, lending a putrid odor to the scene. Not the greatest scenario to sit back and enjoy some absurdist Dutch theater. While most of the audience seemed to enjoy themselves, I was squirming in my seat. I actually did enjoy the second half when the actors left the stage and *came back* on screen, where we got to see them return to their *real lives* after the play, and shortly thereafter I made my own swift departure. People! Keep your shoes ON and your feet OFF the seats!

Mon. Sept 10th: Cloud Eye Control/Anna Oxygen: An Evening at Ape Canyon
I hadn't even planned on staying for this performance -- just meeting up with a friend -- but I came in midway through the first piece and was transfixed. I thought of audiences over a hundred years ago, marveling at the spectacle created by one Loie Fuller, an early mistress of modern dance and special effects, and marveled at the fact that there is still room for innovation with electricity and light. Digital animation projected from four different directions onto a scrim with real live humans interacting with it, becoming characters in high tech cartoons. Despite some technical difficulties, which when you have charming companions just gives you a chance to chat more, I was beguiled and can't wait to see more from this crew.

See you at The Works after my disco nap!

Depending on your perspective, this could contain spoilers for the performance, but then again, you probably will have forgotten them by the time you reach that part of the evening.

Perhaps because it was dinner theatre, over the course of those four hours last night, I just kept thinking of that classic review that people will give of a poor restaurant: "The food was terrible, and the portions were so small!" It's such a summarily absurd statement, but I think it perfectly captures the gluttony that people often display for disappointment. This is not to say anything of the sort about the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma's latest outing, which was both wonderful and challenging and in just the right amounts. Four hours certainly tested the furthest limits of my stamina. Yet, for something as sprawling and ambitious as No Dice, the company wrapped it all up remarkably neatly. And that is no small feat for addressing the multiple levels of everyday disappointments that the piece encompasses.

For those who remember last year's Poetics or the troupe's cameo at Ten Tiny Dances, the style is familiar. The Nature Theater compiles a basic vocabulary of "found" motions - waving, pantomime, dated pop dance moves - and strings them together by random selection into a arguably rhythmic dance. Their use of chance to determine sequence feels like the movement counterpart to Jean Arp and Sophie Tauber-Arp's automatic collages. As the actors distance their prosaic motions from their expected experiences and emotions, the choreography becomes abstracted and juxtaposed anew. In No Dice they largely depart from dance, to the stiffly blocked-out staging of community theater. The spastic, incongruous dance moves make brief appearances (most notably as a mime for form-filing administrative work), but most of the choreography riffs on a kind of "red-light-green-light" amateur style.

Deliver line. Cross stage left. Deliver line. Stride downstage. Deliver line. Cross stage right.

By so humorously stripping down the movements, the dialogue is isolated as the focus of No Dice. Extending their "found" performance concept to sound, the dialogue was extracted from hours of phone conversations that the cast recorded. The lines they selected cover the personal and potentially awkward territory of private calls, complete with all of their nervous laughter, trivial asides, and poorly considered comments. Each actor's lines are fed to them through individual iPods, so that they speak their parts as soon as they hear them. As a phrase in one conversation will lead a new character to begin the lines of a separate dialogue, the three leads are in constant rotation in and out of paired conversations. The result of this individually-prompted script is that the leads step in and out of their roles without ever clarifying who the speaking characters are. Luckily the subjects they discuss overlap between the many conversation snippets. Frustrating day-jobs, addiction and weight gain, future ambitions, amateur theater. Regardless of the topic, the speakers struggle to sound meaningful and in control while bemoaning their lack of direction or discipline.

But all of this begins with poor stage accents. The actors muddle together Caribbean, Cockney, Scottish, German, Russian, and French accents while delivering their lines staring full-face at the audience, their faces contorting out-of-sequence with the words. At first, the effect is slap-stick funny. Discussing your business' complimentary soda policy with a heavy brogue guarantees laughter. But gradually, the exaggerated dialogue begins to act like a chalkboard-exercise in sentence diagramming. I found myself focusing more and more on how poorly people communicate and articulate their ideas. The improper emphasis and emotionless delivery make our conversational word choice seem laughably illiterate. It begins to seem like the goal might be the deconstruction of the English language.

As the piece progresses, whether from exhaustion or intent, the actors begin to slough off their accents as their acting moves into full-on melodrama. Every line seems like it will be the last before the inevitable rush of tears. The speakers' personal failures and disappointments become fodder for soap-opera dramatics and as new conversations are introduced, parts of the original dialogue returns. The second time around these familiar conversations involve the actors in different roles and, absent of accents, the audience pays more attention to their content. Progressively, as the lines that the actors are being given move out of sync with each other, the emotions appear to match up more closely with the repeated conversational fragments. Stripping off their extraneous costume pieces, the actors deliver their lines so genuinely that they sound laughable compared to their earlier hammy appearances. It becomes true parody - repetition with difference - and with this move, the mechanics of the script and its sources are laid bare.

No longer was I noticing the structure of colloquial speech, I felt like I was witnessing a playwright developing a script. As a result, the piece gains the eerie quality of self-reflexive metadramas like 8 1/2 or Adaptation. Whether or not the dialogue actually involved the company members in real life, they cleverly make you believe that you are witnessing a part of their lives. Conversations about bad audition experiences and the terrible day-jobs they hold down suddenly seem more personal. As they discuss the earnestness of dinner theater or tragically funny stage performances (Moscow Cats Theatre?), you notice the elements of their conversations in the show you are watching. The actors reference the sandwiches the audience received and a segment on an idea to market products through avant-garde theatre parlays into the intermission complete with concessions. The audience is unable to ignore the artifice of the performance. Even the excerpts they chose from the phone conversations consistently reveal the distance of the two speakers, highlighting the intermediary of the telephone.

In one conversation, a man opines, "We don't hear ourselves, you and I. We just talk. Things go unrecorded." The play recorded everything. Listening to those records, you are listening to the creation of the play. And once the Nature Theatre gets you to realize that, they never let you forget that you are spending four hours watching people re-enact calls.

"These days, who knows what you need in terms of storytelling."

posted by patrick l.

Kommer is divided into two parts - 1/2 live theater and 1/2 film, which together form a multilayered narrative, complicating layers of “reality” and “acting”. Of course, it’s all acting, but are the filmed, documentary-style characters somehow more authentic? Kommer explores ways that emotions are obstructed, processed and ignored through physical activity. Characters lose track of their bodies, wandering in a daze. Driven to distraction, they mindlessly change cd tracks, tear apart plants, kick over tables or grasp each other. Unsure of how to help, what to do or where to be, they hesitate, stall, give voice to hollow clichés. The “play” concerns the awkwardness of group mourning, and a desperation for some kind of ritual in the midst of overwhelming emotion - just tell us what to do, how to act...

This absurd theater is somehow completely unconvincing and yet totally familiar. Lines are delivered in a stilted, unsure manner. Or is this the deeper “acting” of delivering expected lines of comfort? “We are all empathizing here.” Authentically inauthentic?

When alone, the characters seem taken by some deeper, unidentified malaise, which they act out through violence, alcohol, driving, exercise and eating. What utter loneliness characterizes this half, as solitary figures seem unsure of what to do with themselves, how to spend their time, how to be productive, how to connect with others. Whereas the object of grief was clear and identifiable in the first half, here it is pervasive, internalized and insidious.

Kassys are skilled in finding the telling moment, the revealing gesture, the inner vulnerability, the dead giveaway. Perhaps Kommer is a comedy, but only in the sense that we “laugh to keep from crying”. Identification creates a spark of energy, which must be expelled through a convulsion. And yet it’s also authentically funny - or funnily inauthentic.

- posted by Seth Nehil

William Kentridge’s animations rise like ghosts from the screen- the ghost Africa, the ghost Art, the ghost Abandon. He employs charcoal as though it were collected from the cheeks of miners and spread against paper to tell it’s own story. Every image is haunted by traces of the images that came before. Memories hang like shadows unloosed from form. The past remains always present.

Oppression is written in the geography. It seeps up from the soil- endless lines of starving men. One isolated from the hoards lays beaten and bleeding, swallowed by his own shirt, his skull, shoulders, hips and knees become boulders. Posts rise from blood puddles and support yet another blank billboard. An artist floats naked (always naked) in his room flooded by anxiety. A land eating, tycoon sits in his pin striped business suit (always in his pin striped business suit) eating breakfast in bed. He pushes down his French Press. Filter becomes tunnel digger and we return to the mines.

posted by: Marty Schnapf

Here is the stylized version of the PICA radio site, with instructions for downloading the audio to your itunes or whatever else (I posted the raw version before, if you need to download listening software or want something prettier to look at all the same information is here). I've been catching up on the noontimes chats I missed. The site:

http://pica.radio.tablesturned.com/archive.html?pname=podcast.xml

Great! Thanks to Portland Radio Authority (www.praradio.org) for recording all this. The silent tea party is sweet--I hope someone remixes it. I also highly recommend the noontime freestyle chat where Kassys and Nature Theater of Oklahoma interview each other.

It's really a treat to have access to this audio so quickly after the show happens and to catch up on things I missed, particularly the chats.

--Carissa Wodehouse
Blogger, member, enthusiast

Kassys
KOMMER

posted by laura becker

I really felt like I was missing something as I was sitting quietly, paying close attention to the characters on stage, who were seemingly brought together into a story of grief, when all of a sudden people around me were laughing. The less it seemed the actors were doing on stage, the more laughter there was spreading around me. Giggling, guffawing, out of control glee. Eventually I caught the contagious effect, giggling at the actors and their tics, their somewhat stumbling sensibilities, their ease into the awkward. It was slapstick for sure, but even as I chuckled, I thought: geez, Dutch comedy is depressing.

The moment that finally shook the giggles out of me was when Esther’s character forced Mischa’s to cry. “It’s okay,” she said, “you need to get it out”. And it actually started off as amusing – let me help you be sad, let me sooth the grief out of you with my clownish assistance – but quickly it seemed to me to be her own grief that she was forcing through him, her own need to lose it, to go crazy, that she brutishly took out on him. A second later she was shrugging it off with a funny kick and two-step. The moment was quick enough to miss, but so raw with emotion that it lingered in slow motion for me, long after the rest of the audience was giggling again.

But the more I think about the piece, the more sense I make out of it, the more completely absurd and hysterical it seems. In the live performance, the “characters” did everything they could to avoid truly sharing in any emotion in their shared grief, and it was funny. In the video, the “actors” practically leaped into their lonely despair, and it was still funny. So now I’m thinking: Dutch tragedy – hilarious.

Human Rorchach or Psychotic breakdown?
-Posted by P.A. Coleman

I was wholly unprepared for the visceral brain warp of tEEth’s, Normal and Happy. Over the course of the 70-minute performance, my mental state progressed from calm complacency to wide-eyed distress. In short, I found the program visually masterful, brilliantly danced and absolutely disturbing.

Performed around a brilliantly conceived set piece, the company worked through highly physical choreography that seemed locked in trauma and catharsis. It was as if the program had been pried from a wounded subconscious. The inhabitants of the stage seemed not to be human but rather the human-esque specters of memory and distance.

Normal and Happy begins with the Rorschach silhouettes of two dancers, balled up like seeds and doubled in reflection. Their shadows seem to sprout as they reach out with searching limbs. Like a Rorschach test (an archaic series of inkblots used by psychologists to gauge mental stability in their patients, if you are unfamiliar) the audience it left to make its own interpretations on the dark, mutating shapes, moving at center stage. I think this is idea is at the center of Normal and Happy. In its constantly shifting pattern of movement, we may find familiar gestures or expressions that wake memories we have long since buried deep. To this end, many of the dancers are concealed or mutated in costumes that blur the edges of their humanity, turning them into something more like the archetypical psychological hobgoblins that creep through the mind at the edge of sleep. Still, we are aware that they are somehow extensions of us, of our world.

The creatures of Normal and Happy pant, screams, struggle to speak and gag. They paw desperately at one another or promenade in groups with a type of militaristic haughty concern. They express the childish urge to tease and hurt, as well as the adult urge to cling to another person at all costs- no matter how uncomfortable or how much effort it might take.
Normal and Happy is set to sound design that, at times, is traumatically loud and grating. At one point, as a repetitive electronic static, blasted in tandem with a strobe of chaotic video, I felt my pulse rise along with overwhelming urge to find the nearest exit. Luckily these moments are tempered with far more lyrical passages of song. But there is always a tone of warped intensity, as the program digs deep into a kind of psychosis. There is the wet sound of viscera below the momentary squeak of rats, a vision of a woman, face and hair matted with what might be blood gleefully splashing a puddle of gore.

In the end, the dancers appear to return to a kind of gestational goo, singing- “where do we go from here…”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how to respond to that question myself. As I hurried to leave the theater, my first impulse, upon reaching the night air, was to scream, “Holy Fuck!” However, I kept in and scurried, with furrowed brow, to the next performance.
I am completely willing to accept that six days of performance art, sleep deprivation, too many cigarettes and not enough nutrition may have put created a fragile psychic space not conducive to this performance. Never the less, I expect to be haunted by the images of Normal and Happy for a long, long time.

... yet so freakin' funny.

"Sell Out," Andrew Dickson's comedic and personal justification for being a sell out in a world in which artists cannot get paid, albeit self-aware and self deprecating, all in all was lacking in depth of understanding. It left no room for hope of an even slightly different future than that in which all things in the universe are given merit based on Capitalist values. This is not to suggest that it was not highly entertaining. It was.
The presentation was located in the belly of the Weiden + Kennedy beast, hip, modern and spacious, the dark pulsing heart of evil itself. As a workplace, Weiden + Kennedy brings with it all the yoga classes, on site basketball courts, an everflowing keg of beet and all other perks necessary for the critical thinking individual to consider when deciding whether or not to sell their soul.
Andrew lays out the 27 distinct steps that he took in order to sell out, and within these there a brilliant understanding of how stereotypical the Portland artist mentality is. Poor and bitter without a hope of attaining the "trilogy" ( i.e. house, kids, health care,) what was a guy to do who could not beat the system? So he joined. And that is the message kids, if you cannot beat them, join them. Because no one buys art anymore, so there is no way to make a living without using your talent and creativity to sell things... so just do that. And get paid well for it, because there is no hope for any sort of positive change anyway and it's pretty cool because you get to meet famous athletes through your Nike connections and that is enough. Also, you will have more money, which makes you less bitter and then you will be invited to more dinner parties. Okay, cool.

As inspiring as all this sounds, you know a world in which working for an ad agency can be justified by a lack of other viable options and a wit for crowd-pleasing purposes, there is still a bottom line. This line exists below the Andrew Dickson line of financial-security+free yoga & beer=smiley-face line. This line is where such words as integrity or humanity or intelligence or artistic value or pure or healthy could be used in order to explain why it is a deal-breaker, but I think that no one said it better than Bill Hicks

reposted by Noelle

It's too late to write this, but you really should see Map Me. The performance could be stated as two acts filled with individual scenes. The first act is a variety of movie projections incorporating the two performers as screens. The second act is a series of performances of what I would define as dances.

The former started with the two figures stacking themselves so that their backs were to the audience. A white beam shifting to color bars accentuated the lush tones projection light takes when reflected off Caucasian flesh. The initial images are wonderful, languorous soft focus shifts of what appeared to be skin blemishes. The effect was not unlike the revelation of a dark room’s interior as ones eyes adjust. These images changed and accentuated their effect as new blemishes took their place, much as one might pour over a lover’s body, relishing in his or her intimate differences.

The effect was unfortunately lost as the images became more apparent. Viewing became less of an experience and more of a guessing game: “oh, that is a palm, oh that is a nipple, a mouth, an anus?” Here the pacing became labored and a particular scene of a board demolition in reverse revealing the figure/screen was belabored.

The second act was essentially flawless. What was presented appeared to be intimate explorations of couples. The choreography was gentle—each scene had a set of simple props, some of which had tension of potential violence (at the appearance of small shears I prayed there would be no blood letting, there wasn’t any, but each piece seemed to have a shocker) as if to punctuate the prosaic movements.

The premise could be generalized as a series of scenes influenced by a feminine Fluxus—something of Yoko Ono’s instructional art. The statements, if there were any, seemed straight forward enough, what seemed important to the works was the beauty of two individuals interacting in intimate games(well, as intimate as playing naked in front of a 50+ audience can be).

Posted by: Levi Hanes

There is a dilemma at the core of The BE(A)ST of Taylor Mac that any self-aware snob has had to contend with before: what to do when the subculture moves to the mainstream, or rather, when an act from the subculture strives for the mainstream? The later seems the more damning of the two as one may forgive an artist for the mythical ‘accidental discovery’ but to set out with the intention of appealing to a mass audience? How dare he?

The set-up for the Mac show was a potential for compromise. The spectacle of the late-night cabaret held at 6:30pm (a point Mac addresses and reassures with a “I’ve done it earlier”), in a converted church, seating the painfully sober attendants amongst other patrons politely chatting as a general mélange of glam rock blasted over the p.a. The production itself felt odd. Taylor Mac was spectacular in a ragtag ensemble and ornate blue face-paint. Mac’s stage presence was confident and singing beautiful, in ‘traditional’ form and the croaky septuagenarian evocations of drag. The performance was lead as a tutorial in Drag acts with Mac explaining terminology and walking the audience through politics. The rambunctiousness of the cabaret was substituted by the sobriety (I seem to harp on the booze-less) of an audience physically and psychically by the pews and stage. (Only occasionally would there be a hoot or affirmative remark yelped by a lone observer. Mac mercifully breaks the wall with a dreaded and anticipated selection from the audience for participation. This moment feels the most refreshing, perhaps as we get to see Mac work with improv.)

Mostly the audience kept to the traditional breaks in performance to politely applaud. Not that this was done out of charity. I really felt that everyone was enjoying himself or herself and the comments made when we exited enforced that. What I was witness to was a shift, a coming out if you will, of the drag performance.

Drag is nothing new to performance by any means. Renaissance theater is a note worthy period, but the gender politics of drag has largely been segregated to the musings of late night entertainment and liberal college seminars. What Mac’s show is presenting is drag finally and rightfully taking (forgive me) the Main Stage. Mac should be congratulated for this effort. And the development is fascinating.

The BE(A)ST of Taylor Mac is the next development, inevitable probably, hopeful definitely, of socio-political and gender issues/entertainment.

Posted by: Levi Hanes

Sure, we all do, right? Would you be willing to cross-dress as an English grandmother to shill coffee for Starbucks to do it? Andrew Dickson did. And he wants to show you how — in just 27 easy steps.

Sell Out is Dickson's latest semi-autobiographical work of performance art cum motivational seminar; he previously chronicled his journey from underemployed artist / punk-rocker to personal financial solvency through eBay sales in AC Dickson: eBay Powerseller. Having since abandoned the limited earning power of online auctioneering in favor of writing and staring in ads for for Portland-based advertising powerhouse Wieden + Kennedy, Dickson is back and ready to help his fellow creatives sell out to the man, just like he did.

One of the more interesting aspects of Powerseller is that, amidst the parody and sly cultural commentary, it actually functioned as a legit workshop for people interested in making a living off of eBay. Sell Out drops the facade of legitimacy in favor of a classic observational comedy routine — in this case aimed squarely at the 20-something creative class hipster zeitgeist. Dickson's steps-to-success are a hilariously accurate anthropological guide to modern American creative young people: their socio-economic status (Step #1: Grow up middle class), psychological hang-ups (Step #3: Taste bitter disappointment), education (Step #7: Go to a liberal arts college), living choices (Step #8: Move somewhere cool), and consumptive patterns (Step #14: Ironically flirt with corporate culture). Dickson plays it straight throughout, still employing his gaudy PowerPoint slides and over-the-top pitchman persona; some of the funniest, sharpest observations in the piece are hidden in his quick asides, buried in bullet point lists, or tacked on as footnotes.

That said, Dickson can't entirely hold himself back from critical analysis and things start to fall apart in the closing act of the show. (Step #26: Have your justifications ready) The sweet sheen of parody wears thin as he delves into a less-than-nuanced social and economic commentary about arts funding and the role of technology in devaluing creative works. It abruptly puts the audience in the position of taking the whole performance seriously, thrusting Dickson's false dichotomy into the harsh light of day. Is creating a work of authenticity and integrity inherently at odds with personal economic prosperity? Is it really more authentic to resell things on eBay than to create ads for Planned Parenthood? It requires a discussion that's not suited for an hour-long comedy act. The show operates brilliantly as a simplified, farcical commentary on the absurdity of the subcultural forces that shape the question. A half-hearted attempt at providing an answer doesn't do it any justice.

Ryan Lucas

It was time for me to move on. My brain wonders how it can cram more art into just one sultry Sunday and I want to run from talking and dancing and acting and writing. And I, damn fool that I am, fell desperately in need with that special kind of escape that only a world of books can give, when there, amid shelf and stack, he was, novel in hand, walking a long hard line from the pink room to the orange. On the Road, crossing my path. Chatter chatter blah-blah. I stand in the back, thinking “God! Yes!” clasping my hands in prayer and sweat, “That is the American Voice.”

Reading Aloud. Spotted.
Liz

You probably know that TBA is being podcast (if you read page 144 of the booklet) but you may not know where to find the goods. Well, here is your link:

http://radio.tablesturned.com/rss-raw/P/PI/PICA/46.xml

I'm listening to the Portland Cello Project performance from last night and it's gorgeous.
Thanks to Portland Radio Authority (www.praradio.org) and Matt Kirkpatrick, who has been faithfully recording all over town. Even at the silent tea party!

Other awesome recordings you'll find there:

TBA chat: TBA07 In a Nutshell

TBA07 Artistic director Mark Russell, Performing Arts Program Director Erin Boberg Doughton, and Visual Arts Program Director Kristan Kennedy talk about this year's program of artists and events, and answer questions from the audience.

TBA: Rinde Eckert - On the Great Migration of Excellent Birds
Using hundreds of Portland Voices raised in song, Composer Rinde Eckert kicks off TBA:07 with a joyful noise in Pioneer Courthouse Square.

TBA chat: On the Road

TBA:07 Artists Scott Porter, Nat Andreini (sincerely, John Head), Liz Haley, Gary Weiseman, and Darren O'Donnell (Mammalian Diving Reflex) discuss their projects which place art in the social environment, moderated by Mark Russell.

TBA: Lifesavas at the Works

TBA chat: Pop! Crash! Boom

Artists whose work is inspired by both minimalist conceptual strategies and popular movies and songs. Arnold J. Kemp, Larry Krone, and Jonathan Walters, with Erin Boberg Doughton and Kristan Kennedy.

Awesome

TBA chat: Can't, Won't Stop
Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Phil Busse, Harrell Fletcher, Beth Burns, and Linda Kliewer discuss art as a tool for education, activism, and social transformation.

Recess Tea Party: Gary Wiseman, Dress: Grey Bring: Recess snacks to share

TBA chat: Illusion & Anti-Illusion

TBA:07 Artists Melia Donovan and Larry Bamburg with Kristan Kennedy

TBA: Anna Oxygen - Cloud Eye Control
TBA: Cloud Eye Control set 2
TBA: Anna Oxygen - Final Space
TBA: Anna Oxygen - Aerobic Dancing

chat - Shaking the Columns
Marko Lulic, Peter Kreider, and Guido van der Werve with curators Kristan Kennedy, and Stephanie Snyder.

Silent Tea Party

Portland Cello Project - Set 1
Portland Cello Project - Set 2

--Carissa Wodehouse
Blogger, member, enthusiast

T:BA:07 Day Six – Tuesday, 11 September 2007

Tuesday was a pretty mellow day.
This is good, my mind and body needed some rest and relaxation.

11:30a Kassys Workshop, PNCA
12:30p Shaking the Columns, PNCA
6:00p Roberta Uno Lecture, W+K
8:30p Hand2Mouth Theatre, IFCC
10:30p Portland Cello Project, Wonder

The day was to begin with the Kassys workshop, but I did not finish showering and bLogging in time. C’est la vie. I was not too very struck by their performance, so it was really just fine for me to miss it. I did feel bad though, as part of my desire to see all of T:BA is to see things that I do not like, and possibly learn more about them, get inside their heads, find the kernel of beauty that I missed during the performance.

So, going to participate in the Noon:30 chat “Shaking the Columns” with artists Marko Lulic, Peter Kreider, Guido van der Werve, and curators Kristan Kennedy [PICA], and Stephanie Snyder [Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College] was good in that manner. Mind you, I have not yet gone to see the installation at Reed, but I intend to before it is striked. Guido’s films and music I greatly love. Marko presented a lecture a while back at Reed College, which I attended. So, these were the reference points that I had in my head entering the room.

Kristan and Stephanie were doing their best to strike up a conversation and draw out ideas from Guido and Peter, but they were rather quiet and answering in rather terse or glib manners. Marko, in character, is quite the opposite: bold, strong, perhaps even brazen. Normally, I try to wait until the conversation ends to start asking questions, but honestly, this conversation just was not getting off of the ground. So, first I started with a question about subverting institutional, or other method, funding to create your work. Guido had ‘purchased’ a $150,000 +/- Steinway piano for one of his pieces, had it delivered by crane into his studio apartment, and then it was taken back a month later because he could not make payments. Marko is rather notorious for challenging the galleries or government funding that he attains to a place of discomfort, until critical review, and then hopefully they love him again. It has been working out, as he may continue to produce work on commissions. But, the question did not go very far. I tried to tweak it a bit, and still nothing.

But, then Marko put forward the idea that he could train a monkey to paint, but that they are not an artist. It is the originating idea that makes one an artist. OH YEAH!!! When I went to see Marko speak at Reed, I came away thinking, sure, he is making stuff, but the idea is not his, he is just re-building it out of foam and house paint [or other media, depending upon the piece]. So, it was a question already in my mind, and I had to ask it…
“Marko, by what you just said… would that make you the Monkey?”
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Snears……
Two people jumped on me, saying that I was an idiot and that I apparently did not know anything about the history and theory of art, yadda yadda yadda…

:)

Oh, yeah, I finally got the people in the room talking!
Well, at least Kirsten, Stephanie, Marko and a dozen folks in the audience.

The beautiful thing about this was that 1) Guido challenged me to a thumb wrestle [he won], and 2) the lady that called me an idiot, I later spoke with at length at the IFCC while waiting to seeHand2Mouth, and she was quite surprised to know that I am intelligent and highly educated. Hum… perhaps one should ask a question or start a dialogue before casting stones…

Hepefully today’s Noon:30 will be lively!

A friend of mine was commissioned to photograph Arnold Kemp’s installation, so I hung-out with her for a bit while she did her work.

Then over to Wieden + Kennedy for Roberta Uno’s lecture. Roberta is a self-proclaimed non-hip-hopper; whom happens to be in charge of that aspect of the “Arts and Culture at the Ford Foundation, [which] launched an unprecedented line of inquiry and funding entitled, ‘Future Aesthetics: the Impact of Hip Hop on Contemporary Performance’, which has created profound reverberations in the arts field.” Roberta and Mark Russell spoke about trends, trendiness and the truth behind the impetus of Hip Hop. [Here’s a great reference, which is the Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music: The Classic Graphic by Reebee Garofalo.] Hip Hop is American, it is learning from others and making something your own, speaking of your truth, speaking your language, referencing your experiences and desires. In the words of Marc Bamuti Joseph “Media - - > reMix - - > Community - - > reMix”

So, by that, Marko Lulic’s work is infact Hip Hop. He learns from the Masters, re-interprets, and puts it back out there.

There is a stereotype that Hip Hop is violent, misogynistic and full of ‘bad’ language. Mark Russell explained it quite simply “Scary movies sell”, but the truth is the currents that flow beneath it all. Hip Hip, even if it seems to be sold-out in American mass media culture, can never be dead. Fore, if it is dead, then we as a country are dead too.

But, that is actually a very interesting topic, that I would like to write a tome about some other time… Who are ‘we’ as Americans? Roberta talked about the majority minority. Yet, in the voting and cultural realms, we are a bit watered down. If the minority is the majority, why is it that we are still acting in the patterns of what the ‘majority’ tells us? Why are we voting to have the leaders of our country that we do [in Washington or elsewhere] if they are not representing us any longer? There have been rumor about a revolution, that will create Cascadia, a secession of Oregon, Washington and N.California from the rest of the Union. Baryshnikov is concerned about loosing our creative community to other countries if we cannot keep things vibrant and juicy.

This might just happen.
I know that I have been talking about moving to Catalonia for about four years.
Do we make a stand, and make this place the world we want to live in, or do we just sit around and watch it die, becoming a vague shadow of what was once beautiful about America.

Today, I am wearing my 9/11 tee from Cal Skate. The minority majority…

I had a few moments, so I dashed back home, took the pup for a quick walk, and had some dinner before heading over to the IFCC for Hand2Mouth.

While waiting in line, I had a great conversation about the origins of art, what is it that we reference, what is it that is original. I stumbled upon a question, and perhaps someone can answer it… Certain areas of art reference the idea of works by an artist are art inherently, and that is in fact the critique that makes it art. I did agree, but for the sake of discussion… So, there is often a reference to duChamp’s redi-Mades and then to Jeff Koons. duChamp I love! Koons, not so much. [It is even worse when someone is making work that is referencing Koons, which is referencing nothing, which in my mind is a silly feed-back loop to no where!] So, my question is, whom or what is the bridge from duChamp to Koons. There is a long period of time there of amazing artistic works… but what is that bridge?
Please comment to help educate me.
Thank you.

OK, so then we sat down to see Hand2Mouth. They are very entertaining. For many, that is great! I would highly recommend the show, as you could see the intention, love and passion that the cast poured into it. It is great, as entertainment. But, I keep phrasing it as such, because I [as strange as it might sound] do not like to be entertained. I like to be challenged. You have to understand, I do not read novels, I read textbooks for fun. I do not watch television.

What I do love, is that when I talked with people afterwards, they were so relieved when I told them that I did not love the show, or rather that the show was great, but that I myself did not find it appealing to my desires and sensibilities.

This is the beauty of T:BA.
This year there is quite a variety of works to go and see. Some things I love, some I tolerate, some are interesting and some are just banal. But, there is always potential.

Not everyone love everything. That is the beauty of our country, that it the beauty of the curation of this year’s T:BA. This is why I am quite happy this year. Thank you Mark Russell, you did a great job with the line-up. Thank you.

Lastly was the Portland Cello Project at the Wonder Ballroom.
If you do not know much about them, then I would recommend checking out their MySpace page, and attending some other performances. They are still rather new, and looking to expand, GREATLY! They want to have a hundred or more cellists at some point, so if you play, please contact them. If you are a composer, please contact them.

There was one piece they performed which was quite beautiful, it was operatic in nature, and I really loved it.

I would love to learn cello some day. I have played it once. I went to David Kerr and asked to play one, and they were kind enough to indulge me. The sound, the reverberation,… I LOVE CELLO! When Yo Yo Ma came to town, I camped out to get one of the scalped tickets. I go to see every Adam Hurst performance that I may. Long live cello!

OK, gotta get downtown for the Noon:30 chat…

Ciao,
Fredrick H. Zal
Architect | Sculptor | Advocate

Atelier Z
an.architecture and industrial design studio
advocating dialogue in the fine + applied arts
http://www.fhzal.com

Posted by Meg Peterson

Perched in a nearly full house at Lincoln Hall for Kassys' KOMMER, I was thinking of my mother.

She lives in Helena, Montana, where she works in State Government Social Services, tends to three schnauzers, organizes the occasional fundraiser to cure cancer, watches the sun set with my father, and generally misses out on international theater. Several weeks ago, amidst Internet wandering to pick which TBA events to attend, I realized that the Dutch theater company Kassys would be in Helena a few days before coming to Portland.

“So, Mom.... I don’t know if you’ll like this thing. You might hate this thing. It’s called KOMMER, that's Dutch for "sorrow". I’d like it if you saw it, and I saw it, and... you know. We can talk about it.”

My viewing of KOMMER was turbulent. The cast shuffles, paces, and settles into chairs while they exchange the well-rehearsed patter of condolences. Phrases that you speak after someone’s passed away that are completely unavoidable.

“Are you okay? Sort of okay? Okay, considering the circumstances?”

While they speak, the actors' bodies almost imperceptibly begin to change. They teeter, they fiddle. It seems as if they might hurl themselves off the stage at any moment. The audience can't help but laugh at the hilarity of the herd slowly roving over the set, destroying plants, picking at tape, and allowing their bodies to act as emotive valves. The energy changes when a character, Liesbeth, flips out and violently kicks over a table. A REAL TABLE, with REAL GLASS, that smashes and cascades across the stage toward me, a quiet observer in the third row. I could get hurt. This lady is angry. At any moment, she might pick up one of those chairs and smash my jaw with it. And a minute ago I could hardly contain my laughter as she shredded a dead fern.

The scene progresses, but I am still jilted by the reality of Liesbeth's anger. There are many moments when I'm still able to laugh, but the physicality of the grief is present.

A screen lowers, and the cast is there, again. Projected on the screen exactly as they are on stage -- and after they bow and leave, they are themselves. They are actors after a play, going their separate ways. Alone is the imperative word as the film unfolds. Sorrow is still present after the stage production, if not more real in it's banality of rushing off to work alone, drinking alone, eating alone, exercising alone, sleeping alone.

KOMMER left me feeling a little less alone in grief, a perfect illustration of a want that I had felt when a friend died; to swim to the bottom of a river, to fall down stairs, to let my body feel. Perhaps I'm part of a bummer generation, but dissecting sorrow feels natural. Cathartic.

And my Mom?

I give high marks to the 50% theater 50% film. My brain was divided similarly 50/50 - assessing my emotional response and thinking simultaneously how Meg would feel about it... Friday night in Helena, the Myrna Loy Theater less than half-full, most folks in their 50's and older. I was accompanied by my friend, a 60 year-old therapist. I'm 56 - why denote ages? We've experienced more deaths and losses than most younger people - the cliche phrases associated with death have come from our own mouths and have been received by our own ears - so while we're watching the play our memories of grieving people we've loved and lost are triggered by the words and actions on stage. My therapist friend and I didn't enjoy the performance as much as I think you will. She said, "I didn't see anything hilarious about it."

And I can understand that, too.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The morning after Kassys first night in Portland, they gave a workshop at PNCA. Present were four members of the cast: Mischa van Dullemen,Ton Heijligers, Ester Snelder, and Liesbeth Gritter -- who is also the Director, and Mette van der Sijs, the coordinator and assistant director.

Kassys methods were discussed along with the develpment of KOMMER. The dialogue was quite casual, and I was very suprised to find that Kassys didn't write the script with a narrative in mind. Gritter explained that the company begins with a state of being, or a idea, and then begins to study other people, as well as to improvise within the company. KOMMER began as a play intended to make the audience sad. It also sprung from watching soap operas, and lifting bits from reality TV.

This is the only show that Kassys has toured with in the US, but they've also played it in Holland and France -- and find that audiences react in different ways, though they intend to play the piece the same no matter how the audience feels. The cast assured me that they've had even more conservative audiences than they did in Helena -- and often the humor is culturally divided. Van Dullemen mused that an Australian friend of his had said that KOMMER wasn't a play about sadness, but rather a play about people that don't know how to express themselves. Kassys also agreed that the Portland audience was similar to a French audience in its readiness to laugh.

Translation also plays a tricky part in the production. The live performance was spoken in English, while the film portion was in Dutch with subtitles. Kassys performers are all native Dutch speakers that also speak French and English, but translating humor into smooth English sayings produces varied results. The cast agrees that the phrase, "Let's take a walk around the block!" is hilarious. We English speakers find it common, but Dutch speakers find the near-rhyme silly, as well as the notion that one should take such a specific walk. Kassys was interested in the audience's suggestions for taking a walk: an evening constitutional, a breath of fresh air, streching one's legs...

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Kassys is that the actors that appear in the piece dictate the flow of the piece. KOMMER originally was written for four characters, but Gritter sook to create more age diversity, and added parts as new actors collaborated with the company. KOMMER has been performed for the past four years, as a new actor enters the piece, Kassys builds the character around themselves, in a way that echoes type-casting, but has more to do with each actors' ideas in improve. The actors themselves molded the characters to fit within their own skin. I suppose that this practice is what moved me to fear Liesbeth, and to believe in the reality of each moment on stage, and even in the film.

In KOMMER everything feels real.
Even bingeing on green cotton candy whilst listening to an instrumental version of Danny Boy on your immaculate single bed. It's sad, but how could I not laugh?

Ton Heijligers in still from KOMMER video. photo: Kassys

So I’m a preschool teacher, among other things, and I jumped right on this Tiny TBA thing. I don’t have any children of my own, and my kid date fell through, so I went it alone, without the benefit of child eyes, but I’m fairly accustomed to them after fifteen years in the profession, and I think I can safely give the whole event a thumbs up. The Wonder Ballroom was a good venue for this, spacious enough to allow for balloon batting and running wildly around the room, but cozy in its way, and the outdoor space was frankly more appealing as a face-painting kind of place than as a beer garden. Charmingly, you could buy (a rather expensive) peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and as a walked in, I heard the Greasy Kids Stuff woman onstage call out “Are you a happy noodle or a sad noodle?” I was hooked.

But okay, I’m also a grown up and cynical enough and often find kids’ shows, especially music, nauseating. Which is why I was so happy to discover Greasy Kids Stuff, a radio show on WFMU. They play rockin’ music that was made for adults but is “appropriate” for kids. I’m always trying to make CDs like this from my own collection, but then remember that Cecilia was making love in the afternoon and that the Ramones often need a bit of editing… But I discovered GKS a bit too late, as they’re ending in a few weeks. If I can find their CDs I’m definitely snapping them up.

And then there were the films, shown in about five minute blips, which were apparently made by children and for children. There was virtually no information about them, although I gleaned from credits in Dutch or something that one was made by a twelve year old. The first I saw was incredible, and I kept thinking that surely it was made by an adult. It’s color was supersaturated, a little bit Miss Spider, a little Lemony Snicket, a little Amelie. It was about a girl who was a little stretchy, was gorgeous and absurdist and poetic. I would certainly show it to my children, even repeatedly, on the premise that it is art, beautiful, even sublime, and totally unclear. It’s no passive TV. It must either inspire analytical thought—what does it all mean?—or creative dreaming—in my supersaturated imagination, a similar train runs through—and what more could I ask of art for kids or for anyone? The other films were similarly cool, though less astounding than the first, and included a head-banging squishy claymation head that was a big hit with the little ones, some good fairies (or elfin fireflies) that operatically inspire some piqued dragon gargoyles to come around to the light side (in an extremely Miltonic scene), and a cool line-drawn animated film in which a Pegasus became a sting ray, became stars… in which the ripples on the water were deeply eloquent and which was a great Jungian argument for archetypes.

And then the Sprockettes performed. They were very seventh grade dance troupe in all the best ways. Dancing with bicycles to “I never met a girl like you before,” they were cute, but not sweet, or sweet, but not annoying, tough but not rough, sexy, but not… Well, they were totally appealing, a little bit dorky and very cool with their hula hoops and bikes, and their low-end acrobatics. They were fun, were totally appealing with little makeup, armpit hair, tattoos, pink fishnets, and all.

Except for a bit of tricky balancing of bodies and bikes, this was all from young kids’ physical vocabs. There was nothing they couldn’t do or dream up. They were imperfect, silly, and the kids were completely engaged. I remember my Nia teacher saying of her Hoop Troupe (before she left Nia to pursue hula-hooping full time, that it troubled her that little girls looked at her in her hoping finery like she was a princess, and that she wanted to empower them now rather than just giving them a tougher version of Cinderella. I think the Sprockettes do this, and do it having a lot of fun.

I dug Tiny TBA, but somehow I got roped into to handing out a meager supply of balloons, and I think that whoever does this next year definitely needs to be able to make balloon animals. In general, I think there could have been a little more entertainment, but maybe that’s my adult sensibility speaking, wanting more. The kids seemed dazzled by what there was—happy noodles one and all.

Posted by: Taya Noland

It’s hard not to be won over by Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s peculiar brand of dance theater. Last year, Poetics: a Ballet Brut was the talk of the festival with its simple premise: the easiest everyday gestures, delivered off the cuff, were woven together, repeated and amplified beyond even the audience’s wildest possible expectations. A spell was cast in the theater. I remember walking out of Lincoln Hall and suddenly, everywhere I looked everyone around me was participating in a massive dance, sharing some secret choreography inside us all.

No Dice also tries to spin straw into gold, taking hours of the ensemble’s taped telephone conversations, the mish-mash of their ordinary chat, and elevating this regular material to epic. Each of the performers has an earbud, presumably feeding them the tape recordings. They perform these words for us as they get them, turning them into the lines of dialog from the strangest play you’ve ever heard. And this is dinner theater so they dance a choreography that borrows all of its moves from bombastic melodrama. The actors leer at the audience and give each other freaked-out glances. They wear fake mustaches, shift constantly between odd accents and, literally, chew the scenery.

But to describe the project and to convey the experience is two very different things—the charm of Nature Theater is not in the meticulous conceptual work but the spontaneous playfulness of the performance. The amazing cast members bend everything they have into an aggressively physical delivery, like theatrical rock stars. While they are translating for us what they hear over their headphones, they are simultaneously trying to make sense of it all through the fistful of gestures and conceits they are allowed. It becomes as much a marathon as a piece of theater or dance.

At one point in the performance, I found myself ruminating on the worst piece of theater I had ever seen (with a running time of four hours, No Dice allows for, even encourages this introspection). It was an original work by a local author, produced by an unknown company that was never heard from again. The show had the same trappings as No Dice: the limited staging positions occupied serially by performers, the self-conscious mugging, the harsh lighting, the wigs and prop business. The only difference was a particularly self-important script that was slowly slanting into perpetual collapse from all of the “meaning” it had to convey. The trick for NTO is that the show happens in between and in spite of the lines, a growing dance and a growing sense of music in everyday life. That and the fact that, even with the limited bag of tricks mock melodrama provides, the show never falters, always mesmerizing and surprising the audience.

And it has to, considering the length of the piece, even though the intense duration is arguably key to the transformative success of No Dice. The “everyday” is just that: long, continuous and repetitive. There are small increments of change and it is only with great accumulation of experiences that a pattern can be found. Over the course of the evening, I could feel my own distance from the words and the fierce style of expression wearing down, my laughter replaced with a flexible concentration taking in every element of the drama around me.

As with Ballet Brut, the most memorable moment in an exhilarating evening comes when the cast sheds most of their performance trappings and walks into the audience to engage individual members. They are speaking to us honestly, in unison but making a real individual connection to someone, repeating the words that two hours earlier had left us in a fit of mocking hysterics. Now, however, what they have to say, ever so much more simply, rings true. Abruptly, everything comes into focus and hours of banality delivered with fury gels into, dare I say it, transcendence. And I feel so privileged to have spent the evening growing older in this room with these people.

Posted by Kristan Seemel