Saturday, December 10, 2011

LostWax - BLinKinG

OR: constant change out/in side

I tried to write about Alvin Ailey when they came to town. But writing about a company who's been around for so long seemed daunting. As an untrained dancer and person who likes to think and share but doesn't aspire to be a 'critic', I never got past my struggle to write a proper disclamer, let alone to the meat of my notes.

Well it's been a busy few months since then. I had a solo visual art show, said fairewell to the person I was working on coreography with, met a new friend to go to dance performances with, danced in a site specific piece, and did my own iteration of an interactive art/performance piece. I'm no more at ease as a writer, and bearly more at ease as a "mover", but I know a bit more about biting off the right amount to chew, and I'm hoping to aply that to writing this and get it up before the night it through.

Tonight I finally saw BLINKING by LostWax (multi media dance theater) These are my parentheses. I hate to see that explanatory tag-on mess up the poetry of their name, the gist of which, combined with the piece Blinking, prove it's visionary / creater/choreographer, Jamie Jewett's preoccupation with 'what is lost' or 'what is left' or 'the peripheral'.)

Blinking is a collaboration between Jewett and R. Luke DuBois (bio quote: "composer, artist, performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera". The piece has original video (projected mainly on the backdrop screen), sound (created before/during/after the creation of the video/choreography), and choreography for 8 dancers. There was some sort of tracking device used on the dancers in some parts, which created lines relating to the video projection and were then projected themselves. More (but not much more) on this part later.

So You've got the elements now. Let me start by saying that this is perhaps the ONLY dance/video piece I've ever seen where there was no chance that the video would have detracted/destracted from the live dancers. I am someone who cannot ignore a tv when its on in the room. So that's really saying something, and not that the video was a boring element. Just that there was an evenness about the balance. The movement was more compelling to me And. And the video integrated almost the way the music did-- relating to the movement in a two way street sort of way, rather than dominating it.

I think that what I'll do is simply share my notes, and elaborate where necessary. Here goes.

mother blinks sits in public looking in one direction
periodically focusing on two young boys jumping and swinging around
two dancers with similar playful interaction, eyes meeting often, amused

circle on floor in center appears almost as a rug.
dancer flips it up and it becomes a projection screen.
reminds me of tonight's full moon
gets flung aside slides across floor to stage corner and stops...
becomes light source beautiful.
second spot flood projection on floorspace dancers occupy doubles the circles' meaning

there are lines from the womans face to the boys. tons of them, thin, white, apparently in the act of mapping. they move at slight angle shifts- perception of a million details is near simultaneous. all the thoughts observations visions intake crammed into 5 seconds, 45 seconds. An hour could be a lifetime at this magnification.

Two dancers become four-
on costumes: child-like ones are in purple and green turtlenecks and black pants with the a double white runners strip on the outer seam. they are boyish, short haired, even with the sparkeling aknowliging eyes and mascara.

the next two are in black bell-ish high wasted short-pants [i want them immediately. they are perfect] and asymetrical white shirts. their sleves are a mirror of eachothers- each with a long sleve bearing two black stripes and a short bellish sleeve. I immediately think of eye lashes and eye lids. Struck again by all the doubles.

the motion here is low down, with alot of jumping up then down again.
more down than up, the reverse of the woman's eyes, the reverse of waking life.
then four became five. more white. the odd one out in a dress with two black stripes down the middle. more thoughts about lids or mediating or action or equal sighns, translators, the In Between. Who is ever in there? Who is ever not?

mother watches children clip on loop dancers in front are moving differently though.
children (projected and mirrored) are dancing in a web of protection that is the woman's act of witnessing. in a web of inaction/restriction that is her judgement, no way to know. i project both with my own eyes onto the youth in my past prestent me.

a third piece starts within the whole. it's full of two legged hop/twirls and i instantly want to learn it. all the actions have an inner logic that has to do with momentum and gravity and i want to feel the phrases in my body, if i can manage them.
here the dancers do lots of watching, and overall the piece seems on one hand to be running on Ensemble-time, that's my code for what I learned in Bogart traing - moving as a unit with hyper-listening fueling almost-symultaneous but different action. But as i watched my friend i saw she was clearly dancing to 'a different drum'. I learned later in the Q&A that each dancer in fact was counting units of either 7,8,4, 3 or 5. Woah. Then later on the dancers told me themselves that when they were learning this part they would get messed up if they so much as looked at eachother. Now they can see where they need to be based on eachother, using the structure of their relationships to one another as landmarks in the sequences of landscapes they create...

"Inner Landscapes" is a phrase that came to me later as I was watching, in fact.

A couple of thoughts I had as I watched this part:

are actions like colors in that their impact varies completely by context? (obvious but this is the first time i can remember having this thought)

part of working with momentum is an economy of energy for the dancer.

later, in next part--

and then of the girl in the dress: is she the lid the ball the vision? (nn to answer) the dream the thought the optic nerve?

there is a high surface with a sleeping dancer wearing a matching white dress.
a second dancer (the first one in the dress) dances alone below, and a sleeping woman is projected. this is the nearest parallel to a dancer and the woman on the screen.

relationships shift. there is dancer's level of activity/energy equels that of music.
and also, dancer movement is larger higher faster as music is more regular more quiet or simple. and the inverse of that also.
sharing varied measurements of a whole and sometimes being equel parts.

after awhile the dancer moves up the ladder toward the other. she "screams" a loud long "shhhhh" in her ear. its as though she is the thoughts of subconcious or activity of dream, waking the sleeper. or is she drawing her Into dream with shhhh? sleeper and second slump down platform to floor (the toes touch like a pin dropping- slow motion and ringing-perfectly precise) they dance together awhile, touching or rather moving eachother along like sisters or mirror-selves.

then the sleeper takes off her matching dress and begins to put on day clothes street clothes waking world clothes...

is she dream-walking?

betraying her dream visions in dressing.
taking waking. choosing it.
fighting away sleep, or dreams
thoughts, or that second other inner uncheckable fleeting only bearly-felt wordlss reality/part of self...

Dancer hearing sounds on stage
as a sign of change out/in side her

that poignent motion. swaying forward, hands as though heavy, wrists beside eachother as though bound...
Is Blinking a balking of life-- a balking as if at the cuffs of the landscape of conciousness?

on the bed / dock-
she alone
everyone else below the surface,
ear to ground as if listening to a pebble song
everyone else sub concious sub merged
Water. hidden or reflected
two sides of obscure

bits from the Q&A:

"a direct quote of the boys' movement"
"the video was always about Gaze"
and "main sonic element"

I am interested in a good format for thought fragments.
Please post comments with any you use / have seen.

Later, on the drive home, I recalled my art school unfoldment as an "Archaeology of the self"

Thank you to the artists and performers for their dedication in putting together an ambitious, successful and insightful work.


An Arcade Project


I was a mover in Elise Nuding's movement/archaeology site specific exploration of the Arcade, in downtown Providence, in November. It just confirmed for me that I want to be performing more, moving more. The whole process and performance was documented on her blog: anarcadeproject.blogspot.com/


Thursday, September 1, 2011

Introducing the SKULL KINGDOMS (a post mortem?)


About a year ago my sweetie Sam Holland and a mutual friend of ours (brilliant local artist musician producer mystic who shall remain nameless by choice) decided to start a band. The name is more forboding than most of our sound. So far, anyway. There are five of us, give or take, depending on the project. Most of us are untrained, and identify first as writers or visual artists. Our time playing together occurred mostly in the lovely reverb of the little bridge in India Point park, which is technically part of the east bay bike path. There were bucket drums, guitars, bass, cello, recorders & voices and an instruction: impriovise, listen as you play, go from soft drone to fuller sound and back. This description is written in past tense because we have not played together in sometime. The sound was loose. Perhaps at some point I'll post a clip of it...

This spring, I was interested in doing a couple of projects and I didn't want them to be solo ventures. They were of the art/ritual/installation/participatory sort and I thought working collaboratively would bring the energy necessary to pull them off and keep them interesting. I got the group nod to use the Skull Kingdoms name, and various members stepped forth to participate in their own ways.

Working collaboratively with what in the end were two friends from childhood who know me and who i know (or some earlier versions of them/me) rather intimately. Working together or beside eachother in what for all of us are almost always solo acts that we might even tend to think of as ritual rather than art making was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Even just being in each other's presence daily, speaking on the phone and acting (or not acting) as a team... feeling eachothers rythems and patterns and flow was SO Different, so new, so informative and Transformative. Not everything that came of the project was good, I think we'd all agree on that. But we can't say we didn't learn.

The project I'm most refering to is our Wooly Fair Pod, which we called the Den of Divination. In the end we each worked very differently, flt through envisioning the space and occupying and performing the space differently. Wooly's theme was To The Moon, and in a strange way our pod was like a tent on the frontier- one where scavanged remainders of objects from the home planet were treasured for their relationship to our deepest sense of place... It bacame our cave for medetation, our alter for prayer, our fiery performance space. Alchemy was the goal. There were places for written reflection, there was an invitation to do your own devining--- let your eyes and sense travel the tent. notice where they settle, to what they are drawn. Nothing is a cooincidence. From this, what can you learn about yourself and your current state? Outside was a wild party, but inside, party goers dropped to their knees, rearranged the fountain, fell quiet and still. I was astounded.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Current: Exploring Embodiement




Above is a detail from the installation piece in my latest solo show.

Here is a set of photos showing the pieces and how they were installed. i think of this as a single body f work, united by theme and in many cases approach. let me know what you think! http://natashamaria.zaplife.com/

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

fun fun fun!

Revisiting some fast and fun collaborations I made with my sweetie a while back.
They are short little videos, or animations of quick successions of still shots, actually.
See one here http://vimeo.com/25167490 I call DRIP
and another here: http://vimeo.com/5858382 This one is vibration :-)
I love the ease and joy of presentness they represent.
Observe a phenomena. Play with it. Capture it. Share it. So simple!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Through My Eyes: Brown's 2011 Festival of Dance, Stuart Theater

For some reason i like to write about dance
Here's what I got down tonight:

Enter Comma Prepare is not a minimal dinner party but rather a social event, gone mechanized… Like any good film about drugs I found the dancer body/mind state to be contagious. "Is that what -yes sometimes thats what- I'm like" runs through my head. It is almost a simon says with audio instruction, video projection, tables and well dressed Brown students. Dancers follow prompts like robots, only they each interpret 'left arm back' a little differently, and when malfunction or overload occur, they shut out the input by masking face with hands. Although somewhat silly and alyrical, Enter Comma Prepare has an eery familiarity.


Another modern work by the Dance Extension starts with sound continues with action linked to sound like a code. But the tight correlation quickly disintegrates. Also humorous at moments and grey in mood, Ms. Sokolow and her dancers direct attention to subtlety with ease: the sound of fingernails tapping, and chin protrusions. Not your typical dancers-on-chairs-piece, associations with flopping fish gasping for air, and alien-amphibian frogs are as organic as it gets.


Watching first and reading later, I felt Overlay was certainly a collaborative exploration of related movement by pairs or groups of dancers. Apparently it was. It's irony was much appreciated.


INTERMISSION


Enter muse, chaos, goddess Kali and all her fullness. When a work credits three individuals and one theater troupe with "conception, choreography, text, music and direction" you can assume there will be a lot going on. Indeed. There were puppet makers, an aerial coach and a masquerade coach. Some viewers will need coaching too. This being my second experience of a Michelle Bach-Kubali premiere, I was as prepared as one little human could be.


Advice to viewers: Don't work too hard to follow a 'story' though it may be presented as such at first. Instead let the presence of the story simply lead you in. It will give way to the conviction of the performers and the emotional/elemental -dare I say alchemical shifts swarming around you.


If you try for the story you get something like this: boy in civil war corresponds with younger sister or sweetheart? dies of typhoid fever. girl and her doll morn. live in haystacks? turn witchy. Doll escapes or gets stolen. Then tells us her side- tortured servitude as comfort giver (slap cuddle slap). From there it is sexual, animal, dark chaotic and amorphous. Choreography is fast and emotional, a landscape of individuals, hearts beating wildly in all directions, a pack of beasts prowling.


What is certain is this: Luna Rise was a massive undertaking which clearly and generously embraced collaborative process as a method of investigation. The live music was awesome, and the entire cast and crew were dedicated with a willing-to-go-there-not-knowing-if-theres-even-a-there-there attitude. No doubt, inspiration and deep inquiry can be this messy, and this beautiful.

First Wheatpaste

Fun!


it's up in Northampton, (two) and here in Providence (three places).
There's a misspell. I don't give a damn. It's happy art. A triumph.

activity afoot

so much going on. so much to talk about!

I have started dancing. Well that's silly to say. I have been dancing all my life. In my living room, mostly. But I have started making dances, or focusing on movement other than yoga poses. So that's the new part. Making meaning through movement. Went to a couple of dance concerts too, and wrote about them. Soon to come. I might as well post them here. There's not enough dialogue or criticism or whatever you want to call it in these parts or ever as far as I am concerned.


Monday, February 28, 2011


Photo a Day for January


This was my Fun-a-Day project. Taking pictures everyday got me out of the hose when I'd otherwise hibernate, and for that I'm greatful. Plus now I'm bonded with my new camera, and have a little more insight on my default tendencies in term of framing or composing a photograph. I took almost 1000 pictures in January. To help me narrow down and decide what to display, I limited myself to only those I shot as squares. I've always wanted to play more with this format, so it was a good fast way to do that. I find myself wanting to break the rules. Cutting the square into almost four equal parts, etc. Weren't rules made to be broken?

If this work were to have a dedication, I would read something like this: Thank you, sun, source of all outer light, for helping remind me of the light that dwells within. When in doubt, mirror the good. Not a bad lesson for a dark month. And a great way to start my year.

Side note: The dinosoar is not my work. It's a super fun piece by another fun a day artist, name to come, I gotta look him up! -NMBS

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Hello friends and collegues.

I wanted to invite you all to a very special event this weekend. Fun-A-Day began in Philly more than 5 years ago. But in Providence, it started because a new transplant to RI missed her hometown tradition. We had coffee, placed an ad on criag's list for helpers, and the rest is history. I never anticipated how wonderful it could be to organize an event with a group of strangers. I suppose an idea like this -have fun every day by being creative- is self selecting. Over 80 Rhode Islanders wrote to tell us they took on the challenge. About 40 artists will show their work this weekend. Join us, and please help spread the word. Find more info at http://funadayprov.blogspot.com/
The details:

Fun a Day at the WBNA, 1560 Westminster St.
two days only!
Opening Party, Fri Feb 11th, 7-11
Closing Party, Sat Feb 12th, 5-10

And, looking forward to NEXT weekend, New Urban Arts shows student works in progress.
I like to think of all of us as works in progress. Being a learning community aimed at fostering both creative practice and real relationships, the ultimate goal is to grow individuals who will in turn grow healthy communities. I have been asked to "curate" this show, which basically means facilitating thinking around art process and the display of work. We are considering questions like "What does progress mean?", "Is there an apt metephore for my process - such as growing or building?" and "How can I share the growth of my art, my self, and my community?" By witnessing this show, you will become a part of this dialogue.



Yours in creation,
Natasha

Monday, January 31, 2011

glasnost

a thaw democratization of information free knowlege an open mind

cavity

revene opening rotting infection

palms in cup

gesture of a begger homeade vessel holding an offering

tree bark

inedible. dead. protective covering. living structure amidst urban concrete. fuel for fire- warmth and light





Street Art

So this is not my first post about how I love encountering art out in the real world. be they chalk tracings of night shadows, zippers inserted into sidewalk cracks, "War" spraypainted under the "stop" on a stopsign, or signage on a subway telling you "do not fall in love" instead of "do not lean on doors". I delight in buskers and street music of most kinds. So its no wonder I loved the movie about/by? controversial/loved/mysterious British street artist Banksy. Entitled "Exit through the gift shop", the film is guessed to be the artists' own pseudo documentary turning the lens towards the art market's effect on art making and art makers. I saw it recently, long after it came out, and for me it was a kick in the pants to finish a project I started in November.

Really the inception of this field of study goes back to 2009 when I returned to Rhode Island, and started meeting with childhood friends and collaborators Alvin G. and Sam Coren. Between the three of us are writers, historians, visual artists, musicians, producers, thinkers and mystics. We wanted to do what we began calling a Deep Map of Providence. Looking at the city we loved as if looking at a living being with chakra centers, energy blocks, wounds and other stored memories. The site of a collective and personal history. We wanted to find a way - in various mediums- to explore and begin telling this history. We wrote essays and poetry and may texts that fall in between. We read histories, visited sites, and walked the streets with eyes wide open, alert to the feeling of a place. There was this idea that certain areas were places where pedestrians intuitively did not go. A sense that the highway was strangling the city and that these spots were either energy leaks, where essential life force seeped out of the city, or were energy knots where things got stuck and had no where to go. We weren't talking about traffic patterns necessarily, although they played a role in things of course. But we were observing the less visible ENERGETIC realities of certain spaces throughout the city.

We excitedly monitored the DOT website for signs of progress in the 195 highway relocation. We watched the tent cities under those bridges in fox point and the jewelery district spring up, thrive—if that can be said—and get evicted from their makeshift homes. One day in November I realized that the highway ought to have words on it. The idea of writing on the landscape has always appealed to me. My first installation had writing across a long horizontal wall and over the weeks I took to cover it, I often returned to the concept of the horizon, the line created by sky meeting land as far away as your eye can take you. To limit and to dream. We live on that line, in the thin between where the body of the earth ends and the endless space of heavens begin.

I remember New York city in the early nineties. During the 42nd street revitalization project they kicked the xxx theaters and smut out of the west side of 42nd street, between hell's kitchen and times square. When the theaters were being renovated and were tenantless, all the marquees were filled with haiku by local poets. I was so moved by the stillness of their words in the bustling city. The moment of contemplation, handed to me and every passerby like a communion wafer. In November of this year, I had just finished lettering signs for Greenwich Village's Halloween parade with Kingston artist Robert The. I decided that the highway needed some words—not any words, but some words. I wanted to start quietly, the way one might begin a conversation with a complete stranger. With curiosity. Listening as much as speaking. I called Sam. Sure enough, he had notebooks with words conceived under that bridge. I consulted another friend about typeface design. This picture is the first image of our first piece in what we hope will be a long series, or a continued conversation. I have all sorts of thoughts on these words, and would love to write about them, but more on that later. We hope to have a fruitful talk.