this blog is no more.
see head on the ground

whoa, it has been over a month. trust me i've seen things. i promise.

but just so it has been said somewhere. there are two blogs i would like to see happen:

the first still untitled by nanrichwin. it would be the voice of the past of the celebrity series and it would connect people to what the series is about. no one has ever seen a blog like this one.

the second is from the genius mind of my brother. it would be entitled "i hate that" and written by jan rouse systems. there are so many yet to be entries from our trip but i think one of the best ones comes after having stared at a half decomposed man buried with his possessions encased in plexiglass at the british museums:
"why would you want to be buried with your pots...i hate that"
you're going to be buried in a pot
-max

The single most important scientific principle or concept can be stated in three words: openness, willingness and honesty - openness to all points of view, willingness to see the facts as they are, and honesty in judging alternative explanations for the facts we observe.

-Leon N CooperThomas J Watson Sr professor of physics at Brown University in Providence, and joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics for developing the theory of superconductivity

Choreographing Cinemea I
Museum of Fine Arts, Remis Auditorium
4.30.05

Dom Svobode (2000) Slovenia
choreographed by iztok kovac. in this one 8 people were doing a fully choreographed work on the side of a mountain. they were perpendicular to the mountainside on ropes and the camera was aimed up at them. it was filmed so that the first thing you noticed was that gravity was not acting as it should and then you noticed how it was all working. that was spliced with all of these shots of dance in a factory. it had kind of this epic quality within a 30 minute time frame
http://www.en-knap.com/www/

Rosa (1992) Belgium/UK
choreographed by anna teresa de keersamaker. the filming idea in this one was more used to tell you what to focus on in the dance. the dancing could have been filmed in one take i guess. more like photography--you were watching the dance with someone elses eye. what you focused on was the movement, which was actually worth watching.
http://www.rosas.be/

other films included:

kazuo ohno (1995)Japan
choreographed by kauo ohno -- a wonderfully strange butoh piece in various setting

clown (2002)Russia
choreographed by slava polunin. -- blend of mime and animation

cost of living (2004) UK
choreography by lloyd newson an dv8
my least favorite. it has words in it for one thing, and used a man with no legs. the idea was ok, but then you just have to say "this is a man with no legs, his life is not going to be the easiest".

the experience made me sort of think of the problem of people's accessability to dance and if this is the way things should be going. do you have to actually choreograph for the camera to get any kind of portable recorded media to be distributed and displayed. every art has something, even if it is not a full representation. but recordings of dance performances just stink.

the other thing it made me think of was how much better european dance is (an overly broad generalization i know). it seems to me european choreographers have not gotten trapped into performance art for new ideas. they can still dance in dance. or maybe performance art is so developed that they would have no way of competing?

ten's the limit
april 23, 2005
green street studios

only 1 out of the 8 companies actually looked like a company--a company that could carry an evening's worth of work anyway. i wish debra bluth would make non-improvised pieces because her movement was the best/most real in the program. at the same time, i respect that she doesn't need/maybe want to have yet another company with not enough work. turning on lights at the bottom of a dress was pretty rad, in that obscure low-tech tech kind of way.
that's all for now on that.

Ailey
Wang Theatre
April 19-24

I want to remain employed, but I think this is pretty dead on (except I didn't really care for Judy's part either):

"In going from the earnest sincerity of Jamison's opening to the cheesy slickness of Battle's conclusion, it confirms what many longtime Ailey watchers -- including this one -- feel has happened to the troupe over the years. It's settled for superficiality over substance or subtlety. It's become a reliable, risk-free commodity -- and the audience, which went wild after ''Love Songs," likes it that way."
Ailey troupe extends some superficial 'Love'
By Christine Temin, Globe Staff April 20, 2005

Ailey is like the Boston Pops. It certainly has its place, but I think it is not for me.
I did enjoy Hidden Rites on this program.

so it wasn't just me...
...
A post-show discussion between Miller and film critic Elvis Mitchell underscored this ambition. Miller name-dropped dozens of theorists, from Hegel to Derrida, marring a smart, if incomplete, performance with undirected academic verbiage.

DJ Spooky's 'Rebirth' aims high but falls short
By Siddhartha Mitter, Globe Correspondent March 14, 2005

it seems like a week ago that i told myself that i would blog more to force myself to articulate, so much for that good notion.

but in an attempt at articulation:

dj spooky's rebirth of a nation
3.11.05
sanders theatre
remixing as reinterpretation. a reinterpretation of a found object birth of a nation. at one level this is a really interesting idea--that you can manipulate media to say whatever message you want. but at one level, this is an "of course" idea. that is what media is. i was more struck by paul miller, that subliminal kid, playing on stage. what came out was interesting, but to me it seemed a lot like he was playing around and visually appealing things happenned out and rhetoric was laid on top. maybe this is the way most art is made, and i just have a hard time accepting that it's ok or that is worth as much as well thought out, well articulated ideas. eventhough, i tell myself it shouldn't matter how art is made as long as it pushes you to a place you weren't before, i want more.


mark morris dance group
3.10.05
shubert theatre
another person who plays. i still hold that he in an interpreter of good music and not a great choreographer. another evening of more of the same mark morris. by the middle of the last piece, i couldn't even remember what the first piece was, and i don't think it was due to my lack of memory capacity.