KARIM BAROUCHE, my favorite French dancer from Aktuel Force...

Concentration and Freestyle: Myka 9 circa '97

Franck II Louise from France (next level music-making for dance)

Earl "Snake Hips" Tucker

Finnish B-girls

Hollywood Dance Steps it Up

Here's a special feature of OM about old Hollywood films that featured dance sequences on either staircases or steps.

The famous Nicholas Brothers' routine:


The great partnership of Shirley Temple and Bill Bojangles Robinson:


Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers:

Yes Man! May in Edinburgh

May is officially the best month to be in Edinburgh, Scotland. Tourist season is just beginning to get under way (and this will be my first year actually in Edinburgh for the summer!). But the live music and dance events are getting absolutely ridiculously incredible!

The first amazing gig I saw was a stunning, hilarious, upbeat, light-hearted, and genuinely brilliant performance by the Instant Composer's Pool Orchestra, as part of the ecat series, at Queen's Hall. They have officially become my new favorite orchestra and musical performers. From the moment Misha Mengelberg wandered on stage half way through a song, wading through the players and stands to get to his piano, I was sold.

Next up, I had the opportunity to see my favorite dance company, C de la B, in Glasgow's beautiful Tramway. The garden outside set the tone for the evening, and the trampoline located above the string players made for pure brilliance. It was another elaborate set design for the company with dancers climbing stories and skirting passed percussionists and string players, while top singers came out to the front of the stage to sing and dance and interact with all of the dancers. Out of all the productions I've seen by C de la B, this one seemed to be the roughest around the edges, but the music and dance were stunning. And the eclectic mix of performers is out of this world. Next time they come to Scotland, I will go see them both nights. It's just too good to pass up and seeing this calibre of choreography and innovation is worth a second glance.

Tomorrow night, the Canadian band Metric are playing in Glasgow. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for all of my favorite songs including:


French popper, Salah, is performing at Breakin' Conventions (Edinburgh Festival Theatre) and also giving a dance workshop which I will be checking out (May 17th). It's the same day that new works performed by Mr. Peng Yueqiang (a folk erhuist), alongside Mr. McFall's Chamber, will be featured at the Reid Concert Hall!

May 18th and May 19th: Breakin' Conventions at Edinburgh Festival Theatre with Ken Swift, Salah, and other local and international acts. I'll be there both nights taking it all in...

Just when things could be slowing down, the end of the month is FULL of Dance Films, workshops, lectures and other events (Diamond Circles for the b-boys and b-girls) for Scotland's Dance Film Festival.

I would go into details, but you get the picture. This month is stacked full of events. I can't believe I missed all of this for two years in a row (but maybe glad I did because I also happened to get a lot of work done in that time...)

xoxo

Dee Jay

Some Context for the CAKEWALK

This footage is fairly recent (early 1900s) as opposed to the story recalled by a dancer from the 1840s:

"Us slaves watched the white folks' parties," she added, "where the guests danced a minuet and then paraded in a grand march, with the ladies and gentlemen going different ways and then meeting again, arm in arm, and marching down the center together. Then we'd do it, too, but we used to mock 'em, every step. Sometimes the white folks noticed it, but they seemed to like it; I guess they thought we couldn't dance any better." After a while she was taken from one plantation to another and entered in dancing contests with other slaves, while her owner wagered on the outcome with other owners. "I won a lot of times. Missy gave me a dress and my partner a suit." (Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance, recounting a story that Leigh Whipper told about his old nurse).

BY LEASE

I just returned home to Edinburgh after a busy week checking out SIN CRU's 10th anniversary hip hop week in Cambridge and the UK's Battle of the Year final in London. (The photo above is from the train ride from Cambridge to London with Sin Cru, Ken Swift, Mr. Loose, the Flying Jalapenos, as well as some other international guests).

In between chapter writing, I've been reading about disco clubs from the 1970s. And now, I'm longing for a return to disco's platform shoes, which would actually be better for my legs than sneakers right now because of the tension in my arches and heels. Damn....

Also, one of my favorite Toronto artists and favorites all around actually now has a new blog. Check out: BY LEASE FOR LEASE here. This woman is mad talented.

C. de la B. - coming to Glasgow in May

My favorite dance company, C. de la B., is perfoming in Glasgow on May 8th and May 9th. See details about buying tickets here.

Way of the B-Boy.... Be It...

Research from Reggaeton to Gigue: My favorite writers doing their thing...

A new book out about Reggaeton by some of my favorite writers on hip hop culture.

And a news story about research by one of my favorite fellow graduate students at Edinburgh University:

The old analogue world (and an Edison advertisement for your pleasure)

It was a Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, that recommended a book called "The Gift" by Lewis Hyde to a UK publisher. I acquired a copy of this book as a gift sent to me in the UK from Canada. Sickness (just your average cold but my special Syndrome thinks otherwise) has left me reeling this passed week. And it's just the moment I need to stop and do a bit of leisure reading. To be honest, I don't know what to make of the Gift yet because I'm not done. This book feels like it needs to come together in the finale. Those types of build ups are in effect the arguments I love, the ones that require time, thought and patience -- never a fan of quick judgment which is perhaps my curse considering how many markets and behaviors are built on hastily made choices about art and life. Actually people can't stand how long it takes me to come to a judgment about something.

Having said that, I'm mulling over thinking in progress and reading in progress. Now creativity in progress rears its unlicensed head. The question is commerce. The item is art. Finished art. Sellable art. And the old analogue world is being revisited with the mournful eyes of capitalism. So today it made sense to link my reading in progress (the unfinished act of appreciating art works in the midst of 'in progress') with the works of progress and creative copyright. Here's a document from the British government on this new fangled world of free art and lowly civilians who want it all. Now. For free. Digital Britain. If that even is your real name.

I can only make links, judgment must come later. More research. More thinking. More reading. Doesn't mean that I don't have values, it's just that mine don't make good captions on t-shirts -- too long, too pronounced, too foreign.

Library of Congress and Youtube

Just as music videos are being pulled from youtube in the UK (this is a mistake unfortunately), the Library of Congress is making available archival footage on youtube. See the story here.

Check out a Library of Congress performance by Stevie Wonder here. About 35 minutes in, Wonder talks about his love for the radio and how he used to make fun of opera singers. The inversion is wonderful. He talks about being from the ghetto in Detroit and a woman who lived nearby him listened to opera and would be told to turn down the racket, "that ain't B.B. King!"

Ex-girlfriends of ex-boyfriends and competitions...

I've got a special treat for you: a BBC archive (brand new) on the value of record collecting and dealing. Just click the beat mining below...

"BEAT MINING WITH THE VINYL HOOVER"

The radio show even references historical contexts such as the work of composers Stockhausen and Xenakis!
and the show references the track "Unwind yourself" which always makes me think of this promotional video now:

A Perfect Day

Today is a perfect day minus the inevitable frustration of not being able to watch PJ Harvey's music video "A perfect day Elise" online in the UK. But the swans and ducks are cruising the canal and soon there will be baby swans. Someone is nest sitting across the river and it hasn't gone unnoticed.

Bomb It...Housepaint Style

I just came from a Housepaint event at the Royal Ontario Museum, Signy & Cléophée Eaton Theatre in Toronto. The night brought together an artist named Dan Bereron (aka fauxreel), a city councillor (Adam Vaughan), a curator (Devon Ostrom) and an artistic director (David Liss of MOCCA).

Devon Ostrom started off the introductory remarks by describing some of the art events he has participated in. The list was impressive. Check out some of the visuals here on the them.ca website. One of my favorite projects involved the organizers getting inmates in a prison to select graffiti artists' work that they liked. The artists then came into the space and put their art up on the wall. The results of this activity included an increase in social actions in the community space, an increase in attendance in this area of the prison, pictures for families taken in front of the art, and inmates creating their own art work.

Adam Vaughan, the city councillor, began by remarking on how his lengthy resume demonstrates his age and proceeded to donate extra cv information about his beginnings as a cartoonist (an attempt to mark his street credibility). He continued by tying the concept of weeds to graffiti (the task force that deals with both lawn weeds - that is people complaining about too many weeds on their neighbors lawn - and graffiti) in his use of metaphors. He didn't mention that people complain significantly more about the weeds of their neighbors' lawns than they do about graffiti (that's the statistical reality of the matter).

David Liss described his position in the field as the "gatekeeper of culture" and discussed graffiti art as a "global movement." Finally, Dan Bereron discussed his beginnings as an artist and why he got into "creating works outdoors." He explained that the street art he saw in England inspired him because it was inclusive.

The question and answer period didn't offer any profound debate or insight but entertained the crowd with a few laughs here and there.

What strikes me now about the conversation were the aspects that evoked the global or universal language of graffiti art. For example, Devon mentioned an art project where artists from different nations painted on bank notes. Adam Vaughan referenced a local public school in his district where for Chinese New Year's the students decided to sing reggae tunes with French words. Vaughan added that Toronto is one of five or six cities in the world where that type of cultural mix is possible (and proceeded to link this to his theme of despair, poverty and creativity by saying that "THAT is the culture of the poor"). ?? David Liss remarked on graffiti art at its best as an affirmative act of resistance and a 'global language.' Finally Dan's reference to the UK in general, or the scene in Montreal, provided him with some points of comparison to Toronto. Both Devon and Dan wanted to make explicit that this artistic movement was middle-class in Toronto.

What to make of all this?

I'm not sure yet (maybe it's a girl thing - no women were represented in the discussion panel or Q&A). The debate did sound like the same one I heard in Toronto about seven years ago. The cultural position of some of the graffiti artists over this time have been elevated and given more value and attention so perhaps that's the best result of public forums like this, that is promotion of talented artists like Elicser.

What is worthy of checking out is Well and Good who are doing great historical documentary work to share the stories of some (of my favorite) Toronto writers.


Writing Toronto's (Hi)Story from Well and Good on Vimeo.


Finally, here's the BOMB IT documentary site and a trailer for the film about global graffiti culture from a little while ago:



The general consensus during my trip to Toronto seems to be that the creative (street) artists making art and dance don't want to be tied to hip hop too tightly. Both dancers and writers that I've been talking to say that they want to advance their cultural productions in ways that suit their local inspirations and trajectories rather than fit to a model of what people think it should be (the global opinion on what is b-boying or street art). It's probably this collective mentality that has allowed so many artists to veer off the course of dogma and into their own expressions.

This is the Life: hip hop documentary about the West Coast

I just saw Sole perform at a show in London Ontario with Thesis Sahib and DJ Gripski among others.

Speaking of Myka Nine though... (the above sentence and poster was the prelude...)

"THIS IS THE LIFE" is a documentary that focuses on the underground rappers (as well as dancers, event organizers, DJs, and audiences) that made up the Good Life cafe L.A. rap scene that began in the late 80s.


Here's some more Medusa and Myka Nine who are two of my favorite artists featured in the documentary...

Medusa


Myka Nine


B-boys that want to 'learn' how to freestyle just need to listen to some of that and it'll all start to come out...

Here's the b-boy connection for this blog entry: Medusa was featured dancing in the same music video as Jacob "Kujo" Lyons. In the clip below Kujo discusses his up and coming battle against Junior (from France), learning your own way in dance, having fun and longevity.

Demetri Martin

Seemed like an appropriate time for some jokes about housing situations and throwing stones...



In London Ontario (where I am visiting at the moment) they are trying to reintroduce Trumpeter Swans to the environment. Apparently, they were once a thriving species here but because of hunting and other factors have become almost extinct in Southern Ontario. I've spent the last two days visiting them by the river. They are in a fenced in area to protect them and they seem to be chilling with the other birds of the area without much conflict. I've been feeling an unlikely affinity to them. Apparently they aren't on autopilot when it comes to migration. They head where they can survive and historically heading out of extinction into awareness.

One of those days..

Going to need some more Demetri Martin in the mix. This is part 1 of 6 in the "If I" series to get you started. The rest is on youtube for your viewing pleasure...

Nous deux, translations and history, Intertextuality of Ties…

I walked by a store in Paris with old magazines including “Nous Deux.” My favourite magazine cover featured a picture of a couple. The man was relaxing on a sofa reading a book. Beside him was a large bookshelf including a ladder. On the ladder was a woman with a big pile of books and an alarmed expression on her face. There were too many books in her pile and a few books had spilled out of her arms and were aimed right at the man’s head.

“Nous Deux” makes me think of

Julia Kristeva’s article: "Nous deux" or a (hi)story of intertextuality

about America, history (personal and political) and intertextuality. She fell in love with America with the same tempo that I now fall in love with France. She loves the simplicity of American streets, bustle and academic pursuits. Here the love affair differs. I love the intertextuality of watching movies with subtitles in France. I also enjoy wandering the streets and prefer the moments when the speed of life is leisurely and casual. I'm on vacation after all...

I walked by a store of sorts that read “La Maison de La Cravate.” I said to myself, “cravate, where do I know this word from?” I knew I had seen the word recently and often. Finally it hit me: watching “Frenzy” (directed by Hitchcock) in Nantes just a few days prior with French subtitles. La cravate means tie, which is what the killer uses to strangle his female victims in the movie. The word had come up often on the screen. Have you seen this film? A protagonist without a carefully plotted reputation (he drinks on the job, has an anger management problem and ‘to be helpful’ goes down in his divorce papers as the guilty party) is set to take the fall for the murders of his ex-wife and current fling. He is sent to jail and then escapes to pursue the killer. I could somehow relate (to the protagonist not the murderer just to be clear).

The film is 'set' in the present moment with only one or two rare memories surfacing in the minds of the protagonist and cop on the case. The cop replays our hero's words in court which echo in his mind and the voice-over track (I know the use of the word soundtrack is bad via Gorbman's translation of Michel Chion. Lately I've been wondering what the french word for 'soundtrack' is that Gorbman has translated. ?). Memory stumps me still. Of mice and men. I am stuck in a memory of 'la cravate' and thinking of 'nous deux' wandering the streets.

Maybe a video of dance will help break the spell?

Here is the equivalent of 'Nous Deux.'

Apparently b-boy Junior is battling Kujo at the end of March. There's a battle to watch out for.

B-boy Junior:



vs. Kujo:

Amen Break

Check it.

Fusik; living in and out of tune...

Fusik, the funk band that played the b-boy battle at Hip OPsessions, covered this song and it has been in my mind all day:



There is no singer in Fusik so the guitar player was handling the melody. I never thought about the lyrics before although I've heard this song so many times. I wonder if my knowledge of the song has deepened by taking a closer look at the words or if I'm more confused now that I know what they are:


Her daddy got a big aeroplane,
Her mommy holds all the family cash,
A beautiful blows, I stay at the corner,
She is living in and out of tune.

Hey you,
You’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing your vitamin C.
Hey you,
You’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing your vitamin C,
Your vitamin C.

And at Christmas riding on her pony
Or she is stepping on the pigman’s head,
A beautiful blows, I stay at the corner,
She is living in and out of tune.

Hey you,
You’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing your vitamin C.
Hey you,
You’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing your vitamin C,
Your vitamin C.

Hey you,
You’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing your vitamin C.
Hey you,
You’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing your vitamin C.

Moulin Rouge, Paris and I

I'm in Paris wondering why I don't live here. Just down the street the lights of the Moulin Rouge are out. Morning is in.

Nasty crews of past and present from France are on my mind. Let's review some of my favorites (words of chapter drafts are drifting through my mind all day and there is nothing left for blogging it seems):

Aktuel Force (the nastiest b-boy crew from France back in the days featuring b-girl Karima):



Aktuel Force pioneering cool theatrical numbers:



B-girls from France battling Japanese b-girls (who win!) IBE 2008:


Vagabond crew being nasty for TV:




More French b-boys and b-girls to come...

Finally, the ladies' man SALAH:

Bach, Ballet, Children and Obama Art

TATE MODERN EXHIBITS

Visiting the Tate on a Saturday is the perfect time because there are children everywhere enjoying art the right way. They camp out with their parents in front of one work of art, get out their complementary art booklet, and then start getting really creative. Their bodies stretched out along the floor so they can get a perspective of the painting from the ground up and focus in on the real art; their crayons can attest to this fact.

Unfortunately, there isn't a moment of calm or rest in what resembles a chaotic circus rather than a church service. People are everywhere and they are moving fast, zooming up and down the escalators, making casual noise, storming past art on their way to the art store to pick out some postcards. No judgment. I almost bought a cardboard ghetto blaster ipod stand with 'real speakers' for my friends' office. If it had looked like a bit more fun to put together I would have bought it.

In the midst of the zoo, when I learned that the Rothko exhibit had ended Feb. 1st, I was disappointed. The Rothko room provided the one moment of peace, distillation and calm from the chaos the last time I visited the Tate. I am going to make my own Rothko room when I move back to Toronto.

Altermodern: Tate Triennial

So off on a boat across to another exhibit. This exhibit was mostly disappointing (but in a good way). I found my replacement for the Rothko room: Gustav Metzger whose Liquid Crystal Environment provides pillows and a carpeted floor to lie on in darkness as his colors gradually shift from projected light sources that make shadows of the spectators as they move in and out of the room. If there hadn't been soft carpet then it just wouldn't have been the same experience. I mainly enjoyed the carpet and pillows and a moment of quiet. I would have happily fallen asleep there.

Metzger charms subtly while most of the other artists try to offend or prove points that are a bit too obvious or theoretically sapped. For example, there is Subodh Gupta's sculpture of a mushroom cloud made of pots and pans. Reminds me of what my brain feels like most days. Then, there is a piece that says "I wish I could have voted for Obama" sign with a life-size toy truck wedged underneath. My favorite part of the exhibit was watching a little boy try to pull the toy truck out from under the sign while his brother pointed at him and yelled for his parents who, like everyone else, seemed not to be too alarmed that he was actually trying to yank the toy from under the so-called 'art.' I think he had the right idea. I was going to help him out or take a picture but having a genuine laugh at a desire so entertaining and sincere was the best art I could have asked for.

My other favorite of the exhibit, besides Metzger, was a 'special deilvery' of "Fedex Large Craft Boxes" by Walead Besht. He sent six boxes with Fed Ex with glass squares in them and put on display the result of the delivery. Some squares are shattered more than others... Brilliant.

C. de la B.

The ballet company C. de la B. left me breathless and exhausted last night. This is Alain Platel's re-versioning of Bach's "Matthew Passion." It's a story about the crucifixion told from the mother's perspective. It's an attempt to restore the word compassion from what it has become, a dirty and condescending word. There are deformed moments in the dancing that require the compassion of the audience. If the audience gives the proper reception then everything is revealed in its beauty, all that is humorous, different, troubled and unwell becomes raw movement and love.

I have never seen so many ideas for movements displayed at the same time and the innovations kept coming. It reminded me of going to a b-boy jam full of great dancers and being exhausted after watching for about half an hour, your brain already having reached saturation point for new ideas in art.

As with any good ballet company, the first solo of the night is done by a b-boy! As soon as he started moving I knew there was at least one b-boy in the cast and in my head I was thinking, "well of course Jesus is a b-boy in a contemporary version of the story." As it turns out there is a bit of Jesus in all the characters as they navigate through their relationships. Nobody 'plays' Jesus. It's not that kind of production. There is no false sense of characters to latch on to. It's not 'just' straight b-boying either. The b-boy prances around and imagines b-boy anew. All of the choreography fits into a particular style of movement even as the dancers display diverse cultural and technical backgrounds as a group. That's what's so brilliant about Platel's vision of dance. Difference works organically out of the dancers backgrounds into a cohesive style front and the relationship between music and dance is pure suture.

The composer of the night is Fabrizio Cassol who has worked with the choreographer, Platel, before. The orchestra appears on stage in bright colored hats and t-shirts on the 'upper floor'. I'm assuming they are the sounds of the heavens: sometimes they play with the enthusiasm of a funk band enjoying themselves and at other times they have the enthusiasm of a working band that imagines themselves to be invisible from the audience in the pit. Both attitudes reflect what I imagine a heavenly orchestra would be like. The singers, however, are fully interactive with the dancers. They dance as well sometimes and smoothly navigate their way through the movements of the other performers.

I became a fan of Claron McFadden, the soprano of the night who has an angelic voice that can only be described as sounding "like butta." Her parents were the children of poor farmers from the South of the United States who moved up North for a better life. She began singing a range of styles of music that include a children's choir, gospel, funk and jazz (this is straight out of an interview with her), and then discovered Bach and Mozart at fourteen. Her idol, however, is Sarah Vaughan. She debated between a career in jazz and classical music, but picked classical because she loves the theatre (and she says she wanted to live a 'disciplined life' - so you can see she picked the ideology of the classical world as well!).

Barbican - Shun-kin

"Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides."
Junichiro Tanizaki

SHUN-KIN
Directed by Simon McBurney
Composer Hidetaro Honjo

I visited the Barbican Theatre last night to see a play "Shun-Kin." At first I just wanted to mention that the play was a great experience. So struggling with my common foe, writer's block, I did a little google search and found a scathing review of the piece here. Although the review is laugh out loud funny (in the sense that the reviewer missed everything that was beautiful about the performance and didn't understand a thing) this has compelled me somewhat to talk about the aspects I enjoyed. Wait! I've just read another review, this time by a Guardian reviewer, that also suggests this theatre piece isn't much good!

The piece was Inspired by two texts by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki: 'A Portrait of Shunkin' and 'In Praise of Shadows.' The good news is that the aesthetic theory on which the play is founded only comes up in the final moment. Like all good theory, the evidence is shown to us first followed by a quick commentary about where this might fit. A request at the end of the piece comes to go out into the light; the play of shadow and light was a product of ancestors forced into darkened rooms and the representational art of this experience.

The story itself is not about love, sacrifice and sado-masochism, although those elements are foregrounded. I read things differently. The story is about fantasy in love, about how much of the love between two people fits somewhere between reality and representation and happens backstage and in memories. There is a moment when Sasuke's face is in excruciating pain but he hides this from his master and lover, Shun-Kin. When she calls him to fulfill her demands to come warm her feet, he puts her foot to his pained cheek to cool it down. Angered by his action of helping himself rather than serving her needs (even if the two needs, his and hers, were indeed compatible) she begins to abuse him by repeatedly kicking him in the face. She has been blind since youth and hitting him since she was quite young as well (to discipline him at becoming a better music player). As the puppet Shun-Kin, and her ventriloquist, continues to kick Sasuke and he rolls away, he shares in the abuse with the old version of Sasuke also onstage, and a character who follows the story from the inside (although he remains a shadow of a character). Each of the men takes their place, and Shun-Kin kicks each one rhythmically, over and over again, in time with the shamisen player who is onstage as well. The timing and quality of movement of each man being kicked is perfectly executed and gives an aesthetic quality to the action, and the desire to participate in the memory of the older Shun-Kin is a perfect symbol for what the story is about. This same sequence was derided in one of the reviews so I thought I would try my hand at another take because what I saw completely moved me.


(Next up - a commentary about Hitchcock's "Family Plot")