It’s been a while since we mentioned Zoë Keating on the blog! Here’s a lovely six-minute feature about our very favorite avant cellist in the whole world, produced by Intel Visual Life:
Zoë’s been up to all kinds of cool stuff: traveling around the world along with her cellobaby and cellobabydaddy, making cellotastic “In-C” remixes, analyzing the Spotify hubbub from her unique vantage point as a highly successful unsigned musician… and her current live performance collaboration with the ODC dance ensemble, Breathing Underwater, is getting all kinds of rave-ups in the press! (NoCal folks can catch one of the final Yerba Buena shows in San Francisco tonight, the 23th, or the 25th.)
Then there’s this deeply moving video that high school student Gabriella Runnells recently made addressing the plight of girls in the developing world, using Zoë’s song “Optimist” as the score (which you can read more about on Zoë’s Tumblr):
Zoë’s also got a short tour in the works. US west coast beasties, this may be your last chance to see her live before 2013, after her new album (in the works now) comes out:
Friday night, wooooo! Untold legions of open world action role-playing gamers are about to tumble down a weekend-long Scroll Hole. In honor of their impending battles, here’s footage of a young, frisky, ostensibly naked dude gettin’ his FUS RO DERP on:
LA-based imagemaker/mover/shaker Sequoia Emmanuelle has just premiered this video of dancer Auberon Shull (definitely watch it full screen):
Filmed, edited and directed by Sequoia Emmanuelle Dance by Auberon Shull Hair and makeup by Ashley Joy Beck Costumes by Tiffa Novoa and Auberon Shull Music by Distance and Adventure Club
Recently, she took the time to answer a few questions about her collaboration with Auberon, and to let us know what’s coming next. (Thank you, Sequoia! Always a pleasure.)
Much of the Coilhouse readership is already familiar with your photography, but this may be the first time many of us have (knowingly) watched a video by you. Can you tell us a bit about the differences and parallels between your creative process shooting/editing film and your photography methods? Sequoia Emmanuelle: I grew up watching music videos, [they're] a huge inspiration to me, and I have always planned on getting more involved with film/video as well as photography. In the last year I have been working on several videos for fashion, music and dance. It feels very natural to the way I see things for photography, but of course it is very different, too. For one thing, everything you shoot needs to be horizontal, so it changes the composition of how you set things up. Your lenses change, and lighting changes. You can’t use strobe lights for video, so you have to set things up quite differently. When it comes to editing, it’s quite involved, because you have to pay attention to all the moving details and make your cuts flow in an interesting and creative way, not to mention syncing up the music. Right now I am focusing on simple ways of creating artistic videos… using less is more for the time being, and I’ll surely get more experimental as I keep working at it.
Rocker Clogger is a spirited seventeen-year old American amateur clogger who likes to dance to Adam and the Ants, The Cure, David Bowie, Oingo Boingo, Siouxsie & the Banshees, and Johnny Cash.
From her cute costumes, to the peaceful backyard background sounds of birdsong and wind chimes and rustling trees in all of her clips, to that irrepressible “I Gotta Be Me” attitude of hers, everything about Rocker Clogger’s videos fills my heart with squee.
“I’m NOT a professional dancer! I’m just having fun.” Girl, do your thing. Never stop.
(Several clips are listed after the jump, and check out her YouTube page for plenty more.)
Recently, the street dance documentarians ventured deep into the NYC underground (literally) to document the Flexing prowess of the Brooklyn-based NextLevel Squad.
Flexing (also called Bonebreaking) is a relatively new and potently individualistic fusion dance form that evolved in NYC out of Jamaican bruk-up, and incorporates popping, gliding, contortion, as well as various moves gleaned from martial arts, jazz dance, ballet, gymnastics, and whatever else looks damn good.
There are many, many things to love about this video… not least of which is watching a burgeoning subculture breathe new life (so to speak) into ye olde gas-mask chic!
It’s not only the mind-boggling technical skill, physical strength, personal style, or obvious lifelong commitment to dance that makes overnight YouTube sensation Nonstop (previously blogged on Coilhouse last September) so stunning to watch; it’s the unique narrative he builds for each performance. Scott’s not just an incredible dancer and choreographer; he’s a gifted storyteller as well.
“I had some kind of epiphany about not chasing something in the above-ground world. Something happened in me that I no longer wanted to be in a band that wanted to be famous and go on tour. I just wanted to do something that was ours. I guess it was firmly planting myself in the underground, not after some kind of success that my parents would like.
…In the olden days of New York they had bands and dancing. Dancing and performers of every kind — spoken word, circus, whatever — in the same venue. Places like the Mud Club or Danceteria had a lot of different spaces and a lot of different installations and all kinds of different people went.
And then this weird thing happened when it suddenly became all giant discos and little rock bars. And those people never went to the same place anymore. It seemed like when we started doing Rubulad that people really wanted to be in the same space. They wanted to watch a band and go dance. And be happy.”
~Sari Rubinstein, co-founder of Rubulad, interviewed by Nonsense NYC
Oh, loves. We cover a lot of micropatronage drives on da ‘Haus, but the Rubulad Kickstarter project is especially near and dear. They have been an indescribably huge inspiration to many, many people involved with Coilhouse.
What is Rubulad? Back in 1993, two lovely souls named Sari Rubinstein and Chris Thomas took out a lease on a 5,000 square foot basement in south Williamsburg. Maybe a dozen other people got in on that initial deal, mostly artists and musicians in need of a cheap communal space where they could spread out and work. They all started building up and decorating the space communally. Soon, it became a fun, subterranean hang-out location that drew all sorts of kindred spirits together for dinners, readings, rehearsals, etc.
After a while, Sari, Chris, and their cohorts started throwing parties to cover each month’s rent. Over the course of the next few years, Rubulad (cleverly named with touch-tone letters that corresponded to the space’s phone number)’s space began to evolve, to literally bloom (with vibrant paper flowers, glittering murals, rope vines, colored glass, paper mache sculptures), and the parties developed into these elaborately themed bohemian blow-outs. They. Are. Fucking. AMAZING. For seventeen years now…
(Hang on, let’s take a moment. Seventeen. YEARS.
Yeah.)
…Rubulad has been instrumental in planning and throwing all kinds of events. They’ve already had to move their main warehouse space twice, but their warm, inviting DIY ethic has never faltered or changed; it’s only grown stronger.
