As mentioned previously on Coilhouse, I happen to think DJ Earworm is one of the most creative and engaging mashup artists out there. His latest offering, “Backwards/Forwards” is a sublime distillation of Annie Lennox’s most fabulously demented/dementedly fabulous moments in music and videography. Enjoy.
The “Golden Mean” snail car, a featured installation at the Fire Arts Festival this year. (Photo by Kim Sallaway.)
Heads up, Californians! The Crucible’s 9th annual Fire Arts Festival, “a spectacular open-air exhibition of astounding performances, fire sculpture and interactive art, lights up the sky at the Crucible’s new Fire Arts Arena in the freeway canyon lands of West Oakland.” Commencing this evening and running through Saturday the 18th, the festival is a full ten acres of installations, vendors, roving theatrics, circus arts, fire performers and aerialists.
For months now, Coilhouse co-editor Meredith Yayanos has been in meetings and rehearsals, preparing for this epic event. She’s a key player in The Rootabaga Opera, the featured musical performance at the festival this year. Composed by Mer’s good friend Dan Cantrell, the massive scale, multi-disciplinary work features dancers, acrobats, 20-foot high shadow puppet projections, pyrotechnics, a chamber orchestra and an Eastern European-influenced women’s choir. The whimsical narrative is based on noted American poet Carl Sandburg’s cherished early 20th century folk tales, The Rootabaga Stories.
A few of the Rootabaga Opera shadow puppets by Mark Bulwinkle. They’ll be projected onto a towering scrim and lit by arc welders.
Other featured music performances will include Poor Man’s Whiskey, BlacKMahal, Lucero, and last but certainly not least, Mer’s longtime chum and collaborator, Amanda Fucking Palmer. Mer actually postponed her move to Middle Earth, NZ specifically to participate in this event. She says “I haven’t been so proud or so glad about a music project in a very long time. I’m hoping to see a lot of our readers there!” Rumor has it she’ll be bringing her penny farthing and her Stroh along, too.
After the jump, some more related videos and images, and a long, illustrious list of artists contributing their large scale installations to the massive fundraising event.
Hey, can we all pool our resources and send fresh bouquets of snapdragons n’ dafferdillies to British ballet choreographer Frederick Ashton every day for the rest of his life? Seriously:
Piggy pas de deux! Jemima Puddle-Duck on pointe!
Must. Stop. Squealing.
The original film version of Tales of Beatrix Potter, shot in 1971, has twice been staged by the Royal Ballet, once in 1992, and more recently in 2007. The score –arranged and composed by John Lanchbery– delightfully interweaves melodies from old vaudeville ditties with more classical forms. The masks, costumes and production design are all so squee-inducingly adorable as to border on the demented. But it’s the incredible range of expression and dynamicism of Ashton’s choreography that brings beloved characters like Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Squirrel Nutkin and Hunca Munca so vibrantly to life. I’d give just about anything to see a production of this at the Royal Opera House. Here’s hoping it comes back sooner than later! Meantime, there are tons of clips to watch online, and a DVD to buy.
(Still squealing. Can’t be helped.)
Photographer unknown.
Pina Bausch died on Tuesday, aged 68, less than a week after being diagnosed with cancer. Dozens of eloquent and heartfelt obituaries honoring the Queen of Tantztheater and her incalculable influence on modern dance are going up all over the web. Mark Brown’s eulogy over at The Scotsman contains some especially incisive remarks:
She was one of a select few modern artists – such as James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Ingmar Bergman and Samuel Beckett – whose work can be truly described, in the most profound sense, as transcendental.
Bausch’s immense influence extended – and will continue to extend – far beyond her fellow dance and theatre makers, into film making and the visual arts. She was described so often as a “revolutionary artist” that the term became almost a platitude. Yet there is no other phrase which quite captures the impact of her deeply intelligent, humane, fearless and iconoclastic aesthetic.
Hell to the yes. It’s very rare to find an artist (in any medium) who strikes such a perfect balance of craft, grit, and grace; laughter, tears and squirminess. That “Pornography of Pain” label bestowed derisively upon Bausch by the New Yorker years ago may have stuck, but considering the emotional commitment and complexity of her work, it just doesn’t ring true.
Photo via the AFP.
Obviously, I’m no expert, but based purely off my own intuitive response to her stage and screen work, I’d call Bausch’s vision one of compassionate absurdity. Life and death, male and female, joy and grief, discipline and abandon are all presented with courageous honesty. She didn’t just break down boundaries between the mediums of theater, dance and film; she challenged our perceptions of performance itself. Stanford lecturer Janice Ross nails it:
In a Pina Bausch dance, the invisible divide between the real person and the stage character seems to collapse so that one often has the sense of watching barely mediated real life events. This isn’t art rendered as life so much as living rendered as art.
I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a shame that Bausch died when she was still so actively, splendidly creative. What a tremendous gift that she was ever here at all. In her honor, I’ve added “Revolutionary” to the list of Coilhouse category tags. Long may her dance live on.
Funereal excerpt from Wuppertal’s Die Klage der Kaiserin.
Several more clips after the jump.
You see that title? Do you? Have a good look at. Study it. Let it roll around in your mind. That right there is but a small glimpse into my process. This is how I got to where I am today, folks; making up words that make me chortle. One day, with enough practice, maybe you to can be paid to make up silly words. Until then, leave it to the professionals. Moving on!
Surely we are all familiar with the congruences between The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. A favorite pastime of the connoisseur of illicit substances, it is guaranteed in such circles to blow one’s mind. Having experienced the monumental coincidence that is this pairing I must admit that it can be fairly impressive. Still, even devotees must admit that the act has become a bit stale. Certainly, in this wondrous, fast-paced digital age our culture must have produced another strange, random fusing of disparate works in different media? Rest assured that such a vacuum has been filled by the unholy coupling of a dance number from 80s roller-skate sensation Xanadu and “Teamwork” by poet laureate Ludacris.
It’s my pal Bricey’s birthday. In addition to being a bottomless font of warm fuzzy vibes, moral support and hilarious butt jokes, Rachel Brice is widely regarded to be one of the most accomplished and innovative belly dancers working in the Tribal Fusion style today. So, for those of you who are (like me) shamefully staggering out of bed just in time for dinner (hey, man, some of us were up ’til 11am copy-editing Coilhouse print edition #3) and in need of something awe-inspiring/energizing/exquisite to look upon, here’s an assortment of clips of Rachel Brice: Professional Belly Dancing Badass and Beloved Goofball.
Have a lovely day, homeslice.
Via the most brutal and unrelenting Ben Catmull. \m/
If a Speedo-wearing, paddle-wagging, KVLT AS FUCK individual and his demonic friend headbang in the forest, does it make a sound? Apparently not, save for the mesmerizing voosh voosh voosh of dewy black metal tresses sluicing through crisp mountain air (and some Attila-worthy bellowing at the very end, there).
Canadian YouTube user and Dark Overlord of the Perplexing Non SequiTORRR, esy87, explains: “the music is coming from a headset close to us but the camera hasnt picked it up. for natural perservation of the vid we didnt edit it to put the song on it, but for ppl interested it was ‘Decade of Therion‘ from Behemoth.”
Ah. Yes. That explains everything. Except the banana hammock. But in any case, well done, good sirs. I’d throw you some horns, but I’m still doubled over in hysterics.
(Via Gala Darling. Bear with the janky visuals and audio! It’s worth it.)
Confession: I am a terrible dancer. Really, truly awful. Nothing graceful, mysterious, strong or sexy about me on a disco floor. More like a capuchin monkey being electrocuted. Once, in my early twenties, partying at a club in downtown NYC (land of folded arms, reserved weight-shifting and ambivalent head-nodding) a friend pulled me aside and frankly informed me “sweetie, you look like a twat out there.” For one immensely painful split second, I was deeply wounded. But the bullet passed through non-vital tissue. No permanent damage.
“I know. So what?” I pinched my friend’s cheek, went right back out there and recommenced shakin’ my monkeymaker.
Yes, many of us are terrified of making asses out of ourselves for all eternity. Me too. But when it comes to dancing for the sheer joy of it, all bets are off. All of you cool coordinated kids in the peanut gallery can point and laugh, but babies, you’re the ones missing out. Mark Twain knew his shit, and like Maude once said, “everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves. You can’t let the world judge you too much.”
Who knows? Maybe the world just wants to join in the fun.
Much more wacky wiggle dancing after the jump.
California-born dancer/singer Heather Parisi isn’t a household name in the US, but some of our Mediterranean readers might recognize her. Back in the late 70s, an Italian producer discovered the flexible 19-year-old sunning on a beach in Rimini. Parisi was set up with the best thrustiest jazz choreographer liras could buy, pimped out in one seriously bedazzlicious wardrobe, and became an Italian TV pop sensation overnight.
There are so many transcendentally Stupid/Awesome aspects to this video for her song “Crilù”, it’s hard to know where to start. Just… enjoy.
Gyrations atop a giant Rubik’s cube? Check. Uber groiny, hardbodied ballet dancers in metallic bowler shoes? Check. Intimated BJ three-way with male Moschino models? Check. Glittering Mickey Mouse butt cleavage? OKAY NOW THAT’S JUST GOING TOO FAR.
Clip via DJ Dead Billy, thanks. More Parisi videos after the jump. Additionally, if you appreciate this level of Stupid/Awesome 80s kitsch, you may also like:
Look, ye, upon the 80s wonder that was the Music Vest. Take in its gorgeous exterior, available in metallic silver or jet black. Let your eyes trace the fine, angular, Flash Gordan-esque lines. The next step in personal audio entertainment; marvel at its water proof speaker technology which facilitates musical enjoyment in any situation whether it be jogging, fishing, or simply break-dancing in your parents’s driveway in Secaucus.
Obviously the result of many hundreds of dollars of research and development and worn by one entire family, the Music Vest represents the ultimate in auditory rape. There was a time that the only way to forcibly expose the unwilling public to your own, personal soundtrack was to carry a heavy boombox. This led to shoulder strain; also, it made you look like a tool. Not so with the Music Vest. The Music Vest is light, slimming, and stylish and leaves both your hands free to receive high fives. Imagine looks you’ll get when you emerge from your DeLorean, swathed in space-age material, blasting the latest Duran Duran album. So do yourself a favor, pick up that phone and order yours today.*
* Requires use of time machine. Perhaps the aforementioned DeLorean. Time machine not included.