Dance, Dance, and Dance (among other things)

It's 10 days until I fly off to the American Dance Festival to experience 3 weeks of dance watching, dance talking, and dance writing. So I think it's only appropriate that I talk about all the dance watching, talking, and writing I've been doing lately.

Most recently, I went to the Big Range Dance Festival' Program B here in Houston. I wrote a review for it and you can find it here. I won't repost it here (although I'm told I may---but you can click the link, right?), but I will add that NobleMotion Dance is added to my list of companies I hope to see regularly. Check out their collage video on their homepage. If you're in the Huntsville area (I know, right? Huntsville? Home of a very fine modern dance company?), make the effort to see them. Really.

The June issue of OutSmart is out and up on the web. I have several pieces in it this month. A book review of a wonderful new novel, Blue Jesus by Tom Edwards (plus a web extra interview with the author), a DVD review, and a profile of dancer/choreography Salim Gauwloos. Click the OutSmart link, scroll down to the Salim interview ("No Posseur"), and read it before continuing here. We'll wait.

hum de dum de dum la de dah . . .

Back? Yeah, I got to talk to a Vogue dancer. I feel really badly about referring to him that way because he's obviously moved beyond music videos (and good for him, I say!), but hey, the Vogue video was really very fun and stylish and he's clearly not the type of person who is saying he's above all that now. I could tell from talking to him that he really cherished his time with Madonna and doesn't in any way disown that experience. But surely he must think "That was over 15 years ago. I've done other things." The way of popular culture, I guess.

During our interview, he invited me to come to a rehearsal at the Met studios. I told him I wouldn't be able to use it for the article because the deadline was Immediately If Not Sooner. He said, not for the article or whatever, just because. So I said, sure and two days later, I watched about 20 minutes of a rehearsal.

It was quite a lot of fun. It was very early in the rehearsal process, of course, so there wasn't a lot set, but I saw enough to know that I'm interested in Salim's choreography. There was some very interesting partnering going on (and I'm a sucker for interesting partnering---I love how bodies play against each other's weight), so I'm looking forward to seeing the performance this Friday night. (Miller Outdoor Theatre, the Houston Met's Summer Sampler of Dance, 8:30pm---check the Met's website for more information)

What I want to say now about Salim is more of a personal reaction, but I think it's worth saying. I guess I have preconceived notions about fame or something, but I expected someone who has toured with Madonna and been in multiple music videos (not just with Madonna---check out Salim's website for more on his history) to be, I don't know, more aloof. I found him about as friendly and warm as you'd want a stranger to be. I felt that as I was interviewing him on the phone, and it was confirmed in person. Salim and his partner (who I shamefully cannot name just now---I'm terrible with names!) seemed like just really nice guys, the type of guys you'd hang out with at a coffee house for a couple of hours. The invitation to the rehearsal, without any real publicity to be gotten out of it, was very nice, but to meet him and see how he interacted with his dancers---he simply strikes me as a man who is comfortable in his skin. He's toured with Madonna and he wanted to show me his work in progress. It was all the same to him. I almost felt like I was doing him a favor by stopping by the studio.

I'm anxious to see the dance he made for the Met on Friday. I'll post my reactions here afterward.

To back up a moment, I will also take the time to point out the Blue Jesus/Tom Edwards interview. When I picked up the Blue Jesus review copy at the OutSmart offices, I wasn't really sure what I was getting into. Blue people in Georgia? I hadn't heard of it, so I thought this was some sort of magical realism thing. Well, in some ways, it is, but it's also based on the real blue people of Georgia, who, these days, are mostly cured of the condition that made them blue. The point being, really, that I've seldom been so charmed by a book. The voice of young Buddy Dean is so strong and so engaging, you swear you knew this kid in elementary school---or else were him. He is a mixture of having to grow up too fast (his mom is dead, and he gets pounded at school because he's a sissy and pounded at home because his dad is having trouble grieving and, well, also because Buddy is a sissy) and having a wonderful innocence about the world (he has this very obvious crush on Tony Dow, but he doesn't name it as such---he just wants to move to Hollywood and be Tony's best friend). There's much about the book that is laugh-out-loud funny and much that will break your heart---sometimes in the same line---and the ruminations on faith and courage and race and identity . . . it's just a fine, fine book. Find it, read it, tell others. I'm going out on a limb by calling it a new Southern classic, but I think it's the kind of book that could/should eventually find its way onto syllabi for literature courses.

That's enough for now. I really should be doing more prep for ADF. 10 days!

Joe Goode Performance Group

Just in from an evening at the Cullen Theater. I had been looking forward to the evening for weeks, ever since I interviewed Joe Goode of the Joe Goode Performance Group for OutSmart magazine. It was well worth the wait.

Goode introduced himself to the audience, dressed in cowboy drag (which is really the only way to describe it in this context). It's cowboy by way of Porter Waggoner's closet. Lots of fringe, in other words (although not so many sequins). Goode immediately endeared himself to the Houston audience by pointing out that it was a costume and that he wasn't dressed up as he was simply because the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo are in full swing this week. He went on to say that they're performing in other cities across the U.S. where the costume is actually ironic. The audience warmed up to Goode's charm and his company would have had to screw up royally to lose it.

His company, of course, did not screw up royally. We were treated to a wonderfully inventive evening of dance theater. The first half of the evening was a revived piece from his history, Maverick Strain. This was inspired by the movie, The Misfits, and played with the American ideal of rugged individualism, machismo, John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. The company danced, they sang, they played out scenes that reversed gender roles. Joe Goode himself would swagger one moment in imitation of a Hollywood cowboy, then give us a swishy counterpoint to that image. What's most amazing is that he was able to do it, get laughs, and it never felt forced or cheesy or played only for laughs. As he said in the after-show talk, it was about being male in America---and all the ways a male is in America. It's agenda was laid out in a very friendly way, not pushed, not a strident voice, just politely presented with humor and grace.

Wonderboy, the second half of the evening, was a bit different. Using a puppet as the main character---a quiet, sensitive boy who watches the world from his window, but is afraid to go outside and engage the world---we're given a story of self-discovery that again uses humor to tell the tale, but doesn't shout. Goode may talk about the difficulties of growing up gay in Virginia in the 1950s, but his work suggests that he isn't angry or bitter about it, only that he wants people to see what that experience was like. This is very appealing to me. As a gay writer and sometimes performer, I know it can be hard to present the work without being defensive or antagonistic to a straight audience. It's a joy to see someone modeling a way to do it, to create work that makes seeing the difficulty easy, that doesn't place blame for the difficulty or rails against the oppressor. Goode has found a way to present the difficulty that makes it possible for others to identify with it, even if it isn't the viewer's personal difficulty. Wonderboy is, in the end, about wanting to belong, and pretty much everyone who has survived being a teenager identifies with that.

Even going in with some knowledge of what Wondergoy was about, even after talking with Joe Goode about it for the interview, I was surprised by my own emotional response to the climax of the piece. I knew it was about a boy discovering that his gift and, indeed, his power lay in his being sensitive. Still, when the puppet proclaims, "I'm sensitive!" I had this internal response of wanting to shout, "Yeah! That's right! You're sensitive!" It's a funny moment, yes, there's something kind of funny about this sweet little puppet proclaiming his power with the very thing that had made him afraid to go outside, but it also touched something in me that I wasn't expecting. It's nothing new, really. Mystics and poets have been saying this for centuries. Our weakness is our strength. My own religion proclaims the weakness of a state execution is the power of our proclamation. Humility, the Desert Fathers and Mothers told us, is the one thing that the devil can't match and so is our greatest strength. So it wasn't a new idea, that senstitivity, a "weakness," could be powerful. Goode just built up to it in such a way that swept me into a catharsis of sorts. And that is, the ancient Greeks would have told us, the point of theater.

I should talk about one aspect of the evening that I was most interested in. Goode is known for making his dancers sing and speak. His shows apparently rely heavily on text to create the story he's telling. This is an interest of mine, one that drew me to Toni Leago Valle (see a couple of posts ago) and when I was making performance myself, a thing I tried to explore. I often feel like dancers use text to explain the dance or else use dance to illustrate the text---neither of which is particularly wrong, but not what interests me. In my work, I would try to layer text and movement so that each element offered more information, that there would be information left out if one element was absent. Whether or not I succeeded with those attempts, I wouldn't dare say. But I wanted to see how Goode used text, how he integrated the two.

Here, tonight, fresh from his show, I would say Joe Goode is a storyteller, and he uses many elements to tell the story. There are moments of dialog/monolog that do that, and ther are moments of "pure dance" that propel the story forward. There are times the two overlap, but I'm not sure I would say they are completely integrated in the same way I was attempting, but neither are they simply illustrative/explicative. From my point of view, he uses all elements with ease and the result is a seamless story. It is a layering in that all these disciplines do add a different dimension the the overall work. It is skillfully done and I cannot fault it one bit.

But I'm still searching for some thing I can't quite describe, haven't really managed myself, and may be an unattainable idea---this notion that text and movement might be integrated so that one requires the other to create a third thing. I'm high on what I saw tonight and I want to stress that what I saw was wonderful, skillful, full of creativity. And I'm looking for someone to do something . . . else with text and movement. But that's my notion, and is no fault on the part of Goode for what he offered his audience tonight.

Oh, and for heaven's sake, the other thing I wanted to mention is his choreography for duets. I'm a sucker for inventive partnering, and there was some very exciting and breathtaking partnering in tonight's work. There was even one point that I literally thought, "that defies the laws of science! How are they doing that?" Someone in the after-show discussion noted it, too, so it wasn't just me.

But that's enough gushing. This was one wonderful evening of performance. I have a new favorite dance company, another troupe to keep my eyes open for. If you run across this and the Joe Goode Peformance Group is coming to your city, I highly recommend arranging your life around it.

tetris by Toni Leago Valle

When I first moved to Houston 5 years ago, one of the first artists to whom I was drawn was Toni Leago Valle. I met her in Fieldwork, where she was showing work that incorporated storytelling and dance---which was exactly where my head was at the time. I was especially drawn, however, by her choreography. She uses an interesting and often surprising movement vocabulary, especially when partnering with another dancer. There are images from the first piece I saw of hers in Fieldwork that remain in my head, simply because the partnering work surprised and delighted me.

In the intervening years, Toni has become a friend and sometimes collaborator. She hired me as director for her last evening-length work, Cracked (2006), during the last two weeks of rehearsal of which I had the poor judgment to have a "heart event" and have since felt guilty that I wasn't there to play more in the final moments. (Oh, but wait, this isn't about me, is it?) She also worked with me on a short movement piece I made for a Fieldwork showcase (along with another friend and sometimes collaborator, Misha Penton of the new Divergence Vocal Theater).

So, last night, I went to see Toni's latest full-evening show, tetris. I'd seen a lot of photos from the show, had her bring a snippet of it to the neoNuma Arts Holiday Salon back in December, and even wrote a preview piece about it for OutSmart's January issue. So going in, I knew this piece was about a young woman's fractured identity and all the dancers around her were the many voices inside her head---from internal critic to inner child.

What I saw last night was a surprise.

First of all, this is the first piece I've ever from Toni that didn't use text. All the storytelling was accomplished via the movement, music, and news and pop culture video and audio clips from the 1980s. Not relying on text makes for more ambigous storytelling, but that's not a bad thing. In fact, that's the most appealing thing about this show. Back when I was helping Toni on Cracked, one of the things I remember saying to her more than once was, "cut this bit of text---you don't have to explain everything, we get it---or if we don't it's still there and it's not your fault that we don't." By doing away with the text---and I'm speaking of this piece in the context of Toni's larger body of work---it feels like Toni took a big personal risk, to let the storytelling happen or not, according to the audience's ability to look at dance.

But second, and perhaps most important, it works marvelously. Even when I wasn't clear on every dancer's role in the main character's head, I was enthralled. Even when I wasn't syncing up the video to the movement, it was never dull and never looked thrown together. If I wasn't "getting" every moment, I was getting that there was purpose and thought to every moment.

The evening itself is a bit of roller coaster, starting as it does with video of the Challenger crew boarding the shuttle to the tune of Peter Schilling's "Major Tom." I hadn't seen that video in years and it was a sucker punch to the gut, especially how Toni reminded us of how often we saw that explosion, over and over, with stops to point out where it begain and diagrams that gave us nearly second by second explanations of it.

But it's not all doom, as Toni's sense of humor is evident throughout the evening. A highlight of that being a duet wherein each dancer is trying harder than the other to pose for the flashing cameras about them, occasionally pointing out someone out in the audience and motioning "call me." Very funny stuff, expertly played by the dancers.

And speaking of the dancers, I want to mention two in particular. Priscilla Nathan-Murphy was also in Toni's Cracked. She was mesmerizing then and she's no less so now. She is able to fill the theater with her presence and deliver the goods on her movement ability. From her toes to her fingertips, everything is articulated and everything moves with purpose. I have no idea if she thinks so, but when I watch Priscilla dance, I feel like she's aware of every movement she makes. Some dancers get by with occasional tossing off of unfocused movement. Priscilla never lets you see those, if she makes them at all.

Also of amazing stage presence was a dancer making her contemporary dance debut, 9-year-old Bianca Torres-Aponte. I've never seen a child on stage be so focused and in the moment of the performance. When she first appeared, I was drawn by her presence, but then when she actually danced, I realized here is a little girl with no little ability. I half expected her to do mostly pedestrian movement, but Toni gave her some more complex choreography and it was lovely. At her age, any number of interests might come her way before she makes grown-up decicions about her life, but if she's able to maintain the focus she displayed last night, there's little doubt she'll grow up to do well, whatever she does.

Go to Toni's website and see if you can still score tickets for her last two performances. tetris is an evening in the theater well spent.

This, That, and (mostly) The Other Thing

Candace Chellew-Hodge and Bulletproof Faith

For my semi-regular gig at OutSmart, I got to interview Candace Chellew-Hodge, author of the new book, Bulletproof Faith. I've "known" Candace for a decade or more at this point---I've written several things for her webzine, Whosoever, and I've participated in her listserv, but I've never met her and until this interview, I've never spoken with her on the phone for longer than maybe 5 minutes (and maybe twice at that).

I had a good time talking to her. Listening to the recording, I was suprised to hear how much we laughed. Of course, as I'm editing the conversation for the magazine, we're going to lose a lot of that laughter, I'm afraid. I only have space for about 750 words and the point of the interview is her book, so as I focus the interview, I'm losing some of the fun stuff.

This is a hard lesson to learn as I'm doing more interviews for OutSmart. When I interviewed Tony Kushner, I felt like some of the fun we had got lost in the interest of space and focus. Perhaps this is how it is in this biz, to which I'm new. Maybe someday, I'll get to do one of those sprawling, ten page interviews you see in national magazines, but I guess every form has it's limitations.

But while I'm on Candace, I'm excited that I will finally get to meet her in November (the same month her interview will run in OutSmart). She'll be in Houston doing a workshop at Grace Lutheran Church on November 8. I hope we'll laugh as much (and more) in person as we did on the phone.

I've Been Quoted!

One of the first books I reviewed for OutSmart was Robin Lippincott's In the Meantime, which was just released in paperback. I picked up the paperback at the store where I work the other day, just to see the new cover that is on it. I then flipped to the first few pages of the book, just inside the front cover, where there were a couple of pages of reviews for the hardcover edition. Lo and behold, there's my review from OutSmart! My name isn't mentioned, just the magazine, but this is the first time this has happened. It feels like some sort of validation of my existence. I mean, I write these reviews and I sort of expect no one sees them. But someone saw this one and quoted it! I literally jumped and down and clapped my hands.

It takes so little, I know . . .

Nick Cave and Necroplis

For those of you who have gotten your copy of Necropolis, you'll note that it is dedicated to Nick Cave. Poet Jill Alexander Essbaum is a bit of a Cave groupie, which is to say she's seen him in concert so often that he's started dedicating songs to her from the stage. Deadheads have nothing on Jillie's devotion to Cave.

So I had a message on my voicemail from Jill, telling me that she was able to put a copy of Necropolis into Nick Cave's hands at a recent concert somewhere in North America (I can't keep up with Jill's travels anymore).

All of which is very cool. Maybe Nick will start to endorse it in his travels . . .

Nighthawks in November

Nighthawks by Evan Guilford-Blake looks on target for a November release. I suppose it's time to offer a pre-pub special. It's going to retail at $14.95, so let's say that if you order it before the end of October, you can get it directly from me for $10.00. It's a lovely piece of theater, hard and compassionate. Issues of prejudice of all sorts permeate a cast of oh-so-human characters, as their hopes and dreams are exposed and sometimes crushed before our eyes. If you ever wondered what those four people were doing in that all-night diner in Edward Hopper's painting, this is the play for you. Email me at neo (at) neonuma.com for more information about pre-pub orders.

October Writing Marathon

It's nearly time for another Writing Marathon. It'll again be at the Montrose Library here in Houston, on October 25, 10:30am-1:30pm. I'll write more abou that in a week or so. I think I'm calling it The Post-Ike, Pre-Spook Writing Marathon.

December Holiday Salon

I mentioned it some time back. I should mention it again. And I have tons to do on it . . . but it will be December 6, 3:00pm-6:00pm, at Sauté, 2303 Richmond, here in Houston. Jill Alexander Essbaum will be there reading, as will be Alan Berecka, another poet I'll be publishing soon (that reminds me, I need to make an official announcement about that). I'm talking to other artists, but nothing set in stone at this date. But put it on your calendar. It's going to be a good time and a chance to get some autographs and deals on neoNuma books.

(y)IKE(s)!

Oh, yeah, you may have heard about this hurricane, Ike? It's still a bit of a mess here in Houston three weeks later. I can't imagine what it's like farther down I-45 in Galveston. We're slowly getting back to normal here, but I think most of Galveston is going to be looking for a new normal. And then I would hear from people in Chicago who were experiencing flooding due to Ike a couple of days after it passed us here. That was one mean mother of a storm. Keep the coast in thoughts and prayers. The recovery isn't going to all happen at once.

That's enough for tonight. Maybe if I blogged more often, I wouldn't have to write so much at one time, eh? But hey, I've been doing better than once a month lately. Baby steps, you know?

modern art (in a postmodern world?)

Last spring, when I went to see the touring show of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's Chapel/Chapter, I stayed for the artist "talk-back" afterwards. I'd just written a profile of Bill T. Jones for OutSmart and wanted to hear more from the man with whom I'd had about 15 minutes on the phone.

One of the things he said, in response to a question from the audience, was that the best way to look at modern art was to look at yourself looking at it. (He may have been quoting someone else and of course I'm paraphrasing here. If anyone knows the source of this, I'd love to know it.)

I've been thinking about this, of and on, ever since. I've also, of course, been watching myself looking at modern (or postmodern or contemporary---choose your term and realize each has its own set of luggage) art. Reactions vary, of course, depending upon what I'm seeing, the day I'm seeing it, my mood, and (sometimes) who is the artist. Among other factors.

Watching myself look at art, I find I'm sometimes dismissive. Or judgmental in that really awful way. Sometimes, I'm awed, if the piece meets my personal set of aesthetic sensibilities. Sometimes, I'm just curious.

If I am not awed, it's that last response that I'm working on cultivating. What is that? What is it trying to say? Why would someone do that? This seems, to me, a much richer engagement with art. I may walk away not liking the artwork, I might walk away disagreeing with what (I perceive) the piece is saying, but the process of engaging the work beyond the initial, "what is this crap?" is proving to be rewarding.

Being dismissive or judgmental is just too easy and I find I spent a lot of my life having those reactions. "That's not art!" "Who does the artist thing s/he's fooling?" Or my (least) favorite: "A five year old could have done that!"

Yes, I've had all those reactions. And as I've grown in art education, I find all those reactions were made out of both ignorance and out of a culture that rejects what is unusual or unfamiliar. Is that who I want to be? It seems I can make some decisions about my own reactions. And maybe I can apply those decisions to not only art but to my fellow human beings.

So what do you see when you see yourself seeing art? The artwork itself may be irrelevant. The revelation may come from behind your eyes.

Catching Up; Under a Blameless Moon by Anne McCrady, Bits and Pieces

OOF! Happy New Year, I guess, since I haven't posted since last year. Let me give you a little rundown of how 2008 has started.

That writing marathon I wrote about? Well, two days, before the event, I came down with the flu. Fevers, shakes, aches, all of those symptoms. Knocked me down low. There was no way I could have done the marathon. In my fevered panic, I wondered if I could contact everyone to let them know the event was canceled. Then I remembered that writer, performer, humorist, and Fieldwork colleague Margo Toombs had signed up for the marathon. She's the adventuresome type and I figured she would have the enthusiasm and energy I was hoping to promote with this marathon. So I typed at her, she typed back, I typed an outline of what I had planned, and the marathon went on! About 20 people gathered at the Montrose library and from what I can tell, a good time was had by all. Perhaps best of all, two trashcan bags full of canned foods were collected for the Braes Interfaith Ministries food pantry! Just goes to show that you can throw a successful event without showing up!

Many thanks to Margo and her "can do" attitude. It's good to have colleagues.

Since I last wrote, I was contacted by Becky Haigler, one of the authors in Able to..., and asked if I would come to Shreveport to run a marathon there. I hesitated and said, I could send the outline and she could run it, but she and her co-conspirators said they would like a guest from outside Shreveport, which would make for more participation. So, I thought, okay, it's a nice drive up to Shreveport. And then we typed at each other some more and decided that since I was driving 5 hours north, I could do another workshop, and so a session of my Creative Crosstraining workshop was scheduled as well.

I'll let someone else give the report on that day. Go to:

http://anchorpoet.blogspot.com/

for a report with pictures.

Otherwise, January felt a little lost to the flu. Even though I made the Shreveport trip, I was still low on energy and a tickle in my throat would give me coughing fits for most of the month. I seem to be back on track (or as on track as I get) and moving forward. It seems like a million things are going on but I won't put it all in this one blog entry. I do want to tell you about one thing more in detail . . .

Under a Blameless Moon by Anne McCrady

Part of my trip to Shreveport included a stop on the way back at the East Texas home of Anne McCrady, poet, storyteller, exceptional human being. I had known she'd won a poetry chapbook competition, but had not yet seen it. Let me tell you about it.

Under a Blameless Moon by Anne McCrady broke my heart several times before I was halfway through it. These are poems that look at the violence and injustice of the world with a direct but compassionate stare. Indictments are few as Anne doesn't look to blame but looks at the human lives in the midst of violence, looks at the sad, crushing results of war and terror and helps the reader ask the "why?" or the "how?" and the "how long?" questions. Perhaps most importantly, Anne looks at the rubble she sees on the TV and the comfort of her pine woods home and wonders what role she plays in world events, helps the reader ask "what now?" and "how can I?" questions. The world needs these poems.

Order yourself a signed copy of this book via Anne's website. Tell her neoNuma sent you: http://www.inspiritry.com

You can also read sample poems from the book on her page. (I had to read "Just War" to my adult Sunday school class. I've been thinking along similar lines the last year and Anne beat me to expressing this thought while at the same time inspiring me to find my own voice on the subject . . . )

Bits and Pieces

Okay, that's enough for this blog. Otherwise, I'll just say I continue to write book reviews for OutSmart Magazine (with some other opportunities coming up---stay tuned!) and I've begun writing a little bit for Whosoever webzine again , where I used to publish a lot but took a few years vacation. Fieldwork starts up February 19 and I'm facilitating again---Houston artists, come join us for 10 weeks of creating new work! http://severaldancerscore.org/flyers/field/houfieldspring08.htm

Next time, I'll make a couple of new neoNuma announcements. Hopefully, it'll before the month is out . . .

-Neil