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Sometimes there are just works which take your breath away, this is one of those. Infra by Wayne McGregor on the Royal Ballet. See it if you get the chance – the movement, music and design all merge to make one totally absorbing, moving work. Music by Max Richter one of my favouritist composers.
This is a work that I did along with acr0mosh for Leigh Warren and Dancers
The idea was to see the music. Each musician (from the Zephyr Quartet) was individually mic’ed and passed into a Max patch by acr0mosh which did some audio processing wizardry and which was then passed to my work in Touch Designer and then projected.
This had to fit in between my studies, but I was pretty pleased with how it went, and its going to the Netherlands later this year! (which I can’t accompany due to stupid exams. Blast)
So I did my exams, and I passed. Yay!
<little jig of victory>
Wasn’t as bad as i thought’d they be and obviously my scotch habit hasn’t diminished my capacity too much.
OH yes, my blog traffic was very exciting for a while, I thought that my little corner of the web was somehow super interesting but it turns out that simply having the worlds ‘bill henson’ was enough to make this a superstar blog. I need to preemt the next controversy….
anyways, i ought to go do some busywork – make some more inappropriately reactive software. bah.
Thought puddle was looking a bit empty. And i do apologise that it hasn’t really been a joyful trundle of late – it was supposed to be an entertaining record of adventures. Hopefully fun times are ahead
bissous
Awesome Wall Animation
An interesting E Anthology which gathers work from poets, artists and filmmakers into a freely downloadable e-thingy.
From the site
“The Material Poem is a new e-anthology, edited by James Stuart and published by non-generic productions. It features the work of some 28 Australian poets, artists and critics, all of whom are engaged with poetry, and more broadly language, as a material form.
This body of work is inter-disciplinary, inter-media and often collaborative, spanning a wide variety of formal contexts – page, screen, canvas, space, book, performance and more. The Material Poem showcases the vibrancy of experimental writing in Australia, demonstrating how writing functions as a practice that is never purely literary.”
Worth a squiz if you are so inclined. If you need a review first before committing to 49mb of pdf-y goodness, Astrid Lorange has obliged.
Bel from Audaci’s comment made me thunk and will hopefully change my mindset as I’m woeful at taking my own advice.
But really I should try to be proud of the baby steps of progress so far. I have learnt stuff, I may not know as much about <insert enzyme/hormone here> as some others but I’m learning stuff.
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and now for something completely different
On another note, i saw Leigh Warren and Dancer’s new piece, Seven at the Adelaide Fringe, which was great. It was terrific seeing my friends perform and obviously relish the performance, though it made me more than a little wistful. But really, despite the workload and the constant feeling of overload, I’m really enjoying medicine and can look back on my performing fondly and without too much sadness.
I do miss being creative though, and have signed up for our Health and Human Rights Group as junior media rep, which hopefully will prove fun. The cynic in me says that no way a small bunch of wide eyed med students can never make much of a difference which is balanced against the wide eyed optimism that the sentiment is worth working for and that we certainly can make a difference to communities in need.
I also miss teaching, I really have to find somewhere to teach…
Bel’s post on the transition from creative industries to medicine made me think over my transition too. (just to add to the list, here is another ex-dancer turned med student)
I enjoyed my time in the arts. I loved it. I loved the camaraderie of creating a performance, performing it, touring with it and growing with it. I loved many of the people I met, I loved the thrill of creating my own work, realising my vision. I guess why I left was of practicality, and also a feeling that I needed a change. I was satisfied with what I had done. Like Audaci I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it made sense to me, and it seemed ‘right’ and still does despite my whinging and bitching.
There was certainly an element that it was no longer as fulfilling as it was before. Those who’ve read this for a while know my issues with the whole system of publically funded art, the politics of getting the money and also a certain angst of, what is it, cosmically speaking, all for? I never did get a good answer to that, but along with a feeling that dancing was no longer the most fun I could have and the very real prospect of being ‘damaged goods’ due to bodgy lungs, it seemed ripe to change.
“The one thing that art and health have in common is the human experience. Across both you will see the full spectrum of human suffering and elation. The former may be a more abstract, disconnected version of, but the link is there. Across both you will find your mind challenged, twisted in ways you never thought possible, you’re exposed to depths of knowledge hitherto unimagined. So similar, but so different. The problem solving too, the starting with nothing and creating a whole picture is so similar. You need that same arsenal of skills, even though the skills themselves may differ. And the sense of personal challenge is the same. “
I was just talking about it to a friend of mine, and I really do see a continuum across my eclectic background. The challenges, the element of the human – its frailty, its beauty and its many faces, the drawing and synthesis of ideas from disparate sources, the learning, the teaching and sharing of knowledge and experience, it is, as Bel says, same same, but different.
I don’t know if this post makes any sense, but I’ve been trying to get down some thoughts as I muddle my way through this med school thing.
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for bloggers/forum junkies
Three works by Nacho Duato is lovely.Really really lovely. I took a friend who is admittedly not into the contemporary dance thing, and there is little better to take someone like her to. The dancers are just phenomenal, they move with strength and precision and such liquid grace- it made me more than a little jealous.
However his work is, same-y, for wont of a better one. The three works are vague and similar in movement style, but when his signature is creating glorious long liquid phrases of movement with witty and whimsical musicality, I really didn’t mind that they were similar. He has a nack for picking gorgeous music, and a talent for arranging the space with bodies, light, costume and set brilliantly. In short, a breathtakingly beautiful night of dance – for me, it does what dance does best, convey something visceral, something one can’t express it in words.
‘Alas’ also by Duato was a huge disappointment after the triple bill. The elements were there – Nacho’s choreography, Thomas Pandur as director and Wim Wenders gorgeous film, “wings of desire’ as the text. But somehow in bringing it together, it sucked. Once you put dramaturgy with dance, you had better damn well make sure its good. This was overblown and self indulgent. The images were beautiful, the dancers exquisite, but the movement and musicality lost out, the digital projections were woefully bad, the use of voice and text basic and uninspired. Nacho himself played the angel Demiel, and it was bad. He can’t move as well as he used to, and in stark relief against his dancers its painfully obvious, as my less kind friend said, he had no acting ability, nor personal charisma. It seemed largely a vehicle for him to take off his shirt, look distractingly handsome and writhe a bit. The end image, while lovely in conception (the dancers climbing up a column to heaven, the floor flooded with the angel writing on the ground splashing) was hilariously bad as Nacho splooshed around in the flooded stage, periodically splashing meaningfully as he did 1st year contemporary dance floor work.
Kudos to him for trying something different, but very disappointing after the sublime beauty of the triple bill
Construct by Tanja Liedtke.
It was superb. Clever, witty, fun, accessible.
The dancers are just superhuman, capable of feats of control, daring beyond comprehension all with a cheeky insouciance.
Great use of props, and staging. See it.
It was incredibly difficult to watch, as I had worked on one of the precursor pieces to it, and could still hear Tanja giving us the task (and incidently getting cranky as I wasn’tn doing it very well)(and now I see how its supposed to be done, totally fair enough), but a really special work.
The team which pulled it together are truly astonishing. And lovely to boot.
Mortal Engine – Chunky Move
Unbelievably irritating. It was like watching the windows media screen saver for an hour. It lost the charm and connection that ‘Glow’ their previous work had. I didn’t feel any connection to the ‘narrative’ or the dancers – it was all engine, with little of the ‘mortal’.
I was so totally distracted by the technology – which as an artist who is working on similar things, I know is not all that super mega difficult, that I lost interest in the work as a performance and spent my time rebuilding their effects on my platform.
It really looked like a first stage work – where they found cool effects and made up dances to go with it, incidentally.
I think there is some potential in dance and technology but it is elusive and difficult.
Puddle 