Found! One slumbering Lenni and a head full of Dreams.
The second of two new zines for Tonerpalooza, with a little feline assistance-cum-interference.
Tonerpalooza, in the Queen's Hall, enters its last hour.
Misreadings in hand. (So very delighted to meet you face-to-face at last, dear @oliviatokyo. Enjoy your copy of Misreadings and other zines.)
The late afternoon light in the library. (It was a hoot! Thank-you familiar faces and new bods for coming along to Tonerpalooza, presented by @stickyinstitute and @library_vic, and saying hello.
Blown into the State Theatre (by way of obligatory mirror portrait) for the newness of @ausballet's Bodytorque.DNA.
Forty-two 1950s pewter bike models primed in Warhammer's Skull White, of course.
Pass me my 000 brush. A box of 1950s cyclists ready to paint for Antique Toy World.
With a siamese cat upon her shoulder.
Kitten Interference. (Wrapping a big card order for the UK is proving a challenge. Lenni loves paper, but paper doesn't love Lenni.)
An impromptu portrait especially for @pasadenamansions and her pastel workshop in Rock Hampton.
From binding and folding new zines in readiness for Sticky Institute and the State Library of Victoria's Tonerpalooza in the Queen's Hall to filling card orders, it has been a big week (and a bit) that has zipped by. In between which, little pewter cyclists have been picked up and primed in Skull White. I'd forgotten just how slow and fiddly painting little models (for Antique Toy World) can be. And in between all of these things, the day-to-day, which in winter means trips to the ballet, not once, twice, but thrice. I was lucky enough to see Ballet Imperial two times, once on opening night with friends, and again on Wednesday with my Mum, and Bodytorque.DNA as well.
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Throughout all five works, links are drawn that are in part a result of a theme explored, but not solely. From Cilli’s "ode to the human brain" and its workings, in particular the differences between the left and right side to Harbour’s abstract exploration of the dualities of extroversion and introversion within a performer specifically, we are taken on a fast and furious journey through the body. Or, to appropriate John Adams, a short 79-minute ride in a fast machine. We are shown that the body can be moulded, bent, spun, thrown, pulled, and stretched in an existing vocabulary. It can be still and controlled, even after moments of high brashness (Control). It can slither in its encasement of skin and vinyl as order is sought and possibly found. It can turn inward as it looks within, as movements are passed from one dancer to the next like a game of Chinese Whispers/Broken Telephone, and the traditional front-of-the-stage outward projection is shifted to the centre as we view an intimate circle (Corpus Callosum). It can even appear to glide unbeknownst to its self, as celestial bodies momentarily take over the navigation (I Cannot Know). An arch here, a curve there, and lo! a double helix is indirectly referenced. Particularly pleasing for new work, we are reminded that pointe shoes can extend the range of possible movements, and hair can be released from a bun, and worn as fantastically wild, almost animalistic, extension of character, in the case of Vivienne Wong (Same Vein), or to amplify one’s rock star swagger credentials, in the case of Ingrid Gow (Control).
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(Bodytorque.DNA)
You can read Gracia's fantastic written response to Bodytorque.DNA in full here.
And her equally brilliant piece on Chroma, lest you missed it, also from June, too (and especially for Fjord Review).
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At times the ten dancers appear to swim underwater like serpents released from an abstract painting, suggested by the large rectangular opening in the back wall, only to materialize into crabs with pincers to wound and protect the next, providing, as Wayne McGregor explains, “a graphic sketch or relief from this sense of white”. Just when you think you have decided that the dancers are an abstract painting transferred into human form, testing their legs for the first time in the gallery when the lights are out, the tempo shifts, a trumpet sounds from the orchestra pit, and the dancers draw shapes in the air on their own imaginary canvases. The choreography, a changeable, magnetic beast, that sees Lana Jones become a broken marionette finding its centre line, Juliet Burnett, a hummingbird mid flight, and Andrew Killian and Leanne Stojmenov, a pair of cranes engaged in a courtship dance. Playing with the blank canvas of abstraction, this is choreography digested and re-moulded to form new movements each time. ''The choreography is there and the steps are all the same, but it's about encouraging the dancers to take it into their bodies and mould it,” explains Chroma restager Antoine Vereecken.
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(Chroma)
To me, winter couldn't get any better than at the State Theatre for three very different ballets.
