HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Christmas to the last December morning of 2012.

{These recent days.}

Christmas Day through to the morning of New Year’s Eve 2012 has looked like this. Bright, festive, and relaxed. Delectable food has been shared, cards played, and all is good and calm and quiet. Birthdays have been celebrated. Films seen. Fish & chips enjoyed in company of Williamstown seagulls. The days have been long and light-filled. It has been, well, almost idyllic. Brought all the closer to this state by the next-door neighbours (who revel in door slamming and foot stomping) having been away for this celebratory period, enabling, for the first time in three years, windows to be flung open so that birdsong and far distant noise could fill the house. Books have been read in a single day. Books upon books. From Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book which left me longing for my own small island in the gulf of Finland to comb. With its mossy rocks, it’s useful rubbish washed up on shore, and black swallows circling high above. A windswept changeable landscape with an unpredictable sea. Of all the books recently read, this is the one I am climbing into when changing places with literary characters is made possible. And so pajamas have been lolled in as detective stories and tales of hobbits have been read. Gingerbread houses have had their walls pulled down. Mail from Ritva in Finland (by beautiful timing) has arrived, with tiny labels of good cheer fastened by gold thread. (From this comes this.) From Copenhagen too, collage pieces from Christine bearing printed images of summer houses, hedgehogs, and kangaroos. So as cats sun bake, dogs too, I am hoping January brings a few more days like these. You?

On the whole island, there was nothing but rock and juniper and smooth round stones and sand and tufts of dry grass. The sky and the sea were veiled by the yellow haze, which was stronger than sunshine and hurt the eyes. The waves heaved in towards land like hills and curled into breakers at the shore.
(Tove Jansson, The Summer Book, A Sort Of Book)

Tempted too?

Happy New Year!

The late December whirl.

{The busy gloriousness of late December, thanks to instagram.}

Christmas eve is tap, tap, taping at the shoulder, and the days of late have seemingly whizzed by. Outdoors. Sunlight. Feasting. Nattering. Lolling. Some in moderation. More often not. This is how these days have looked. This is how they’ll continue to look, this tail end of December, with jacaranda trees dropping splendid purple mess at their feet, and CD and record collections that wall to wall, floor to ceiling stretch. Paper decorations and Christmas lights, and lemon verbena leaves crushed in palm. Teacups in neat formation, waiting. December’s portrait could easily be drawn as a series of tables set. Curtains closed and blinds drawn to keep the house cool. Windows next day flung high to cool breeze catch. Merry, merry all, wherever December finds you.

+ Thank-you, Hila, for the beautiful gift handpainted by your Mum, Orna, and the link to our festive print. As promised, I look forward to showing you the work hung on the wall just as soon as the perfect spot is decided upon.

+ On display, a new zine of Louise and mine at Hand Held Gallery (which, in the brand new year, reopens on the 16th of January).

In working order. Almost.

{I can no longer hide my excitement.}


{Keeping good time.}


{Practising Emerson's advice.}


{Reading symbols formed.}


{Assembled at the agreed spot.}

Sickness or injury of any kind is humbling, and so it has been these past two weeks. A sore back has left me feeling like someone, at best, twice my age, as I hobble and limp and move tortoise pace. Where normally I could touch my toes with ease, legs straight and palms of my hands on the floor, now, tying up the laces of my sandshoes is a slow process as the whole lower area of my back burns. Yes, when the machine that is the body runs at less than optimum it is a humbling experience. I cannot imagine how it must feel for an athlete or dancer or circus contortionist, someone used to the incredible highs and dizzying feats of wonder their bodies can perform, when faced with a failing, aging, injured body.
 
This spanner in the works has rendered me less (though kitten therapy helps and old dogs prove loyal). Slowly shuffling towards Christmas. What December this has been! (Complete with department store melee.)
 
From a time when feeling less decrepit, less Bah of the Humbug, a festive wish from Louise and me shared with Leah and Janette of Milly Sleeping.
 
To both receive and give, we’d rather fancy the gift of a little quiet time to be spent as desired. Time to open a book and read it in one sitting, the process broken only by the need to cut another slice of chocolate ripple cake to ensure the belly remains full. Time to potter in the garden, gloves off, soil under fingernail. Time to lie in a hammock or stretched out on the grass. Time to snooze like your pets do year round. And time to be submerged in water, be it at pool or in the ocean, or feet dipped in a creek or body in a bath drawn and brimming with potions. Days and nights, a succession of them, to be spent as one chooses. In bright and noisy company. In the darkened cinema hush. In quiet seclusion. On a long walk. With purpose or ambling. Dreaming of the future.
 
Happy Christmas! May it bring something wonderful.
 
And here’s to the adventures ahead in 2013.

+ You can purchase Materiality (hard copy and digital) here, through Pinknantucket Press

Curl around or cradle it.

{Daylesford views with new zine by the two of us in hand and a book launch in Footscray for Materiality, captured all with instagram ease.}

On the way home from Daylesford afternoon time spent, a book launch was attended for Materiality, a fantastical new and handsome publication. In this, the first volume, the book is the theme rich to explore and it has been lovingly dreamt of, edited, and made actual by Alice of pinknantucket press. An invitation to contribute words and images on the theme of the artist and the book we happily accepted. What a thrill. Thank-you Alice, for all your hard work making Materiality, a journal about the material world, something true to name beautifully material.

MATERIALITY
Number 1: Book
December 2012

THE ARTIST AND THE BOOK
Book artists Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison love paper for its adaptable, foldable, concealable, revealing nature. From their limited edition artists’ books to prints, zines, postcards and other projects, the animal is ever-present in their work. “For us, the animal is there to question our very behaviour, those moral principles by which one governs the self, and to explore our relationship with the natural world... we leave our scenes deliberately open-ended. We invite you to ponder, to contemplate, and to perhaps find that things are not as they appear at first glance.” Gracia Haby tells us more about their attraction to the book format as an artistic medium.

I blame the intimacy of the book. It was perhaps a suggestive wink from a book that first drew me to collage and from there to the process of altering and adding to the printed page. Now, I am not referring to those precious tomes that in library collections most rare reside. Nor am I talking of books deemed sacred by any definition. No, I am talking of books salvaged from dusty piles and rescued from opportunity shops. Book that can be exchanged for a couple of plastic notes of various colours that would otherwise become a meal for silverfish and time. So, before you panic about the corruption of a precious book, remember that the future of these books, these beautiful books, was not always secure. They come with age spots and creases and weak spines. They are hunched. There, I’ve made them human, almost. Like withered folk in a nursing home. Well, perhaps not—I may have inflated my position as Rescuer Supreme a tad too much, like any real collector who saves artefacts from the clutches of the past and then feels inside the warm victorious glow.

Now, where were we? Books—one’s love affair with books. Books ripe for collage. I’ve one favourite supplier who keeps any tremors of withdrawal at bay. If it sounds like an obsession, then, yes, you’d be right. Collecting can often become an obsession, a devotion sometimes taken a little too far. Obsession is perhaps what steers the ship Louise and I jointly captain across the paper seas. We are linked by a love of paper, be it to draw or paint upon, to fold into concertinas, or to snip at with a pair of scissors until the negative space (typically) is no more and new landscapes are found.

In my search for a suitable book, I am first restricted by the price listed inside the cover. Restrictions and limitations can actually work to the advantage. In a general sense, I look for books that are not so badly damaged that they cannot be used, ones that are chiefly complete. I am not bothered by a rusty staple in a tourist booklet, for this I know can be removed and a stitch tied in its place. I am not adverse to age spots or even marks left from sticky tape.

I look for negative space within the images printed on the page. Primarily, is there enough of it? Or will any hippo or vulture or river otter be too restricted or hampered (even for my liking) by the composition’s predetermined confines? Within the existing image on the page, I look for room to add something to the scene. And I look for books that hold scenes that are not, by my definition, too complete and beautiful that no further mark or element is needed. I look for books that feature the landscape or the urban environment prominently. I like to control the scene as a puppeteer controls their puppets and a choreographer their dancers on the stage. I view the scene from such a distance. I look for many images within each book, for this is the arena I doctor with glue pot and brush and elements cut from another book at some earlier stage.

Upon a more practical note, I look for a paper that will agree with glue. Something that is not too thin, for those, when a collage piece is adhered, will ripple in quiet rebellion. I look also for a matte finish, as I will draw on the page with pencil. I use pencil around the edge of the collaged pieces, to soften any white edges that a slightly thicker paper will yield when placed atop another, and to shade, for example, the hind paw of an animal. Shading helps me to marry the piece added to the base below. Seamlessness, that is the aim. I am interested in creating a sleight-of-hand, a fascination that Louise and I carry over into our collaborative collages too. We try, always, to hide the effort of the hand. And, compositionally, we desire the piece to look both effortlessly thrown together and as if it had always been that way. It is all about finding a balance, and working a restriction to an advantage.

A ready supply of books languishing in small darkened stores and a love of a format that requires the viewer to curl around or cradle it—or, if displayed in a case, requires the neck to crane forward and perhaps the nose to hit the glass—this is what draws me to the book and to collage. Printed paper—I am, on second thought, not your master but your slave most willing.

Pinknantucket Press
2012

+ Our super sale continues still, and don't forget to download our free festive whale print, if you've not already had the chance to do so.

A print for you and a super sale too.

{Onward.}

Dear friends, dear newsletter subscribers,

We're pleased to announce that we’re having a 25% off everything sale until midnight Christmas eve and to offer you this print to download free.

+ To receive 25% off your order upon checkout, simply enter the word FESTIVE when asked for the sale code.

And especially for you, our print, Onward, a new collaborative piece by the two of us. Should you wish to print yourself a copy of this adventure with its string of lights, it is A5 in size. Download, print, and pin to wall or with magnets hold to your fridge door.

+ + Download this PDF file (4.2MB), or simply click on the image above and send to print.

It is all our way of saying thank-you for your support this year, dear and marvellous ones.

G & L
xo

(2010 and 2009's Christmas print.)

(In other exciting news, to the State Library of New South Wales go five of our artists' books recently exhibited as part of our Charms of the Gloaming. An early Christmas gift of the very best kind. Yip! Yip! December, you sure aren't too bad if only you'd slow down.)

An abundance of whooping, cheering, hooting, and thunderous applause.

{Love and happiness.}

For Fjord Review, my response to The Australian Ballet's 50th Anniversary Gala, which I attended on one night with my Mum  and the second night with Louise (see her There were fireworks! post). Thank-you Penelope for inviting me to contribute this piece to Fjord Review. Thank-you to The Australian Ballet for inviting myself and Louise to Friday night's Gala. November, was it really so very long ago now?

The Australian Ballet’s 50th Anniversary Gala
Thursday 1st & Friday 2nd November, 2012
Featuring guests from American Ballet Theatre, Stuttgart Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of China, and The Tokyo Ballet

There must be whooping. Lots of it. An abundance of whooping, cheering, hooting, and thunderous applause. This is what celebrations need in order to make them celebrations. And to make a performance a gala event: so it was for The Australian Ballet’s 50th Anniversary Gala, which I had the fortune of seeing twice.

The cast for both performances was chiefly the same, with the exception of the Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux (Thursday 1st November: Ty King-Wall and Leanne Stojmenov / Friday 2nd November: Kevin Jackson and Lana Jones) and Études (Thursday: Madeleine Eastoe, Yosvani Ramos, Chengwu Guo, Andrew Killian / Friday: Lucinda Dunn, Rachel Rawlins, Lana Jones, Madeleine Eastoe, Ty King-Wall, Adam Bull, Rudy Hawkes). Friday night was recorded and broadcast live at Federation Square in Melbourne and Martin Place in Sydney where you could watch the performance free underneath the starry canopy.

What amazement, the human body: capable of performing all manner of artistry and athleticism, capable of the illusion of weightlessness as it sails through the air, capable of wooing and beguiling its audience, of such tantalisation. The Anniversary Gala, which included a host of international guest artists, was a giddy showcase of the balletic body. Fouetté. Jeté. Pas de bourrée. Pirouette. Ballet’s lexicon was shown to brilliant extreme in this jewel box array from Giselle, Carmen Suite, Manon, and Tchkovisky’s White Swan Pas de Deux from Swan Lake and the finale, Harald Lander’s Études.

It is a language to be read on the bodies of dancers. It is a conversation we are cognisant of between the dancers themselves, in the aching intimacy of Demis Volpi's Little Monsters in love and the sigh inducing partnering in Christopher Wheeldon's  After the Rain. Equally, it is a conversation between dancer and audience. You do not need to know the terms nor the history (though this helps, and many, of course, do) for it is a language that cuts across this. There is a directness, a clearness to movements we all understand. Longing, love, elation, exuberance. This is something we can read no matter our background. It is a story told yesterday; it is a story told today. It is timeless, and Love and Loss and Joy prove unfailing guides. They whisper, they coax, and they play. They tell a story orchestrated to reach into one’s very chest and grab at the heart. They must know that they pull long golden ropes from inside the fleshy trunks of all seated in the theatre. Pulling at heartstrings—this is the stuff to make your forearms prickle. Goosebumps! These physical sensations, all part of the thrill. Not merely a heady experience, this ride is for the body too.

The dancers, those beautiful alien creatures, seem to be carved from something else (the result of years of training and dedication and the endless pursuit of excellence). Some, like the Tokyo Ballet’s Mizuka Ueno give impression of being a towel wrung such were the twists she performed in Alberto Alonso’s Love Pas de Deux from Carmen Suite. Where the body’s organs go is anyone’s guess. Amber Scott’s delicate backbend into a bridge supported by not the palm but the back of each hand, in Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain, had my mum, a Yoga teacher, in complete awe. So too, did the ethereal qualities and liquid moves of Zhu Yan and Sun Ruichen from National Ballet of China in their Giselle dreamscape on stage.

“For as long as the body is relevant in our society, ballet, dance, non verbal forms of communication have a unique role in the communication of ideas. Ballet is relevant because it still has the capacities to move, challenge, excite, inspire, provoke, our human sensibilities in ways no other art form can.”[i]
Wayne McGregor, choreographer, The Royal Ballet

From the opening Overture, this honey-laced trap calls for endurance. What is it common folklore says about being mindful not to step inside a fairy ring of toadstools lest you have to dance for eternity? Something of this rings true for me in this lineup that asks its audience to come along for the fast-paced journey, only our limbs are not as fluid moving and capable as those of the dancers and I find I’m limping by the time we reach the White Swan Pas de Deux. Thrown into the middle of “the best bits” cannot make for anything other than one super endurance test that sees us plucked from Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel and plunged into Giselle’s realm, another landscape to navigate and footing to quickly find.

And so it continues, springing from bedroom (Manon) to another story altogether before things culminate in the Wedding Pas de Deux (Don Quixote). Add to this, all those elements which ensure a company can present such a spectacle polished for the audience to lap up like the bug-eyed child in a sweet factory. Costumes, lighting, teaching, direction, this tight mesh that is the performing arts, to an outsider from the visual arts, reads like a dream.

“I don't experience it as me standing behind the girl looking at the back of her head, with my hands on her waist. I'm feeling what's going on inside her body. And what two people can execute and create is a lot more than one person can alone… Letting go and trusting yourself and your natural reflexes and instincts. It's shedding and taking away all the technical expectations and being sincere with yourself. That's what comes out of it for me.”[ii]
Damian Smith, dancer, San Francisco Ballet

Manon, danced by Australian Ballet principal Adam Bull and guest Julie Kent, principal with American Ballet Theatre, and After the Rain danced by Australian Ballet principal Amber Scott and guest Damian Smith, principal with San Francisco Ballet, the latter in particular, illustrate for me what love is. In Little Monsters (created especially for Stuttgart Ballet’s Elisa Badenes and Daniel Camargo), we see that arms can be made to arc that of a bird of prey. A mighty wingspan that is as beautiful as it is controlled. And when again to the stage the Little Monsters duo take, they bring with them their obvious enjoyment, and assured familiarity to Don Quixote. They love the audience and the audience, naturally, loves them. Hearing feet upon the stage floor, the smell of hairspray (or am I imagining I can smell this from where I sit?), the snap of fingers clicking, the clack of a fan opening, all the little nuances peculiar to a live performance run through me.

Beginning with one dancer’s plie, in Lander’s Études beautiful repetition is used as exquisite pattern to describe to the audience the work of a dancer. This is groundwork, the barre, the training, the repetition of steps. And so, after an early part of the evening spent atop mountain’s peak, we are now presented with a work to read from start to finish. We get to revel in the now seemingly slow assent; the steady build to bang that is Études.

Dancers’ legs are spot lit and shown at the barre as though in class. At one point, the line of dancers look almost like a centipede with its many legs all moving in the one direction, all part of the one body. We see, too, the figure used as inventive silhouette play with the dancers lit so as to become almost from black paper cut. This work is one to delight in, with its chorographical challenges clear. It is, in the vein of the previous highlights, a work for a dancer to open their bag of tricks much like a magician and say, You like that? Well, look, look at what it is I can do now–and the audience lap it up eagerly, feeling truly part of a 50th knees up.

This is play. This is evident in many parts of Études. Dancers taking delight in the things that they can make their bodies do. This is emphatically the feeling I come away with after the curtain call with its flowers, and fireworks on stage, in literal sense, a crowd enraptured and applauding so enthusiastically I’m sure my ears were splitting. How I love this audience for showing its admiration and love for the company, its work and all it stands for. This is how a 50th milestone should be marked.

Crossing the bridge in the direction of home, I stopped at Federation Square to catch the tail end of the performance I had just seen live. It was a good ending to see the crowd assembled on a chilly spring eve, watching the screen. To see a small child preforming its own interpretive solo before those seated. To see people dressed in their work clothes tucking into sushi or sipping lemonade as they looked up at the big screen, transfixed. Once more, the fireworks, the ‘50’ projected on the backcloth. The company on stage saying thank-you, from artistic director David McAllister and Nicolette Fraillon (chief conductor with The Australian Ballet) to Maina Gielgud (artistic director, 1984 to 1996), Marilyn Jones (a principal dancer from the earlier years), Marilyn Rowe (dancer now director of The Australian Ballet School), and Dame Margaret Scott (founder of the school). From here I float home, head wrapped in gauze, nostrils still detecting the smell of hairspray.

Notes:
[i] Wayne McGregor, choreographer at The Royal Ballet, in interview with dance writer Brandan McCarthy in 2006, quoted by Valerie Lawson, arts writer for The Sydney Morning Herald in her piece for the Manon programme of The Australian Ballet, 2008
[ii] Damian Smith in interview, Chance event sparks a leap of faith, Philippa Hawker, The Age, 30th October, 2012

Thursday 1st & Friday 2nd November, 2012
Artistic Director: David McAllister
Executive Director: Valerie Wilder
Music Director & Chief Conductor: Nicolette Fraillon

Overture
Featuring The Australian Ballet
Choreography David McAllister
Music Piotr Ilyich Tschaikovsky

Little Monsters
Featuring guests Elisa Badenes and Daniel Camargo from Stuttgart Ballet
Choreography Demis Volpi
Music from the album Love Elvis sung by Elvis Presley

Act II Pas de Deux from Giselle
Featuring guests Zhu Yan and Sun Ruichen from National Ballet of China
Choreography Feng Ying after Jules Perrot
Music Adolphe Adam

Love Pas de Deux from Carmen Suite
Featuring guets Mizuka Ueno and Naoki Takagishi from The Tokyo Ballet
Choreography Alberto Alonso
Music Georges Bizet

Pas de Deux from After the Rain
Featuring The Australian Ballet’s Amber Scott and guest Damian Smith from San Francisco Ballet
Choreography Christopher Wheeldon
Music Arvo Pärt Spiegel im Spiegel

Bedroom Pas de Deux from Manon
Featuring The Australian Ballet’s Adam Bull and guest Julie Kent from American Ballet Theatre
Choreography Sir Kenneth MacMillan
Music Jules Massenet

Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux
Featuring The Australian Ballet’s Ty King-Wall and Leanne Stojmenov (Thursday)
Featuring The Australian Ballet’s Kevin Jackson and Lana Jones (Friday)
Choreography George Balanchine
Music Piotr Ilyich Tschaikovsky

White Swan Pas de Deux from Swan Lake
Featuring guests Sofiane Sylve and Pierre-François Vilanoba from San Francisco Ballet
Choregorapgy after Lev Ivanov
Music Piotr Ilyich Tschaikovsky

Wedding Pas de Deux from Don Quixote
Featuring guests Elisa Badenes and Daniel Camargo from Stuttgart Ballet
Choreography after Marius Petipa
Music Ludwig Minkus

Études
Featuring The Australian Ballet
(Thursday) Madeleine Eastoe, Yosvani Ramos, Chengwu Guo, Andrew Killian
(Friday) Lucinda Dunn, Rachel Rawlins, Lana Jones, Madeleine Eastoe, Ty King-Wall, Adam Bull, Rudy Hawkes
Choreography Harald Lander
Music Knudåge Riisager (after Carl Czerny)

+ Episode #9: Celebrating a birthday: Streamers, fireworks, cake, international stars and an unforgettable gala

The moonlight's pale blossoms! Des Mondlichts bleiche Blüten!

{O I'd pluck just one!}

Once more taking you along for the ride with another piece for Fjord Review, The Shock of the New. Thanks for the opportunity, Penelope, and I'm delighted I was able to throw link in there to Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie's The Affair at the Victory Ball).

Pierrot Lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot)
Presented by Melbourne Recital Centre in association with Melbourne Festival, 2012

Performed by
Dan Carter conductor
Merlyn Quaife soprano

Syzygy Ensemble
Jenny Khafagi violin
Blair Harris cello
Laila Engle flute
Julia Stoppa clarinet

Songmakers Australia
Andrea Katz piano

BalletLab
Phillip Adams artistic director, choreographer
Shian Law performance artist
Tim Walsh performance artist

Program
Arnold Schoenberg (b.1874, Vienna–d.1951, Los Angeles)
Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Giraud’s Pierrot lunaire (Three-times-seven poems from Albert Giraud’s Pierrot lunaire)
composed 1912

"Art must have perpetual youth; it must change and renew itself."[i]
Sergei Diaghilev

The history of art, music, ballet, opera, and literature is one dotted with the curious, bewildered, shocked receptions of the audience when faced with the new and the challenges this in turn presents. Springing to mind in a flash, the famous response The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) received at its premiere on a warm spring evening in Paris in the year 1913. Igor Stravinsky’s rejection of conventional melody coupled with the abstract and convulsive dance movements of Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography presented the audience with a "prehistoric vision, confused, awe-inspiring, but true."[ii] The Rite of Spring is for me forever tied with the riotous response it received on the 29th of May, when those at the Champs Élysées Theatre were "not ready for jagged rhythms, crunching discord, and the strange jerking of the dancers on stage."[iii] Such was the noise of the audience making loud their shock and displeasure that Nijinsky shouted the numbers so the dancers could keep time. I see this, an imagined vision of Nijinsky whenever I listen to a recording of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a ballet renowned for making "Pagans of the audience."[iv] But perhaps what I like best from what I know of the history and uproar this performance yielded is Stravinsky’s own response to the madness of the premiere, "The performance went off in very stormy fashion; things went as far as fighting."[v]

Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire premiered the year prior to this, in Berlin on the 16th October 1912, the culmination of some twenty-five rehearsals, but you would be wrong (as indeed I was, a Schoenberg novice) to think that it was received in the same manner as The Rite of Spring. Pierrot was and remains still provocative and awe-inspiring, but that is not to say that it was not well received at its premiere, as was the performance given by soprano Merlyn Quaife, Syzygy Ensemble, Songmakers Australia, and BalletLab which I attended at the Melbourne Recital Centre recently (as part of this year’s Melbourne Festival).

Some, it is true, were confronted by the 1912 premiere of Pierrot. "The most ear-splitting combination of tones that ever desecrated the walls of a Berlin concert hall,"[vi] was how one audience member described the work that prompted so many others artists to cover new terrain musically. It is a work that can be many things to many people. Fascination, awe, and provocation: these are powerful motivators. "After hearing Pierrot in December 1912, Stravinsky composed the eccentric second and third movements of his Three Japanese Lyrics for a similar ensemble; Stravinsky’s astonished descriptions of Pierrot one month later inspired Ravel to write his Three Poems of Stéphane Mallarmé."[vii] I wondered what the gathering assembled some 100 years later would see and feel. Of the New York City premiere on 4th February 1923, critic Lawrence Gilman wrote that the performance "disrupted families, severed life-long friendships, incited critics to unbrotherly remarks about one another, and filled whole pages in the Sunday music sections of the newspapers."[viii] Did anyone leave Wednesday’s intimate performance at the Salon, I wonder, with a life-long friendship now severed?

As with Michel Fokine’s Petrouchka, the character of Pierrot is one well known, from appearance to persona. The outsider, the sad clown, he is a character in which we recognise ourselves. Throughout the years, his costume may vary but we recognise him instantly by his sad eyes. It is the deeply vulnerable Pierrot that drew me to this performance. A cycle of poems in French by Belgian writer Albert Giraud was the source text for Schoenberg’s Pierrot. BalletLab’s director Phillip Adams’ Pierrot is for three dancers (himself included), and it celebrates the 50th anniversary of Glen Tetley’s Pierrot Lunaire, a work that calls on the movements of the face to convey a wide range of emotions and expressions that we have come to associate with Pierrot. "Half-ballet, half-modern dance, Pierrot Lunaire epitomises Tetley’s style, legs and feet balletically elongated, torso arching with Grahamesque fullness, the whole body now acknowledging tension, now soaring into release. Although today’s choreographers are constantly breaking down the boundaries between genres, decades ago Tetley's pioneering fusion provoked disapproval from certain quarters. But he never doubted the rightness of his duality. 'I have always existed in both worlds,' he said, 'and never felt them to be anything but one world.'"[ix] BalletLab’s choreography leans on this blurred distinction between ballet and modern dance, and sits comfortably with Schoenberg’s music to Giraud’s words that are ‘recited rather than sung.’ The dancers walk in a circle, anticlockwise. From the four clothing racks that are placed at intervals throughout the Salon, the dancers perform several costume changes that reference the poem and its many interpretations, effectively blurring the line between what is on stage and what is ‘behind stage.' The costumes reference the landscape described in the poem; they are a beautiful and varied array that end up being little worn. The dancers respond to the music but, for me, have little to do with Merlyn Quaife, the Syzygy Ensemble, and pianist Andrea Katz of Songmakers Australia and I was searching for a greater interaction between the two, between dance and music.

Of ballet/dance and music united in this way, I have seen two other melds. El Amor Brujo, a chamber ballet by Ensemble Liaison and JACK Productions at the Melbourne Recital Centre (in 2011), remains a brilliant example of this. The artists were interested in exploring the question "how does one completely surrender to and give genuine emotional physicality to musical energy?"[x] Drawing upon the ‘dance’ that musicians perform with their instruments, the dancers in this work responded to the music, and the musicians responded to the dancers. At times, the dancers would be at the fore, and at others, they sat on the nearby seats on the stage in artful collapse or pulled-up pose, actively listening to the musicians. This exchange between dance and music was what I was looking for in this recent performance of Pierrot lunaire.

The familiar, well known character of Pierrot is everywhere throughout history, from the mime talents of Charles Deburau by way of Antoine Watteau’s Gilles (or Pierrot) and Four Other Characters of the Commedia dell'arte (painting c. 1718 in the collection of the Musée du Louvre, Paris) to David Bowie dressed as Pierrot on the cover of the single Ashes to Ashes (1980). Pierrot even appears with Pierette, Harlequin, and Columbine in a red-herring laced murder mystery in Agatha Christie’s The Affair at the Victory Ball (in Poirot’s Early Cases, published in 1974). There are many references across all manner of mediums that a list would be as long as it would be varied. Perhaps, given Pierrot’s adaptability it is from this footing that I should look at the choreography. To BalletLab’s Phillip Adams, "the performances decadently re-imagine Pierrot, the clown of legend fit for the fag that has everything."[xi] I had not seen him that way before and while the performance did not necessarily convince me either, who am I to say or expect how Pierrot should be? The three short solos within the performance were nonetheless more engaging than the slow encircling of the musicians.

The piece, performed in a circle of seven musicians including conductor Daniel Carter, sees Merlyn Quaife move three times so as to ensure we all see something of her face that conveys such a wide range of emotions. ("It’s perhaps not coincidental that these “three-times-seven poems” are the numerologically-obsessed Schoenberg’s Opus 21"[xii] which draws (from 50) 21 poems grouped into three distinct parts.) The audience was seated in an outer circle around this knot of musicians and dancers. Being a circle, there is no front. The seating, too, was general admission, so the audience decided upon arrival where to sit. To begin, for Part One, I saw Quaife from behind, her face was lit rendering her for me a moving, spiked silhouette. The second aspect correlating with the poem’s shift from the moon and moonlight to an atmosphere of darkness found Quaife facing me. "The poems of Part Two describe a nightmare of blasphemy and crime. The gigantic black moths of Night have massacred the sun’s glory, these monsters sink onto the hearts and souls of mankind. The poet makes a Prayer to Pierrot: 'O give me once more… Your Lunar Highness, Pierrot – my laughter!'"[xiii] I cannot understand German but I felt I could as I watched her delivery of the work. You could read the German lines in translation upon her face and hear them in her tone. This was the 'dance' I focused on. As Quaife herself remarks, "I have devised a way of expressing it so that I can refer to the music without being glued to it. My facial expressions portray what it happening to the character."[xiv]

In Part Three, where memory and nostalgia take hold, Quaife, now in a third position, draws for me that moonbeam for a rudder. I found her performance and her own engagement with the musicians and the audience compelling, it was my evening’s highlight. The strength of the dance did not balance that of the music. One should need the other in order to make something anew, something not possible without input of the other, and I struggled to see this. That is not to say that it was not there, for the audience around me loved all aspects of the performance; you could see it their expressions and hear it in their applause. While I was unable to read the poem on the dancers bodies and through their movements perhaps upon later reflection I will.

We see all if we wait our turn.

(Note: I attended the Wednesday 24th of October performance. A post-concert discussion led by Leigh Harrold and performers was held on the Thursday and Friday nights only.)

Referenced in the words above:
[i] Quoted by Léonide Massine in My life in ballet, MacMillan & Co, London, 1968, p 85.
[ii] Prince Peter Lieven, The birth of the Ballet-Russes, trans. L Zarine, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1941, p 190.
[iii] Miles Hoffman and Renee Montagne, Stravinsky's Riotous 'Rite of Spring', Music Interviews (published online), 21st March 2008, NPR Music.
[iv] "One shrewd musicologist wrote that 'the pagans on stage made pagans of the audience'." Quoted by Hoffman and Montagne, Stravinsky's Riotous 'Rite of Spring', Music Interviews, 2008, NPR Music.
[v] Stravinsky quoted by Hoffman and Montagne, Stravinsky's Riotous 'Rite of Spring', Music Interviews, 2008, NPR Music.
[vi] Joseph Auner, Ears of the Future: Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire at 100, The Boston Globe, 3rd June 2012.
[vii] Auner, Ears of the Future: Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire at 100, The Boston Globe, 2012.
[viii] Lawrence Gilman quoted by David Metzer, The New York Reception of Pierrot lunaire: The 1923 Premiere and Its Aftermath, The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Winter, 1994), Oxford University Press, p 669.
[ix] Nadine Meisner, Glen Tetley’s obituary published in the The Independent, 12th February 2007.
[x] Robin Usher, Still daunting and haunting even after all these years, The Saturday Age, 20th October 2012.
[xi] JACK productions (founded by Lucas Jervies, Robert Curran, Andrew Killian and Laura Tong) website program notes 2011.
[xii] Phillip Adams, BalletLab website notes for Pierrot lunaire, 23rd October 2012.
[xiii] Pierrot lunaire Program Notes supplied by the Melbourne Recital Centre to accompany the 2012 performance.
[xiv] Quoted by Usher, Still daunting and haunting even after all these years, The Saturday Age, 2012.

A deltiologist.

{For how long manicured and tame.}


{Aware of your every step.}


{Beset by foolish daydreams.}


{Aware of your every move.}


{An ornamental rain fell down upon me.}


{Tanger gazing.}

Dear you,

A deltologist is someone who collects postcards. I cannot believe I am only learning this now. All this time and there was a glorious name for it. My parents are the two super slueths responsible for bringing this word to my attention, a recent trip to Geelong to see the exhibition, Wish You Were Here, at the National Wool Museum, yieleded the treasure.

Yours happy to have a name to fit about the shoulders,
G

“Dear Ive,
Our dear little Ella was taken to the hospital today, the Dr. thinks it might be typhoid.
Love from Flo.”

"Early postcards may have included an ornamental border, but no picture. The first known picture postcard was mailed from Vienna, Austria in 1871. Initially, pictures on postcards took the form of small views within a decorative frame leaving most of the face free for a message."
Wish You Were Here: A Private Note for All to See, National Wool Museum, Geelong

deltiologist
noun

    A deltiologist is a person who collects and/or studies postcards (as a hobby).

deltiology
noun
    The collection and study of postcards.

Origin: 1940s: from Greek deltion (diminutive of deltos 'writing tablet') + -LOGIST

Blue sky lust.

{Image scanned from a borrowed library copy of French Riviera (Assouline).}

The first day of summer deserves a sun soaked image plucked from pages of French Riviera (by Xavier Girard, published by Assouline). This image speaks of summer days to me. Not mine, but ones I'd like to imagine. (As I prepare to hit Publish Now on this post, the heavens are opening, the rain pouring, and the sky becoming increasingly grey, but I am sure we can, for sake of feel alone, play along with the idea.) So grab your favourite canine companion and come with me today to Copenhagen by way of A different picture with every look (Kjøbenhavn). I've grapes packed, and we can stop for a toasted sandwich along the way.

This artists’ book is one of four recently exhibited as part of Louise and my Charms of the Gloaming, which after a 5-week-long display in the window of the Port Jackson Press Print Room is now but a pleasant memory. However, in saying that, it is one of four artists’ books and a collection of Louise’s drawings that we have left with the good folk of Port Jackson Press Print Room until they close for Christmas so if you live nearby and would like to see this work with your own eyes, you've still a chance. They also have a collection of our prints available for your perusal too.

On the far wall, Louise’s Delias Hübner (Pieredae), Barn owl (Tyto alba), Zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), Giant hummingbird (Patagonia gigas), and Northern hawk-owl (Surnia ulula) are pinned, and on a shelf in the front window, our artists’ book, Beneath the screen of closed eyelids (Port-Said), and To spend a quiet day (Interlaken Berner Oberland), and With you my destiny I'd steal (Venezia).












{A different picture with every look (Kjøbenhavn).}

+ I am December ready. I think. Here is to days that begin with a chocolate from the advent calendar, and the wonders of a new haircut.
+ Louise's recent post, It all comes down.
+ My Mum's project A Drawing a Day continues.