HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Dazzle and a fair amount of woo.

{Steven Heathcote on Don Quixote}

The 415th and 420th performance of Don Quixote
The Australian Ballet
Friday 15th of March
Tuesday 19th of March

Production and choreography Rudolf Nureyev after Marius Petipa

The light touch is not something easily carried out. It, like many things, is a fine balance held between its opposing sides. Its footing seems light-hearted because it is, but to achieve this, much magic and trickery is required. Moreover, one cannot slump. Nothing light comes from slumping. And nothing is as simple, and free of effort as we are oft led to believe.

Don Quixote is one light-hearted caress of a ballet that features slapstick moments that echo Buster Keaton. Here, I am thinking of our wealthy nobleman, Gamache, with a wavy mane worthy of Oz’s lion, whom we meet in the port of Barcelona. Orange and fuchsia, frilled and feathered, before the body moves, the costume tells of a character not to be taken too seriously. Intended for the innkeeper’s daughter, Kitri, but this we know will not come to be, Gamache gets to play the fool who could not dual without assistance. This playful humour is one part of Don Quixote’s I-want-to-please-you charm. It is, unless Keaton-esque humour makes your quills bristle the wrong way, a ballet that cannot help but tip the corners of your mouth into a smile. It seeks also to dazzle with its abundance of stunts and impossibilities that if left unattended would happily obscure the storyline further. Dazzle and a fair amount of woo, the objectives of the saturated colour palette of the seventies are more than met. Orange, rust, and pink, and the unmistakable red dress allure.

Recently, Louise and I had the good fortune of being invited to the opening night; such are the thrills of March. Speaking briefly to former dancer, Lisa Bolte, during the second interval, she mentioned that watching the performance she could not help but recall her own Don Quixote cast. She spoke of the joy of wearing Dulcinea’s impossibly beautiful tutu that, from where I sat, looked so light and lovely. Memories from past giddy and sweaty experiences became naturally one part of what she saw and felt. Her daughter, at the previous night’s dress rehearsal with its Russian guests, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, she explained, saw something else. Her daughter noted especially the Corps de Ballet dancers required to stand so still throughout and for such long lengths of time. Whilst, for Louise, she saw shades of the Nureyev production made into a film released in 1973 (which included Nureyev as Basilio, Lucette Aldous as Kitri, Marilyn Rowe as the Street Dancer, and Robert Helpmann as our monster-mistaking windmill-battling Don Quixote). For me, having never seen the ballet performed live, I saw a series of brushstrokes that made up a whole. The painting effect heightened by those poses held with barely detectable movement, and by backcloths that depicted nature splendid. All colour harmoniously balanced, part artificial, part real, colour to reflect an emotion or idea. Staging to simulate nature but fabricated nature. But it is more than this stillness of scene that to my mind calls a painting. It is more than the sunset backcloth. It is the irregularities of a live performance that make it a painting. It is in a dancer’s stomach seen breathing in and out. It is in the unexpected within a highly orchestrated and polished work. The near miss of a prop tossed over the shoulder in Act III. The sound of feet. It is in everything that tells you that this is a live performance and one tilt and all could change. It cannot be reproduced any other way than by hand. It has imperfections that make perfection of the experience. No night can be like another with one or the same cast. Even though it tells through repeated choreography the same tale, no performance can ever be replicated and it is for this reason that I think of it as a stand-alone painting. It is the very 'unfixed-ness' that delights. It is akin to seeing a painting hanging on the gallery as opposed to reproduced in a book or printed upon a postcard or decorating an umbrella. No matter how fine and exact the printing there is something it will always lack, something the original work keeps for itself that you are privy to when finally you see it on the gallery wall. Something indescribable, the recognisable riddle. Some might call it a work’s soul. Or its pumping heart.

The sensation of a painting with its varied strokes. This is what I saw both nights I attended The Australian Ballet’s Don Quixote, the first time with Louise for the opening, and then again the following Tuesday with my Mum. Once more, the intense colour shot of a Rupert Bunny (1864-1947) with 1970s flair. Once more, the clack-clack of baubles and beading, and gold coin jangles, and costumes that ring, chime, rustle and swish-swoosh. The fingers click and we are in Spain, unmistakably. The feet stamp and stomp, and all is enthusiasm and light, with required dream sequence for your whipped cream. The casts for both night’s chiefly the same, with Lana Jones as Kitri and Daniel Gaudiello as her Basilio, but as will come as no surprise, both nights were different. A return trip, a second look, a glance over the shoulder and something else is revealed. There once more, the fantastical dream sequence to lift the character of Don Quixote from “a figure of fun, a senile fool doddering on the edges of the action... His dreams, we are shown, are noble — a realm away from and above the rough and tumble of gypsies and villagers” (And then I woke up..., Rose Mulready, The Australian Ballet’s publications editor, published in The Australian Ballet’s Don Quixote programme, 2013). It has long struck me as curious, those who claim either one viewing, be it recently or long ago, is sufficient. Can one see Don Quixote only once? Is once enough? Is there such a thing? It reminds me of the weary tourist’s remark: “Rome? Done that. London. Been there. Statue of David. Tick. Mona Lisa. Done.” Whilst aware that not all things are for everyone and not all requires a double dip, can anything really be so definitive? If you had the chance to revisit a favourite artwork, would you? Can you see Van Gogh’s yellow bed and chairs once and need no longer to see the work again even if the opportunity arose? Do you only need to see Louis Hayet’s (1864–1940) In the café (Au café) (1888) or George Morren’s (1868–1941) Laundry day (The washerwomen’s field) (1890) but once and your fill is done, quota met. All those marks. All that labour. All that history. Soaked in under the skin in less than two minutes. Why, unpacking it from its (touring) crate would take longer. Can you see it all? Could you never see it again? For me the irresistible equation of performers, orchestra, and audience proves too great. I’ll go again, and again, and again.

The instagram foyer series:


{Louise and me, Don Quixote, Friday the 15th of March}


{My Mum and me, Don Quixote, Tuesday the 19th of March}


{Louise and her Mum, Don Quixote, Wednesday the 20th of March}

+ En pointe!

The art of the moonlight meld and other recent collages

{The art of the moonlight meld.}

Once the warm fug of nostalgia wears off, you are left with a curious aftertaste. It’s not wise to live in the past nor is it something I’ve ever aspired to, no matter how rose-hued the scenes in my postcard collages might initially appear. A recent twenty-year school reunion afforded me the rare chance to press pause on the present and sidestep with all the ease of a sci-fi adventurer into days long past. All things familiar held in check by all things unfamiliar. Same. Different. Different. Same. If you wish to recall what you thought and how you acted some ten, twenty, thirty years ago, a reunion makes such trickery possible. Magical transformation easier than you’d thought. Step through a door and suddenly you are the ‘you’ of years ago, with all your old mannerisms, quirks, and fallbacks waiting in the wings. It is both comforting and confronting. Looking in a mirror at myself twenty years ago, I am not the same. What would the point of tomorrow be if all days from here on out were the same, same, same, until inevitable end? If you knew what was around the corner, would you still keep walking?

Today’s ten Geelong scenes are for a forthcoming exhibition with Louise at Geelong Gallery, but for more on this you shall have to wait.


{The wait was long, but worthwhile.}


{Losing feet, losing way.}


{It had to be said, when it came to yachting, the Dog bat provided sails like no other.}


{Another marble for the collection found by the Marbled salamander.}


{In search of elusive answers.}


{The Philippine flying lemur takes a detour pleasing.}


{Practising the Elephant Shrew Blend in the Johnstone’s Park Fernery, Geelong.}


{Trouble digging.}


{Wet whiskers drying.}

+ Working from home can sometimes look like this
+ ...transcribing data can become awkward

+ Thank-you for the new site love and compliments tweeted, emailed, and otherwise

+ Ashley Dyer's Life Support, as part of Dance Massive 2013

From out of the wings steps a new site.

new |njuː|
adjective
1 produced, introduced, or discovered recently or now for the first time; not existing before: the new website by Gracia & Louise

In what took longer than we'd rather boldly anticipated, we've finished the great web site rebuild. At long last. Such is the jubilation that was marked more by a state of collapse than knees-up fanfare. But this which I speak of is behind the scenes stuff. The workings, the mechanics, the stuffing, the labour behind the gloss. The searching for rogue commas, line breaks, and links that need to in new windows appear. But what you will see is something brand new and shiny. What you will see, it is hoped, is a new repository for all of our artists' books, commissioned collages, words, zines, exhibitions and their relatives. You can leaf through the pages of collaged books (scanned page after page by Louise), read clippings, sift through prints with a bird as your guide, whatever and however you please.

Take not my word for it, skip across and see, adventurer you.

(And should you discover something out of place, do give a hoy and help out. We'd be ever so grateful. We've only a pair of eyes each.)

Choose your place carefully.

{Choose your place carefully.}

When not at a dance performance, Louise and I are working on our new site. And when not working on our new site, Louise and I are at a dance performance. Such is massive March. Here, for you, and published but a moment ago on Fjord Review, Where There's Smoke..., my thoughts on the first piece I saw as part of Dance Massive 2013.

Ashley Dyer
Life Support
Tuesday 12th March
Sylvia Staehli Theatre
Dancehouse

DANCE MASSIVE 2013

There are some nights when the weather plays its role as if part of the performance. This was the case one very hot eve, when I went to see Ashley Dyer’s Life Support at Dancehouse in Carlton North, on the first day of Dance Massive 2013. The idea of being trapped within a room that slowly grows airless as smoke fills and chokes, on such a close night seemed to work hand in glove. Waiting in the foyer, already a claustrophobic air. People fanned themselves with their Dance Massive programmes or whatever came to hand in futile bid to cool the skin. I stand near to the open door where a slight breeze is circulating thanks largely, it seems, to a passing stream of after work traffic snaking along Princes Street. Such is the heat. Relentless. Ongoing. Cooler outside in the polluted air, standing in the last of the sun than inside in a small foyer. A cool change promised, but when. . . . The crowd in wait is one sweaty mess of opening night excitement. And it is from this one airless room that we move through to the next, though larger and darker, yet airless room. One body of curious punters, we’ve elected an audience member by show of hands, as the person to speak for us and call the performance to an end once a red light appears. Based on a survey filled in by those who arrived early enough to do so, Grace, our nominated collective voice, our own life support, responded that she had saved her fiancé's life by nursing him back to health with serves of chicken soup and much care. She is now charged with the task of deciding our fate as an audience. It will be up to her when the performance is truly over, to decide when the doors can be opened and fresh air granted.

As we file into the theatre, we are issued with oxygen in a can, and a bottle of water should you wish. Walking in, eyes adjust to the dark space, detecting centrally placed the seated illuminated figure of the performer Tony Osborne. We enter from what is the back of the stage and make our way to the seats at the end of the room. The focus is on negotiating the space, registering the posture of the performer and what this communicates, and finding the best survival spot. One row of stools, two rows of chairs, and a final back row of high stools: choose your place carefully. The performance began long ago.

Osborne’s seated posture suggests someone on tea break. Weariness, in a moment of both public and private rest, harbours in his rounded shoulders and the unseeing-yet-aware focus of his eyes. Part in his own world, part observing the activity. Seated atop a milk crate, Osborne is a nurse on a tea break, smoking. A performance that began long ago. This is everyday. As Dyer explained in interview recently (and published on the Dance Massive site), this work, Life Support, draws, in part, on the experience of watching a friend lose his battle with cystic fibrosis: 'When my friend was born he was only expected to live till he was twenty. He lived to twenty-eight, constantly reminded about his mortality. He spent a lot of his life waiting: waiting in hospitals, waiting with this thing always present.'

This personal connection is communicated to the audience through the "dance portrait" of the nurse on break who clearly Dyer had much chance to study. More than that, this portrait could be the actual nurse not performer, so real is the sensation. 'The smoking nurse, for me, is a beautifully compromised and juxtaposed image. One that is understood but complicated, and requires resolving. It’s a figure that represents both the shortening and prolonging of life,' explains Dyer.

I make my way to the back of the theatre and find a spot conveniently near to an exit. I have a bolthole should the room become too oppressive, the smoke too thick, the atmosphere too intense, the experience of struggling to breathe too real. I also figure that this will be the least smoky part of the room, should this be an endurance test, a case of survival-of-the-fittest.

The magical art of transformation is a wonderful thing. One moment we are watching a nurse on a "smoko" out the front of a hospital in a constructed nook against the wall. A space suggested by way of movements alone, for the room is but one dark space. Propped. Sitting quietly. Rolling a cigarette. Thinking, not thinking. At ease. On the wall, to the right, a shadow is cast. This shadow could be a William Kentridge silhouette. It moves occasionally. And it could be torn from black paper. (Think: Shadow Procession, 1999, an animation made using puppets and figures made from torn black paper melded with Invisible Mending, from 7 fragments for Georges Méliès, 2003.) Sometimes around this projection, smoke can even be seen in the form of circular rings. But only sometimes, for smoke does not create shadow, it prefers to mask it. And hide it, it does. As the performance progresses, my familiar Kentridge man-on-the-wall disappears. It gives way to a Bill Henson photograph. An illuminated figure set against a velvety darkness that threatens to consume them or at very least, nibble away at the edges. The wall is black and the figure is illuminated and golden, and we are being moved to a new place once more as an audience. The room is filling with smoke but it is so very beautiful a spectacle to see. The smoke chokes, makes it harder to swallow, but it also creates halos of gold to play with and marvel at. A large smoke ring can make a halo-like crown or it can become a shot fired that skirts under the arm. We are now seeing smoke as something beautiful and playful. It, like the weather, is a character within the performance, and I am reminded of how things can be unexpectedly magnificent. The room is filling with smoke and yet though the natural inclination is to flee, we stay and gape at its majesty. For a moment I think this might be what it is like to be mauled to death by a tiger you were only moments ago admiring before it pounced upon you. Marvelling at the beautiful beast, rendered awestruck, and then, too late, it devours you.

As more smoke is pumped into the room, the landscape alters to that of a Tarkovsky film. We are caught up in Stalker now. In the alien and familiar smoky world we willingly decided to explore. And all without having to move from our seats. All within the space of an hour. I cannot see my footing. I lose my bearings. From Kentridge silhouette to Henson illuminated form against black, to a film still in Stalker, this is, as mentioned, some visual magic. It speaks also of Dyer’s intention to create 'paintings of movement.'

As a back screen is pushed up close to the audience, effectively penning us in, and obscuring two of three exits, I am grateful for my seating choice not in the thick of it. This now smaller space becomes increasingly airless. Soon what looks like a sculpture by Swiss artists Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, descends from the ceiling. (Think: Jardin de Lune (Moon Garden), installation in the heart of the old silver mine in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, France, 2007–2008) Smoke billows from it. An engine can be heard to idle. Its noise grows louder and louder. Sweat pours down my back. How close the room. I visualise the laneway I know is beyond the exit immediately behind me. Just the other side of the door. My response to this environment is to flee. To escape. Live. Breathe. All of that. I am sitting up straight, ready to make for the exit. But of course, I am not inside a car about to be gassed. I am in a theatre. I have on my lap an oxygen cylinder with its plastic mask for inhalation ease, and a bottle of water. I’d not anticipated being issued with such props. Nor being shown, before performance began, how to use something previously unfamiliar. (In manner much like flight attendants on a plane, Dancehouse staff showed the audience how to assemble and use their oxygen cans.) Nor had I anticipated a performance’s soundtrack being created by the audience pressing down on the nozzles of their oxygen cans and releasing a loud compact shot of air to draw down deep into their lungs. The audience becomes a sweaty orchestra and a fine balance is held throughout the performance between the terrifying fear of suffocation and all that this evokes and the elation of starring in one’s own science fiction adventure.

Grace, it turns out, was keen to let this performance last longer than I think some would have liked. When eventually she declares it complete, she stands up and pushes back the wall that had served to pen us in. The side exit is opened, and we pour out into the still hot night. Deep breath. Exhale. Move forward. The body with all its organs operating is a marvellous thing.


{William Kentridge, Bird Catcher, 2006, charcoal, pastel and ink on paper, 6 drawings, 40 x 40 cm each.}


{Film still from Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979.}


{Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, Jardin de Lune (Moon Garden), installation, France, 2007–2008.}

Lead Artist: Ashley Dyer
Collaborating Artist/Lighting and Projections Designer: Travis Hodgson
Collaborating Artist/Designer: Matthew Kneale
Collaborating Artist/Dancer: Tony Osborne
Collaborating Artist/Performer Sound and Objects: Sam Pettigrew
Collaborating Artist/Designer: Clare Britton
Collaborating Artist/Production Support: Bek Berger
Collaborating Artist/Financial Controller/Performer: John Possemato
Writer/Publication/Performer: Sime Knezevic

+ 1 water bottle, 1 can of oxygen
+ Don Quixote, 1, 2, 3

An atlas on any subject (if you will it so).

{Small ephemeral atlas, a collaborative zine made with Louise especially for Sticky.}

Seems we have made quite a few zines between us and together, Louise and I. 71, actually. From the first one in 2002 right up to the most recent ones created earlier this year. Zines are but the last wing to complete on our new site which tomorrow I hope to unveil. We are almost there. Almost. Broken records, we are, it seems. We've been almost there all week long, but loose ends and final edits are like that, as well you know. Above you can see a small zine made especially for the Sticky Institute. An edition of 25, this zine is capable of turning itself into a paper flower. It is one of many things past that I've yet had good chance to share.

To ensure our eyes are not too square and our focus not too back-screen only, we've plenty of Dance Massive 2013 still to see before next weekend, and the splendour of Don Quixote to look forward to as well. From oxygen in a can supplied to all for the smoky immersion of Ashley Dyer's Life Support to Stephanie Lake's beautifully combative one-plus-one-doesn't-always-equal-two Dual last night, consider me hungry for more. Could March be anymore delicious?

+ A MIEL publication magnificent draws closer

March days, March hares, waiting at the station.

{Quietly waiting, page detail from the artists' book In search of a time the heart does not recall}

As March twelve days in proves to be the month frenzied, in one hot little abode the great website rebuild continues. The small fan previously trusty gave up spinning days ago now, and it is in some sort of crazed state that we've been working to get our new site complete. Hot days and nights spent by the computer, it is not particularly attractive, this business. Computer keys are thumped. The engines chug along. The hands tries to keep up with the brain. The humans sweat and near expire. And the animals sleep. But we're almost there. Almost. (Though those who know us will recall that we have been saying this for a few days running.)

One of the pleasing things about rebuilding the site from scratch has been the finding of photos previously forgotten (as Louise recently posted). Let's add to that the discovery of large cleaned-up images of our work thanks to the preparation needed for talks and presentations. Though looking forward rather than backward is preferable as a rule, I'm enjoying working on this and seeing some of those earlier works and projects. Most of all, I'm enjoying the focused intensity of the experience. All that remains is the section on early zines, I think.

Here, until then, is a look at an artists' book from 2009, In search of a time the heart does not recall  (Souvenir of Johannesburg). And here is a look at Hila's brand new portfolio site. Something's in the air, clearly. What are you building?












{Page details from In search of a time the heart does not recall}

+ One cat, three lives
+ Dance Massive 2013 is here! (I am delighted to be heading to six or so performances. More on that soon.)

"That immeasurable sense of bliss..."

{To spend a quiet day (Interlaken Berner Oberland)}

Today's artists' book, To spend a quiet day (Interlaken Berner Oberland), sees us leave behind the landscape of Copenhagen, swell in size, now that we no longer sail by ship model, and it asks us to tip our heads to the right in order to read down the page. (Those of you reading on iPhone, iPad, or similar, will find their device agreeable and they've nothing to do, such are the joys of technology. Those of you on laptop, too, may fare well. Those of you who fall into what remains, please tip your head to its side, press your right ear to right shoulder, and scroll, scroll, scroll down the post, meeting all manner of new inhabitants.)

To all of you, a good journey I wish you.










{To spend a quiet day (Interlaken Berner Oberland), one of several artists' books and drawings recently in the window at the Port Jackson Press Print Room.}

Before departure, a beautiful quote to digest:

"It would be vain to try to put into words that immeasurable sense of bliss which comes over me directly when a new idea awakens in me and begins to assume a definite form. I forget everything and behave like a madman."
Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky

+ In the process of building a brand new web site that I cannot wait to share with just as soon as it is finished. In the meantime, keep an eye on twitter for updates.