HIGH UP IN THE TREES

“You would have to be half mad to dream me up.”

{Arthur Rackham's Alice.}


{Charles Dodgson’s own sketch for The Pool of Tears for his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, dated early 1860s.}


{Pool of Tears 2 (after Lewis Carroll), Kiki Smith, 2000.}

The Royal Ballet's Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Thursday 28th March, 2013

There are many images and their associated thoughts that arise when I think of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I see the penmanship of Sir John Tenniel’s illustrations, all black inky beauty and strong character. I see Charles Blackman’s table setting of wonky proportions and distortions for the Mad Hatter and friends. I see Arthur Rackham’s Alice, arms up shielding her form from a house of cards that are falling, tumbling, attacking dagger-like. I see Kiki Smith’s Pool of Tears, amongst other works, with its characters Dormouse, Mock Turtle, and Dodo, swimming in a muted palette. I see the world of Salvador Dali’s Alice. The ‘real’ Alice photographed or dotted by Kusama. I see Walt Disney’s Cheshire Cat, and Tim Burton’s recent landscape also, with its details in the distance as saturated in hue and sharp in outline as the action in the foreground. Indeed, one pictures so many artworks when thinking of Alice that I wonder what I would see without the noise of these brilliant, varied interpretations. She is everywhere and though her exterior may alter, she is instantly recognisable. She crops up as a means to describe an ordinary setting that is slightly off kilter with such frequency. As does the Mad Hatter as a means to describe those of contented otherness whose way of looking at the world from outside in or inside out sets them so apart. To think of Alice, one sees Carroll’s own drawings and the text that curls as mouse’s tail. One thinks of caterpillars, and hearts, and nature painted in accordance with desire, a rose from white to red. One thinks of duality, too, that push-pull balance between the curious, obscure light with the curious, obscure dark. Those delicious dark undercurrents that weave through the text, from grotesque kitchen tales to final pages.


{Film! Directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, 17th October, 1903.}


{Sir John Tenniel's 'Drink me' illustration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865.}



{One of twenty-four magic lantern slides based on the illustrations by Sir John Tenniel that tell the story of Alice, The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture.}

It is with all these Alices in my head that I go to the cinema, not theatre, to see on silver screen, not ‘live’, Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is The Royal Ballet’s first full-length work since 1995, and this alone brings much baggage in the form of hope and expectation, let alone our glorious, familiar characters we relate to, and the known landscape we’ve traversed. I am hoping for an Alice not too saccharine. An Alice that is light and dark in equal measure. An Alice not painted, beaten, walloped hard with whimsy’s wand but an Alice drawn surreal by what is already there on the page, a perfect completion by mathematician’s hand. For me, I see the colour of Wonderland in the earlier, dustier hues of Rackham and Smith. I see colour as bound to reality even though the tale finds us playing croquet with hedgehogs as balls and flamingos as mallets. This is enough to suggest alternate setting, a removal of logic. I am looking for an interpretation of these words not an addition, for a drawing out of ideas and themes. To seeing how one falls down the rabbit hole or swims in one’s own tears. I am keen to see which characters look as I feel them to be, to learn how the stage will be used. Moreover, how will she sound? What will Joby Talbot have created to write the words of the tale? How will Alice and Caterpillar converse through choreography? How will the long story unfold not in reader’s palm but upon stage?

And I am also thinking: will this packet of lolly snakes last Louise and me the full length of the ballet? For this is cinema, not theatre, and as such requires snacks more often than not. Not noisily munched, mind, for there is still very much the sense of being there in the theatre and for such an act the usher would rightly pounce. Just a couple of little props to keep the approaching lunchtime rumbles at bay.

For most of the crowd gathered in the cinema on a late Sunday morning there is a sense of live theatre rules in play. This is also twined with, well, how else can I see this Alice that appears everywhere, even in my twitter stream, if I don’t accept this invitation. The audience is a mixed gaggle, from a family with two small children to solo punters. There is popcorn. There is chatter. But there is also anticipation in the air and no mobile illuminations on the plus. (I am not sure what it is about an opening musical score or a film’s opening titles that make people rush to expel all the sentences gathered at the mouth’s exit. This need to fill the ‘space’ with own words bemuses me and, if honest, begins to annoy me, as I hear the two women behind me talk of emails recently sent, job vacancies at the agency, and what such-and-such said in reply to such-and-such’s accusation. I want them to pipe down. I am ready for Alice. I want to feel the excitement of something about to unfold.)


{Detail from Alice in Wonderland, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard, 1949.}


{From Charles Blackman's Alice, one of six colour screenprints.}


{Salvador Dali's Advice From a Caterpillar, heliogravure with woodblock, 1969.}

Seeing the rehearsal footage as bookend to Alice on stage as told in three acts, and during the two intervals too, lets me see the beautiful, descriptive, evocative choreography from Alice’s pas de deux with the Knave of Hearts (Jack, the gardener’s boy) at the close of Act II where two bodies arch to make heart motif, to Steven Mcrae’s Mad Hatter-cum-Mad Tapper. For such a huge tale to squeeze, for me, the beauty of its telling was always going to be in the choreography and musical score, and, as such, I left the theatre sated.

There is perhaps one obvious drawback to seeing a performance this way, and given the choice I’d always choose to see it live, and that is that your own eye ceases to be its own camera. On film, we are shown brilliant and beautiful details, but not details of own choosing. It is this choice of where to look, what detail to seek out in a live performance that I miss. Nevertheless, for what it lacks in personal choice it delivers in sumptuous details. There is no other way to see the Caterpillar's shoes, each hand-encrusted with 365 crystals. The camera picks up every cheeky twinkle of them against an inky blue ground.

Sarah Lamb’s Alice I believed to be that 13 year old on curious adventure perhaps none more so than when growing smaller and then larger in Act I. Here, Wheeldon’s choreography was so effective in showing a body growing tiny and then ballooning and filling up an entire room. This scene so effectively conveyed in all beautiful simplicity it still in mind. Striped back to essentials in staging that plays with the illusion of altered scale and depth, and twined with Alice’s own movements so telling, the drink-me-eat-me scene remains a highlight.

The reduced palette of the caterpillar’s scene with its blues and silhouette play also delighted. Yes, it is when Bob Crowley draws on puppetry and masks that I love best of all. A caterpillar at one point conjured through many legs, though only seen in conga line’s graceful mutation fleetingly, dazzles, and then disappears. One could easily see why Alice would take such a mushroom from the caterpillar whose lower half is rooted in classical discipline whilst the torso upward moves as one would dance in their own kitchen, as described by Eric Underwood.

The Cheshire Cat beautifully assembled from separate puppetry parts that float and bob as if operating to new gravitational system, this fine feline can spin his head like a figure underwater or an astronaut in a spaceship. The head floats, the legs too. Again, I am struck by such effective simplicity that allows focus on character. The Cat nuzzles Alice at one point as she strokes him, and the movements of both are anchored in reality and so tender. The head of the Cheshire Cat tilts and presumably, seemingly purrs contently. That we see a little of the puppet’s masters in black head to foot adds to the magic spectacle of it all. Puppets later appear as several flamingoes in Act III and the dancers operate them with the skillfulness of trained ventriloquists where there own body tells one story and the puppet another.


{Film still from 42nd street, directed by Lloyd Bacon, with choreography by Busby Berkeley, 1933.}


{Becoming the Queen of Hearts, The Royal Ballet's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.}

There are many parts to love about this performance, the Flower Waltz that tips hat to Busby Berkeley kaleidoscope and that Tolby found such a challenge to write, for one. The dancers sport dip-dyed finery and listening to the music it sounds as if played not on conventional instrument but on something fantastical and perhaps not yet invented, played on instruments you may seen drawn but do not to your knowledge exist. This is what I hear bursting from the pit. This is the sound that floods my ears. Strings plucked and chords struck to make music from some new instrument in accordance with a world of white rabbits offering council. Yes, from Edward Watson’s White Rabbit floor thumps, leaps, and twitches, to sweaty glimpses, there is much to love, much to store in the pocket for later recall. From the use of the aisles for one mad coloured moment as action spills off stage and soaks the audience, to chairs made of pig skin, with ears for ornament, in the nightmarish kitchen, and dancers hands that move in suggestion of ticking clock. And, of course, the Queen of Hearts rendition of the Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty. Zenaida Yanowsky playing the Queen transports me to Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916. Her expressive face and limbs draw for me a brilliant queen who, when finally released from her giant heart-mobile-cum-coffin, enjoys every minute of the Tart Adage with unwilling suitors. There is a leaping Frog-Footman and a weaving Fish-Footman, who sport perhaps my favourite costumes. A Dormouse in dressing gown too. To say little of those adorable hedgehogs. The movements of each animal and character are all there in the choreography and the dancer’s execution, and at their most effective when stripped back to essential movement, a reduction of noise. This ‘simplicity’ is not something I expected to find in Alice, but it is just what is needed for such a huge novel not spoken nor read but shown on the stage. Exacting choreography and dancers skill enhanced by costume and set and lighting and every small and important detail that goes into the mounting of such a giant and glorious production. I would happily follow that rabbit with his hair combed into two ear peaks again.

Cast
Alice Sarah Lamb
Jack/The Knave of Hearts Federico Bonelli
Lewis Carroll/The White Rabbit Edward Watson
Mother/The Queen of Hearts Zenaida Yanowsky
Mad Hatter Steven McRae

Credits
Music Joby Talbot
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Conductor David Briskin
Choreography Christopher Wheeldon
Designs Bob Crowley

Return to the '80s. Return to the '90s. Nostalgia is a maze.

{This is the late seventies and '80s.}

So often with nostalgia-laced posts that I have cobbled together, a collection of photos from the mid seventies and early '80s appears. Photographs not of teenage learning and doubt but from those early childhood years. From photos of the first day at Primary School when one is small and all is new to a collaged house of shells that continues to inspire my visual sensibilities today, this, friends, is the beautiful false passport of memory. All those years lived are recalled in a handful of images with rounded corners. There are photos of me in tutu, or on stage receiving thanks for drawing the programme's cover. Of toy mice at a fairground banquet to actual mice in the Little's dollhouse. Cats. Cuddles. Mice drawings. Charm-filled stuff. A perpetual succession of summer days. This is what I remember. Yes, this is what I summon from the fixed images in large album. Not that my ribbons came undone on stage (horror!) or how scary the first day of school was (was it?). Will the same warm blur soon apply to those photographs of more awkward years now that I am older; now that I've reached the age of sometimes watching episodes of Dr Who with closed captioning on a Sunday night. Is this.... is this middle age?










{This is the late eighties and early '90s. This is Secondary School, with the first year of uni peeping at the window. All this is well before this blog began in 2006.}

+ Morran
+ Then and now
+ Repeat
+ Often near to a house

+ Back to the future
+ The Brown Sisters, Nicholas Nixon

Coming in. Going out.

{Incoming.}

Incoming:

Louise and I each receive a contributor’s copy of 1110/5, spring 2013, twenty-three postcards featuring the work of artists and writers, published by MIEL books. Just add a stamp, chimes Éireann. We could not be more thrilled to see our collaborative collage, A composition based on the stories collected from old seafarers (II) in print. And upon the reverse, the words of Shana Youngdahl, It Is Alice They Stare At.

 

One copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with artwork illustrated by Yayoi Kusama, published by Penguin Classics, 2012



Outgoing:

Various zines, greeting cards, and lithographic offset prints as our 25% off sale continues until the end of May. (Type in the code MAY to receive the tasty discount, should our paper wares tempt you. We are ready to just add a stamp, in the name of symmetry completion.)

Incoming. Outgoing. It's as simple as that late on a Monday.








{Outgoing.}

Purchase a copy of 1110/5
Featuring writing by Jon McGregor, Roxane Gay, Juliana Spahr, Nick Flynn, Matt Bell, Amber Sparks, Neele Dellschaft, Matthew Welton, Shana Youngdahl, James Cihlar, Mensah Demany, Laressa Dickey, T.J. Jarrett, Ali Gharavi, Polly Atkin, Metta Sáma, Arlene Kim, Steve Himmer, Rachel Moritz, Hannah VanderHart, Carol Rowntree Jones & Valerie Wetlaufer
With images by Kathryn Clark, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Ilse Weisfelt, Ben Terrett, Shari Altman, Ivan deBoom, Elsa Mora, Marion de Man, Wil Freeborn, Heather Smith Jones, Mónica Naranjo Uribe, Yuko Matsui, Amy Friend, Lisa Congdon, Leo & Pipo, Lisa Solomon, Brian Aldrich, Cathy Cullis, Marie-Klara González, Camilla Engman, Helena de la Guardia, Thomas Sayers Ellis & Éireann Lorsung

+ Monday's gloom banishment looks like this. (One exciting parcel from MIEL books in hand. Thank-you. X)
+ In Amy's hands

Pharaohs and Sirens.

{Femme aux longs cheveux, Man Ray, 1929}


{Mother of pearl lorgnette opera glasses by Austrian optician Otto Schleiffelder with a magnification x5.}
 
Won over, converted, altered, and changed. A trip twice to the opera in recent weeks has led me to rethink the art form I knew and know so little about and I find myself sufficiently wooed, enticed, and on lookout for more. Eye-filling spectacle, skill, and tales familiar served as ample encouragement. Ceremony and costume happily aiding and abetting the transition, fostering along the way a new found appreciation for binoculars, those curious seeing devices that augment action and amplify beauty on stage. The grandeur! The polish! Just like Galileo (1564–1642) searching the magnificent magnified heavens (with the telescope that enabled a magnification of x30), I have watched the brilliance of a large production unfurl before my eyes. I have felt as though the only person in the theatre as I hold them up to my eyes. Looking at a performance, in part, through a pair of binoculars more likely found in a twitcher’s nest, I have felt as though I am viewing it as if through a stereoscope. The scene appears larger and in detail, and, more importantly, all mine. Such is the curious ownership a view through opera glasses imparts. Balanced in my hands, I have ancient Egypt. I can see the faces of the deliciously fake big cat pelts that drape the shoulders. It feels much like holding something precious, secret, my own select view. Is this the thrill of a lighting technician holding a performer in a ball of light, spot lit on the stage, supporting them in the perfect moving blob of white illumination? I press my eyes up close to the little rubber frames that support the lenses and I see stage makeup and fabric crease and shimmer. I see a fragment in this peep show. Something highlighted which otherwise would not have been. Yes, I’ve been swayed by their brilliance. They illuminated both Partenope’s suited suitors and Ethiopian slave garb in equal portion. When the optical aid yields treasure, I don’t care if I look pretentious in the dark. From Aida’s sets that toy with creating the all-important optical illusion of depth to the shadow play and smooth lines of the tickle that is Handel’s Partenope doused in Surrealist dream logic, I have been very lucky to have seen both productions this season. Graeme Murphy’s direction of Verdi’s Aida reminded me of silent and early film cinematic epic staging that can make a cast of many seem like hundreds, and the desire to make like an Egyptian frieze on the conveyor belt when next I am at the airport to pick up family will be hard to resist. It read like a painting beautifully orchestrated. The Nile an abstract band of blue. From Aida I took away with me in my pocket the sense that no detail is too small. From Partenope, a sense that the first idea that manifests is oft the one to chase. Drawing upon the influences of Man Ray, Breton, Max Ernst, and Dali, “...desire, [is] the sole motivating principle of the world, the only master that humans recognise. (André Breton). Seduction, that is what both were to me.


{From the growing Foyer Suite, Mum and me in anticipation of Aida (in April).}


{And in May, in giddy anticipation of Partenope, with Louise too.}


{Theda Bara as Cleopatra, 1917}


{Stereoscope illustration, 1895 (Edinburgh Photographic Society)}
 
+ Opera glasses and Jealousy glasses (The College of Optometrists, London)

Windswept. (Of Birds and Fishes / Over Vissen en Vogels)

{Hold fast, lest you fly off.}

Flying back to me from the Netherlands, my prints created especially for the exhibition and collaborative artists' book Of Birds and Fishes / Over Vissen en Voggels. From this bed, with the wings of a bird, I flew to the sea as I slept last night is a work from 2010, and here, as refresher, if you will, a look at the process of printing and signing.

Now that the edition is returned to me, I have listed several prints of From this bed, with the wings of a bird, I flew to the sea as I slept last night (2010) in our online store.

Below, a closer look, one windswept day. And should you be tempted by this work, or indeed any other things Louise and I have listed in our online store at present, we will be having a mad May Sale come Monday. As of Monday and right through until month's end, everything in our store will be 25% off. Simply enter the word MAY to receive the discount, my dear ones near and far. Three little letters, m, a, y, one after the other and together a little happiness we hope it spells for you.
















{...I flew to the sea.}

Seven plus three.

{Seven recent instagram captures from the month of May but five days old, and three beautiful illustrations I found stored in a folder of images I find beautiful but which I unfortunately know little to nothing about. (Should you know the source of these Russian works or the tale they depict, do let me know. Guesses welcome.)}

Beautiful May, beautiful autumn, this Sunday night smattering random is brought to you by an eye rest much needed. Screen for screen, I grant you, but with fewer moving parts. You see, I am working on a zine I've long had in mind. A zine all about Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie's Hercule Poirot. Of it I can tell you, it involves screen captures of murders. It brings together my love of graphs and lists and order under the umbrella of fandom. That is the hope. It is a long way from complete.

Of zines, thank-you to those of you who placed an order over the weekend for my newest zine, Genova to Johannesburg (Johannesburg to Genova). Tomorrow, to the Post Office I shall head, no doubt capturing the pocket of the world I know as I go.

+ Agatha Chrisitie essay published for the first time
+ From Otto Neurath's The Transformer: Principles of Making Isotype Charts (via Brain Pickings)
+ The Golden Horse Express proves the best and most reliable postal service (Lisa's 1,000 doilies)
+ Percy the Hopeful (via Pasadena Mansions)
+ Louise and I are excited that editions of our newest collaborative artists' book, As inclination directs, is bound for the collections of both the State Library of N.S.W. and Victoria. We are thrilled!

Travelling from head to tail.

{Genova one way, Johannesburg the other.}

A deliciously quiet evening at week's end provides me with the perfect chance to introduce you to a recent zine that brings together collages from two independent artists' books of mine. This zine is a bound tête-bêche (from the French meaning "head-to-toe", and also often referred to as upside-down or reversible binding, it is a relative of dos-à-dos). You can begin your journey in Genova before flipping over to Johannesburg. Or vice versa, my friends. It's up to you.

In Genova, from the artists' book Before all colour faded (Ricordo di Genova), you will discover that washing lines make great pathways for those nimble of foot and whom are not afraid of heights. Whilst in Johannesburg, in the artists' book In search of a time the heart does not recall (Souvenir of Johannesburg), you may sight Diana monkeys eager for the old joys in Pritchard Street.

With a familiar character at the feet (I give you, Percy), and a volcano in the background (Guilfoyle's Volcano built in 1876, Royal Botanic Gardens), here is a closer look at Genova to Johannesburg (Johannesburg to Genova):












{Scenes from Genova and Johannesburg in hand at the Royal Botanic Gardens.}

+ You can purchase a copy of this zine for $8 through our online store

+ Some unusual and exquisite bindings, Chetlam's Library
+ A Captive Diana Monkey on a Wall against a Landscape with Four Colorful Birds in the Sky by the Dutch artists Melchicor d' Hondecoeter, 1690 (Toledo Museum of Art)
+ A charming tortoiseshell box for snuff or sweets with a micromosaic of an animated monkey clasping a cherry by the Italian artist Giacomo Raffaelli, 1794 (Toledo Museum of Art)
+ Looking very much forward to receiving my copy of 1110/5