HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Simplify the palette, better see the subject.

{Before Vanguard.}


{After Vanguard.}

Published this very evening, as Swan Lake opens at the State Theatre, my response to The Australian Ballet's recent triple bill, triple thrill, Vanguard on Fjord Review. Drawn up early on the morning after having seen Vanguard a second time and whilst it was still fresh in my mind, it is one of my favourite triple bills seen thus far. Abstraction is at its heart. Movement abstracted. Clarity revealed through a reduction of means. An idea explored not through conventional narrative but through movement itself. And such movement, all three! The body is the story, the costume; it is what we look at and read. Moreover, it is the feeling. The root of our response to the performances that represent a change in choreography, in how we read movement and understand ballet. It left me keen for more. (Thanks Penelope. I look forward to taking you in my pocket next week to Graeme Murphy's Swan Lake.)

Vanguard
The Australian Ballet

The Four Temperaments (1946)

Choreography George Balanchine

Repetiteur Eve Lawson



Bella Figura (1995)

Dance production/choreography Jiří Kylián

Assistant to the choreographer Elke Schepers

Dyad 1929 (2009)

Choreography Wayne McGregor

Two performances seen:
Thursday 6th June 2013
Tuesday 11th June 2013

I read ballet through the prism of art, my background training. And it is by holding this prism before your own eyes that I will take you with me, beginning with George Balanchine.

As a child, before the National Gallery of Victoria was renovated, I recall visiting the upstairs gallery that housed glassware and other breakables from history. I remember walking through this section with my dad, quickly but assuredly, for the cabinets shook a little and this gave rise to the terrible fear that the contents within would teeter and fall. Perhaps I imagined this owing to the fragility of the contents held within. Nevertheless, this was a space, though beautiful a display, that we passed through en route to the main attraction. I recall walking behind my dad, shorter legs following longer legs, guided by his trailing knitted scarf. Through the delicate forest of china, silverware, and other fine curiosities we passed, the sound of our tread on the floor. This sensation sums up how I have felt about Balanchine. The precision so perfect, the choreography so otherworldly, yet for all its brilliance, something held me at a distance. I have viewed his work on the periphery. I have viewed his work as though behind glass. Look, but don’t touch. Admire, but don’t intrude. Be in awe, but don’t gape. But all this was mere uninformed preconception. A collection of thoughts based on never having seen one of his 425 works performed live. A fallacy, it turns out. And this for me speaks of the beauty of live performance and shall remain testament to always keep an open mind. Yes, there is a certain intended coolness and irresistible chicness to The Four Temperaments but what strikes me first is that famous off-centre tilt, the pelvis thrust forward, the flexed feet, and the placement of each part of the body in such a way as to render it both perfect and odd.

All is on display in pared-back costumes, the simplicity of which allows us to see the whole. How the whole of a leg rotates enabled by the supporting leg and strength of the upper body. How everything is connected in more than a mechanical thigh-bone-is-connected-to-hip-bone sense. Rather, how movement is weighted to the floor even in elevation, as though some giant magnet below stage were held in place. Perhaps even Balanchine himself, wielding said giant magnet, such is his legacy. This simplification of costuming and narrative too, for the four different temperaments or humours—melancholic, sanguinic, phlegmetic, and choleric—serve as an idea from which to leap as opposed to a tale to communicate, show me that this ballet is one closer linked to painting and drawing than I had realised. An artists’ reduction of means on the canvas or parchment enables clarity of vision. Simplify the palette, better see the subject. Limit the means, see clearly the form. This is now what Balanchine has become to me, and I am drawn in, pulled closer.

A link to collage and assemblage as well can be seen in Balanchine’s loves and influences. The Four Temperaments, particularly on second viewing, tips hat to Josephine Baker, my own childhood idol Fred Astaire, George Gershwin, and Lindy Hop dancers. As Eve Lawson, who has danced in Phlegmatic and is now ballet mistress and repetiteur with the Australian Ballet, discusses, ‘when he made The Four Temperaments he had just worked with Gershwin in Hollywood, and certainly he was always aware of current popular culture. In the exit of the third theme, where the man lifts the woman up and she has to raise her legs up, parallel to the floor and he walks off with her, holding her under her shoulders, that could have come straight from the Lindy Hop.’[i] Speaking straight to my collage heart, she continues: ‘Balanchine loved to think of himself as a gardener or a chef: he’d say “God creates, I assemble.” He was always looking for just the right ingredients to put together to make the perfect meal.’ The ultimate assemblage artist. A collage of moving parts!

With a score by Paul Hindemith, recalling its ‘rolling arpeggiated piano motifs, and the strings soaring smoothly (strongly, insistently) above’[ii], my introduction to Balanchine, a name synonymous with minimalism, seen on opening night and again a handful of days later on the Tuesday, gave me one beautiful performance that has forever altered my view and (growing) understanding. Two casts, slightly different, equally inspiring, the first third (of this triple bill) leaves the audience as it should: wanting more, but sated for now.

Through the prism of art continues my experience of Jiří Kylián’s Bella Figura with its curtains employed as black paper to conceal and other times reveal. Once more, I find I am holding my breath from beginning until end, save for four sharp intakes that I am aware of. With one hand it reaches into your chest cavity and holds your heart whilst the other it places around your throat. It is no surprise that this follows on perfectly from the Balanchine, a triple bill is a collage too, juxtaposing, complimenting, and making a new reading possible.

Bella Figura, for its rawness, directness, and intimacy, is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. A black curtain envelopes a dancer, folding its giant fabric arms about her before letting her loose. Hands hold faces, both own and others. Bodies ripple and convulse as if for one moment not bodily organs within but perhaps a flow of water or jelly spill. There is the loud crack of a thigh being slapped. The distinct and familiar sound of a hand clapping, of feet as they land, of bodies as they fall to the floor. A curtain that trails after two dancers as they move across the stage, becoming a character in itself. There is a dancer who walks alongside another who has transformed into a graceful stalking cheetah (or perhaps a gazelle) before the roles are reversed. The human guide privileged to walk alongside such a creature as opposed to the more familiar scenario of a master walking a hound. A black curtain, that repeating motif, falls but part way, and a row of dancers in enchanting wide-hipped red skirts now hold it in place, hold it from falling; wearing it, taking comfort in it, employing it as shield, becoming it, before stepping forward a trio and the curtain falls silently to stage floor. One arm moves, the other controls it. This liminal place, between dream state and waking. With dancers on the stage warming up before performance even begins—when did it even begin? The intimacy of two red-skirted dancers disrobing for but a moment in the small square of curtain’s frame. The delicate intimacy of a body recoiling then yielding. Two figures moving as one in fluid suspension. As one arcs forward the other follows or mirrors, and this in final duets of the differing pairs that form is something repeated. A leg that swings for briefest of moment is like a pendulum; your time here soon up.

The score pieces together extracts from Giovanni Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Giuseppe Torelli’s Concertor Grossi Op. 8 No 6, the Salomon Rossi Suite by Lukas Foss, Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Mandolins, and Alessandro Marcello’s Concerto in D Minor transcribed by JS Bach, and is performed by Orchestra Victoria with four guest singers: Russell Harcourt, countertenor; Jacqueline Porter, soprano; Janet Todd, soprano; Margaret Trubiano, mezzo soprano. Movement repeats the sensation created by the haunting score. Or is it the other way around? As a former dancer with the Australian Ballet, Jane Casson conveys: ‘every single moment brings the music alive. All the notes are brought together into live movement and suddenly the music makes perfect sense.’[iii]

On opening night, when in those last minutes the music fades and two dancers remain in a final pas de deux, there are only the small sounds of their breathing, their feet, the flicker of flame in the cavernous space, and the soundlessness of an audience collectively holding its breath (I think. I can’t remember. To me, there was no one else in the theatre. I forgot them.) before dancers depart and we awake to house lights, conscious of our own heavy limbs. The quiet tragedy of being permitted to soar immortal on the stage before awaking in own skin is perhaps the price of the out-of-body experience. Dance carries us to some undefined place; it transports us all.

Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1929 takes us somewhere else again, and it is abstraction for own sake; its subject is what you see in the colors (black, white, with yellow in tonal gradation from flesh to sunflower), shapes, and strokes. I first saw the company perform this work in 2009. Now I see something else. My eyes are different. I’ve long thought that it is not the world that gets crueler (or faster), but our eyes that grow older (and slower). For me, the sorrow we see around us speaks of the age of our eyes and this is not linked to actual years lived, of course, but experience, things seen, and felt. Wide-eyed hope, to me, at least, seems hardest to hold onto unknowingly, but then again perhaps the temperament I closest resemble is Melancholic. There is an underlying sadness to this energetic piece that I cannot quite put my finger on. Steve Reich’s Double Sextet offers a new freedom of movement, and for me, with familiarity, I grow fonder and fonder of it, perhaps none more so as in the second movement, which as Nicolette Fraillon, music director and chief conductor, explains ‘provides room for the dancers to develop and express their own individuality, and I love giving them that room. In the context of ballet, this gives a little breathe and space.’[iv]

‘How is it that you get what you want from a body? One of the ways is to give it like some kind of vocalisation. Vocalisation is suggestive, evocative of a particular feeling of movement. I think what’s interesting about these dancers is that they have a great kind of technical proficiency, also they have a really beautiful way of being able to work with interpretation of music so it’s not all bound, not stiff, not robotic.’[v] And it is this very ‘feeling of movement,’ as described by choreographer Wayne McGregor, that enables us and makes us want to connect, to be drawn in closer to this work where dancers swim like fish under water.

The three ballets that nestle under the mantle, at the forefront of innovation, ring true. So too, the dancers in Dyad 1929 that become “rubber bands” as explained by soloist Dana Stephensen. ‘That’s what I think of when I walk in the studio; trying to get that elasticity in your body.’[vi] Yes, a rubber band able to resume its normal shape spontaneously after being stretched and compressed. The dancers wear costumes that are direct link to their Ballet Russes roots. They become a constellation of dots that would please Massine, and echo constructivist Pavel Tchelitchew’s Costume for a Constellation c.1928, for Ode: Spectacle in three acts. As McGregor describes, ‘movement is the message’; it is what is communicated; it is what is felt. Abstraction, refraction, (rubber band) snap, Dyad 1929 is movement both free and controlled. Through the body, boundaries of the medium are explored and in doing so, a tie is bound between the performers on stage and audience. The audience sit engaged, thinking, feeling, consumed, all thoughts focused on the piece, on dance, and music, and what together it makes. This piece is the axe Kafka writes of to the frozen river within us all.

In all three works, the body is revealed. By minimal staging, by absence of narrative, by simplification of costume, but chiefly through each dancer’s execution of choreography, as beautifully exacting as it is challenging. A true celebration of the physical form and how it can move, convulse, be powerful, be languid, be pulled like marionette or swim in defiance of gravity.

[i] Rose Mulready, Assembling Balanchine, The Australian Ballet Vanguard programme 2013
[ii] Jasmine Moseley, Vanguard from the orchestra pit, Behind Ballet, 5 June 2013
[iii] Catherine Lambert, Music Note, The Australian Ballet Vanguard programme 2013
[iv] Nicolette Fraillon, as quoted by Catherine Lambert, Music Note, Vanguard programme 2013
[v] Wayne MacGregor, in interview, The Making of Dyad 1929, produced by The Apiary (2009) for The Australian Ballet
[vi] Dana Stephensen, as quoted by Rose Mulready, The Movement is the Message, Vanguard programme 2013

+ Vanguard in pictures (The Australian Ballet)
+ Bella Figura in motion (Nederlands Dans Theater)

A day committed to the retracing of steps. ..

{Forever at my heel.}

Dear you,

A day (nay, make that a day AND its comrade night) more capable of going in wrong direction I’ve not yet had misfortune of meeting. Today, tonight, all of it, one backward canter perfectly performed. Perfectly polished to such a gleam that I see my form everywhere reflected. Reflected on the ground. And on the feathers of the giant birds who haunt my every step. Wings browbeat.

Redo. Retrace. Rework. Refit. Remodel. Relink. Repeat. Re-, re-, re-, up until I think I’ll snap if I don’t yield to the humor that comes from a day committed to the retracing of steps.


Yours tangled up in melodrama,

X

+ Something new soon coming! A new home (to run alongside this space here) specifically for my Dear You suite.
+ A Year of Southern Hemisphere Birds: Louise's feathered piece one step nearer to completion

The eternal verity: look the part and they’ll never know. ..

{End of day Raffles ramble.}

Dear you,

Now that I am here at long last the very thing I’ve dreamt of at irregular intervals is not quite as I’d expected it to be. Raffles. Singapore. A Hotel. A destination. Long in my mind. Now an actuality. I am writing this to you from my shaded spot beneath the trees. Summer’s already browned lawn. Late haze of day. I’m soon headed for the hotel’s hair salon. To be quietly brought into follicular line with a focused snip, snip, snip. With a little fussing, I may, just may, be granted entry to the bar and ballroom. The eternal verity: look the part and they’ll never know.


Yours seeking to hoodwink first,
X

The spatial arrangement.

{Mapping out space on the Queen's Birthday long weekend.}

map |map|
noun
1 a diagrammatic representation of an area of land or sea showing physical features, cities, roads, etc.: a street map.
• a two-dimensional representation of the positions of stars or other astronomical objects.
• a diagram or collection of postcard collages showing the spatial arrangement of works on a gallery wall: a map to make the installation process smooth.



An obsession with right angles revealed. I am Poirot neatening the paper spills on the mantel (The Mysterious Affair at Styles).

Quite my favourite part, the laying out of work made but not for longest time seen. From one small white box for transportation’s ease comes over 450 postcard collages. Within, all  are wrapped in column bundles of seven horizontals or five verticals. Together, they make one long grid, and I am looking forward to installing this work once more (but with variation and addition) come August as part of an exhibition, All breathing in heaven.

In a room where normally I do yoga, over recent long weekend I was able to lay out this work and make plans to add in 28 new postcard collages (which specifially tip their hat at Geelong) to the meld. The room alive with different Dogs, Cats, Cows, Eagles, and Camels, and the floor littered with paper order where normally there are purple mats. Having quiet play of such a space proved great for the head. Time to think as plans were drawn. (Time, as in below you'll see, to sit and post previews to instagram too.) And now our map is complete.

Gracia Haby, Louise Jennison, Stephen Wickham
All breathing in heaven
Saturday 17th of August – Sunday 13th of October, 2013
Geelong region artists program
Geelong Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong




















{Everything in correct position.}

Particulars:
70 columns (57 horizontal (7 postcards high), 13 vertical (5 postcards high))
(of) 464 postcard collages
(with) 70 printed labels with each collage's title
12.27 metres in length
1.1 metres in height
928 nails (required to hang)

Hours to install:
Iimpossible to predict

+ Upon related note, within this temporary makeshift box, twelve of Louise's exquisitely drawn Southern Hemisphere birds reside. For the month of April, a Yellow-fronted Woodpecker (Melanerpes flavifrons). For September, one Superb Fruit-Dove (Ptilinopus superbus). And finally, in this visual peep, November's bird, in ring of a kelp, an Antarctic Tern (Sterna vittate).

+ To those of you heading to Vanguard, The Australian Ballet's triple bill, triple thrill, this evening, I wish you a wonderful experience. It is a true celebration of the physical form and how it can move, convulse, be powerful, be languid, be pulled like marionette or swim in defiance of gravity. It still tugs at my heart. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

A Jungle Grows in all Spaces.

{A Jungle Grows in all Spaces by Gracia & Louise, especially for Pinknantucket Press, and featuring There'll Be Some Changes Made by Ocie Stockard & The Wanderers (Western Swing Chronicles, vol. 3).}

But a peep, a small peep at a collage of moving parts. Louise and I created this work especially for the second volume of Alice's Materiality. For the theme of Time, in broadest sense, A Jungle Grows in all Spaces is our version of all things returning to nature. Broken down into its thirty-plus parts 4cm square, it will in someway feature on printed page, but for more details you will have a little longer to wait.








{Collage details held still for a moment.}

From the first volume of Materiality, in case you are unfamiliar, The Artists and the Book. Digital and hard copies are available through Pinknantucket's store.

+ Flip book progression as teaser

And, of no direct relation...
+ Bringing together collage, drawing and photography
+ Olive transforms herself into a cushion
+ Charles Dickens, rejecting an invitation from a friend:"‘It is only half an hour’ — ‘It is only an afternoon’ — ‘It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes — or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometime worry a whole day … Who ever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go in my way whether or no.”

A treasury of recent imagery.

A garland of autumn's tail and early winter instagrammed I give you. And should you have seen these squared visuals previous (be it in their original home or roaming about), an assortment of postcard collages for every second step. Journey forth!


{Your abode proved hard to find.}


{One for you. One for me. On second thought...}


{Florence, you are in my sights.}


{Percy sports an RSPCA Million Paws slicker. We are ready for the elements. We are coordination. In step.}


{To slink by.}


{A beautiful quilt handmade by my Mum most happily received.}


{I trust you completely.}


{Peeping: one gold star craft maker and one extra pair of handy hands. Unseen: one hound at feet.}


{Made discernible by the glowing light.}


{A double-shot kind of afternoon. Much needed if one is to work at the circumlocution office. (Market Lane Coffee)}


{With new fondness for the local customs growing by the day.}


{Some days give you boxing squirrels, much to own chagrin. (The Boxing Sequence above shows handshake to knockout, and it features in Taxidermy by Alexis Turner.)}


{It seemed it was the wild I needed.}


{A lucky $10 found floating in a shallow puddle early on a Sunday morning makes going to yoga twice as sweet.}


{Seeking entry. (With the beauteous State Library of Victoria in the background.)}


{Coffee chases coffee. (Switchboard café. Squish. Squish.)}


{The Heidelberg composition.}


{Growing in someone's garden, a bonneted lady of china with feet of succulents.}


{A wary salute.}


{Saturday's wait in the warm winter sunshine.}


{Exchanging peace for noises new.}


{A window of days, from Woolf's Monday or Tuesday to McEwan's Saturday. (Kay Craddock Antiquarian Bookseller)}


{The Saiga from the River Volga was well adapted to the cold.}


{The Australian Ballet's Vanguard true to definition. At forefront in movement, field, activity. So much so, we forgot to exhale. Held breathe from The Four Temperaments through to Bella Figura and the full-stop of Dyad 1929. (And now greatly looking forward to collaging with words a little something about this triple bill for Fjord Review in the coming days.)}


{The Constantinople Slide.}


{Morning's silhouette. Omar is illuminated by the globe.}

Light stepping, rock hopping...

{A whole new kind of formation.}

Dear you,

“Sing a song of sunbeams. Showing the blue’s we’re busy.” Rock top with friends. We’re grabbing hold of this delicious sensation. Infecting ourselves with dose of Yippee. Light stepping. Rock hopping. Bass slapping. In the Grand Canyon, take two. Squinting in the sun. Grimace makes grin. And it looks like we’re smiling even if we’re not. With a fascinating, abrupt ending.

Yours loon grinning at the birdie,
X

+ Budding zoologist: The terrapin in the postcard collage is a Diamondback (Malaclemys terrapin), the only North American emylid adapted for life in brackish and salt water. It is known for its strong large hind limbs that enable it to be such a fast-swimming turtle. They like to spend their days on mud-flats or tidal marshes, feeding upon snails, clams, and worms.


{Balanchine's The Four Temperaments.}

+ Louise and I, two Melancholic Temperaments, are very much looking forward to Vanguard (luck fortunate! twice apiece!), key works from ballet’s game-changers: Balanchine, Kylián, McGregor, and ask which of the temperaments are you?
+ How the Four Temperaments used to dress, by Lorelei Vashti on Behind Ballet

End of the line! Hotel Terminus...

{Quietly waiting.}

Dear you,

A poem by Emerson. Terminus. A monospaced bitmap font easy on fatigued eyes, designed by Dimitar Zhekov. Last stop! A Roman divinity presiding over boundaries and frontiers. End of the line! Hotel Terminus. No reservation costs, and guest parking is available for a surcharge. Here I sit. In Oslo. Awaiting sighting of the scarred Risso’s Dolphin (Grampus griseus). Little is known of this dolphin, save its weakness for squid. But I’ve more than temptation snacks to woo. In my skill set the oft undervalued virtue of patience. He will come. I will wait.

Yours bobbing in deep waters,
X

+ Quietly working
+ Louise's For Martha is on display as part of the 2013 Libris Awards: Australian Artists' Book Prize

Sunday's saunter.

{Cover variation of As inclination directs, 2013.}

Each of the ten editions of As inclination directs features a different bird on the back of the cover sunset. Perched upon the seated woman's shoulder, a different bird of roughly similar proportion. Here, on a copy destined for the State Library of Victoria's collection of our artists' books, a particularly pink-breasted Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Muscivora forficata) from south-central USA. It is a bird known to winter in the South of Texas, and anywhere between Mexico and Panama. It is the extreme length of the two long black tail feathers that gave rise to the name for when viewed in flight the tails appear to snip, snip, snip like a pair of scissors opening and closing. When perched, they close shut their blades and spend, as giant guide book of animal behaviours instructs, their time perched elegantly upon fences, telephone wires and trees... and the obliging shoulders of strangers too, if the above visual is to be believed. There they patiently await sighting of their prey. Bees, grasshoppers, crickets, moths, wasps, spiders and caterpillars are their chief fancy. The odd berry or seed too, I'm told and trust-worthy is my source. Sight. Dart. Triumph. No room to dilly-dally.

And now here for you in long tumble, a closer look at this artists' book of Louise and mine:

{The inside pages of As inclination directs.}

+ This Sunday has been a very fine day for strolling about. Found floating in shallow puddle near to the pub, one ten dollar note, early on a Sunday morning. A lucky find on the way to yoga! Hurrah! The early bird today really does get its worm. And the sighting of a china woman with succulents for slippers. Hello, glorious winter. It seems you've few fans, but you can count on me. Always.

+ As inclination directs features in the current CFPR Book Arts newsletter available as PDF download (June 2013, issue 82)