HIGH UP IN THE TREES

She quickened her pace.

{Kitten Lenni has plans to be as large as a Jaguar. (The Panthera onca is the largest South American cat with a deep chest and strong limbs.)}


{Bizet and Ravel. Balanchine and Millepied. Christian Lacroix tutus and Daniel Buren stripes. Le Palais de Cristal and Daphnis et Chloé. We emerge from the cinema and realise that at this rate we are not MIFF 2014 ready. (Image credit: Scene from Benjamin Millepied's Daphnis et Chloé, Opéra National de Paris, captured live in Paris on the 3rd of June)}


{In a winter citrus stupor. (A brilliant mandarin crop, @pasadenamansions. Here's to next year's oranges following suit. X) (Image credit: Picking Oranges, no 53907, from Photographic Views of North America, published by Detroit Photographic Co., 1897–1924, in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library)}


{A three-steps-backwards kind of day.}


{Giant Kitten Lenni pretends he is in a scene from The Goodies.}


{There have always been Siamese cats in the family. (Photo of my Mum taken sometime before I was born)}


{Senior Pets Screen Cleaner. (A quick Percy capture from Monday morning's errands dash.)}


{From tiny cyclists to mini footballers, Louise's 00 and 000 brushes are getting a solid workout.}


{There have always been Siamese cats in the family. (Part II, December 1976)}


{Great swishing cat tails! (New postcard collages on the lounge room drawing board prove once and for all, I am a cat.)}


{There have always been Siamese cats in the family. (Part III, November 1975)}


{A Leopard (Panthera pardus) in Calais. A closer look at something new that Louise and I have been working on.}


{From this bed, with the wings of a bird, I flew to the sea as I slept last night. (Until the 1st of August, we're having a HUGE SALE on EVERY LITTLE THING in our online store. Simply use the discount code JOLLYJULY to receive 30%-off your entire order.)}


{Still in Calais, with a Leopard Cat (Felis bengalenis) and a Jaguar (Panthera onca).}


{Choice Confectionary, Winter Drinks, Hot Malted Milk, Beefine, Benton's and Davidson's Cakes & Pastry, Lending Library, Tobacco & Cigarettes, Cigars, etc.}

With a tame fifty-five MIFF 2014 films booked (let the disintegration begin!), things here are in a mad scramble. I am dotting my t's and crossing my i's. I am clearing the decks in readiness for my longed for and greatly needed annual holiday. And I'll be sharing the films I see here, my vision and sanity permitting.

See you in the dark.

+ Reads the news. (Grey mouse lemur, Microcebus murinus)
+ 'Excuse me, Mr Whiskers, are you ready for your extreme close-up?' (Australian Museum)
+ Adriaen Coenen’s Visboek (Fish Book) from 1580 is an epic tome on all things fish and fish-related (The Public Domanin Review)
+ Benjamin Millepied adapts Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé

+ And Zarafa Kept Walking, our four-colour lithographic offset print (on Fabriano Artistico 300gsm traditional white hot-press paper) from 2013, features Zarafa, the first giraffe to be seen in France (in the year 1826), and is available as part of our JOLLYJULY sale. The beautiful Zarafa inspired tall hairstyles à la girafe, and Honoré de Balzac to write a story about her. An exotic gift as political ploy from Muhammad Ali of Egypt to King Charles X, she walked from Marseilles to Paris to the delight of many onlookers, carrying with her perhaps a few feathered friends.
+ Thank-you for your recent orders placed through our online store. It has been wonderful, and not to mention terrific practice for Lenni who is learning not to nibble paper.

As cross as two sticks.

{Floral Clock Cushion Break.}


{With Lantern-eye by moonlight. (Photoblepharon palpebratus)}

A recent cantankerous mood for no especial reason saw me look for an antidote and find one in creating several new postcard collages. And of things found, I also discovered in the treasure house of words an abundance of words for my ill temper. Not for me Violeta Parra’s leaky this-is-the-end-of-all-things tent*. We are yet to descend the mountain; it’s all still an upward climb, isn’t it?

"We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination."
(Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in a letter to his benefactress, Nadezhda von Meck, dated 17th of March, 1878, and found in the 1905 volume of The Life & Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (in the public domain))

cantankerous
adjective
a cantankerous old man: bad-tempered, irascible, irritable, grumpy, grouchy, crotchety, tetchy, testy, crusty, curmudgeonly, ill-tempered, ill-natured, ill-humoured, peevish, cross, as cross as two sticks, fractious, disagreeable, pettish, crabbed, crabby, waspish, prickly, peppery, touchy, scratchy, splenetic, shrewish, short-tempered, hot-tempered, quick-tempered, dyspeptic, choleric, bilious, liverish, cross-grained; argumentative, quarrelsome, uncooperative, contrary, perverse, difficult, awkward; INFORMAL snappish, snappy, chippy, on a short fuse, short-fused; BRIT. INFORMAL shirty, stroppy, narky, ratty, eggy, like a bear with a sore head; N. AMER. INFORMAL cranky, ornery, peckish, soreheaded; AUSTRAL./NZ INFORMAL snaky; INFORMAL, DATED waxy, miffy. ANTONYMS good-natured, affable.


{Sliding scales.}


{A shy forest bird tap, tap, taps the answer.}


{In the Silent Street of the Grampians, a Black-fronted Nunbird (Monasa nigrifrons).}

* At MIFF 2012, Violeta Went to Heaven (2011), a film directed by Andrés Wood about the life and work of singer and folklorist Violeta Parra, depicts the end of her career in a lonely, leaky tent, and it has since come to be Louise and my own personal reference to the inevitable end of ideas that awaits us all.

+ With a flourish of trumpets, an assembly of links
+ Thirteen winter views
+ Senior Pets Screen Cleaner
+ Lenni's morning dance practice with Not Our Cat
+ Inspired by collage?
+ Tumbling in the Galerie François

+ Until the 1st of August, we're having a HUGE SALE on EVERY LITTLE THING in our online store. Simply use the discount code JOLLYJULY to receive 30%-off your entire order.

A Daring Adventure.

{Like beads sliding off a suddenly broken thread.}

A recent Q&A with Mati Rose McDonough for her guest interview series conducted as part of her Daring Adventures in Collage 5-week e-course, in May 2014, is now available for you to peruse. Enjoy!

Daring Adventures in Collage

Collage is the ultimate exercise in daring. As an artform, collage is all about gathering inspiration, embracing imperfection, and transforming the mundane into the extraordinary. Unpredictable by nature, collage challenges our inner critic as well as the inner choreographer who wants everything to be just so.

This 5 week e-course is not just about collage: it’s about building our daring muscles while practicing courage in art + life!

This course is for anyone who wants to strengthen their creative muscles, be inspired on a daily basis, step into their own brilliance + find their magic. Oh, and create unique, inspiring mixed media artwork incorporating beautiful collage!

Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison are practising artists based in Melbourne, Australia, who more often than not work collaboratively. Graduates of RMIT University (Haby: BA Fine Arts, with Hons, 1997; Jennison: BA Fine Arts, 1996) their artists’ books and other paper works can be found in the collections of the state libraries of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria; the university libraries of Deakin, Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, Charles Sturt; and University of West England (UK); Artspace Mackay; Burnie Regional Gallery; Latrobe Regional Gallery; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery; National Gallery of Australia; Print Council of Australia; Tate (UK); and private collections. Their work has been commissioned for The Big Issue; NETS Victoria; Fjord Review; Australian Poetry; The World of Interiors (UK); ACE Hotel (USA); and UPPERCASE magazine (CAN) amongst others.

Q: What are some of your inspirations?
Our inspirations are perhaps as they should be, many and varied, direct and indirect. Sometimes they will be courted, deliberately sought out. And always will it be apparent at the time. You see/feel/hear and are inspired. Inspiration is, if nothing else, always clear. It announces its arrival, whether brought about by a passage in a novel by a favourite or newly discovered author, or an exquisite visual seen in a book held in a collection, like Malherbe’s incredible Woodpecker compositions from Monographie des picidées 1861–62, held in the collection of the State Library of Victoria.

Fiction, natural history, film (in particular the full immersion we favour of the annual Melbourne International Film Festival where we treat ourselves, and perhaps render ourselves silly in the process, to seeing upward of fifty films in nineteen days), dance (in particular, The Australian Ballet’s annual season, and new works at Dancehouse or as part of a festival like the recent Festival of Live Art, amongst others), art then and now, and music, all of these things and more are inspiring.

For our most recent body of work (currently being exhibited at the Counihan Gallery in an exhibition called In Your Dreams, May though June, 2014), for example, the work is inspired by the choreography of Graeme Murphy, Jiří Kylián, George Balanchine et al., and it is about loss, of a Siamese cat of sixteen years, Omar, of species, of possibilities. It is about the body inevitably growing older and knees that creak. It is about all the things that are now only possible in our dreams. It is inspired by the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, which pull the rug out from underneath you, and the writing of Patrick Hamilton and John Williams for their sadness and the beautiful ordinary characters on the page. It is inspired by Dickens’ description of a character ‘building castles in the sky’ as much as it is by the muted colours of the costumes of the Ballet Russes. It is inspired by all the things we love.

You see, inspiration is found in everything.

Q: Describe a rhythm of your week and/or a day in the life of you!
Varied, as per inspiration, if broken down and dissected day by day.

Our day starts at 6am and runs through until 12.30. Some days we can work solidly on our artwork, and other days are more splintered. Necessity dictates it so, and stamina too. Some days are broken up with the business side of things, a tight deadline, grocery shopping, and archiving what has been done. At present, as things are a little hectic, we are working from the top of the pile, getting the things that have to be done for tomorrow done first and anything else a bonus. This helps us get things done without getting into too great a panic. We tick things off our mental To Do list. So tonight, we will be, for example, making final preparations for a bookbinding and artists’ book workshop we are conducting tomorrow.

We both prefer working on our own work in the mornings or in the early evening, but you cannot always wrangle things that way. Sometimes days are chopped about a bit. Ideally, we prefer large uninterrupted spells, but then, doesn’t everyone? At present, as we have just taken down one exhibition of hand-coloured prints and postcard collages (Not Quite Sure, Port Jackson Press Print Gallery) and we have two current exhibitions to, for want of better word, promote (In Your Dreams, and Louise’s artists’ book, A Flight of Twelve Southern Hemisphere Birds, exhibited as part of the 2014 National Works on Paper). We are looking forward to getting back to the making side of things. We are looking forward to installing our new work in a new way in a new space (for we love this bit). We’re looking forward to the cycle repeating. Always.


{The staccato surmises of the Marmots caused bafflement.}

Q: What is something daring you've done lately?
Our whole career seems most daring, upon reflection, as it offers no guarantee and it provides no shortcut. We have kept plugging at what we love and thrown ourselves in headfirst. At the back of our minds, the feeling that if we stuff this up, it has all been in vain, and this is a powerful motivator when twinned with love for what you are doing.

Q: Who are some of your role models?
Those who are hard-working and true always make the best of role models, and they can be found in all fields.

Q: Favorite art books? Music to listen to while painting? 
For the main, we both like to work to classical music. It can be familiar or new to our ears, depending upon which stage we are up to. So, for example, if working on something brand new, I favour something I know on repeat, and that way it helps me keep tempo and in the same unbroken zone.

Our bookshelves are heaving with books, from art books to fill us with awe to reference books and dog-eared novels. They are all favourites, all inspiring, and all in some way filter into our work.  

Q: What are some of your favorite materials?
Paper is our chief love, our favourite material to work with, now and always.

And upon a paper support, Louise favours pencil (both grey lead and coloured pencil) and watercolour, and I, archival glue, applied thinly with a brush. To create all (non-digital) collages, I use a small, sharp pair of scissors so I can cut in close to the desired image and make the edge fluid. Once adhered, I soften this edge further with pencil. 

Our tools of choice: 2B pencil, scissors, glue, brushes, bone folder, steel ruler, and drawing board. 

Q: Can you talk more about how you've incorporated these unique aspects/discoveries into your work?
When working with paper, we look to use a paper that will be of heavy enough weight to support collage (too thin, it will be too hard to flatten). Our collaborative artists’ book, As Inclination Directs, for example, which features collage and hand-coloured sunsets, is printed on 300gsm hot-press Fabriano.

When using found materials, there also needs to be room to add something to the scene, a need for a spot of collage in the first place, and the condition needs to be good. Some found material fashioned into an artists’ book is rebound by Louise, such as Tumbling lightly, tumbling fast (I) and (II). Others have their rusty staples removed and are rebound with thread. 

Q: Favorite colors as of late?
Gold. Greylead pencil. Colours with a slight muted earthiness to them. 

Q: How do you begin?
With an idea netted before it can escape. One can't be too polite.

Q: How do you side-step your inner critic?
They can be hard to muffle, those Inner Critics, but usually they don’t make their presence felt at the time of chasing an idea, making work or installing an exhibition, the three most enjoyable parts of the process when all feels golden and possible and exciting. The Inner Critic waits in the wings for a failed attempt at trying something new that results in a lot of then-deemed wasted paper, or an opening (sometimes), or the day after an opening (when, in cold light of day you dissect the parts and read them in an unfavourable way). Chiefly, once the work has left the studio. Once you’ve stapled your heart to the wall for all to see. But as with all things, there are exceptions to the rules. Sometimes when you do not feel like working or you feel small about ‘the silly things you do’ or ‘the same things you make’, perhaps this is the Inner Critic at work trying to dissuade you from brushing yourself off and starting over.

The Inner Critic can be silenced by continuing with your work (it is rendered small by Perseverance), by reading or trying something related that gently then nudges you back to work, and sometimes by stepping away and coming back with fresh eyes. The old maxims are oft true.


{The obvious stumbling block in the white light of day.}

Q: What does it feel like for you to be in the flow? Any suggestions for how to arrive there? 
Wonderful. Utterly. Hours pass, but you are unaware of this, save for realising that night has fallen and you now need to close the blinds and cover the aviary. It requires focus, and depending upon which stage of the process you are at, sometimes it can disappear if interrupted too often (by phone calls and daily chores). When chasing an idea, the state is fragile as you are racing to record it all whilst it appears clear. Later, when polishing this idea, the state is more robust and can withstand pets mewing for a third breakfast or emails tapping at the door seeking entry. At this stage, you can dip in and out with relative ease. 

To find this sensation, try to snare it with a few similar conditions repeated. This may be classical music playing in the background or first thing in the morning, before you turn on the computer and are pulled away. For me, water always helps. Ideas strike in the shower, when I can’t get to a pen and paper, or when washing the dishes, or watering the garden. Ideas seem often to crash in and beg to be seized when I am hindered in some way. So too when engaged in quiet rhythmical process, like gardening or sweeping. Perhaps this is distance making things appear clear. A way of stepping back and realizing what needs or could be done. Perhaps this is another version of, just sleep on it and in the morning, you’ll know what to do. Perhaps it is when you focus on a different task at hand that ideas or solutions can come to you and you silence your Inner Critic or the noise of the day and all the million jobs that need doing. 

This glorious blinkered state is one neither of us have had to struggle too hard to find, as yet. 

Q: I love that you COLLBORATE with collage! Can you talk about this process? How the idea was born and any insight into the collaborative creating adventure!
We rather fell into it, many years ago now. Our first series of artists’ books were made collaboratively, with the two of us working on the one image side by side. With our recent collaborative installation as part of In Your Dreams at Counihan Gallery, the process has shifted, but then, it is now some 14 years hence.  

We decided early on in our collaboration, through organic process, not to polish the same skills. We naturally lent towards different things and then bring these different things together to make one work not possible without the other. And so a third work is made that belongs to us both. Sometimes, Louise will create a drawing in response to one of my elements, such as the imagined portraits of the last pair of Great Auks and their spinning-top egg before extinction. These drawings were made to mirror the collages I had created on found photographs, right down to the gold trim she painted onto the sides of her drawings. At other times, my collage with scissors and glue, will respond to her drawings. Sometimes we pool our work together and see what we have before then racing in our related but separate directions. It is a definite pattern, but it is flexible and it is founded on harmony. We are influenced by similar things, but to the collaboration, Louise in particular brings her love of natural history reads, science, and bookbinder’s precision, and I enjoy inverting these facts about extinction and the plight of endangered animals to give them a different meaning. I toss in the red herrings. But not always.

We work together because we enjoy it and we could not imagine it any other way. We have never questioned it and find that it keeps us motivated. It sharpens our Can Do spirit, really. As well as being pleasurable, it is also reassuring setting up an installation that is fiddly and precise with someone else. We can take turns to lose confidence or faith, sharing the load. Moreover, as we both thrive when working, it makes sense to do that together.  

Q: What would you like to say to this class of Daring Adventurers to give them confidence on this journey?
There is much to be said for perseverance and determination. If you are in it for the long haul and because you need (more than anything else) to make whatever it is you need to make, everything is possible. Setbacks are inevitable, but eventually can be turned around to spur you on (after a fair amount of grumbling). Writer Iris Murdoch referred to “every book is the wreck of a perfect idea” and this strikes immediate chord. This is what ensures we keep working, trying, doing, making. The belief that one day it will all come together just as we’d envisaged.

And perhaps on more practical note, with practice, all work gets better. And to always make work that is in your own voice: it has legs to go the distance and leaves Fad for dead. 

Thanks Mati.

+ Mati Rose McDonough workshops, classes, and retreats
+ Do you dare?

In glorious flux.

{This was a distressing conclusion.}

Especially for Fjord Review, my response to the Keir Choreographic Award Semi-Finals.

Keir Choreographic Award Semi-Finals presented by Dancehouse, The Keir Foundation, and Carriageworks

Dancehouse Season (Melbourne) 3rd–13th July 2014 and Finals Carriageworks (Sydney) 16th–19th July 2014 

Performances seen:
Program One
Matthew Day, Jane McKernan, Tim Darbyshire, Brooke Stamp
Sunday 6th July 

Program Two
Shaun Gladwell, Atlanta Eke, James Batchelor, Sarah Aiken
Thursday 10th July

To begin, it is all about numbers and the patterns they form.

One inaugural award, the Keir Choreographic Award, dedicated to commissioning new choreographic work and fostering innovation in contemporary dance both nationally and internationally.

One biennial prize of $30, 000, with the intention to raise "the profile of and cultivate new audiences for contemporary dance within Australia by commissioning and presenting new choreographic works in a competitive context."[i] With a second work to be awarded a $10,000 prize, determined by audience vote.

From some seventy-seven applications, eight talented and diverse semi-finalists—Sarah Aiken, James Batchelor, Tim Darbyshire, Matthew Day, Atlanta Eke, Shaun Gladwell, Jane McKernan and Brooke Stamp—were drawn and commissioned to develop a new work.

Each semi-finalist was given 100 hours of studio access, and two months concentrated development time, an artists’ fee, and a production budget enabling them to work with up to five collaborators from lighting designers, visual artists, sound engineers, and others.

The result: eight commissioned multi-disciplinary works (each between 20 to 25-minutes in length) presented before an international and national line-up of five judges as diverse as the artists and works themselves—Mårten Spångberg, Matthew Lyons, Josephine Ridge, Becky Hilton, and the Award’s visionary, Phillip Keir—and an audience of wide-eyed enthusiasts.

From eight semi-finalists comes four finalists*, and from four comes one winner**, but, really, it is all about dance, and the commitment to newness in contemporary dance, above all else.

In the end, it is not a numbers game, but a willingness to negotiate uncharted waters, pushing the absolute limits of what constitutes dance. "This award is about bringing a little more attention to this art form which, quietly but firmly, organises our bodies in space and our minds in our bodies, and to its makers who relentlessly craft those journeys," [ii] explains Angela Conquet, the artistic director at Dancehouse. All eight works, seen during their two-week season at Dancehouse, question the very definition of dance, of the body in orchestrated movement, and in turn ask: what is choreography? Some do so gently, some do so aggressively, some quietly, and some with a triumphantly tuneless trumpet blast (Brooke Stamp’s TEARAWAY—Part One: The Crater of Motor Power), but all seem in accord that it begins in the body. Brooke Stamp, choreographer and performer in Program One, illustrates this through both her performance and her words, "I think that a lot of people in this award are thinking about choreography as being grounded in the body but moving beyond that and into objects, visual art and sonic spaces."[iii] The stage for her work dotted with props, some called upon and made animate, and all the while the legacy of Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham keenly felt. Stamp’s beautiful and brief dance with her projected shadow on a suspended cloth depicting through line the figure of a dancer is perfectly balanced by the trumpet’s brashness.

Indeed, dotted throughout all the performances, little gems: the humble one-handed prop against the wall to remove one’s shoes celebrated in Tim Darbyshire’s Entitled TITLE (Working Title); the meditative repetition of the 8 x 8 grid played out in different configurations of bricks, and the water-like reflections of the plastic sheeting on the ceiling of the upstairs studio at Dancehouse in James Batchelor’s ESCAPE TO THE INFINITE; the quiet humour winked at in the seemingly random sequences of the individual that slowly reveal themselves to be unified, shared, and passed down in the choreographic language that is Jane McKernan’s Mass Movement, and the slow, fated tumble of three soldiers in Shaun Gladwell’s Dead Flag Blues. From the slow build of increasing intensity in Matthew Day’s Rites, echoing Rite of Spring (1913) and the choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky to the frame within a frame within a frame, in-your-face prodding of Atlanta Eke in her aptly named allegory of the present, Body of Work, this investment in dance is what we need to see more of.

Of particular strength, the considered beauty of Sarah Aiken’s THREE SHORT DANCES, which features a dance of increased rhythmic effect between three large cut-out shapes that, as sound builds, appear to almost pulsate, thereby questioning our understanding of what is dance. Objects can be made animate, if our patience holds, and slowly a rainbow-sacked larva is revealed on the floor, it metamorphoses before our eyes, shedding its encasement and unfurling its wings. But it is the third dance, in which a series of six fine timber rods are balanced on the body that remains the most striking visual. Before my eyes, one moment an imagine synonymous with a bird cage, the next, a tightrope walker in meditative trance, before finally assuming a slowly spinning hybrid porcupine, with quills near grazing the walls. Balanced atop the head, and across each shoulder, and within both hands, the appearance is mesmerising when coupled with the sound design and performance of Daniel Arnott.

Asked to question what we see and redefine what we think we know, I take especial delight in watching the stage being prepared in between the performances in both the upstairs studio and downstairs theatre. It reads like a part of its own performance as plastic sheeting is unrolled and props are quietly placed in assigned positions. And it is in this moment that I am given space to absorb what I have seen and ready myself for the next journey into the unknown.

These commissioned works are in glorious flux, still assuming final shape, dust still settling. Akin to the soldier’s awkward dance performed on a pair of crutches, with the legs not allowed to touch the ground, in Dead Flag Blues, these works are not for the idle. As they should, these works ask a lot of the audience. They are "new and unsettled"[iv] in both their feel and energy, notes judge Becky Hilton. And from where I sit, this is what the award is all about, and it is exciting.

* Finalists: Sarah Aiken, Matthew Day, Atlanta Eke, Jane McKernan (announced at final Melbourne performance at Dancehouse in Melbourne)
** Atlanta Eke announced as the winner on the 19th of July at the final performance at Carriageworks in Sydney, Peoples’ Choice went to Jane McKernan

Notes:
[i] The Keir Choreographic Award, The Keir Foundation website, accessed July 2014
[ii] Angela Conquet, Keir Choreographic Award Semi-Finals folded programme, 2014
[iii] Brooke Stamp quoted by Paul Ransom, Down To Your Chor’, The Music, 30th June 2014
[iv] Becky Hilton quoted by Philippa Hawker, So you think you can choreograph, The Age, 10th July 2014

Entitled TITLE (Working Title)
Choreographer: Time Darbyshire
Performer: Deanne Butteworth
Performer: Sophia Cowen
Performer: Brian Fuata
Sound design: Thembi Soddell
Lighting and Projection design: Ben (Bosco) Shaw)
Text: Time Darbyshire with performers

TEARAWAY—Part One: The Crater of Motor Power
Concept/Choreography: Brooke Stamp
Visual Artist and more: Agatha Gothe-Snape
Composer and more: Kevin Lo
Clothing: Geoffrey Watson
Lighting: Matthew Adey
Outside Assistance: Rennie McDougall

Mass Movement
Choreographer: Jane McKernan
Performer: Angela Goh
Performer: Leeke Griffin
Performer: Carlee Mellow
Performer: Lizzie Thomson
Music: Toby Martin
Voice: Elizabeth Ryan
Costumes: Jen Kevin

Rites
Concept/choreography/performance: Matthew Day
Dramaturgy: Martin del Amo
Sound: James Brown
Light: Travis Hodgson

THREE SHORT DANCES
Choreography and Performance: Sarah Aiken
Sound design and Performance: Daniel Arnott
Dramaturgy: Rebecca Jensen
Lighting and Set Design: Matt Adey
Costume Design and Construction: Cary Aiken

ESCAPE TO THE INFINITE
Choreographer, Performer: James Batchelor
Performer: Amber McCartney
Visual Artist/Performer: Madeline Beckett

Body of Work
Concept and Choreography: Atlanta Eke
Video: Hanna Miller, Jacob Perkins and Luke Gleeson
Music: Daniel Jenatsch
Light Design: Bosco Shaw

Dead Flag Blues
Concept: Shaun Gladwell
Dancers: Kathryn Puie, Dean Cross, Matt Cornell
Production Design: Mark Haslam

Folded, stapled, and held snug in a (winter) jacket.

{A library of artists' books, a photocopy of zines, a warmth of coats, a crowd of people.}

Images harvested from yesterday's opening of PAGE.PRINT.POST: 50 years of Artists Books at the Post Office Gallery, Federation University Australia, Ballarat, interspersed between images from several of our zines that feature in the exhibition in addition to our artists' book As inclination directs (2013).

A Catalogue of Bodies (Second Edition) (2014), As if from the clouds, restless (2014), Misreadings (2014), Four Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) who visited my garden one summer’s day (2014), Twelve months, an explorer (2014), 38.1500° S, 144.3500° E (2013), A Postcard as Measuring Device (2013), Beneath the screen of closed eyelids (Port Said) (2013), Genova to Johannesburg (Johannesburg to Genova) (2013), and Lunch (2013) are being kept in very fine company until Saturday the 9th August, 2014.

A major exhibition which explores the development, range and ambition of the Artists Book, PAGE.PRINT.POST: 50 years of Artists Books, will be held at Federation University Australia’s Post Office Gallery until 9 August.

Featuring over 500 works, including books, postal art and other 'alternative spaces' from the 1960s to the present, the exhibition presents a broad range of significant works from a number of private and public collections in Australia and the UK.

Curated by Debbie Hill and Geoff Wallis, the exhibition will showcase a large selection of books by contemporary Australian artists, together with remarkable and rare publications by pioneers of the Conceptual art and Feminists' movement.

(Federation University Australia News)

Thank-you Debbie and Geoff.

PAGE.PRINT.POST

{Page details from the artists' book, In search of a time the heart does not recall (Souvenir of Johannesburg) (2009), which features in one of the zines included in PAGE.PRINT.POST, Genova to Johannesburg (Johannesburg to Genova) (2013).}

Our artists' book As inclination directs (2013) and a selection of our recent zines will be on display as part of the exhibition PAGE.PRINT.POST: 50 years of Artists Books at the Post Office Gallery in Ballarat.

Opening this Saturday at 4pm, come along, do.

PAGE.PRINT.POST: 50 years of Artists Books
Post Office Gallery
Federation University Australia
corner Sturt & Lydiard Street, Ballarat, Victoria 3350
Wednesday 16th July to Saturday 9th August

PAGE.PRINT.POST: 50 years of Artists Books curated by Debbie Hill and Geoff Wallis, offers a rare insight and overview of the development, range and ambition of the Artists Book over half a century. Featuring books, postal art and other 'alternative spaces' from the 1960s to the 1980s, the exhibition presents a range of significant works from a host of private and public collections in Australia and the UK.

The exhibition will include a large selection of books by Australian artists, together with remarkable and rare publications by pioneers Ed Ruscha and Dieter Rot, members of Fluxus and the Conceptual art movement, and feminists May Stevens, Nan Becker and Nancy Holt. 

A broad range of Artists Books and postal art by contemporary artists, including Nicholas Jones, Deanna Hitti, Angela Cavalieri, Gracia and Louise, Deborah Klein, David Dellafiora, Sarah Bodman and Guy Begbie, will also be presented.


{Something mighty peculiar was afoot but I was hard-pressed to say for certain what it was (II) and other greeting card designs are all on sale when you use the discount code JOLLYJULY. Yippee!}

And lest you missed it mentioned on Louise's Elsewhere post, and on various twitter, instagram, news, and facebook updates, we are holding a HUGE sale in a bid to make way for all the new things we have up our sleeves.

Head to our online store and receive 30%-off your entire order when you type in the discount code JOLLYJULY.

The sale includes our recent prints, And Zarafa Kept Walking, and Turning the Tables on Alfred Court, and our newest zines, The Suggestion of Opulence, Nuit Noir, and In Your Dreams, Blurred and Distinct. The sale includes the whole damn lot and is yours to enjoy until the 1st of August.

+ The Silver Scream
+ 1914: Black Cat Stockings
+ Louise and Percy and Little Lenni (@pasadenamansions)
+ Should we mourn the end of blogs?

Harmonious hues.

{Navigating our way through the MIFF 2014 guide is akin to this. (Image credit: The Glory of Azaleas, Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, S. C., from Photographic views of North America, c. 1901, Detroit Photographic Co. photochrome, Beineke Rare Book Library)}


{LOOK what Lenni did. (Keir Choreographic Award, Program One, Dancehouse)}


{And with that, we fall out into the glorious night. Thank-you Dancehouse. (Image credit: Sarah Aiken, Three Short Dances, @keirchoreographicaward, Program Two, Dancehouse, photo by Gregory Lorenzutti)}


{No, Lenni, we do not eat tiny cyclists.}


{Slow peddle. (The slow business of hand-painting tiny cyclists for Antique Toy World collectors. I don't know how you do it, Louise.)}


{Black & Gold Milk Powder. (Another day wrapping up end-of-semester artworks to return to students using all the recycled materials we could get our hands on. Screech! goes the packing tape.)}


{Some sort of idyll. (Image credit: Azaleas, Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, South Carolina, no. 53796, from Photographic views of North America, Detroit Photographic Co. or Detroit Publishing Co, ca. 1897-1924, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library)}


{Percy has excellent legging recognition and meets me after every Barre Body class.}


{...getting the hang of shoulder travel.}


{A soon-to-be MIFF2014 orphan, Percy toys with the idea of attending the festival as Louise's neck-warmer. (Especially for @cottageindustrystore)}


{From the safety of my shoulder, Lenni surveys the big, loud, crazy world.}

Another week. What a week. Introspection held in balance by outward gaze, highs by lows, close focus by general sweep, the exciting by the mundane. Yes, all as you’d expect, really. But whoever thought July would be quieter was clearly pulling my leg. Wait a minute—that was me. Me, sat here on a Saturday evening waving a bit of fake fur on a plastic stick to distract Lenni from chomping Percy’s rump as he sleeps at my feet. Me, jiggling a cat toy with my right hand, typing with my left, thinking it is time to start a new body of work, and in echo of a performance seen at Dancehouse (as part of the Keir Choreographic Award), aware of the unwashed dishes in the sink, and the clothes in the washing machine.

To the beautiful hunkered down winter.

+ Fifty-four MIFF sessions booked! Let the disintegration begin! (MIFF)
+ ...and upon learning we'd booked fifty-four MIFF sessions without him, Lenni looked a little like this.
+ Later, the Lenni Scarf, showing Percy how it is done. (From the MIFF2014 orphans series for @oliviatokyo and @cottageindustrystore)
+ The Ramones' first bio, written by Tommy in 1975 (Letters of Note)
+ "Louise Jennison takes colouring-in to the sublime — see her book on display at Monash Caulfield Library"
+ PAGE.PRINT.POST: 50 years of Artists Books exhibition

"Dance is music made visible"

{From Ballet Imperial to Suit en blanc.}

When one thinks of Balanchine, one thinks of a true traditionalist, of a great romantic choreographer who expanded technique and stretched the limits of choreography. And perhaps, like me, one also thinks of Vera Zorina in the Water Nymph ballet (Undine) he choreographed for the film The Goldwyn Follies (1938). Some may even think of Balanchine’s choreography for a ballet for fifty elephants and fifty dancers set to Stravinsky’s Circus Polka: For a Young Elephant for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. And naturally one thinks of Ballet Imperial. Here, especially for Fjord Review, my written response to Imperial Suite. Enjoy!

The Australian Ballet's Imperial Suite

Ballet Imperial (1941)
Choreography: George Balanchine
^©The George Balanchine Trust
Repetiteur: Eve Lawson
Music: Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Concerto No. 2 in G for Piano & Orchestra, Op. 44
Costume and set design: Hugh Colman
Lighting design: Rachel Burke

Suite en blanc (1943)
Choreography: Serge Lifar
Music: Edouard Lalo
arranged by Serge Lifar
Original lighting design: William Akers

Performances seen:
Friday 20^th June
Thursday 26^th June

"See the music, hear the dance," a quote attributed to George Balanchine, perfectly encapsulates Ballet Imperial, Balanchine’s one-act love letter to the choreography of Marius Petipa and the compositions of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and the splendour of imperial Russia as he saw it. The work employs Petipa’s courtly overtone with its hierarchical framework of dancers and melds it to Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 2 in G major, op. 44. The result is a work that whilst recalling the Winter Palace with all its grandeur, typifies his belief that "dance is music made visible." And having now seen this work performed twice in the one season by The Australian Ballet, it is no longer possible to hear Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 2 without recalling princpal artist Lana Jones on the stage.

Balanchine "subscribed to the Hegelian view of history as a spiral: everything recurs, but in a different form.... One of the great Balanchine statements is a definition of what tradition means to the artist: 'You must go through tradition, absorb it, and become in a way a reincarnation of all the artistic periods that have come before you.'"[i]

Our self-confessed borrower of many things, Balanchine saw no shame in taking a bit from here and there, for this was process. He tips his hat at jazz and Lindy Hop dancers (as we saw in The Four Temperaments (1946)), and he transforms it and makes it his own. Much like a collagist, to me, he created collages with music and the human body and fused them together to make something not possible without the other; to make something unique.

With this in mind, Ballet Imperial assumes a dreamlike quality. It is like seeing the world as I imagined it looked in 1941, one aspect of it, polished and at its absolute prettiest. So keenly does it evoke the period that I feel as if I have been transported to its premiere in Rio, South America, to a performance that received “a rapturous reception and 18 curtain calls.."[ii] Ballet Imperial has since gone through several transformations. The bejewelled tutus have been replaced with long flowing white chiffon swathes, the cavalier no longer sports "lace sleeves and a collar of white ermine,"[iii] and the set that conveyed a sense of the inward-looking Winter Palace has been stripped. For a production staged by New York City Ballet in 1973, the name of the work was altered to reflect this shift and the music that is its source, Piano Concerto No. 2. But in this production, presented as part of Imperial Suite, we are seeing it as it first appeared at that premiere. In its original guise, the tutus and tiaras are back in place, so too the suggestion of the Neva River beyond, blue and shimmering.

And so here we have, in Ballet Imperial, a remodelled version of a Russia that no longer exists, and it is a sumptuous meld of all the things one thinks of when one thinks of Balanchine and his choreography: pure classicism bound to modernity. Reminiscent of theatre of the silver screen, which presented as something of a dream during wartime, rationing, and the Great Depression, there is something of this pure and extravagant escapism to be seen as Adam Bull sends a gentle ripple down two threads of dancers. Orchestrated ensembles form squares, diamonds, and circles on the stage, further illustrating to me the idea that "dance is music made visible”. As new formations assemble, the impression is not unlike looking through a cinematic kaleidoscope.

As Music Director and Chief Conductor, Nicolette Fraillon, and guest solo pianist Hoang Pham explained (in a pre-performance audience Q&A), Tchaikovsky’s concerto, which follows the traditionally accepted pattern of fast, slower, faster, continually changes from being a duet between pianist (in the pit) and dancer (on stage) to a quartet, quintet, sextet and so on. This sensation reiterated by Eve Lawson, Ballet Mistress with the company and repetiteur for the George Balanchine Trust, who describes it as though the dancers are "singing with their bodies."[iv]

As Lawson describes, the upper-body movements in this work are distinctly Russian in flavour, the fast footwork, French: one body, two ways. Opulent costuming and a classical score are juxtaposed with a jazz-inspired modernity, and all elements are meshed seamlessly: a true collage. We are swept up in what can only be described as the challenging splendour of it all, for you cannot look at the beauty of the piece without being aware of the incredible and exacting technique it requires. It is utterly demanding and yet presents the near-to impossible, from the impeccable footwork it insists upon and receives to the effortless way dancers are woven in and out like ribbons. The overall impression is one of an extravaganza to make the jaw drop, and it certainly did.

From this majestic high, we leap to the year 1943, to Serge Lifar’s Suite en blanc, which still pleasingly elicits the expected 'oohs' and 'ahhs' from the audience when presented with the beauty of the opening tableau. Against a contrasting black ground, the white of the costumes is offset, and once more we are invited to revel in the neoclassicism of all that this double bill is when only earlier in the season we had been at the other end of the spectrum 'oohing' and 'ahhing' at a different range of movements. In the Melbourne season of winter ballet, Imperial Suite proves the perfect bookend to Chroma, just as Suite en blanc does to Ballet Imperial.

To music from the ballet Namouna (1881–82), Edouard Lalo’s score, arranged by Lifar, gives us moments of speed, seduction, and the chance for play, from the clearly visible "wafty Cigarette movement, which begins lightly with pizzicato strings and small wind solos.... [to] the almost relentless march rhythms of the Finale, driving the tension to its ultimate heights".[v]

In Suite en blanc, we see Lifar’s "favourite movement motif—a flattened profile with shoulders turned 90 degrees to the hips, reminiscent of ancient Egyptian art and clearly rooted in Art Deco style— ....in [the] elegant struts on and off the stage."[vi] Once more the impression of being transported to another century is strong and part of the reason I found so much to love about it, if only I could follow suit and negotiate those unforgiving stairs (on the stage) with such grace. The other component comes from observing the absolute skill it demands.

Heart a-flutter, sidestepping geography and springing from 1941 to '43 in the space of a twenty-minute interval, I found myself in complete awe of the choreography and how, in the case of the performances I saw, it is executed with prowess bound tightly to energy, athleticism, and grace. May all history lessons leave one’s cheek grazed by tutu tulle.

Notes:
[i] Arlene Croce, Onward and Upward with the Arts, Balanchine Said, The New Yorker, 26^th January 2009, p.36
[ii] Dr Caitlyn Lehmann, An Imperial Education, The Australian Ballet Chroma and Imperial Suite programme, 2014
[iii] Dr Caitlyn Lehmann, An Imperial Education
[iv] Eve Lawson in interview with Rose Mulready, Singing bodies: Eve Lawson on Ballet Imperial, The Australian Ballet’s Behind Ballet blog, 18^th June 2014
[v] Katherine Kemp, Music Note for Suite en blanc, The Australian Ballet Chroma and Imperial Suite programme, 2014
[vi] Cheryl A. Ossola, Suite en blanc Program Notes, San Francisco Ballet, accessed 27^th June 2014

Cast:
Ballet Imperial (1941)
Friday 20^th June
Lana Jones
Adam Bull
Miwako Kubota

Thursday 26^th June
Ako Kondo
Ty King-Wall
Robyn Hendricks

Suite en blanc (1943)
Friday 20^th June
La Sieste: Natasha Kusen, Robyn Hendricks and Valerie Tereshchenko
Pas de Trois: Madeleine Eastoe, Andrew Killian and Kevin Jackson
Serenade: Reiko Hombo
Pas de Cinque: Ako Kondo
Cigarette: Laura Tong
Mazurka: Chengwu Guo
Pas de Deux: Amber Scott and Rudy Hawkes
Flute: Amber Scott

Thursday 26^th June
La Sieste: Vivienne Wong, Rina Nemoto and Dimity Azoury
Pas de Trois: Miwako Kubota, Ben Davis and Rudy Hawkes
Serenade: Benedicte Bemet
Pas de Cinque: Dana Stephensen
Cigarette: Robyn Hendricks
Mazurka: Brett Chynoweth
Pas de Deux: Robyn Hendricks and Brett Simon
Flute: Juliet Burnett

Good news to tuck in your pocket.

{Nuit Noir}


{The suggestion of oppulence}

A troupe of Swiss Alps tumbers with cinched waists. A tall man with a few feathered friends. Egad, I never would have thought! Following on from earlier acquisitional good news, I am delighted to report that As if from the clouds, restless and The Loon of Swan Hill seeks an audience (two artists' books exhibited earlier this year as part of Draw Me A Story and In Your Dreams) have been acquired by the Melbourne University Library.

And lest you missed our trumpeting, especially for The Australian Ballet's Behind Ballet blog, we created several embellished collages to celebrate George Balanchine's Ballet Imperial (as part of Styling Ballet Imperial). A one act love letter to the work of both Petipa and Tchaikovsky, our collages for Balanchine feature the dancing feet of Juliet Burnett, Madeleine Eastoe, Robyn Hendricks, and Amber Scott.

You can now pocket your very own slice of Imperial Russia and gold-dusted Mariinsky-blue tutus in the form of a new zine, The suggestion of opulence.

The suggestion of opulence is available through our online store for $9.00 (AUD).

Joining this new zine on stage, and having also made its debut at Tonerpalooza, a festival of zines presented by Sticky Institute and the State Library of Victoria, is Louise's Nuit Noir.

Nuit Noir is available through our online store for $2.00 (AUD).












{New zines for winter.}

The working process.

{This. This is how starting new work can feel. One hard slog. (Image source: Perspektivet Museum, Tromsø, Norway, Photo (detail): Magnus Schrøder)}


{And sometimes this, this is how starting new work can feel. One quiet and joyous meld. (Image source: Perspektivet Museum, Tromsø, Norway, Photo (detail): Magnus Schrøder)}

Yesterday’s music: Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 2 in G for Piano & Orchestra, Op. 44 (on repeat, with Balanchine on my mind)

This evening’s music: Swifts in their nests in the tower of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History webcam
("Swifts have been nesting in ventilation flues in the tower of the University Museum for many years, providing a wonderful opportunity for scientists to study these fascinating but elusive birds. From May to August this page offers a webcam link to swifts nesting in the Museum tower.")

Puffins and aardvarks! To my great delight Tumbling lightly, tumbling fast (I) and (II), two new artists' books exhibited as part of In Your Dreams are destined for the collection of Monash University Library (Caulfield Campus).

Yesterday’s hard slog yields rewards. Hurrah!
















{From kitten hearts to observant hounds, all things gold and blue.}

+ Olivia's Maly has her portrait painted (@oliviatokyo xo)
+ As do Lenni and me (@pasadenamansions xo)
+ ....tiny cyclists too

+ Zipping along
+ The Nantucket Sea-Serpent Hoax (1937)
+ The Centaurs, a Fragment (1921)
+ Startled cats and curious kittens in Tadashige Nishida’s woodblock prints