HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Something new brewing.

{Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, The Company You Keep, 2016, artists' book}

A decade seems a good point to change things around, and so whilst I'll still have an online space for showing works in process through to completion, how it looks, feels, and runs will be different. I've been here, High Up in the Trees, for ten years. Time to construct a new tree house more in keeping with how I share what I see and think and do.

For now, I will be keeping High Up in the Trees as an accessible archive, keeping it just as is, for I've many fond memories of this space. It has transformed from a rather warty, small file size, personal scrapbook to a more considered place. I have learned more of how to communicate, as my pieces for Fjord Review are a testament to, and I've refined my visual sensibilities. From a humble platform, I feel I have found my feet, and now I am keen to eke out a new spot rather than limp along.

Thank-you to everyone who has stopped by here throughout its various incarnations, and to the loyal hearts from start to finish. I have enjoyed creating this space with and for you. My links list points to many blogs now closed, removed, or cobweb-cloaked, left to languish with a forlorn 'March 2013' post on the front door. (Am I suffering from a bout of nostalgia when I say they remind me of ghost towns or something of ash-cloaked Pompeii?)

I had wanted to give High Up in the Trees a fitting wake, but sadly most of its friends have already passed. And so before I grow too sentimental about what blogging was in the early days before the instant share of instagram, twitter, and snapchat, for when comments were to be read, before the tiny violins do play: thank-you. Really, thank-you. Thank-you.

And so, I guess, if this is to be a wake, we need refreshments as we mourn. And I have just the space for that. High Up in the Trees has been reincarnated as MARGINALIA, and who knows how it will grow.

Come along. Over here. Yes, you. Over here. I've so much to show you.

Whirl, whoosh, swoop.

{From setting up to lights out, the Melbourne Art Book Fair.}

Monday night, just time enough for a quick gallop through the Melbourne Art Book Fair. For a whirl about the Great Hall, before the edges soften further and fade altogether. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, you crazy flash. Sweep, hare, fly! Here, below, a little of how it looked from our stand at the fair. And perhaps a little, too, of how it felt. Giddy. Exhilarating. And exhausting. Good hallmarks, all. We are beyond thrilled that copies of our artists' book, Because I Like You, are now bound for the National Library of Australia, the State Library of Victoria, and the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne, as well as private collections. And speechless that The Company You Keep, an artists' book comprised of fifteen Salvaged Relatives collages on cabinet cards, is destined for the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. The stuff of dreams!

Thank-you to everyone who swung by our stand and leafed through our zines and new work. It was a pleasure to show you our jaguars, giraffes, tigers, and other pressed animals on the page. A real pleasure indeed.

Thank-you for having us, Melbourne Art Book Fair team. 2016 proved even merrier than its debut, and we've talked ourselves hoarse. We've talked ourselves silly.

From Dear tails to Whiskers and Bristles, over the coming days, we'll list our nine new zine titles on our online store, for those of you who couldn't make it along.

With heavy eyelids, weary bones, and happy hearts, goodnight, and big thanks,
G&L xo








































{To savour: the quiet moments setting up in the morning to fair's full flight. So happy to have shared this with you, Deidre, Deanna, Theo, Peter, Emily, Trent, M.33, and Kyoko.}

Fairground beckons.

{Ready to go again this weekend. (Melbourne Art Book Fair 2015, image (detail) courtesy of National Gallery of Victoria)}

{Lenni, in role of tiny overseer, double checks the stock for the forthcoming fair.}


{Safely delivered: 9 of 9 boxes for the Melbourne Art Book Fair, plus 1 Lottie}

Dear you,

Blowing the proverbial trumpet from the rooftops, we invite you to join us at the Melbourne Art Book Fair this weekend. We'll be bringing with us nine new zine titles (all an edition of 100), two unique-state artists' books, and one limited edition (of 10) artists' book. We'd love to show you these new works in person, should you be nearby. And for those further afield, all new zine titles will soon be available through our online store.

Yours, with fingers taping at the (piano) keys in a foxtrot now that the brushes and pencils have been put aside,
G&L
X


{Cutting the Collection}


{Wrens, flycatchers and honeyeaters beware}


{An Afternoon of a Hopping Mouse (Notomys mitchellii)}


{Thumb Through}


{Seasonal museum sketches (spring)}


{The Company You Keep}


{Whiskers and Bristles}


{Seasonal museum sketches (summer)}

Melbourne Art Book Fair

Saturday 30th April
10am–8pm

Sunday 1st May
10am–5pm

(#NGVABF)



+ Contented hound, hard at work (by @pasadenamansions)
+ Unexpected mailart from Frips in Belgium is the best kind of unexpected mail art (@necessityofnonsense)
+ Automobiles for Mice

Work in Progress

 

Home time, but not quittin' time. #theworkingtable

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Apr 18, 2016 at 11:12pm PDT

 

 

Testing the "thumb-through-ness" of 'Thumb Through,' our flip book featuring collages created with treasure from the #PerformingArtsCollection.

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Apr 10, 2016 at 7:21pm PDT

{From making edges glow to testing the flip of a flip book.}

Everything of late, it interlocks, as we prepare for the Melbourne Art Book Fair in the Great Hall at the NGV. Nine new zine titles and three (limited edition and unique state) artists’ books are all in various states of completion. Towers of drying, Almost There and Really, Really, Almost There dot the landscape of our home-based studio between which pets weave. Drawings on individual pages are cut, curved and sanded, their edges made gold. Pets sleep. Pets leap. Zine spines are coated with twelve layers of glue. Pets leap. Pets sleep. Scoring. Folding. Signing. Tweaking. Our only niggle with the days of late: that they are soon to draw to a close. In this beautifully blinkered state all else drops away. And the pets sleep on. Bliss. With a frenzied intensity to it. Bliss.

+ Olive's cat fort of zines.
+ Lottie perfects the Art of Cat.
+ The Tortoise dreams of being able to glue the spines of Whiskers and Bristles at the speed of a Hare, but with accuracy.

{Precarious towers of zines as they dry and bookbinding components are given the rub of approval.}


{In the last of the light, taking shape.}


{The Dear Tails production line is, rather suitably, flanked by sleeping soundly pets.}


{Olive as Tower (of Zines, Drying).}


{Fittingly, a closer look at several new characters from our artists' book, Closer to Natural.}


{Thirteen animals from Closer to Natural ready to be fixed, cut, sanded, and trimmed with gold paint.}


{A quartet of new zines (Seasonal Museum Sketches (Spring and Summer), Wrens, flycatchers, and honeyeaters, beware, and Afternoon of a Hopping mouse (Notomys mitchellii) will be released into the wild at the #NGVABF and our online store at the end of April.)}


{Happiness is seeing (our) animals drawn from the collection return to the collection. (Image credit: @museumvictoria, @melbournemuseum)}


{Whiskers and Bristles waits to be made whole}


{Handwriting 'Whiskers and Bristles' 90-odd times, I can no longer recall with ease where the 't' in 'bristles' goes.}


{Lottie and her assistant, Louise, check the proofs and give the green light.}


{Little dog; big factory. Taking it all in her stride, like Perce, as the guillotine slices through tower after tower of soon-to-be zines.}


{From these parts will come three titles: Cutting the Collection and Thumb Through (featuring the Performing Arts Collection) and Whiskers and Bristles (featuring components from our forthcoming artists' book, Because I Like You).}


{'Psittacula wardi,' 'Atelopus zeteki,' 'Eretmochelys imbricata,' and 'Mustela erminea' might be fun to say, but they're Devils to hand write.}


{Olive's cat fort varies from day to day. #theworkingtable}


{Four (of nine) new zine titles, Whiskers and Bristles, Closer to Natural, Cutting the Collection, and Thumb Through, ready for the fair.}

This time next week, the National Gallery of Victoria's Melbourne Art Book Fair will be in full flight. We hope to see you there! 

Melbourne Art Book Fair
Great Hall, NGV, 180 St Kilda Rd. 

Friday 29th April
10am–6pm International Symposium on the Future of Design for Publishing (ticketed event)
6–10pm Melbourne Art Book Fair Preview (ticketed event) 

Saturday 30th April
10am–8pm
Melbourne Art Book Fair (free) 

Sunday 1st May
10am–5pm
Melbourne Art Book Fair (free)

You and me and a little theatre.

 

#AndyWarhol's #Photobooth harlequinade at @ngvmelbourne. (As part of Studio Cats, #NGV, accompanied by Shades of Sennet, performed by Henry Mancini and his Orchestra.)

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Apr 15, 2016 at 2:51am PDT

{Always, always, in the last week. Catching Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei at the NGV, and leaving with a colourful souvenir.}

Mice? Play? What's that you say. Away from the (cat) desk, we indulged in a little silliness behind the silver curtain of Studio Cats. Why leave it all for the little people?










{Makin' faces "while U wait".}

Right, intermission over. No, really. Back to it.

Because I Like You.

 

Turning the pages of our #artistsbook, Because I Like You, the Stick-nest rat edition. (Music: Camille Saint-Saëns, Carnival of the Animals: Aquarium)

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Apr 13, 2016 at 11:23pm PDT

 

 

The trickiness of filming with a curious siamese cat on set. #pawsonbooks #ohno!

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Apr 13, 2016 at 6:40pm PDT

{Turning the pages of, Because I Like You, this is our version of close-enough-to seamless, crowned by the trickiness of filming with Lenni.}

Because I Like You, as the title suggests, is based on the concept of a love letter to ten mammals. Each of the edition is housed in a black fabric Solander box. And each page has one mammal lemonwood block print portrait and one original collage of the mammal mirrored. The mammals featured range from a Greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) to a Sea otter (Enhydra lutris) by way of a Royal antelope (Neotragus pygmaeus) and a gruff Polar bear (Ursus maritimus). This edition has been over a year in the making, based on a back and forth notion we have been toying with more and more (my collage in response to Louise's print, this time). With the printed portrait showing nature, as intended (close to), and the collage placing the animal in different (and often less than ideal) surrounds, it is also our first book to feature woodblock prints. 

Along the way it was discovered that there are many nice words to write, but few as nice as 'mouse lemur'. I suspect it is the pair of 'u's and the hills of the 'm's, but I could be mistaken. (Spinning the 2B pencil, in love letter to the mouse lemur.)

{Turning the pages of the Greater stick-nest rat edition of Because I Like You.}

To the Greater bilby
I like you because your long ears are pinkish in colour, and you gallop much like a rocking horse. I could be talking about a Greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis); I could be talking about you.

To the Black-and-gold howler monkey
I like you because you greet the dawn with a guttural howl. I could be talking about a Black-and-gold howler monkey (Alouatta caraya); I could be talking about you.

To the Rufous mouse lemur
You’re shy and nocturnal, hiding in the foliage from the Fossa, the Ring-tailed mongoose, and the Madagascar harrier hawk, and it is why I like you so. I could be talking about a Rufous mouse lemur (Microcebus rufus); I could be talking about you.

To the Polar bear, we say
I like you because we share a plantigrade gait. Your whiskers too. I could be talking about a Polar bear (Ursus maritimus); I could be talking about you.

To the Royal antelope
I like you because your crepuscular ways find you frequently ruminating by day. And because your hind legs are so long, in relation to your front legs, you appear in something of a constant crouch. I could be talking about a Royal antelope (Neotragus pygmaeus); I could be talking about you.






{Turning the pages of the Greater stick-nest rat edition of Because I Like You.}

To the Californian sea lion
I like you because of your short black stubble on your flippers. I could be talking about a Californian sea lion (Zalophus californianus); I could be talking about you.

To the Snow leopard
I like you because your long tail serves as a blanket. I could be talking about a Snow leopard (Panthera uncia); I could be talking about you.

To the Greater stick-nest rat
I like you because you can weave a secure nest from branches and collected vegetation. I could be talking about a Greater stick-nest rat (Leporillus conditor); I could be talking about you.

And to the Red squirrel
I like you because the forgotten seed caches you bury sometimes sprout and grow into trees. I am also fond of your long ear tufts. I could be talking about a Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris); I could be talking about you.

Finally, to the Sea otter
The loose patch of skin under your forearms serves as a pocket for rocks and other tools and it is primarily why I like you. I could be talking about a Sea otter (Enhydra lutris); I could be talking about you.

In colour.

 

Featuring treasure from the #PerformingArtsCollection, a tiny collage of moving parts on wet, wet day. (Music: 'Malmequer' performed by Banda do corpo de Bombeiros do Distrito Federal, composed by Christovao de Alencar and Newton Teixeira)

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Apr 6, 2016 at 12:14am PDT

{A tiny collage in moving parts featuring treasure from the Performing Arts Collection.}

From yesterday's silhouettes to full colour at speed, I proudly present 150 frames in 15 instagram-able seconds. The 'filled' version, lest it feels neglected, is also going to be made into a zine, flip book style. Though yet to be printed and hand-bound, it will be one of ten new titles created especially for our stall at the Melbourne Art Book Fair.

And, here, a fragment of the whole, paused. Sixteen random frames between six and one hundred and thirteen to enable a closer peek. Enjoy!
































{Slowed down, and ready for their close-up.}

+ Lottie Long Legs is following in the footsteps of our dearly departed Percy and marking her New Life journey by participating in the RSPCA's Million Paws Walk this May. We're walking with Lottie to raise awareness and funds for all animals, the great and the small, long-legged or otherwise, and you are most welcome to chart our progress and/or donate to the good cause.

Borrowed and cut.

{Collage from Cutting the Collection, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, digitally printed zine, edition of 100, 2016.}

A love of collage led to a love of ‘collaging’ with words. More specifically, collaging with words about dance. Combining two things I love in the one place, for the time being at least. To me, the means are the same: an image is arranged until it can be ‘read’, until it can communicate something close to what I saw (in the case of dance) or see (in the case of a collage created from ephemera).

Cutting the Collection, a new collaborative zine made with Louise, features treasure found within the digital archives of the Performing Arts Collection. Skimming the surface of their dance, theatre, and circus collections, we harvested digital copies of raged-edged programmes, costume designs, and juggling balls. A mixed bag of images we in some way responded to and thought we could combine within the pages of an A6 zine to be created especially for the forthcoming Melbourne Art Book Fair at the NGV. Chiefly in the role of the fan, whilst also acting as the visually curious, we selected images of Moya and Fred Brown juggling cushions, c.1920s and Patricia Redmond and Owen Laurence performing as ‘Latasha and Laurence’. We collected more than we needed to tell a tale, all the better to whittle away the excess later on in the studio. This was our process. We dug about in the archives and left with a wealth of sepia-toned gems.

In the collages within Cutting the Collection, we have layered two or more elements one atop the other. In echo of the process of creating collages by hand, layers serve to mask or reveal, and all in some way to alter. And so you have illustrated costume designs replete with ruffled collars and long feathers atop photographs of stage sets for musical comedies. At first glance it might appear as though we have blanked out what was once a part of the scene, but the closer you look, the more you will see that the additional silhouettes are from a different period or of a different scale. A circus poster collides with a set from a vaudeville show. Our interest here is shape, yes, but mainly the new story it tells.

Pared back, in this way, whilst making these works we were thinking about the ephemeral nature of dance; the thrill of a live performance and the trace it leaves; notions of recording what was, whilst not ever able to capture or document it fully; and the importance of such collections. The transitory nature of all performance, filtered through our own memory of it or through the imagined memories documented by others before us, in the sense of the earlier material held within the Performing Arts Collection, is something we wish to explore further.

A live performance cannot be siphoned in its entirety into a recording (unless specifically created and/or staged for film). It cannot be ‘relived’ fully just by looking at a piece of staging; the work was beautifully fragmented before the curtain closed. The very idea of something so impossible to harness holds great appeal to us. Serving as an exquisite metaphor of life’s cycle, what occurred on the stage at the very moment can never be seen nor felt again. We are left with trace memories, borrowed or otherwise, with costumes that yellow and fade; we are left with silhouettes that tell a little of what was. This “state of vanishing,” as the choreographer Crystal Pite described, is both powerful and quite tragic.

Working digitally, we were able to cut up precious artefacts, and such temptation we can never refuse. Wish fulfilment! Stop the clock! Rewind!


{Two costume designs, one with gold trims and pink flowers, and the other with green sash and four strands of beads under the chin, by Attilio Comelli for act two from the musical The Girl From Utah, c.1913, upon a photograph of the stage set for the musical comedy Follow Through, 1930 or 1932.}


{Black and white photograph of Patricia Redmond, performing as ‘Latasha,’ upon a poster sign for Holdens Circus’ Saturday Big Matinee, and a black and white photograph of ‘Carter’s’ featuring Patti (Patricia) Redmond and Owen Laurence.}


{Photograph of Mona and Beryl Ferguson in costume for Going Up, 1919, upon a programme for A Tivoli Show presented by the Allied Works Council (Amenities Branch), featuring Jenny Howard, Tibby Roberts, Eddie Marcel, Marie Doran, Percy King, June Holms, the Loretta Twins, Fred Brown, Flannagan, Ted and Flo James, Mavis Reed, 1940.}


{Poster for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Combined Circus featuring Con Colleano, ‘Wizard of the Wire’, United States of America, c.1930s, upon a black and white photograph featuring Ursula Irving and Gordon Girdwood.}


{Costume design, replete with orange sash, silver trims, and light green fan, by Attilio Comelli for act two from the musical The Girl From Utah, c.1913, upon a photograph of the stage set for the musical comedy Follow Through, 1930 or 1932.}

All images borrowed and cut with permission from the Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne. Thank-you for having us.

Kylián, Forsythe, Wheeldon: boundary markers in the geography

{Amber Scott, Lana Jones and Karen Nanasca; Scott and Adam Bull, in Forgotten Land (Image credit: Jeff Busby)}

Vitesse penetrates the heart of being and the beauty of matter through perpetual change in the Australian Ballet’s triple bill and first ballet for 2016. And like its predecessors, 20:21 featuring the choreography of George Balanchine, Tim Harbour, and Twyla Tharp; Chroma featuring choreography by Wayne McGregor, Jiří Kylián, and Stephen Baynes; and Vanguard featuring the choreography of Balanchine, Kylián, and McGregor, our journey is one to spark imagination by presenting the unfathomable as an inexhaustible force.

Especially for Fjord Review, my response to Vitesse, Ballet Without Borders. (Thank-you Penelope. Until next time.)

Vitesse
The Australian Ballet
State Theatre, Melbourne
Monday 14^th March, 2016
Tuesday 15^th March, 2016

Forgotten Land
Choreography: Jiři Kylián
Assistant to the Choreographer: Roslyn Anderson
Music: Benjamin Britten Sinfonia da Requiem
Set and costume design: John F Macfarlane
Original lighting design: Jiři Kylián (concept) Joop Caboort (realisation)
Lighting redesign: Kees Tjebbes
Technical adaptation: Joost Biegelaar

In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated
Choreography: William Forsythe
Repetitieur: Kathryn Bennetts
Music: Thom Willems in collaboration with Lesley Stuck
Set, costume and lighting design: William Forsythe

DGV
Choreography: Christopher Wheeldon
Repetiteur: Jason Fowler
Music Michael Nyman MGV: (Musique à Grande Vitesse)
Set and costume design: Jean-Marc Puissant
Lighting design: Jennifer Tipton reproduced by Jesse Belsky

"... for the only human race to which it is forbidden to sever the bonds of time is the race of those who create art." —Alejo Carpentier, The Lost Steps

In Vitesse, Jiří Kylián is our trusted guide and cartographer, joined by William Forsythe and Christopher Wheeldon. Together they map our course and broaden our understanding of what dance is and can be. In their hands, Vitesse is shown to be a heart, furiously beating, of that there can be no mistake. This is ‘ballet without borders’ where cause and effect relationships are explored and fleeting moments glorified.

A squally wind blows into the theatre, pursued by beat after beat on the timpani. Kylián’s Forgotten Land is set to Benjamin Britten’s symphonic memorial for his parents and dramatic statement on the horrors of war, Sinfonia da Requiem. Beginning with a funeral march, Lacrimosa (Weeping); there is still a sense of hope in this work, namely in the final movement, Requiem Aeternum (Eternal Rest), and in Kylián’s known fluid movement, which affirms "in a wartime context ... that one day there will be peace… And Kylián’s choreography gets inside the essence of the music, even when it’s not interpreting it literally, and he perfectly reflects the moods and implications of the Sinfonia in Forgotten Land."^[i]

Just as humans are altering the landscape to devastating effect, causing Antarctic ice shelves to melt, in Kylián’s hands, we’re not just looking at the landscape but at how we (through the dancers) can carve out and alter a space. And just like weathering a storm, it is never easy to find new ways of being. So whilst the dancers appear battered by wind and try to keep themselves anchored in the face of wild terrain, they, themselves, are actually the forceful energy.

Recalling Edvard Munch’s painting The Dance of Life (1899–1900), there are three distinct periods: youth, in white, full of hope and serenity; red for passion and intensity; black, wise, strong, and determined. Lana Jones beautifully symbolises black’s ‘what will come’ awareness. Heads whip round and recall sea birds buffeted but steadfast in their promenade. With their backs to the audience, the dancers are individual and community, constancy and change, hand in glove. As Amber Scott and Adam Bull make footprints in the eroding coastline, "each footstep is a form of measurement that mediates between [the] body and the landscape"^[ii]: Humans have created the world around them and as such have the power to reshape it. With a melancholy undertow that echo’s Munch’s own lament: "my art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are?"

From seascape to the electronic score by Thom Willems in collaboration with Lesley Stuck, William Forsythe’s In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated at first appears to disturb nature's order. Is there no limitation to the range of actions the human body can perform? Energy unleashed gives the impression of being beyond rule, where in fact the very opposite is true. Discipline and courage, this power is controlled, but the dance, from the audiences’ vantage reads as fantastically chaotic; it is triumphant and in parts downright destructive. Movement appears like hot glass before it sets, and it is the colour of malachite. Hard and brittle, it expands before it shrinks and cools. Glass (like the dancers) has enormous tensile strength.

The beauty of this work is that movements are rooted in the classical. The same building blocks but spun anew! Achieve equilibrium, an interactive balance, or be doomed. Slippage! The potential for danger in the choreography is never far away. And so we have the heel weighted walk as reprieve in the sidelines. To read this as diverging from the formal is to misread turbulence, this is showing us the way things are as organisms collide and evolve. This is physics as materials morph, reshaping dance’s evolution through choreography that lets the audience feel the play, release, and hyperextension of muscles and joints. Fleeting moments, suspended, offering an abundance of shapes both in the positive (dancer) and negative (background) space, and for me it was symbolised by Nicola Curry, Jill Ogai, Valerie Tereschenko, and Alice Topp (on Monday) and Ako Kondo, Kevin Jackson, Robyn Hendricks, and Benedicte Bemet (on Tuesday).*

From here we spin, or rather hurtle, punching holes into the burnished steel of industry as we go, into Christopher Wheeldon’s DGV (Danse à Grande Vitesse). As with Forgotten Land, where the score becomes entwined with movement, the perpetual motion of Michael Nyman’s MGV: (Musique a Grande Vitesse) ensures unity. As the world flies by, the suggestion of changing scenery and train are not separated, but one. Time, whether recalled in Kylián’s poetic dream or shown by Forsythe as a dancer (never just) travelling from A to B, to the linear steam engine of cause and effect is given shape. This symbolic train is moving forward to the present and in turn it refers back to Munch’s cycle of life where we began.

Suspended and swift! In the manmade steel railway of DGV, rapid elevations are forged by human might. The dancers appear directed by their own movement, orientating themselves according to their own senses. A steam of dancers! A mutable image! Just like the capricious coastline of East Anglia. Amy Harris and Andrew Killian, Bemet and Rudy Hawkes, Hendricks and Jackson, and Kondo and Chengwu Guo make themselves chimeras, in the sense of being hybrids capable of mutating shape through movement. Part love letter to the romance of travel and its peculiar intimacy, part high speed blurred landscape, this requires couples and corps de ballet to become greased pistols and cogs. And with two beautiful moments of complete silence to replicate the hush of a tunnel or evoke wifi disconnection, it’s not the destination that’s of importance but the new way of seeing things which travel affords, even in the theatre.

The Vitesse triple bill: an indivisible whole. All three works shown in this manner become interconnected. Dance as "élan, a ‘current’, absolutely distinct from inanimate matter but contending with it, ‘traversing’ it so as to force it into organized form ... it refuses to put life’s essential spontaneity in bondage to any kind of predetermination."^[iii] Disquieting and real, enlightened and inexhaustible, "the world we live in is a revelation that can be 'read', experienced. Everything we experience or are able to experience is significant for itself and for everything." Yes, "the world is my chance/ it changes me every day/ my chance is my poetry."^[iv]

* Inescapable vim, it is infectious! As with all contemporary triple bills, I especially enjoy the egalitarian casting of principals, senior artists, and soloists alongside coryphées and members of corps de ballet.

Notes:
[i] Nicolette Fraillon, 'Music Note,' Sinfonia da Requiem by Benjamin Britten, The Australian Ballet’s Vitesse programme, p. 25
[ii] Michael Auping, 'A Nomad Among Builders,' Places, volume 3, number 4 (1987), pp. 4-7
[iii] Jacques Monod, extract from Le hazard et la nécessité. Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie modern (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970); trans. Austryn Wainhouse, Chance and Necessity, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), pp. 25-33
[iv] Herman de Vries, “the world we live in is a revelation,” in Vittorio Fagone (ed.), Ars in natura (Mazzotta Edizioni: Milano, 1992) as on website

Tinkering with purpose.

 

In my pocket, a forthcoming zine, 'Afternoon of a Hopping Mouse (Notomys mitchellii)' (featuring drawings from a day drawing specimens at @museumvictoria).

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Mar 23, 2016 at 2:03pm PDT

{In my pocket (I)}

 

Move over, Rabbits. Shuffle aside, Chickens. Here come the Potoroos and co from the Melbourne Museum. (Louise's zine, 'Seasonal museum sketches (spring)', is folded, editioned, and ready.)

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Mar 27, 2016 at 2:09am PDT

{In my pocket (II)}

Hurrah! Hurrah! Whether from a sailors' cry when hauling or an alteration of 'huzza', we're excited, neigh chuffed, yip! yip!, to announce that we have a stall again at this year's Melbourne Art Book Fair at the National Gallery of Victoria.

With many new zines planned, in process, or completed, like Louise's Seasonal museum sketches (spring) and my An Afternoon of a Hopping Mouse (Notomys mitchellii), we'll have so much to show you. All this, and we've yet to touch upon the artists' books we'll also be bringing with us. In readiness, all ten copies of Because I Like You, and several unique-state artists' books, are receiving their final polish.





See you there, one and all, see you there, with bells or otherwise. Kicking off on Friday evening, April 29th and running until Sunday the 1st of May, you'd be silly to miss it.

+ Four-hundred zines to fold and then some, on the working table
+ Collating The company you keep in the quiet of the afternoon (#SalvagedRelatives on #theworkingtable)
+ Thank-you to everyone who went to see our work as part of Animal Instinct, but especially to you and you and you
+ In the Museum, tailed
+ Pagination: The Book as Object

Come what may, “I said to myself, keep dancing.”

{Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch's in Nelken (Carnations) (Image credit, top to bottom: Oliver Look, Tony Lewis, Ulli Weiss)}

"Up startled the whole forest in [not] violet fire," but blush of pink, in echo of George Meredith’s spring carpet for Richard Peverel. Where Peverel found a night-time forest floor of bluebells that "drooped glimmeringly" and filled him with “awful rapture,” I found, in Pina Bausch’s piece, Nelken (Carnations), my own prepared forest floor and I gasped. Here now, especially for you and Fjord Review, a little Romance in the Dark.

"Darlin', oh so near," at last. Hold on!

(Thank-you Penelope.)

Nelken (Carnations) (1982)
A piece by Pina Bausch
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch

Festival Theatre
Adelaide, South Australia
as part of Adelaide Festival of the Arts 2016
Thursday 10th March, 2016
Friday 11th March, 2016

3,000 pink carnations standing upright on the stage. A dreamscape! My “spirit rose, …. let it be glory, let it be ruin!”[i]

A flame grew from just a spark
When I found romance in the dark with you.

In the dark, with Tanztheatre Wuppertal Pina Bausch, nature has been brought indoors, and in the process it has changed its makeup. Petals and stems were plastic (all the better to fray the hem of your evening attire, my dear), and unruly wilderness was ordered in near-perfect rows. In this fake field, carnations grow to a uniform height with no colour deviation: flesh incarnations. Pink carnations to say, ‘I’ll be there for you.’ Carnations, artificial or otherwise, the symbol of Bausch’s fascination with love.

My own love affair with the unique humanist core of Bausch began late and unknowingly. Introduced by Pedro Almodóvar in his film, Talk to Her (2002), which featured her performing in her own work with Malou Airaudo, the heart-breaking Café Müller (1978). It was followed by Wim Wenders’ 2011 film Pina, which “after half a year of intensive work, and only two days before the planned 3D rehearsal shoot, the unimaginable happened: Pina Bausch died on June 30th 2009, suddenly and unexpectedly.”[ii] Caught in an exquisite and demanding tribute, within the dark embrace of the cinema my eyes were opened. Film had introduced us, and I was keen for more. Here for the first time in sixteen years, and exclusive to the Adelaide Festival of Arts*, the Australian premiere of Nelken was worth the wait I knew it would be.

In Bausch’s ‘space where we can encounter each other,’ generous as it is confronting, charming as it is unsettling, open as it is restrained, the landscape was raw, private, unblinking, and real. It feels a little like recounting a dream. Also, given Bausch’s apparent "mistrust of words [that] made her rely all the more on her eyes, but in a very particular, unique way of her own. She honed her gaze into an extraordinarily sensitive tool for recognizing and analyzing everything we say and express with our movements and gestures, for everything we reveal about ourselves through them.”[iii] In showing us an “interpretation of our humanity that was wholly new and unexplored," her work "hit[s] us right through the heart." Gesture, her palette.

In Nelken, created in 1982, five years before the Berlin Wall fell, movement was initially imposed as the dancers stepped, almost gingerly, through the artificial wilderness with their armchairs held aloft. As with all her work, it is ‘not how people move, but what moves them,’ and until the suited official that was the achingly elegant Andrey Berezin asked for your ‘passport, please,’ you’ve ‘permission to hop.’ In the transitional space, tangled in dream before you open your eyes, much of Nelken balanced. With its stalking, almost menacing introduction undercut by the jaunty second theme, the East St Louis Toddle-O further emphasised the balancing act Bausch favoured: where happiness can wobble over into sadness, where freedom can tip into a controlled state. As the low clarinet of Duke Ellington and his Orchestra growled the music conjured what Ellington described as "an old man, tired from working in the field since sunup, coming up the road in the sunset on his way home to dinner. He’s tired but strong, and humming in time with his broken gait." Sweetness, in music as on stage, is always undercut with grittiness. Cue: the appearance of four suited officials and their accompanying German Shepherds. In the blink of an eye, an innocent childlike arena revealed itself to be a police state. Beautiful men in beautiful dresses freely tipping themselves in the air in playful hop was now deemed unsuitable: ‘put some decent clothes on.’ The offence: punishable by spanking. Humorous acts have given over to improper and finally now teeter on the edge of shameful and humiliating. For as much as Bausch lets you sit back and marvel at and celebrate beauty, if you slouch too comfortably in your seat, you’ll soon be pulled upright brutally by your collar. You may even find yourself ejected from the theatre altogether. Her infamous gaze continues to be not just on the dancers on the stage; it is also fixed on the audience.

Titillation comes at a price. And nowhere was this better illustrated than in Fernando Suels Mendoza’s "okay, you want to see something?!? You want to see ménage?!? Here. Look! Ménage! Here! Ménage! Ménage! Ménage! Viola! What else do you wanna see!?! I can do anything!" In a black dress with a full skirt, he angrily pounds the stage ‘performing’ for the audience who in turn applaud all the louder. Venezuelan born Mendoza, who has been with Tanztheater Wuppertal since 1995, jetés across the stage in a fury, demanding we, the insatiable audience, take responsibility for the heavy expectations we have placed on the shoulders of performers. With the rough edges of the more challenging components (read: experimental gestures and quiet, unsettling bits) smoothed over, the familiar classical steps soothed the audience like a baby being rocked to sleep. Even if the rocking was being done by an outraged performing seal balancing a ball atop its nose, it didn’t seem to bother those seated around me, rather they lapped it up, calling for more and caring little for the creaks of the performer’s body. A series of chaînés: we could read this language. To me, this brilliantly humorous scene was utterly devastating. Free to interpret the thrust of this scene how I chose, I read this as being about the inevitable fallibility of the human body. Steps become harder and take their toll. The life of a dancer is short and the price their bodies pay is high. This was Mendoza as a symbol of all dancers facing the unforgiving brutality of a body that will one day not be able to perform. Backs’ stiffen, and the 'broken gait' of Ellington awaits us all.

"Most dancers have to stop dancing in their 20s and 30s — it’s not a sustainable lifestyle. That’s something that’s unique about Pina’s work; we have stayed here, and lived our lives as dancers,"[iv] affirms Australian born Julie Shanahan, who joined the company in 1988. At 53, she poured her 33 years of experience into a beautiful moment of heightened, quite literally, scene-stealing. Shanahan climbed atop the shoulders of a fellow male dancer, and magically lengthened her scarlet-red skirt so as to cover his body and reveal only their hairy and muscly calves. She appeared monstrously majestic as she towered over Michael Strecker, challenging his control during a game of Red Light, Green Light. But of course, being in the landscape that is Bausch, we are not just in the playground, but facing up to oppression and persecution, grasping for love, challenging the restraints placed upon freedom. As German born Strecker, who has been with the company since 1997, later fantastically spits at the audience, "this is a complete waste of time. You’re yawning already, and I’ve got sore feet," before hauling a younger and fresher model out on the stage to suggestively peel potatoes to the delicious strains of Billie Holiday. "Better for you; better for me." Four stuntmen in padded suits take to the stage in a tumble in a bid to sate the audience and it works. More fool you.

Encompassing everything from the swaying jubilation of a Brazilian marching band and the xylophone-tinkling Pink Panther (Shades of Sennet) by way of Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, elation always comes laced with sorrow, but above all, hope remains a permanent fixture. Typified by Scott Jennings’ bewitching solo in sign language to Sophie Tucker performing The Man I Love.

Jennings’ drew a smile upon his face using both index fingers. He traced a curve at the bicep for 'strength,' and for 'love,' his arms crossed across his torso, fists closed, making a letter 'x', or was that a kiss. "Just meant for two," his right hand swept forward to hold up his index and middle fingers. Suited and solemn, standing in a field of yearning, he juggled his hands left and right to portray ‘maybe’ and it was as beguiling as it was honest, this picture. "Maybe I shall meet him Sunday," he radiated both palms facing forward in slow circles, like rotations of the sun or washing a spot off the window, and for all the world you wished it so.

Whether permitted to dance on the table top or hunched beneath, I will carry the overwhelming sense of optimism and resilience with me for a long time. Though each performance was technically played the same, Thursday night slapped me across the right check (while rubbing my eyes in chopped onion) and Friday night caressed the left (while giving me a hug), both colouring my dreams ever since. If I close my eyes, I can still see the charming seasonal procession of the dancers weaving to Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five’s West End Blues.

"I became a dancer… because I thought it is easier than speaking."
"…by chance."
"I became a dancer because I fell in love with a dancer."
"I became a dancer… because I didn’t want to be a soldier."

Just as the dancers revealed, with arms in increasingly absurdist fifth position, why they became dancers, in own revelation, I went to see Nelken because of love.

* Bausch’s Australian debut was in Adelaide 35 years ago.

Notes:
[i] George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of Father and Son, (London: Penguin Classics, 1999), p. 42
[ii] Pina, the film by Wim Wenders, ‘About the Movie’
[iii] Wim Wenders’, on 4th of September, 2009, at the memorial ceremony for Pina Bausch in the Wuppertal Opera House
[iv] Julie Shanahan in interview with Alan Brissenden, 'Nelken's Adelaide Connection', The Adelaide Review, 2nd March, 2016

+ Adelaide in clove pink promise

Adelaide in clove pink promise.

{Sign (language) me Ira and George Gershwin's The Man I Love as I perform the four seasons from spring's new shoots to winter's brrr. All the world for 3000 pink carnations.}


{Playing tourist. Waiting for Pina.}


{Minerals organised by colour to appeal.}


{Paw to the glass. A Spinifex hopping mouse (Notomys alexis) pleads for cabinet release.}


{Cool respite, with mummies and amulets. In the museum.}


{From mounted specimens to glorious models, shuffling about in the South Australian Museum, dreaming of new works to make.}


{Never could resist a museum display of the scaled, haired, or feathered. (Lo! I thought I saw a thylacine.)}


{Art Gallery of South Australia, turning on the cloud charm.}


{In awe of the papier-maché mushrooms and fruit models in the beautiful Santos Museum of Economic Botany.}


{A collection of artificial fungi in different stages of growth. The papier-maché models were made in Germany by Heinrich Arnoldi and Co, and are labelled in three categories from edible (blue) to poisonous (red) to harmless (green).}


{Thank-you for your cotton-bud cloud formations and green grass underfoot.}


{The Divided House with divided title on the spine, by Mary Raymond at the library. "Note to subscribers: a fine of 2 cents per day as provided in the Libraries Act will be imposed for the late return of the book"}


{Ocean floor exploration. (2016 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object, Lovers of Neptune's Cabinet, @nellartist's The way of Saint shell, 2009, bronze)}


{flâneur:"a person who walks the city in order to experience it"—Charles Baudelaire}


{Thank-you for revealing the human condition (Gallery 13), unapologetically suspending Berlinde De Bruyckere's monumental We are all flesh, (2011–12) alongside J. W. Waterhouse's painting of Honorius meditatively feeding pigeons as his secretaries wait to discuss matters of state (The favourites of the Emperor Honorius, c. 1883). Thank-you for your seated cow playing Narcissus gazing at her reflection in a puddle (William Ford's Between the showers, at milking time, 1887, above a card table from Hobart, c. 1840).}


{Putting ourselves in the collection (I).}


{Putting ourselves in the collection (II). (Shinto deities (Shinzo), 15th–16th centuries, Usa shrine area, Oita prefecture, Kyushu camphor wood, pigment, ink, and you and me.)}


{From @samstagmuseum by way of @jamfactoryau and the Santos Museum of Economic Botany, back to @artgalleryofsa, we've peered in every crevice of @adelaidebiennial's Magic Object wunderkammer and found it true to premise: artist as conjuror.}


{Farewell Adelaide. Thank-you for your ladies in sun hats before Roger Kemp (Controlled Extension, 1972) and Segantini's nocturnal scene. Thank-you for the music. (St Cecilia: an allegory of music, c. 1650. "I am Music, who in sweet accents can calm each troubled heart ... and now with love, can kindle the most frigid minds.")}


{Tickle my soles. Colour me jewelled. Carnation carnage. Beautiful and brilliant.}

Because of Pina. Because of Carnations, 3000 of them. Adelaide at a glance. Three days, two nights, squeezed. Just for you, until my piece is posted on Fjord Review. From Welcome swallow to bunting roll, I can't wait to share more.

Adelaide playlist, courtesy of Nelken (Carnations)
The Man I Love
Composed by Ira Gershwin and George Gershwin
Performed by Sophie Tucker

String Quartet in D minor — 'Der Tod und  das Mädchen' ('Death of the Maiden')
Composed by Franz Schubert
Performed by Melos Quartet

Sophisticated Lady
Composed by Ellington/Harwick/Brown/Mille
Performed by Duke Ellington and  his Orchestra

Schön Ist Die Welt
Composed by Franz Lehár
Performed by Rudolf Schock and the Berliner Symphoniker

East St. Louis Toddle-O
Composed by Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley
Performed by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra

Shades of Sennet
Composed by Henry Mancini
Performed by Henry Mancini and his Orchestra

West End Blues
Composed by King Oliver
Performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five

Last Night I Dreamed You Kissed Me
Composed by Gus Kahn and Carmen Lombardo
Performed by Lillie Delk Christian with Louis Armstrong and his Hot Four

Pastorinhas
Composed by Noel Rosa and Joao de Barro
Performed by Banda do corpo de Bombeiros do Distrito Federal

Dama das Camelias
Composed by Joao de Barro and Alcyr Pires Vemelho
Performed by Banda do corpo de Bombeiros do Distrito Federal

Malmequer
Composed by Christovao de Alencar and Newton Teixeira
Performed by Banda do corpo de Bombeiros do Distrito Federal

Romance in the Dark
Composed by Sam Coslow and Gertrude Niesen
Performed by Billie Holiday

+ Welcome home
+ How I missed you
+ Truly
+ Lottie's own holiday, drawn I, II, III, IV

In the museum, tailed.

{Drawing from specimens at the Melbourne Museum.}

Mitchell's hopping-mouse (Notomys mitchellii)
Brief description: Long, hopping legs. Large ears. Long tail with tuft of fur at the tip.
Description: Body fur pale brown-red, white underneath. Tail red-brown with a tuft of hair toward the end. Body up to 13 cm, tail up to 16 cm.
Biology: Mitchell's Hopping-mice nest in logs and deep burrows. They eat plants, roots, seeds, fungi and insects.
Habitat: Mallee and dry woodlands.
Native status: Native to Australia
Diet: Omnivore
Colours: brown red
Distribution: Scattered populations across mainland Australia.
Conservation status in Victoria: Near Threatened

Spinifex hopping-mouse (Notomys alexis)
Brief description: A large bicoloured mouse with a long tufted tail and elongated legs adapted to hopping.
Description: The Spinifex Hopping Mouse is large for a mouse and can weigh up to 45 grams. The upper parts are chestnut and the underbelly is very light, almost white. They have large pink ears and a very long tufted tail. A small throat pouch is present on adults. Size is measured as the head-body length.
Biology: This species is nocturnal and lives in groups which construct deep burrow systems with several entrances. They shelter in these burrows during the day. They have a typical omnivorous diet, eating a wide range of plant material, fungi and invertebrates. Breeding can occur year round and a high survival rate in good seasons leads to a boom and bust type population. They can move very fast by hopping on their elongated hind feet.
Habitat: Sandy hummock grasslands and mallee woodlands on loamy soils.
Native status: Native to Australia
Diet: Omnivore
Colours: Brown, white, pink
Distribution: Central Australia
Conservation status in Victoria: Least Concerned

Smoky mouse (Pseudomys fumeus)
Brief description: Dark nose, dark around eyes, dark grey fur.
Description: Body fur soft, dense and dark grey, light grey underneath. Dark nose and dark ring around the eye. Tail long, pink with brown stripe along the top. Body up to 10 cm, tail up to 15 cm.
Biology: Smoky Mice raise their tails up and down when threatened. They eat a variety of seeds, fungi, fruit and invertebrates. They shelter in communal burrows in the ground. Smoky mice were thought to be entirely restricted to Victoria until they were found in the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales in 1986 and 1994, respectively.
Habitat: Sclerophyll forest, heath, sub-alpine and coastal areas.
Native status: Native to Australia
Diet: Omnivore
Colours: brown white
Distribution: Isolated populations in south-eastern mainland Australia.
Habitat types: Terrestrial
Conservation status in Victoria: Endangered

Rakali (Water-rat) (Hydromys chrysogaster)
Brief description: White end on tail, swims in water.     
Description: Extremely dense fur, black to grey above and white to orange underneath. Tail thick and dark, white at the end. Wide, webbed hind feet. Broad face with large whiskers. Body up to 39 cm long
Biology: Water Rats feed on a variety of primarily animal foods including fish, crustaceans, shellfish and some vertebrates. Most active at dusk, but can be active anytime of day. They have been protected since 1938; before then they were killed as a nuisance animal and hunted for their soft fur.
Habitat: Fresh, salt and brackish wetlands.
Native status: Native to Australia
Diet: Carnivore
Colours: brown black yellow
Distribution: Widespread in permanent water bodies of Australia, New Guinea and offshore Islands.
Habitat types: Terrestrial
Conservation status in Victoria: Least Concerned

Infrequent is the glorious chance to draw from specimens up close at the museum. Held quarterly, such hen's teeth drawing opportunities allow for luxurious focus for a whole day (with the only interruption being one's own stamina). On Saturday, together with Louise and my Mum (and a handful of other nature enthusiasts), I was able to draw our requested mounted (read: stuffed) and/or pinned specimens in the quiet hush of the Discovery Centre. With 2B pencil in hand, I was able to soft-shoe shade a sleeping Spinifex hopping mouse, 'paw' over the splendour of the tufty-tailed Mitchell's, ruminate over the nature of a smoky mouse, and marvel at the 'water-mouse with golden belly'. In attendance, an Australian Pied 'peepapeep' oystercatcher (Haematopus longirostris), an Azure kingfisher (Ceyx azureus), and a brilliantly impressive, somewhat quizzical Australian raven (Corvus coronoides), though I didn't have enough time to draw their portraits.

Naturally, I can't wait for the next session.

(On the heels of a conversation with an elderly neighbour who has put rat poison down in her back garden, it feels somewhat disquieting to pop this rodent post up this evening. I am concerned for both the local colony of rats in our patch (one is never far from a rat; I'm well versed in Ratatouille, Brambly Hedge, Anatole et al.; I've 'riverbanked' with Ratty) and also for Misha and Tommy, the local ratters. At my neighbour's hands, a small nest of littles perished, and I can't shake my unrest. I shall try to channel it into the drawings I wish to finish off from the museum the other day. Coming soon your way: a zine dedicated to the rodent!)

+ An Australian raven, Rakali, and a Mitchell's Hopping mouse appear on the page (by @pasadenamansions).
+ From the last time, when Louise drew an Echidna, a Barn owl, and a Potoroo, and my Mum and I decided it was too much fun for us *not* to come along.
+ Earlier, at the museum, researching Pressed Wings.