beyonce is sacred.

on saturday i drove up to seattle for the antony & the johnsons show. i went with a murder of lesbians; audrey, rebecca and erin. we met up before the show at the whisky bar across the street from the moore. there we met the nicest kebab guy you’ll ever meet and took a small batch bourbon flight. it would have been a great experience if i had any idea which bourbon was which. the bartender just handed me four glasses, said “that’s a good tray of bourbon”, and turned to the next patron.

johanna constantine opened with two short dance pieces, johanna is a long time friend of antony’s.  i was hoping that she would amaze me, but it wasn’t her night.  johanna seemed crowded on the stage with all the instruments, i think she would have done better on a blank stage. the lighting could have helped by darkening the back of the stage, so you couldn’t see all the instruments. i found it hard to focus on her. i would love to see one of her shows. i imagine her on a black stage with a single light would be striking. also a live soundtrack, or perhaps vinyl played live.

the show was great, not my favorite antony performance, but still a capital evening. i blame the venue and not antony for it not being perfect. antony & the johnsons seemed in high spirits and pretty relaxed for being on tour, i wondered if they picked up some pot up in vancouver the night before. antony’s voice was fantastic and of course the crowd loved him. antony stayed behind the piano all night, and  the johnson’s all played brilliantly and looked very dapper. all of antony & the johnson’s songs now mean so much more to me since my mother’s passing, especially the songs off the crying light. it was all i listened to in december and january, i can argue that all the song were really written about me, my mother, and the tenuous relationships i have with my family.  i was excited to hear “her eyes are  underneath the ground”, which really isn’t as morbid of a song as the title suggests , and “aeon” the most. both songs were amazing, “her eyes” was subtle beauty and “aeon” was wonderfully soulful. “shake that devil” turned out to be quite the roof raiser live.  another  a big surprise for me was how much i liked the live version of “the crying light”. on the album this song, while beautiful, comes off a little whiny. the live rendition was different, with hints of desperation and longing. the set was centered around the new album, we got a treat when he played “i was young when i left home”. this is a traditional song that bob dylan used to sing, antony recorded a version available on the dark was the night compilation. he said he just wanted to give it a try. he sang with only rob moose playing guitar, and it was remarkable. once again, he performed his cover of beyonce’s “crazy in love”. i love this cover, and this was my first time seeing it non-orchestral. the arrangement was more drum heavy, and antony snapped his fingers. afterward someone in the audience yelled “fuck beyonce” and he quipped “why would you say that”…”beyonce is sacred”.  like all antony & the johnsons shows, it went by too quick.

the reason for this not being a perfect show, comes from where we were sitting. we had great seats just not acoustically perfect. i don’t really think that is was a sound man issue, the acoustics were against us. antony was often drowned out by the instruments. so i couldn’t fully connect to the performance as i have in the past.

the setlist.

where is my power
her eyes are underneath the ground
epilepsy is dancing
one dove
for today i am a boy
kiss my name
everglade
another world
shake the devil
crazy in love
you are my sister
fistful of love
i was young when i left home
twilight
aeon
cripple and the starfish
hope there’s someone

walk it out, walk it out.

i am wallowing in a pit of bad reality shows right now. even top chef is boring me. i’m glad that the third season of america’s best dance crew starts tomorrow. the two seasons of abdc that aired last year gave me some of the biggest television moments. this show is a natural extension of my love of dance movies. mainly i like that the crews get creative challenges and do all their own choreography. season one was all about kaba modern, and season two was all about fanny pak. you can watch all of the fanny pak performances here. i strongly recommend the speakerphone and get ur freak on performances, but they are all great.
neither of my favorites ended up winning. maybe i should start voting?

can you do all sixteen dances?

someone on justonestar mentioned the b-52’s so i decided to troll youtube for videos. it’s hard not to be in a good mood while listening and watching to the b-52’s. here are some of the treasures.

“rock lobster” live in early eighties.

“mesopotamia” live in 1982

“song for a future generation”, “whammy kiss”, and “butterbean” on a uk tv show in 1983

“dance this mess around” from germany in 1983

lets ghettoize the arts.

settle in kids, this is gonna be a long one.

i think that PICA’s TBA festival is far enough behind me now that i can finally look back on it without being exhausted. thanks to keight, who brought me along to many of last years TBA events, i wanted to hit up as many of this years shows as possible. i spent a good amount of time looking at the schedule and doing math. the TBA guide became my bible for two weeks, i didn’t mind, there was a beautiful picture of antony on the cover.

morgan, cheryl and i went to the opening night part at leftbank, where the PICA’s after hours program called the works were all held. none of us are really good at the mingling thing so we mainly wandered around the building checking out the art and talking. there were a couple of performances first was deelay ceelay, a audio visual group comprised of two drummers and a producer, the visuals were produced earlier and projected onto a screen behind them. they were pretty good, reminiscent of don caballero and battles. unfortunatly they were playing when we got there so we weren’t paying that much attention. instead we spent too much time looking at the installation works in the basement. which we all agreed was kind of mess. the biggest piece was big skin by lizzie fitch. the installation took up a large room and there was a path that led you through what seemed ,to me anyway, to tell the story of  a little girl going through life. the piece was not successfull at all, there were plastic cast of body parts everywhere and far too much ikea furniture. it didn’t really seem like there was much planning or intent with the layout, it really needed a more editorial eye. in the gallery space there were some sculptures by corey lunn, these were better but not great, i don’t think that they really worked with the surroundings. we tried to watch some of the video pieces, but the small rooms were too crowded and stuffy. underwhelmed by the art we went back upstairs to see the sloppy mishmash of the flash choir, a large vocal group that just didn’t work right. we left thankful that it was a free event.

the next night after the amazing antony show we went back to leftbank for the neal medlyn live experience. i was looking forward to a performance artist’s redition of the beyonce live experience dvd, while doing my research for TBA i read many great reviews of his perfromance in nyc. i watched the beyonce dvd awhile ago and found it to be quite spellbinding, in a r kelly/trapped in a closet kind of way, so it is ripe for parody. when we got to leftbank it was packed and had a strong funk of body odor. neal medlyn was already performing and were turn off almost immediately. he and his backup dancers were fully commited to the horrible karaoke, but there was no real show. it was just a “look at me and how weird i can be” thing. we were expecting more of a spectacle. after neal medlyn was done someone named ice rod performed, a white rapper rapping about art school and the suburbs. bad bad bad bad. the whole night was just a level of irony that i am not okay with. it was almost to a point of brainwashing the hipster masses, who seem to  enjoy it not because they liked it but because they felt that had to.

on a beautiful sunday morgan and i met up with caleb down at the sw waterfront discovery center, which is a show room for all the condo towers that are going up on the waterfront right now. we were there to see a performance by the sojourn theater called built, we had no idea what we were in for. after we checked in we were brought to a table and asked to set up a street using cards with businesses on them, we had to decide which we want close to us and which should be far away. then we were ushered to one of the display kitchens and met our tour guide. he started talking about community and how the new developments are going to affect the future of community. the tour was interrupted by a small dance which had the various tour guides acting out getting ready for entertaining and going to other kitchens to be entertained. after the skit the kitchen groups were brought into an office and were asked to combine our streets into a community with they other members. so of course the business you don’t want to be next too ends up being next to your neighbor. one of the group almost threw down with caleb over where the art should be fuming “why do you want to ghettoize the arts?”  after that there was a short monologue and another performance about being new in the neighborhood and acceptance. we were again brought into a office and combined with another group to set up a metropolitan city using our previously set up communities. the highlight was a tightrope performance about the difficulties of choosing and buying a house, the movements and dialogue were on point. the performance ended with tour guides asking about the perfect community and screaming out the answers while someone did their best to draw the plan up as fast as she could. it was a very effective performance.

on monday afternoon cheryl, caleb and i gathered at the winningstad theater for the tiago guedes performance materiais diversos. he started out a bit slow basically moving around the stage with out any music, only the sounds of his own feet. we could tell that his movements were precise and planned but not really sure why. then he laid down on the floor and slowly pull a chair to him, on the chair were some various materials (get it?). with those materials he repeat the same movement only this time we could see that the movements had meaning. he built a landscape, a river and finally an ocean. we never really figured out the point of the performance other than the whimsy of it all maybe he also wanted to make a statement about patience, the first fifteen to twenty minutes of silent mime was a bit of a challenge. by the end though his performance turned into quite of visual piece that we all enjoyed.

later that night i went to leftbank by myself for a show by ethan rose. i have never heard of him, the TBA guide made him sound right up my alley though. the description mentioned musique concrete, found sounds, and soundscapes, i knew i would like it. like most sound artists he started slowly layering samples with a piano, a modified autoharp and a harmonica. then he slowly tweaked them on his mixing board and added some vocal samples. when he was done constructing he let the soundscape swirl to a climax and left the audience fairly stunned.

two nights later morgan and i were back at leftbank to see nollifur, another person we had not heard of but sounded good on the page. before nollifur played a group called french fry and root beer played. as a whole they weren’t that good, but i thought that their lead guitarist and drummer should really strike out on their own. the other two members seem to drag them down. nollifur was great though, dancey electro pop with a slight experimental edge that i could appreciate. he also had a smart and very well choreographed video projected onto the large screen behind him. it made me sad that he played to half the crowd that the first band did.

on friday night i again met up with cheryl and caleb at the imago theater for a performance by philippe quesne/vivarium studio called l’effet de serge. this was a charming piece all about social awkwardness. it centered on serge who likes to put on little shows for his friends, only it seems that serge does not have very good conversation skills. the show seemed to take a cue from the office, awkward silences and rather real characters. the little shows he put on were quirky, funny and rather minimal. in one he choreographed a remote control box and in another it was flashing car lights on and off. this offbeat performance was great and i hope to get to see them again someday. pictures were forbidden so these aren’t my picture’s, i got them from the PICA photostream on flickr.

after the performance we went to my apartment, where morgan was waiting for us, and killed time eating chocolate coconut bliss and pound cake. we then went to leftbank (we were pretty sick of the place by this point) for a night called our hit parade. it was suppose to be various artists reinterpreting the current music charts. the night was hosted by kenny mellman and neal medlyn. we were not that excited about it after the previous weeks beyonce experience. this wasn’t much better. some of them did okay, but for the most part it came off as bad karaoke. we spent time in the basement watching the videos that we couldn’t watch the week before. cheryl and i went back upstairs in time to catch the two of the better acts. one was an interpretive dance done to m.i.a.’s “paper planes”, a performance that wouldn’t of been out of place at burning man. the other was an operatic version of rihanna’s “disturbia”, which i was loving till the singer stopped and ranted about how stupid america is then sang his own parody called “suburbia”. i could go on about his rant but for some reason he really angered me with his rather uninformed opinion and unnecessary hatred of pop music. after that the evening really went downhill with neal medlyn stripping to a miley cyrus song, and a bad duet from a bad disney movie. we fled the venue as soon as it was over.

the last TBA event was the city dance of lawrence and anna halprin. in the early seventies portland opened a series of fountains designed by lawrence halprin. his wife anna was a pioneering choreographer of modern dance. using anna halprin’s choreography, all four of lawrence halprin’s portland sequence parks, the third angle new music ensemble, and what seemed to be every dancer portland has to offer they took us on a two hour tour through downtown. starting at the keller fountain with a group of dancers wearing light blue and white, they started at the top of the fountain and slowly descended for a small group performance. that is when this segment dragged the most, wallowing in the modern dance swishy cliches. then they ascended the fountain again before a bell rang telling us to move to the next next park, pettygrove park. i couldn’t find a good picture of the park, so just imagine the teletubby’s land, lots of small mounds. this segment was a much looser piece, and by far the most boring. the group of orange dressed dancers went from mound to mound chanting vaguely new ageish sayings. the park’s design was not meant for performance and the sight lines were horrible, so for the most part i zoned out and listened to the music, till the bell rang and they corralled us to the next stop, the lovejoy fountain. this was my favorite part of the program. the yellow dressed dancer used all parts of the fountain it really interesting ways, they did lots of separate pieces and did interesting things with upside down cups of water. this was also the only segment that seemed natural, not forced, with the music. i was a little sad when the bell rang. we were led down a narrow path and asked to hold hands and circle around the source fountain. it was all a bit much for me, as most of you know i am not big on the touching, especially with strangers. i haven’t mentioned the music yet, the music was the best part of the whole performance. the third angle new music ensemble did a fantastic job interpreting pieces by morton subotnick, pauline oliveros, and terry riley. all composers that approach music the same way that a painter would approach a painting.

on the way home we stopped by the paintallica gallery that was set up in the bottom of a large condo development near our house. the show was made up entirely of found objects and seemed to have a slightly native american bent to it. the separate works didn’t really do that much for us but as a whole it made a statement that we agreed with.

Thanks to PICA for making me exhausted for a week, maybe next year i can afford to take some time off to make it to all the events. they do need to step up the events at the works next year though, enough with irony.

with all the feathers.

i have long been a fan of dance movies, which i (and i’m sure others) often refer to as danceploitations. it probably started with girls just want to have fun, i remember watching that repeatedly. i have never really had many people to watch danceploitations with, here in portland though i have found a group of people. the group gathered recently to watch step up 2: the streets. i’ve never seen the first step up, i have never been a fan of balletsploitations, they tend to be more romantic and less about dance numbers.

when the trailers for step up 2 starting airing i knew it was going to be good, after failing to mobilize the group to see it in theaters we finally got to see it on dvd. wow, what a great danceploitation. at times they try a little to hard to inject a plot, but the dance numbers more than make up for the clunky forced plot.

especially this number, which is the fantastic final number, so if you plan on watching the movie you might not want to watch this.

everyones favorite character in the movie was moose, played by adam sevani. when i was looking for clips of this movie i came upon an interesting online battle between miley cyrus, her friend mandy and adam sevani teamed up with jon chu (the director of step up 2). i don’t really understand anything miley cyrus related and her part of the dance battles are horrible. miley and mandy head up the m&m cru, while adam and jon have the acdc. i won’t torture you with all the videos but the second acdc video has some pretty good dancing.

the acdc comback.

the midly comical final battle, that took place on some awards show that i have never heard of.

a diverse saturday.

this past saturday i had a pretty interesting day full of free activities. the first was the red bull flugtag. i had no idea how popular that event was, apparently there was over 80,000 people there. who knew that watching people push things off a pier would draw such a crowd. jamie, her roommate jesse and i got there about half an hour after it started and it was almost hopeless to find a spot that we could see. after a little searching we found a space where we could see bits and peices of the pier and the large screen. we watched about ten or so “human powered crafts” fall into the water. mostly we were amused by the horribly stupid skits that the teams would perform before pushing their crafts into the water. after that got old and the crowd became too frustrating we left.

after leaving the flugtag we said goodbye to jesse, jamie and i hopped on the streetcar and headed down the the sw waterfront for the ten tiny dances walkabout. the ten tiny dances set up ten performances all around the sw waterfront neighborhood with each performance lasting eight minute and starting at fifteen minutes intervals.

the first one we saw was call “wet?” by POV Dance. it was alright, a little to yogaish for me. i was impressed by the strength and grace of the two performers as they dangled and lifted themselves and each other over and around the railings and small fountain that was used as their space.

after meeting up with iris and isaac we watched “finding foundation” by KO&Co. five people using a four foot cube frame to perform around. i thought that the concept was interesting and the arrangements were good, it was just a little sloppy and a bit unfocused. i’d be interested to see a longer performance from them.

we then moved into a loading dock where the hand2mouth theater was doing “project x”. this was an interesting performance that had the audience filling out a questionnaire while the troupe sort of acted like cheerleaders prompting the crowd. i thoroughly enjoyed this one; it was amusing and informative. it reminded of the vis-a-vis society performance (look here under april 9th) i saw in seattle a while back. i’m definitely going to check the full show in a couple of weeks at milepost 5.

sojourn theatre’s “built: prologue 3″ was next.  this was part of a bigger performance that was started in a workshop earlier in the week. two people acting out a courtship in the kitchen, the backyard, the wood, a fountain and several other places. it was by far the most linear performance of the day, and one i’ll remember.

we then made our way over to a large dirt lot for two performances. first was “lack of current” by hot little hands. i really appreciated that they thought about the starkness of the environment and produced a slow and pensive performance with a slow drum beat and a single woman with a unique outfit that involved a set of antlers under the skirt. i would like to see more from them.

the second lot performance was by rhiza A+D. billed as “architect’s draw”, when the performance started we were told that we about to see “telephone sketch #2″. we watched four construction workers walk across the lot where one of them strapped on a wooden frame with pink twine unfurling from the shoulder. one worker guided two other while they hammered posts and twisted the twine around them. when they were done they were left with a landscape off telephone poles with pink wires. it was certainly the most conceptual piece of the day. isaac said that it was “oddly satisfying” and i have to agree. it was the only performance that left something behind and caused the most discussion.

the final performance we saw was another one of the sojurn theatre’s “built: prologues”, i don’t remember which number it was though. this time there were four women, with one of the searching for acceptance. at home we’ve been watching mad men, and this performance reminded me of the divorced neighbor’s struggle to belong in sixties suburbia. that piece could be expanded on for a whole show about the desire to belong. something everyone can understand.

we were all performanced out by this point, and we were starving, so we went to bambuza, a vietnamese place in the sw waterfront. all off us ordered vegetarian dishes and ended up get the pork equivalents. also iris ordered her pho without cilantro, yet it came covered with it. once we all got the right dishes it was all delicious. i would totally go back for the food, i just hope the have the service issues sorted out.

thanks to jamie, jesse, iris and isaac for accompanying me on that interesting and entertaining day of free events.

indoor summer activities.

mad men : set in the sixties with dashing men in sexy suits and women in torpedo bras. also its a damn good show, somewhat reminiscent of the good seasons of six feet under. we are in the middle of the first season, trying to catch up since the second season already started. this show really makes me want to drink scotch.

picture from vanity fair

eureka : the second season of this somewbuhat cheesy sci fi show is just out on dvd. while this show is far from perfect, it has a very quirky buffyness about it. and i have a bit of a crush on jack carter.

americas’s best dance crew : since watching this show i have become an authority on dance crews. i’m rooting for fanny pack. i recommend following the link this youtube video dosen’t do them justice.

project runway : the last season of on bravo. i loves me some project runway. hands down the best reality show that will ever exist.

wall-e : utterly charming, amazingly grand in scope, i almost cried (people were crying all around us).

the dark knight : i liked it more than batman begins, but all i can say is “meh”.

they smashed it.

the second episode of america’s best dance crew was a little boring.  due to too much product product placement in the announcements and introductions (thanks tivo) the performances are still too short.  i’m looking forward to when the group’s can do longer performances.

iconic – still my favorite, despite this somewhat unoriginal performance, i loves me some broadway influence. they have to work on their costumes though.

kaba modern – they are the obvious winners, by far the most together group

jabbawockeez – i hate the masks, but i give them credit for staying so in sync.

quick edits ruin everything.

mtv’s new reality show america’s best dance crew appeals to me on the same level as cheersploitation films, and they throw in the reality show elimination fun.  of course mtv has to ruin it with quick edit and too short dance numbers.  the judges are jc chasez from nysnc, lil mama a hip hop “superstar”, and shane sparks, a choreographer, who i only know because he was on so you think you can dance.  the host is mario lopez, i’m happy that someone who started out as the drummer on kids incorporated has made it so far in life, and doing more than staring in made for the hallmark channel movies. don’t ask me why i know that.

the redeeming value is that the crews choose the music and choreograph their own numbers.

my favorite crews

iconic – bob fosse set to hip hop.

kaba modern – just plain good

status quo – they danced to marky mark!

i don’t like this group, but i feel i should post them because they’re on roller skates.
breaksk8