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frandroidSo I lied (friends-only). I'm used to giving up easily on challenges, so the only thing I can do now is giving up on giving up.
One benefit of having a mind unencumbered by sri sri filters is that I let emotions run over me like reucurring tidal waves. Cases in point:
1) We went to see Le nombre d'or (Live) on Sunday (here's a video excerpt, if you want to get a sense of its texture). We had seen Marie Chouinard's bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS a few years ago, which was good, but admittedly F remembers more of it than I can. All you need to know: Marie Chouinard runs a pretty damn good contemporary dance company with a side of raunch.
(SPOILER ALERT, MARIE CHOUINARD, THE GOLDEN MEAN)
So it was pretty exciting to see this performance. It started with its cool-looking mid-century over-sized office lamps, its ephemeral half-clothed dancers gallivanting about, sexy floating indistinguishable yada yadda dancers, and then 10 minutes in, the whole troupe turns into a bunch of lascivious Stephen Harpers, strutting the stuff, rubbing against each other. Talk about disbelief crashing down from its suspension hooks!! Eventually the performance went back to itself, and there were many other interesting vignettes: similarly oversized flat printed masks turning the whole troupe into babies; a stuttering, blonde-wigged indigenous android#; masks turning the whole troupe into a gaggle of elderly folks; etc.
Chouinard designed the masks herself, and there were more that were interesting. The main mask worn by the performers under their other masks constituted of a long masquerade-style skin-coloured face top, backed by a short-cropped, bleached blonde wig. Some of them went all the way down to encompass the upper lip. The eye cuts gave everyone a vaguely Asian look, but more importantly, erased part of everyone's indentity so the dancers kind of blended into each other.
Three things really bothered me about this performance:
eh) Its unbearable whiteness of being
too) Its unbearable straightness of being
free) The maskless, solo performance that Chouinard gave later during the show. Her lack of mask was so jarring, it broke suspension of disbelief a second time, and this time there was clearly no other purpose than Chouinard just showing off. That was a big letdown.
She did make it up with another dancer that got on stage halfway through her solo, in the background but fascinating: Imagine a person with four faces around their head, and all of these faces are Anonymous-style masks. You pretty can never tell which face is the front one, esp. as they kept brusquely rotating their face at 90° turns every few seconds. When other dancers joined the scene, they started kissing another dancer, switching which face would kiss every few seconds or so. My mind, totally blown.
Overall, I quite enjoyed myself. However, during the Stephen Harper bit the dancers slapped themselves and took hard steps in unison a few times, and I got brought back to Orwell's 1984. I spent some minutes pondering us developed-country citizens as all complicit party members. It was unpleasant.
#: Your interpretation may vary
(SPOILERS END HERE)
2) I went to see Retox at Sneaky Dees. Retox is fronted by Justin Pearson from The Locust. If you know The Locust, you have a sense of the insanity that prevailed, sans organ. Just like The Locust, it was a short, tight set, but really intense. Before them was Foxmoulder, with a similar sound, from Toronto. Also pretty awesome. Once I put my glasses in a safe place I was spazzing out in front of the stage. Motionless Toronto crowds, you fucking suck. YOU SUCKK.
Anyway, I really got into both shows, in a way I would have not quite done so until recently. That was pretty good. Now I just have to keep the rage and personal attacks in check.
One benefit of having a mind unencumbered by sri sri filters is that I let emotions run over me like reucurring tidal waves. Cases in point:
1) We went to see Le nombre d'or (Live) on Sunday (here's a video excerpt, if you want to get a sense of its texture). We had seen Marie Chouinard's bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS a few years ago, which was good, but admittedly F remembers more of it than I can. All you need to know: Marie Chouinard runs a pretty damn good contemporary dance company with a side of raunch.
(SPOILER ALERT, MARIE CHOUINARD, THE GOLDEN MEAN)
So it was pretty exciting to see this performance. It started with its cool-looking mid-century over-sized office lamps, its ephemeral half-clothed dancers gallivanting about, sexy floating indistinguishable yada yadda dancers, and then 10 minutes in, the whole troupe turns into a bunch of lascivious Stephen Harpers, strutting the stuff, rubbing against each other. Talk about disbelief crashing down from its suspension hooks!! Eventually the performance went back to itself, and there were many other interesting vignettes: similarly oversized flat printed masks turning the whole troupe into babies; a stuttering, blonde-wigged indigenous android#; masks turning the whole troupe into a gaggle of elderly folks; etc.
Chouinard designed the masks herself, and there were more that were interesting. The main mask worn by the performers under their other masks constituted of a long masquerade-style skin-coloured face top, backed by a short-cropped, bleached blonde wig. Some of them went all the way down to encompass the upper lip. The eye cuts gave everyone a vaguely Asian look, but more importantly, erased part of everyone's indentity so the dancers kind of blended into each other.
Three things really bothered me about this performance:
eh) Its unbearable whiteness of being
too) Its unbearable straightness of being
free) The maskless, solo performance that Chouinard gave later during the show. Her lack of mask was so jarring, it broke suspension of disbelief a second time, and this time there was clearly no other purpose than Chouinard just showing off. That was a big letdown.
She did make it up with another dancer that got on stage halfway through her solo, in the background but fascinating: Imagine a person with four faces around their head, and all of these faces are Anonymous-style masks. You pretty can never tell which face is the front one, esp. as they kept brusquely rotating their face at 90° turns every few seconds. When other dancers joined the scene, they started kissing another dancer, switching which face would kiss every few seconds or so. My mind, totally blown.
Overall, I quite enjoyed myself. However, during the Stephen Harper bit the dancers slapped themselves and took hard steps in unison a few times, and I got brought back to Orwell's 1984. I spent some minutes pondering us developed-country citizens as all complicit party members. It was unpleasant.
#: Your interpretation may vary
(SPOILERS END HERE)
2) I went to see Retox at Sneaky Dees. Retox is fronted by Justin Pearson from The Locust. If you know The Locust, you have a sense of the insanity that prevailed, sans organ. Just like The Locust, it was a short, tight set, but really intense. Before them was Foxmoulder, with a similar sound, from Toronto. Also pretty awesome. Once I put my glasses in a safe place I was spazzing out in front of the stage. Motionless Toronto crowds, you fucking suck. YOU SUCKK.
Anyway, I really got into both shows, in a way I would have not quite done so until recently. That was pretty good. Now I just have to keep the rage and personal attacks in check.