Ow Challenged My Senses on Four Sides
Friday, July 06, 2018
On Wednesday July 4th I attended a preview performance of
the Mascall Dance Company’s Ow.
It was at their headquarters on Jervis 1130 Jervis Street.
Owe was performed in a large room (I was disappointed to not see the wonderful
maize on the floor) in an unusual theatre on the round (not quite as there were
four sides). I chose the side that had the video man, thinking he might know
something. The fact is that just about any side was good.
During the 60 minute performance (there are 7 more including
the one tonight as I write this on July 7 ) I attempted to count how many
dancers were present. I had to call to find out that there were 19 in all.
Central to Ow were Billy Marchenski and Molly McDermott. I
also spotted that contact improv wonder, Anne Cooper.
I am not a dance critic, if anything I am an amateur dance
aficionado who has been seeing a lot of dance since 1991. I even remember
seeing a Maypole dance performed by a pre-John Alleyne Ballet BC. I could not
believe it! A lot of stuff has happened since then and I would affirm that Vancouver has an avant-garde dance scene with no maypoles in the horizon.
Since then I have seen a lot of work some of it difficult as
was Chick Snipper’s
Slab performed at the Cultch by three dancers not wearing a
stitch of clothing (Anne Cooper was one of them).
While watching Ow I thought of Jennifer Mascall a woman with
a gentle and inviting voice who is gracious and is (in my books) very classy.
And yet this is the choreographer, who sometime back, had a dance performance
that included a dancer swimming in a swimming pool.
Mascall cannot be pinned down and her works are never
boring.
Owe was not but it was also challenging. The
dancers seemed to be uttering words that appeared to be a manufactured language.
The sound was courtesy of Stefan Smulovitz. The write-up on the Ow site
explains that the work is a melding of sound with movement. And he did finish with some Piazzolla that pleased me lots.
But to me there was more. I spotted a smart phone held by
one of the dancers. There was a lot of tension between Marchenski and
McDermott. Perhaps Ow has all to do with human interaction, when explored how we
move and how we speak. I am not sure if Marchenski and McDermott resolved their differences in communication at the end.
During the performance I remembered the first time I went to
see the punk group the Subhumans perform and in particular two of their signature
tunes, Fuck You! and Slave to My Dick. I was in a state of shock by the blast
of loud sound shaking my ears and the rest of my body. When I left I felt
shattered and numb.
Now when I listen to my Subhuman records I have to state
here that while they don’t sound like Chopin they do not shock and I may even
hum along.
I believe that Mascall’s Ow is something along the lines of
those Subuman performances. Time will tell. Time will soften the work. Time
will eventually bring me that aha! moment and I will understand.
Until then watching Ow in that four-sided room is
challenging but it is a performance that will linger in my memory.
Mascall has been around and the proof of that is that I
spotted both Karen Jamieson and Judith Garay. I wonder what they thought of
Ow?
The Topanga Café & East Coker
Thursday, July 05, 2018
 |
| Eaton's/Sears |
extrañar
Del lat.
extraneāre 'tratar como a un extraño'.
1. tr.
Sentir la novedad de algo que usamos, echando de menos lo que nos es habitual.
No he dormido bien porque extrañaba la cama.
2. tr.
Echar de menos a alguien o algo, sentir su falta. Lloraba el niño extrañando a
sus padres.
3. tr.
Desterrar a país extranjero. U. t. c. prnl.
4. tr.
Ver u oír con admiración o extrañeza algo. U. m. c. prnl.
5. tr. Afear, reprender.
6. tr. p. us. Apartar, privar a alguien del trato y comunicación que se tenía con él. U.
t. c. prnl.
7. tr. desus. Rehuir, esquivar.
8. prnl.
Rehusarse, negarse a hacer una cosa.
Diccionario
de la Real Academia Española
Above is the Spanish definition of extrañar or to miss. The origin of the word is from Latin and it
means to treat as a stranger. Somehow
extrañar is more powerful in its pathos than the English equivalent to miss.
It is patently evident that one misses that which is
gone. It can be a temporary one as when my Rosemary flies to Prince Edward
Island with our two daugthers in a few weeks. I will miss her.
Vancouver is, I believe, a city where its inhabitants
take stuff for granted until what they take for granted is gone. Vancouverites
will tell you of the two previous incarnations of the Hotel Vancouver, of
Eatons before it moved to what became Sears and now is Nordstrom.
I often feel like a bird in migration not being quite
sure if the landmark I pass by is one that replaced a previous one. I can drive
on Richards and Davie and see in my mind the former building that housed
Vancouver Magazine and Western Living.
Vancouver is well known for keeping parts of inimitable
places. So the sign that advertised the Smilin Buddha is kept somewhere. This
somehow is supposed to calm our unsettling reaction to inevitable change.
And so there are all those city dwellers decrying the
burning down yesterdayof the Topanga Café on 4th.
I went there once with my friend Marv Newland. Since I
lived in Mexico for many years I found the California version of Mexican dishes
there not memorable and I never returned.
It is interesting to note that topanga is a Native-American
term for where the mountain meets the sea. The name of the restaurant, then was
most appropriate.
Seeing the hole left by the fire reminds me of being
invited for a barbecue lunch by broadcaster Jack Webster in his home on Salt Spring
Island. He started his charcoal fire with cedar shingles commonly used in BC
for roofing.
What is curious about the fire is that yesterday I went
to Macleod’s Books and purchased T.S.
Eliot – The Complete Poems and Plays –
1909 – 1950. I bought it because it contains my favourite Four Quartets.
One of them, East Coker, the second one, begins thusly:
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur, and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent
motto.
The picture of Jo-Ann on the roof of my former studio on Robson and Granville came about my missing the hot sun of Mexico and of Edward Weston's photograph of Tina Modotti on the roof of his house in Mexico City.
Un Azul Para Marte - José Saramago
Wednesday, July 04, 2018
 |
| Andrea en azul |
Me encanta poder encontrar algo escrito para acompañar mis fotos. Me gustan las poesias de Jorge Luís Borges, Julio Cortázar, Emily Dickinson y Homero Aridjis. Aunque algo sé de escribir no tengo el talento necesario para idear algo que al menos seacomparable con mi foto. He agotado el azul con los poetas ya mencionados. Hoy encontré, en un rincón inesperado, un cuentito de ciencia ficción de José Saramago sobre la falta del azul y otros colores en Marte.
Un Azul
para Marte
José
Saramago
Anoche
hice un viaje a Marte. Pasé allí diez años (
si la
noche dura en los polos seis meses,
no sé
por qué no
han de caber
diez años en una noch
e marciana)
y tomé muchas
notas
sobre la
vida que allí
llevan. Me comprometí
a no d
ivulgar los
secretos de los
marcianos,
pero voy
a faltar a mi palabra. Soy hombre y deseo
contribuir,
en la medida de mis escasas
fuerzas,
al progreso de la humanidad a la que enorg
ullece
pertenecer. Este punto es muy,
muy importante.
Y espero, si
algún día los
marciano
s me
vienen a pedir
cuentas de mis
actos,
es decir, del perjuicio cometido, que los no
sé cuantos billones de hombres y mujeres
que hay
en la tierra se apresten, todos, a mi defen
sa. En
Marte, por ejemplo, cada marciano
es responsable
de todos los
marcianos. No estoy
seg
uro de
haber entendido bien
qué
quiere decir
esto, pero mientras
estuve allí (y fue
ron diez
años, repito), nunca
vi que un
marciano se
encogiera de hombros.
(He de aclarar
qu
e los
marcianos no tiene
hombros,
pero seguro
que el lector
me entiende.) Otra
cosa q
ue me
gustó en Marte
es que no hay
guerras. Nunca
las hubo. No
sé como se
las arreglan
y
tampoco ellos supieron
explicármelo; quizá
porque yo no fui capaz
de aclar
arles qué
es una guerra,
según los
patrones
de la tierra. Hasta cuando les mostré dos
animales
salvajes luchando (también los
hay en
Marte), con grandes
rugidos y dentelladas
si
guieron sin
entenderlo. A todas
mis
tentativas de
explicación por analogía,
respondían
que los
animales son animales
y los
marcianos son
marcianos. Y desistí.
Fue la única
ve
z que
casi dudé de
la inteligencia de
aquella
gente. Con todo, lo que más me desorientó e
n Marte
fue el no saber qué era campo
y qué
era ciudad. Para un terrestre eso es una expe
riencia
muy desagradable, os lo aseguro.
Acaba
uno por habituarse, pero se tarda. Al fin, ya
no me causaba extrañeza alguna ver un
gran hospital
o un gran
museo o una
gran universida
d (los
marcianos tienen esto,
como
nosotros) en
lugares para mí
inesperados. Al princi
pio, cuando
yo pedía explicaciones, la
respuesta era
siempre la misma:
el hospital, la uni
versidad, el
museo estaban allí
porque
eran
precisos. Tantas veces me dieron esta respuest
a que
pensé que mejor sería aceptar con
naturalidad,
por ejemplo, la existencia de una escu
ela, con
diez profesores marcianos, en un
sitio
donde solo había un niño, también marciano, c
laro. No
pude callar, desde luego, que
me parecía
un desperdicio que
hubiera diez profesor
es para
un alumno, pero
ni así los
convencí.
Me respondieron que cada profesor enseñab
a una
asignatura diferente, y que la
cosa era
lógica. En Marte
les impresionó saber
que
en la
tierra hay siete
colores
fundamentales de
los que se
pueden sacar millones
d
e tonos.
Allí sólo hay
dos: blanco y
negro
(con todas las gradaciones intermedias), y el
los
sospecharon siempre que habría más.
Me aseguraron
que era lo
único que les faltaba para
ser completamente felices. Y aunque
me hicieron
jurar que no
hablaría de lo
que por all
á vi,
estoy seguro de
que cambiarían
todos
los secretos de Marte por el proceso de obten
er un
azul. Cuando salí de Marte, nadie
vino a
acompañarme a la puerta. Creo que, en el fon
do, no
nos hacen caso. Ven de lejos
nuestro planeta,
pero están muy
ocupados con sus pr
opios asuntos.
Me dijeron que no
pensarán
en viajes espaciales hasta que no conozcan
todos los colores. Es extraño ¿no? Por
mi parte,
ahora tengo dudas.
Podría llevarles un pe
dazo de
azul (un jirón
de cielo o un
pedazo
de mar), pero ¿y después? Seguro que se nos
vienen
aquí, y tengo la impresión de
que esto
no les va a gustar.
