Tag Archives: australia

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a body – gala moody at the volksroom

The coffee is made thus: In a small bowl two teaspoons or so of sugar for every cup is added. Once the coffee begins to run out of the espresso machine, the first trickle is poured onto the sugar. This is beaten with a spoon until taking on a pale brown colour, emulsifying. Into each small cup, two viscous spoonfuls of this amalgam, and then the coffee on top, stirring until a crema floats on its surface.

This is the coffee of Giacomo, who has been in Brussels the last week and an half while Gala finishes some weeks of rehearsals in a single performance at Ivo’s Volksroom, along with Anuschka von Oppen, who was showing Nearby Buffalo in Brussels after a short season in Berlin.

Gala and Giacomo haven’t been sleeping so much the last week; long nights working on the set, lighting, rehearsing, rewiring, trying ideas and pre-show amendments (a whole scene vanishes, and the sound from a previous one also). Coffee is in abundance, as is beer and cigarettes. A calmness across the days also.

I found myself in the place I am happiest: a theatre, making performance. I do mundane things such as taping things, hanging things, adjusting things. This is not a review, though perhaps can be taken as one.

Throughout is a stillness, waiting attentiveness. For a dancer who has found home in companies where movement is the heart, she makes nothing that could be said to be dancing. Perhaps the floor on which she rehearsed is responsible, but equally, there is no inconsistency between one being a dancer who dances and the same one making performance far removed from this. At the end (less than thirty minutes), had she continued the room would have gone with her.

Rope bondage and suspension. Gala hangs sideways from her waist and abdomen. Giacomo dresses her in a sheet of emergency orange latex. She is in a box inside a room, walls of opaque or transparent plastic, floor reflective Aluminium. Lights stutter and tremble.

Giacomo illuminates the performance with perhaps twelve or so sources, some recognisable as theatre lights, others fluorescent tubes, others common household lamps. At times, a fan pushes the plastic sheeting, undulating and filling the space with sound.

She is naked until the end. This also is a change; before she was naked the whole way through. In the end she is talking, in jeans and a t-shirt. A story, autobiography? A poem. She is swimming, no water, no, definitely water, water goes in, goes out, polluting a little. In ten years, twenty years, only a photograph left. I am paraphrasing here.

Earlier, she is running. On the spot. Endlessly. Throwing dirt or dust or ashes, which haze in the aura of light. Giacomo … his lighting is as music, classical music perhaps. Deeply artistic and romantic, and also precisely technical. Without being obvious, it fills the room, gives not simply form and colour, but emotion, movement, sense, time. He says we should come to the Gorini home, to eat rabbit and drink coffee.

I spend Friday with them watching this, light and performance, trying to find some settings on my camera that will not balk at the conditions. Low light is one concern, and ultimately the difficulty I can’t surmount. The plastic sheeting between Gala and I, the other; the camera resolutely focussing on any light reflecting off the sheet, making her even more unfocussed.

This morning, more coffee. Then a failed trip to the markets for crëpes, arriving too late. Anyway, it was beautiful, poignant. Some photos.

giacomo contemplating light giacomo contemplating light

blue ladder orange sheet blue ladder orange sheet

gala ladder suspense gala ladder suspense

ladder orange giacomo ladder orange giacomo

gala suspense gala suspense

giacomo orange sheet gala giacomo orange sheet gala

there is some hair out the corner there is some hair out the corner

gala unsuspense gala unsuspense

still life under room still life under room

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temperance 16mm film

With all the adding of video and making newness on francesdath.info, I started looking at the footage of temperance again. It’s been years since then, reading my blogging on the project is a curious reminder of that time, and the process of forgetting, the certitude of thinking one remembers.

I decided then, to do some rough cutting of the film, beautiful 16mm stock that had been sitting in a fridge for decades, wondering if I could work around the limitations of some of my decisions in the filming. A good deal had already been done. Paul had synced the cameras and also done a first cut – though what I have done, while retaining some of this, is far from it, and also conditional, preliminary.

A thought early on, a week or so ago, was what to do about music. For the rehearsals, we’d been using a track from the Boredoms, which fitted well the mood of the rehearsal as well as of that time. It didn’t fit now, or rather it did but didn’t say or add anything I particularly cared about.

In addition to the film, there was also all of Bart’s sound recordings, including boom from the floor – also all synced. I wanted to leave this in place, as the sound of feet, breathing, scraping, knocking the floor, the hum of the cameras, was all things I felt belonged.

So to music. I thought perhaps something Cello or otherwise, but then was listening to Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations and one track, the 15th, somehow suited. Perhaps it is a bit long, perhaps one that was four minutes would have been better, but strangely the rhythm of Bonnie and Gala matches that of the piano.

This then, is a first cut. I am really not a film editor, though I can stumble and thrash my way through Final Cut enough. I decided to stop here as the only real option is to spend weeks on familiarising myself with all the footage, and carefully assembling it, for which I don’t have the luxury of such time, nor do I think I am capable; and I also know if I don’t at least call something ‘finished’ now, it will remain in the darkness of my hard drive forever.

There are a couple of edits I’m a bit cringy about, where the continuity is very off, and other places where more tightening and timetimetime would make me smile more, but there is also much in here I like. The dancing and attentiveness of Bonnie and Gala, the camerawork of Paul, the sound of Bart, the Temperance Hall, those two weeks when we made this.

You can watch temperance on francesdath.info/video

temperance 16mm film temperance 16mm film

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something wicked this way comes

Yesterday, an arrival.

Three years, eight months ago, I took a photo. I wrote also,

“I have this strange compulsion that has overtaken me. I bought a ticket to Berlin and decided to live there, see what the dance is, see what the life might be like. Will it suit me? Will I feel something like home? Will I be able to stay?”

Those boxes. I saw their contents briefly early 2008, unpacking, repacking, again in Adelaide a month or so later for some weeks, not even bothering to really unpack. Before that, it was late 2004 that they were last in my company. Six years. What I paid to keep that all in storage likely is far in excess of what it’s all worth. Still …

Slightly battered after all that, but …

… still in Berlin.

2008 everything 2008 everything

2011 everything 2011 everything

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goat snake witch dance theatre blackness

The last couple of days I’ve been working on a side-project, cleaning up my dance/performance/choreography website, francesdath.info. I decided a while ago I wanted to move it into WordPress, change the font to Anonymous Pro, and try and make everything I would do by hand-coding possible through the WordPress browser editor.

Success! (Mostly). The design hasn’t changed, except it’s been cleaned up a bit, and a more structured layout used. The video took the longest and was a rather intense learning process, which is going to fall over into some other projects I’m working on at the moment. The words I edited a bit, but mostly left alone. Some time I’ll clean that up also.

As for ‘goat snake witch dance theatre blackness’, I couldn’t decide which word I liked the least and somehow they all sit together quite nicely, like an excess of baroque.

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Daniel Jaber in Kuala Lumpur

Daniel has been on an AsiaLink Performing Arts Residency in Malaysia for the last some months. Snakes? Yes! He has a double bill this weekend, of WG-Spiel (which I love) and Poetic Structure (which is new, I think). I had a strange idea he was also performing degradation, which would have been hilarious, though he probably would be put on the next plane out of the country…

Anyway, probably worth flying there if flying wasn’t so rotten for the world. (I’ll stay in Berlin and pretend I’m there, eating noodles from a street stall in the warm rain…)

WG-Spiel
&
Poetic Structure

a double bill of new works by Daniel Jaber

Where:The Fonteyn Studio Theatre, Level 5, Wisma FAB, 1-3 Jalan 14/22, 46200 Petaling Jaya KUALA LUMPUR
When:Friday 19 & Saturday 20 November @ 7:30pm

Tickets:RM 15 available at the door OR contact Bilqis email hidden; JavaScript is required

WG Spiel is a ferociously physical dance work from award-winning Australian choreographer Daniel Jaber. The work examines the lives and living habits of 3 housemates as they coexist in close living quarters. Set to a vibrant and energetic electronic soundtrack, the work charges forth through images and choreographic scenarios regarding domestic duties, working life and relationships.

Poetic structure redefines traditional choreography in the context of a modern world. Cyberspace, chartrooms and MSN form the communicative dialogues of the performers as they engage in wickedly abstract choreography created by CSS and HTML coding formulas. Commenting on communication, technology and digital engulfment – Poetic Structure is a sophisticatedly structured short dance work featuring 4 outstanding Malay dancers and created by Daniel Jaber.

Made possible through an Asialink Performing Arts Residency and supported by the Government of South Australia through Arts SA, the Australian Government through the Australia – Malaysia Institute, Rimbun Dahan, Carclew Youth Arts.

daniel jaber - wg-spiel, poetic structure daniel jaber – wg-spiel, poetic structure

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a website a video

She of the long red hair, Gabrielle Nankivell has her own website. Witch/Red was one of my favourite pieces in Adelaide, and also in Australia, so naturally watching the videos on her site is a good idea.

Another Austro/Europa-innen, Daniel Schlusser has video of his recent performance, Cageling to see.

mmm… beautiful theatre.

gabrielle nankivell gabrielle nankivell

daniel schlusser - cageling daniel schlusser – cageling

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sydney’s siberia and other digital creatures

No, I don’t actually remember which Mac forum I discovered Jason Nelson and secrettechnology on. I do though highly enjoy receiving infrequent emails from him with his latest odd, poignant, beautiful pieces of art. Much happiness then, and wishing I had more time to play, when I discovered not one but three new pieces with Australianness… (yeah all nostalgic because of the too easily remembered winter and dreaming of Adelaide beaches and sun.)

Hope your world is more than curious.

I have some semi-newly birthed digital artworks/poems inspired by Australian locales to spread out across the net. And of course feel free to critique and/or send to anyone everywhere.

T: sydney’s sibera
D: an interactive and infinitely zooming digital poem
http://www.secrettechnology.com/sydney/

T: Birds Still Warm from Flying
D: an interactive/re-creatable poetry cube
http://www.secrettechnology.com/ausco/poecubic2.html

T: wittenoom and the cancerous breeze
D: digital poem created from ten sections
http://www.secrettechnology.com/wittenoom/starthere.html

again and as always you rock and cheers, Jason Nelson

sydney’s sibera sydney’s sibera

Birds Still Warm from Flying Birds Still Warm from Flying

wittenoom and the cancerous breeze wittenoom and the cancerous breeze

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bike

Once upon a time I had a beautiful bike. She was stolen. I cried. I came to Berlin. Trudel lent me her old bike, heavy, slow, upright, but a bike nonetheless and I made many journeys on it, riding most days for an hour at least from home to the west-end of Kreuzberg and back, all through winter even.

And of course I courted disaster. A misjudged curb outside the Bötzow Brauerei. Much skin missing on shoulder, knee and hip. Still a tracery of dark skin there. Of course like all old bikes and people it became slower and more decrepit. I searched for a new bike.

How I ever afforded my baby is a story I won’t write of here, indeed, I think I’ve seldom even mentioned how I came to afford such a joy. Sufficient to say by the time she departed I’d spent close to the mid-four figures on her. And yes, worth every cent.

I have my attention these days drawn to Cyclocross, and think it would be a fine way to spend a weekend or week. Fine and muddy. Even if I were utterly flagrant with euros though, I couldn’t afford such a bike. It shall have to wait. So I looked across Berlin for a new friend to take me speeding from Neukölln to Wedding.

Bikes here are mostly hideously expensive or hideous. Or both. A propensity for bespoke (harhar) Fahrrad Werkstätten with prices to match, sensible city bikes with ungainly accoutrements and weight, an obsession with putting shitty heavy and cheap shocks on all bikes under €600, and an aesthetics tax that says only ugly below that same price…

Emile was here last week, the first time we’ve seen each other in years. Much gravity sucking walls, pigeons of doom, languageeeaRRlugghhh!!!, and talking about narrow handlebars, Damon and the Melbourne Critical Mass, fixies in 2000 only for bike geeks and now as fashion instead of transport. The windows of Mitte shops full of these, ‘hey let’s put a … ‘Fixie’ in the window, they’re cool right now?!!’, ‘hey, yeah! A bike!’. Oh we talked about art too and went shopping.

Wandering around Neukölln I thought of Emile when I wandered out of a shop with about the only affordable and semi-attractive bike I’ve come across in weeks of looking. No, I didn’t want to buy secondhand or on eBay, and became so frustrated with the sea of hideousness and ++€€€ that I decided to buy the first thing that wasn’t repulsive or a heap of shit.

I spent today in the sun, after a visit to the laundromat. New brakes. It’s astounding what a set of €16 pads can do for a bike. I changed the cables around also, having an unconscious tendency to twitch with my left hand when I want to stop. Bad habit when that hand happens to rest on top of the front brake and I decide to have a panic twitch. Some adjustments to seat and brake lever placement also, with my new pocket-sized multi-tool.

No, the welds on the steel frame aren’t the prettiest, the components are mostly obscure-name or un-name, the tires need to be replaced with ones carrying a more useful tread and rubber compound, the wheels could probably do with being replaced altogether, and I can see myself over the course of the year buying new bits and pieces until suddenly I have two entire bikes. (And then decide to buy a second bike.)

But. She is fast, has some of that same slightly scary unpredictability and twitchiness of my baby that makes me think I’ll certainly have a gravel party sometime, but in the meantime I ride from Wedding to Neukölln and back, barely stopping, the gear ratio encouraging a trance-enducing rhythm… yes, the seat is up riather high, isn’t it?

my new bike you should see my bike my new bike you should see my bike

obligatory black and white photo obligatory black and white photo

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Shifting Daniel Jaber into WordPress

Daniel Jaber is the second choreographer and dancer I’ve done a website for. Coming from Dasniya Sommer, I was intent on messing around with jQuery again, and finding something distinctive to build his site around. The initial site, as with Dasniya, was hand-coded, relying on jQueryTools, which I discovered through Flowplayer for much of the interactivity.

Two big problems emerged. Firstly was the pain of updating static HTML. Even though I write my blog posts in this way, and have no difficulty screening out code from in front of my eyes, this way of managing a site is painful. The second big problem was the conflicts between how the content on the page was loaded and both video and images. The plan had always been to put the site into WordPress, and so I did.

The idea for using Daniel as his own background image was a fairly inevitable one, remembering when I first saw him, all piercings, blue mohawk, tattoos. I first tried supersized for this, but found it slightly heavy for just a single image. Lucky then CSS-Tricks had the perfect, all-css answer, which has become one of my favourite bits of code, being fond as I am of huge background images.

First though, I had an idea for the menu, coming from jQueryTools’ accordion tabs, with much eviscerating of CSS and some slowing down of the slide effect. This though, I could never get to work in WordPress. Much messing around in jQuery, dynamically adding classes and divs and removing them from elsewhere, I could even get it to work using an identical sidebar HTML structure to WordPress, but when I tried to use it in WordPress, weirdness ensued. I really wanted to use this though, because it’s the only accordion I’d seen with different times for the sliding effect.

But WordPress has almost everything, and I fell upon jQuery Accordion Menu for WordPress, which has very similar code, taking a couple of hours at the most to get the CSS right and working rather nice.

Of course when I added the page crossfade eyecandy, it broke again. My fault for using redirectPage.

supernaut still uses the Flash-based sIFR method for using nice fonts, but the last couple of sites I’ve been rather enjoying the combination of open-source fonts and @font-face. Not one of those beautiful new CSS3 adventure like opacity or rounded corners, even Internet Explorer 5 supported this, and lately with a deluge of options for pretty typography, it has become increasingly popular. And far easier to implement that sIFR also. Oh, the title font is Anonymous Pro, which I think is one of the most elegant monospace fonts around (also important that is has Unicode-based character set, important for things like ü and ß).

Being dance, video was always going to be lurking. I wrote about my fun with Flowplayer and WordPress earlier, and still finishing this, with bandwidth check, pseudostreaming and the inevitable full-screen option shuffling this way. I’d rather be doing this all in HTML5 though, and shall come up with a graceful degradation from that to this in my next project.

A bunch of small plugins helped me along the way also. Add From Server let me add video to the WordPress Media Libary after I’d uploaded via FTP – perfect for large file sizes, and modifying allowable upload file types meant I could get the f4v there also.

pageMash made structuring the site and reordering projects as they move from ‘soon’ to ‘now’ to ‘then’ so much nicer than blah-ing around editing the pages themselves, and PHP Execution made it possible to do the Flowplayer video cludge.

Elsewhere, Lightbox Plus for a not-overpowering image gallery, though I am still working on this. DB Cache Reloaded and Hyper Cache for the necessary site caching, as long as I don’t forget to disable them when I’m busy working. PHPEnkoder, based on my favourite Hivelogic anti-spam email encoder. And WordPress File Monitor, which is about the most useful anti-hacking plugins I’ve found.

Oh, and page crossfade! I know it’s a bit Flash 20001, but I really did want to recreate the page fade-out/-in from the original site. (Not so good if JavaScript is turned off though.)

danieljaber.com danieljaber.com