"the lastmaker" (goat island)

saturday 24th may 2008

"the lastmaker"
goat island
http://www.goatislandperformance.org/

part of burst at bac
http://www.bac.org.uk/whatsonresult.php?id=3114

karen christopher
matthew goulish
lin hixson (director)
mark jeffery
bryan saner
lito' walkey

"After 20 years of creating challenging and highly acclaimed performance, The Lastmaker is Goat Island’s ninth and final piece, a fitting conclusion to the company’s journey.The performance is structured around the form and iconography of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, a site that has been a Byzantine church, a Mosque and a museum over its history. Incorporating the company’s highly energetic and physically demanding choreography, Goat Island explore the layering of these three identities and the complex interweaving of stories and cultures enclosed within the building."

"construct a last performance in the form of a human foot that weighs two tons and remains in good condition."

u vezi sa (croation) ~ in relation with; in connection with, in relation to, in construction to, related to, connected to
vezica (croation) ~ shoelace

"it begins with the building of a mold or prototype, a source to be vanished or set aside for future reproductions, an alphabetic mass, throat sealed, in the absence of the foot or because there never was one, the last maker is not a writer or a cobbler, and his crutch is not separate from his armpit. the task is still not to be new in ending, but to render a massless history of walking with the heaviest material available. "
(judd morrissey, goat island associate member)

"i saw a crow running about with a stork
i marvelled long and investigated their case
in order that i might find the clue
as to what is was that they had in common

when amazed and bewildered i approached them
then indeed i saw that both of them were lame."

(rumi, mathnawi, book II: "the cause of a bird's flying and feeding with a bird that is not of its own kind")

"we'll start the session now.
i'll give you your instructions.

we'll build this song like a house.
bass, you're the plumbing.
drums, you're the electrical.
horns, i want you to think of yourselves as the windows.
guitar, you're the drywall.

everybody ready?
roll the tape."

certainly an interesting experience this one. we liked pretty much all of the ingredients but alas not what it added up to - or at least were unable to get much from it beyond a real interest in the methods and the ingredients worked into the mix.

starting with the programme which is immediately arousing and captivating - i wasn't sure what we'd come to, the programme didn't give me much more of an idea, but it did hugely increase my desire to find out. (aside to m: when we make something we must make a programme as beautiful and surprising as this...)

the performance space is taped out in rectangles - reminiscent of a tennis court - and yet again we sit in traverse (funny the patterns of things - our third traverse show with cheek by jowl's both at barbican). a wooden chair. a microphone on a stand. off - a bench and a mini stepladder.

enter a man. sits on chair. can't remember now what he said but it evoked ideas of realising how best to live only when there is little time left for living - the foolish not-knowing of youth.

enter another man. places a beat box which will play sounds of a horse neighing intermittently throughout the whole show. places a tiny mechanical bird, which will intermittently twitter.

enter saint francis of assisi as larry grayson. larry grayson chat that is quite funny. he says he's been asked to do a turn and after a "well you know, i said i can't do that..." patter, he tells us he's decided to remake the the hagia sophia in istanbul, which he tells us was first a church, then a mosque and now is a museum, from just the materials available in this room.

what follows is a lengthy dance piece involving the full company of 5 performing a series of highly ritualised, precise and repeated movements in and out of sync with each other and punctuated with 'u vezi sa'. the movements are clearly demanding and impressively executed and perhaps it is this effect of obvious display that means we are interested and impressed but only superficially engaged (often thinking: hmm could we do this? how would we make this work more? oh that's smart how they're moving it round to work for the audience on both sides)

other ingredients that follow include ...
+ what seems a pretty spot on enactment of lenny bruce which is accurately weird rather than funny - "i'm not a comedian, i'm lenny bruce."
+ an old poet bent in half to talk straight into the lowered mic in conversation with a woman who may or may not be emily dickenson (this is when we get the crane and the stork reading)
+ a hillbilly singing to a saw played by striking it into vibration with a hammer
+ a woman singing "the perfect end to a perfect day..." the original of which we later get in playback
+ more hi-force precision movements
+ an explanation of what a last is and the different parts that make up a shoe
+ a balsa wood model of the hagia sophia brought in ceremonially and constructed piece by piece, finishing with the two pairs of minarets.

then saint francis returns to intone in perfect if sardonic high mass falling inflexions a series of litanous "we give thanks and say farewell to ..." as he chants off the various aspects of the staging (the microphones, the shoes, the floor tape, the beat boxes, goodbye hagia sophia ...) - i guess this is the link back to making the hagia sophia with the available materials. during this a slow movement of the women standing on planks of wood and and being moved around the stage. while another man performs an utterly bewildering and quite possibly nonsensical kind of poem / rallying call to action - reminiscent of some rhetorical style that i haven't yet been able to place.

and then it's over (running time 2+ hours without interval)

what was it all about?
fuck knows

but very interesting to watch and jammed full of performance ideas that might be fun to play with sometime ...

from the goat island website:

Members contribute to the conception, research, writing, choreography, documentation, and educational demands of the work. Characteristically we attempt to establish a spatial relationship with audiences, other than the usual proscenium theater situation, which may suggest a concept, such as sporting arena or parade ground, or may create a setting for which there is no everyday comparison. We perform a personal vocabulary of movement, both dance-like and pedestrian, that often makes extreme physical demands on the performers, and attention demands on the audience. We incorporate historical and contemporary issues through text and movement. We create visual/spatial images to encapsulate thematic concerns. We place our performances in non-theatrical sites when possible. We research and write collaborative lectures for public events, and often subsequently publish these, either in our own artists' books, or in professional journals.

"the last performance"
judd morrissey
goat island
http://thelastperformance.org/title.php

"the last performance" is a collaborative writing, archiving and text-visualisation project conceived in response to the work of the chicago-based performance collective, goat island, and their decision, after 20 years of practice, to create a last performance.

writers, artists, critics and audience members of "the lastmaker" are invited to contribute.

"the last performance" is devised and built by judd morrissey with goat island.

"model love - a lovers' manual" (bodies in flight)

thursday 8th may 2008

"model love - a lovers' manual"
a 4-hour performance-installation
presented by bodies in flight
http://www.bodiesinflight.co.uk/

devised by:
edward dimsdale ~ photography
catherine dyson ~ performer
sara giddens ~ choreography
sam halmarack ~ music
simon jones ~ text
graeme rose ~ performer

with tom wainwright on video, editde by tony judge

part of bac burst

"...somewhere between soundbytes, sonnets and songs, our fifteenth performance work - a dark and surreal exploration of modern dating - begins with a mysterious book of photographs - a lovers’ manual - claiming to record that exact moment when two strangers’ eyes meet and it’s love at first sight. known for our innovative collaborations with sonic and visual artists, we are working with photographer - edward dimsdale whose bespoke photo-books are at the passionate heart of this new work. part investigators, part impersonators, three performers bring to life his unique series of images with our characteristic mix of live music, poetry and high-octane performing..."

"please feel free to move around the room, look at the books & photographs, open the drawers of the small cabinet in the corner.

"please do not touch the electrical equipment or the printing press.

"as this performance-installation lasts four hours, why not return later to see how the material has developed."

programme notes:

raiding dating sites and surfing handy hints on online romance, with live music and performance, "model love" takes you on an intimate journey through mysterious images that claim to record the exact moment when two strangers' eyes met and it was love at first sight.

amongst a sea of lonely-hearts self-portraits, a singer sets their poignat postings to music, whilst a performer gathers up photographs and begins carefyully sewing them, leaf by leaf, into a book. do these images capture the instance of love at first sight? are they perhaps an allegory of the photographic moment itself? in a corner another performer slowly dismantles a book, re-contructing the images into a love-triangle's never-ending narrative: three into two won't go. is this a doomer love affair? or a post-mortem for the photographic image itself?

this show caught me surprise and i wish i had been able to see more of it...

photos hung on lines
a woman in a black dress sewing photos into a book, looking at photos on the line, leaving by a door at the end
a man in black clothes cutting up photos in a book with a scalpel at the same time projecting images of this - photos and cutting onto a screen, sticking parts of photos on to the creen and writing garffiti - "this is not me" and photos onto a wall making a slowly increasing mosaic
both performers mic'ed (altho their text still very hard to hear clearly - him saying "i am lost" i caught but not so much else
both performers dancing in synch but unconnected - jerky repeated moves, arms splicing down to the one outstretched foot, then out crucufixtion-like
the musician making atmospheric sounds and singing sad love songs

a show i would have liked to watch through...

"und" (doris uhlich)

thursday 8th may 2008

"und"

doris uhlich

doris uhlich ~ concept & stage direction
dramaturgy ~ andrea salzmann
production director ~ johanna kienzl
performers: peter fenz, christa himmel-schwarzmuller, pauline haslinger,frederich nedoma-ohnhauser, susanna peterka, otto schodl, ilse urbanek, werner vockenhuber, pia voldet

bac burst festival

engage with the beauty, fragility and strength of old age in this unusual piece of dance. two years ago doris uhlichasked older people on the streets of vienna whether they were interested in working with her. this culminated in a show choreographed through the performers' own gestures and movements. a celebration of older generation that is not often seen on the stage.

programme notes:

two years ago, doris uhlich was roaming vienna searching for older people who would work with her. she met them at the volksgarten (a public park in vienna), on the tram or the tube, in coffee houses or at a senior's fair.

by talking with each individual person, doris uhlich focused on their body and concentrated on their language. the next step was to study the person standing up, sitting upright or lying down. based on these rudimentary movements, sets of body and motion materials were developed for each person, each set with a specific scope.

by zooming into the fragility and the robustness of the body and personal gestures, a field of analysis is opened at the intersection of the everyday-body/everyday-scenarios on the one hand and artistic body/body scenarios on the other.

"today i am everything. i am the twenty-six-year-old, i am the sixty-year-old, i am the eighty-year-old. everything is summed up in the 'here and now'. (frederich nedoma-ohnhauser, eighty-six years old)

an empty space with a line of people sitting in chairs to the left-hand side.

a man gets up and walks around the periphery of the space, hands in pockets, hands behind, hands at side. although the walk in a circle is like a the pace around a prison yard or a cage, it is impossible to read anything about this man and his current attitude, emotions, state. some time later he will skip with a total energy and lightness that will suggest a childlike playfulness and glee.

a woman gets a pen from out of her handbag, looks at what is happening the man walking and us in the audience, and starts to write on a clipboard of paper. she will do this throughout most of the performance until later she will read what she has written. this will turn out to be a=n account of everything she has observed.

"the audience is silent. it is a tense silence. susanna slowly takes her clothes off puts them on the back of the chair. she sits then lies on the floor..."

a chair is placed upstage right.

a woman, smartly dressed in shiny heels, comes and sits on it. she will tell us of her different visits to london, her impressions of our city, the differences between life in london and life in austria. she will remove all her clothes while she tells us this and sit and lie in different positions on the floor and chair. she will do the with an everyday-ness that will disallow any sense of this being novel or unusual in any way.

an ancient fragile little man comes into the centre of the space. slowly he unfolds down an unbelievable way and then slowly folds back up again. later he will come and grin happily at us all with mischievous knowing. and then he will put on tap shoes and tap for us.

a slender woman in slacks comes into the space and performs a series of ballet moves. she is obviously old and not in prime form but she dances the moves nevertheless.

a man in trousers and jacket looking smart comes into the space and looks. at the ballet dancer. at us. at susanna lying naked on the floor. it is impossible to read anything specific from him.

another man comes into the space and looks at us. he then moves to the back and sprints with incredible speed the distance of the back wall. he will repeat this at different times. later he and the smartly dressed man will disco together looking happy.

another woman eventually comes in an paces and mutters. she seems less happy than others and the snatches we catch of what she says seem to be about wanting to be on her own.

eventually all the people will be moving their moves at the same time in a complicated set of patterns that never quite connect or intersect. in a moment of stillness in this another woman will come into the space, lie down on her side, and slowly slowly curl up into the shape of a foetus, then uncurling then get up and go back to her seat.

and sometimes we laughed - sharing the joke with these performers: this was not how any of them should be behaving or who they were supposed to be.

nice piece of work.