the weekend after it all finished

When beginning a wash-up of this size in a kitchen of this size one approaches it like a military operation. It’s heavy. The initial hostilities are mere deployment, then you stiffen your lip and hope that you will not be forced to sacrifice any of your little glass or
(gulp)
china men.

Eugene has asked for time out.

tricksy blogger

me as geekgirl

Originally uploaded by Illuminata.

i’m not a systematic person, so this blog goes up in fits and spurts. sometimes things are written on the pda weeks before they’re hot-synched to the computer and uploaded to the blog. then they have to be back-dated to the relevant day, which means that they won’t show up in the ‘last 7 entries’ list.

the best way to find them is to browse by category and look for unfamiliar articles.

shen wei

i’ve figured out how to put up some kind of review of all the things i see as a dance reviewer without violating the copyright of the magazine i write for.

click on the ‘continue reading…’ link below for my original notes about shen wei dance company, a surprisingly rare example of cross-cultural fusion between chinese traditional dance and western contemporary dance. the company’s based in new york and was here for the sydney festival, jan 2005. i review for dance australia magazine, which is an A4 glossy that comes out every 2 months. you can find it up the back of your newsagent, in the specialty section alongside fishing australia, body-building australia, monster trucks australia, and so on…

in the case of shen wei, the company presented 2 works, ‘rite of spring’ and ‘folding’. i went to a performance that had a special forum afterwards, where the choreographer and the rest of the company sat onstage and answered questions from the audience. shen wei was articulate, charming and modest and the audience was overcome with admiration. the last few lines of my notes are details from that discussion. feel free to ask questions; the notes are probably quite cryptic. but it’s a taster.

sound principles

funny how the process of recording music manages to be both fascinating and boring.

you invariably spend unbelievable amounts of time fussing and fiddling: setting up, testing, adjusting, trying to work out why something is or isn’t happening. the technology’s incredibly dense and complex to navigate, the acoustic issues are always tricky, and the performers wait and wait, go away, come back again, momentarily get interested in the process or the problem, lose interest again, go get something to eat, then suddenly have to perform – perfectly – or again and again. somewhere between stone cold and too tired, you hope for that one flawless take.

the grand tafe showdown – may 18, bar broadway

despite being called Music – Performance, there is no compulsory public gig in this course, though organising your own is encouraged. so being the mature-age narcissists that we are, james and i went up to bar broadway and did just that. only our cabaret show is a skimpy half-hour long, so then we had to make sure there were enough other performers to turn it into a full night, which was surprisingly difficult. i mean considering it’s a performance course, i wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d come pouring out of the woodwork once someone had done the ‘hard bit’ of booking the actual gig. but we had to go round to each class and coax and wheedle, forgodsake. no-one’s ‘ready’ yet – either that or they’re actually with bands that perform regularly and wouldn’t go near anything as potentially naff as a tafe showcase. still, we dragged out enough to get quite a night happening – and, thanks to sam (god bless his little red knickers), it’s also going to be filmed.

loose tangle of tafe

funny about this course and how it’s run… it’s very fragmented. if you stay with it you get plenty out of it and it certainly does provide a broad (but quite specific) framework within which to develop your own learning projects, but it’s the loosest learning system i’ve ever rattled around in.

works for me, and for plenty of others in the class. it’s not working so well for some.

take bridget, for example. a huge talent and well-trained already – probably overqualified for the level of the course but she’s here anyway… well, more or less. she started 5 weeks late and it looks now like she’s decided to finish 4 weeks early – and it’s only a 13-week course. she could have starred in the class, come out with straight distinctions despite her late start, made some useful connections and got a grasp of the industry and where she wants to go in it. instead it’s looking like she’s gonna fail, or whatever grey mark it is that they give you when you don’t hand in most of the required work, don’t turn up to class, don’t let your teammates in the group project even know whether you’re pulling out.

*sigh* i hate seeing that happen. i can’t do anything to help, ‘cos she’s not answering my calls – presumably ‘cos she doesn’t know what to do about it all and expects to be chewed out for letting us down. she’s still only 17, for chrissakes.

there are others in the class with similar dilemmas, but i feel like this one’s kinda my responsibility, ‘cos i’m directing the group project she asked to join. i just wish she’d answer her phone. friday we started organising an understudy.

picking up the thread

the longer i leave it the worse it gets… here we go.

forgive me readers for i have been slack. it’s been several weeks since my last blog, and even when i stopped (for good reason: i was incommunicado in the wilds of tasmania) there was stuff overdue. much of it will now never see the light of day, i guess, and half the delay comes now from confusion about where to start… this blogging shit is a burden, damnit.

okay. the most urgent obligation is to my tafe documentation, so if you read me for the more salacious and entertaining aspects of my life i’m afraid i have to keep you hanging a little longer. keep checking back – and remember, i backdate, so check the categories at left for new entries.

backlog

i know; it’s too long since i’ve blogged. the trouble is, the more happens in your life, the more you feel you should publish, but the less time you have to write. i have a mental blogjam… i’ll get to it; just bear with me a few more days.