cate•muse

Review of Xavier Le Roy & et Co.'s dance audience

2010-04-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Xavier Le Roy and a band of dancers held two Boston dance audiences up to the mirror last night. Floor Pieces, a mind-numbingly beautiful series of nude scapes imagined a universe where humans never wore artificial skins. Xavier Le Roy has somehow found the means to get beneath the toxicity of personality, into the cross-species core of what makes us animals.

What remained was as peaceful and cool, and visually almost as pleasing and exciting as sighting a band of lions in repose, whose loping looseness and tilting shifts of weight inspired the final section of the piece.

I took it the work as a statement about the beauty and dignity of the real. The audience, ironically, performed the perfect foil to the genuineness of the dancers. The performers were literally naked but not figuratively. Their warts were exposed but not their personalities. Our own personalities by contrast seemed overweaning, pretentious; and their nakedness may have been there to teach us modesty.

The evening started and ended with two "conversations" between fully dressed dancers and audience. We in the audience were invited to speak our minds, to spend some time conversing with the performers. A heady nervousness overtook the audience as we began, and someone asked brashly, "so, are you going to take off your clothes?"

It was a satirical way to start, and some in the audience, particularly Europeans, who seemed to form half of it, bristled at the sheer American-ness of it all. Meanwhile we in the audience were being set up to participate in the performance as more than just idle spectators. The genius of this method was that we ourselves were on display, softening the peculiar power differential that usually exists between observers and performers. Instead of being safely ensconced in our seats while dancers with well-crafted personalities sweated before us, hoping sufficiently to entertain and make it worth the cost of admission, we never were asked to pay for admission. We were instead confronted with our own character and personality as the audience.

Instead of patiently listening but never heard, we had the chance to shine, and also to shame and embarrass ourselves. We got a little taste of performing. There were many commentators in the audience who tended to judge not only the dance but also the other audience members' comments. One person rebuked the rest of us for joking about nudity, for engaging in "adolescent" banter. Another suggested that the banter might be too performative, as if a more serious inquiry would have been a more appropriate or dignified way to fulfill the task of "having a conversation". One performer astutely remarked that a conversation was always a kind of performance and rendered the distinction moot. One particularly acerbic comment clipped the question mark right off another audience member's question, as if to suggest that the first question did not merit a response.

Many in the audience behaved with excruciating entitlement despite the free admission. As a performer for many years in Boston the experience confirmed a sneaking suspicion I had always had: it wasn't the dance that was to blame for the weakness of our dance communities, it's the audiences.

While the dancers welcomed us into their quiet, peaceful, unselfconscious animal world, the audience, like so many polluting tourists on safari, trod heavily, combatively, self-absorbedly and pretentiously through the delicacy of the environment the dancers had created for us.

Suicide

2010-04-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

My neighbor committed suicide. I met him twice. He was very eager and helpful, but his cordiality seemed strained, painful. It gave me the willies and I didn't pursue his company after that. The other day I smelled him rotting from the back stairs. I thought, damn rats. It didn't occur to me when, today at noon I left again by the back stairs and a small army of men wearing disposable overalls and gas masks were cleaning out his apartment. They were throwing out the most amazing things- a flat screen tv, a fancy bike. After a worried call to my landlady I heard the story - he had died days, maybe weeks ago. His parents were in Texas, and they didn't want his things except for a few small items. I ended up profiting handsomely from his demise. It didn't sink in until now-- it still hasn't quite sunk in. I found a package on the front steps for him. I looked up the name of the sender on the internet, but didn't call. Not yet. What if I, a stranger to the deceased, was the first one to break his death to the sender of that package, who might be a friend? Or worse, what if he's not a friend? Why did the dead man rot before anyone noticed he was gone? How long does it take for a body to stink? Where were his parents, and why didn't they want his things?

Blooming niece and spring

2010-04-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

Well this is embarrassing. I never assumed anyone would actually read my blog. Now I realize it's my signature! oy vey. When I tried to sign a comment on my beautiful, blooming, traveling niece's blog this pulled out of my signature like from a gutter. I thought I had dashed it off and thrown it away months, years ago! Maybe this is an opportunity to explain to the ethers themselves what no human would care to hear from my lips, but seems pressing at the time. Like, Flavia!! from out of the fogs of France, how abundant your experience of the world is being. I'm happy about it, but also sad at the distance. (Our time in the sun was wasted time, you weren't paying attention, we came to the wrong conclusions anyway.) Well go, then, find out for yourself, a little less burdened and braver, more willing to call out the bums and able to love. How fucking awesome is that: my niece can love. Nothing much add after that triumph. Soon it will be time to bow out. -bow-

Productivity from Peepcast

2009-01-28T10:50:00.001-08:00

productivity

number one - remove obstacles
this refers to mental clutter, things not done.
make a to do list and do it.

number two - write a plan.
write stepwise objectives. Final goal and intermediate goals.
details details details.
ascertain the value of each goal
reevaluate reevaluate reevaluate.
find the 20% effort that will yield 80% of the project

List the intermediate steps in some to-do log
Be realistic-- how much time will step each take?

only then can you begin.

step three - begin.
again, remove obstacles
this time this refers to distractions
do NOT multitask - multitasking causes brain damage and severe plan damage
refuse ALL distractions. no email, no ichat, no sms, no phone, no cleaning (you've already cleaned), no websurfing except for directly related research.
Take a two or three hour long piece of the project and do it. It comprises a goal. Be realistic.
Then for every hour, work 50 minutes and break for 10. When you break, listen to what your body demands. Obey it.

step four - finish.
When you are done, check off the goal as being done in the to-do log.
Rest, chat with friends/family, exercise the body. EXERCISE IS CRUCIAL
Celebrate