These words are not mine. Well, these words are, sure, of course. But the ones below? The ones in quotes? Those ain't. They're very, very good words of advice about 1. sustaining an organization (an arts organization, in particular), and 2. integrating with a community in a meaningful way. These words, this "How To," if you will, come from Ms. Natalie Brown of Alternacirque and Delirium Tribal Bellydance fame.
I first became aware of Natalie and Anternacirque when high school chum Kate Fox noticed she had two friends (at least) through Facebook who posted pictures of themselves doing things in crazy circus contexts. Since that time I've watched Alternacirque flourish, so much so that it's made me wish I lived a little closer. Today, Natalie was inspired to leave a lengthy post on Facebook about their success, and graciously permitted me to quote it.
This is it, in its entirety, with no editing on my part. Down with form letters, emails and phone calls...
"I seem to be having the same conversation over and over with various people about Alternacirque, Delirium, and our success among the muggle population. And it's pretty basic stuff, really: go invest in your community and they will invest in you.
"And I don't mean send out a bunch of form newsletters or emails or phone calls. Go out and actually shake their hands and put your business cards in them. Go see art gallery openings. Go see shows. Go attend festivals as a spectator and strike up conversations with people holding clipboards or badges. Go to mayoral political debates (especially if they're having one centered around the arts), stick around for the rope line, and then go have a drink with everyone around you to analyze the candidates. Know what your legislators look like, so when you pass them on the street, or they come through your line at the coffee shop, or you're standing behind them in line at the coffee shop, you can tell them what you think or what you need. Know their right and left hand henchpeople, too. When you meet them, get their cellphone numbers. Ask to go to lunch and pick people's brains. Go hang out where other artists, producers, entrepreneurs and people with power and resources drink, and drink with them. Go see the ballet, and local theater, and take the playbill home and friend every single name in it on facebook, from the cast to the stage crew to the marketing department down to the interns. Know the name of everyone working at your local arts council and state arts commission. Do enough research to know which of those organizations are fairly useless and which actually care. Keep up enough to know when things turn over and they might start being useful. Talk about your art passionately. Listen equally as passionately about their projects. And don't stick with your people. Don't talk to just dancers, or just weirdos, or just artists. Talk to restaurateurs and tech people and the organic/urban food movement in your areas. Share advice and resources as often as you ask for it. Make friends. If your community isn't close-knit, see what you can do to encourage it to be so. As you grow and figure things out, reach down to the kids coming along behind you, and see if you can't make their struggle easier.
"Don't be afraid that people will think you're a freak. A few will. But really, you're probably the most interesting and fascinating person in the room. People would rather hear about what it's like to be a bellydancer than about spreadsheets and conference calls.
"Everyone's town is going to have a different pulse, heartbeat, radio frequency. It's your job to figure out how it functions, and join the flow. You can't do that from your living room. It's much more interesting out there, anyway."
A couple of Saturdays back, our aerial silks teacher held her second student showcase. Wife Megan being in a maternal way, she was unable to perform, but she choreographed, and I was lucky enough to be subject to her whims (and thus, you have her to blame for my provocative costuming). Along with my scene partner Jeanne Barenholtz I enacted a Fight Club-inspired routine to the Pixies' angsty classic Where Is My Mind?. All photos compliments Seamus Maclennan.
A miasma of silky warm-up.
We were aiming for right-angled awkward, but this just looks flat-out weird.
Just don't ask about the fabric burns. For, like, at least another week more.
Don't worry - there's actually at least three layers of undies there.
This is all Jeanne.
This, less so.
I wasn't eating chocolate. That was a jellied smear of stage blood, until my sweat took over.
Our silks were not rigged that close, hence our bulging guns (OK: Jeanne's bulging guns).
Okay, well, not exactly that. (Fewer strobe lights, though I did work bare-chested and in tasseled leggings.) But I attended my first class in German wheel, with Chris Delgado, who is a very good teacher. He's also, as it turns out, a clown whose sentiments aren't too dissimilar from my own:
If that seemed slightly reminiscent of this (2/10/11) to you, well, we agree. If it didn't, you're paying attention to the wrong stuffs and you're wrong, and I hate you.
I've been interested in German wheel (OR wheel gymnastics OR Rhönrad; not to be confused with the Cyr wheel) for some time now, and fortuitous it was that classes began being offered at Streb Lab, where Wife Megan and I attend aerial silks classes. My interest stems from pure physical curiosity to aesthetic sensibilities. I love contraptions, and circus skills that make use of them - hence my affection for stilt-walking - love climbing, and the German wheel turns climbing into perambulating, and makes surprises out of seemingly predictable movement. In that sense, it's pure physical comedy: Using an apparent and predictable mechanic to create moments of elation. Plus the thing just conjures up useful imagery - from the Vitruvian Man to Prometheus bound to Lloyd's clock or the steam engine of Melodrama or anything round of which you can think.
The experience of trying it out was at once affirming and surprising, which leads me to think I'll be back for a class or two. It's a bit frustrating to imagine making a commitment to the skill, simply because it's inconceivable to imagine storing the equipment it requires. (My stilts alone are far less obtrusive, and still a blight on efficient apartment living.) Still, that's a reasoning in favor of giving it a few more gos. Who knows when I'll have another opportunity?
Every circus skill, I've found thus far, features some incredible physical torment that you might not have guessed from watching it. In silks it's friction burns, in my opinion. Stilt-walking, it begins as quadriceps torture, then settles into chafing and occasional calf/ankle stiffness. For German wheel, though it's intensely physical in many unexpected ways, the hidden torment is in the feet. We were asked to wear :"thin" shoes, like classic Converse, and the reason for this is that you need to be able to fit them snugly under straps and then point your toes around the edge of the foot platforms.
Now, maybe I'm different than you (perish the thought), but the first time one of these rigs takes you upside-down I'm willing to bet your instinct will not be to point your feet. Rather, I imagine, you'll be kind-of sort-of interested in flexing your basal digits. There're straps, right? That's what they're there for, right? Nope. All wrong. The straps are there for tension, tension created by pushing hard against them as you essentially fight to shove your toes off the edge of wood and around the other side.
So: My feet hurt. Also, my butt, but I expect that lessens the better one gets at this skill set.
It's very very cool. I mean: Very cool. I expected it to have a lot in common with stilt-walking in terms of momentum-based tricks and using one's center-of-gravity. What I didn't anticipate is how fully it feels as though the wheel breaks free that balance awareness as though going from two-dimensional to three. Ironically, I think German wheel accomplishes this in part by its rigidity, which gives us limitations that help us develop a very precise vocabulary of movement. A jungle-gym on which to play, if you will (if you won't, see note above regarding wrong stuffs and hate).
That is definitely not to say one can just jump on the thing and have at it. The German wheel courts danger as much as any circus feat. See, for example, Chris' video at 3:12. He does a little look-through that - if followed through - could easily result on a broken neck or cracked skull via being run over by a metal bar plus your own body weight. I took to a trick last night that I observed, but hadn't yet been taught, and about midway through had this thought: "Ah. I see. At minimum five reasons I should've sought advice on this one." Plus I could never get the notion of crushing my fingers out of my brain completely . . . but then again not an ice rink goes by without me wondering if they'll be severed there, so that might be a personal fixation.
The entire device has to do with weight distribution - specifically one's pelvis - and leverage. Many of the moves I learned last night had something in common with momentum-based partner acrobatics, in that straightening and bending limbs and torso were used to create that precious leverage and overcome inertia. The entire experience is surreal in all the most circus-y, delighting ways. You roll and flip and are lifted and set down again, all while moving yourself around a defined center, a sweet-spot of a solar system of yourself. Great, great fun.
Wife Megan and I have been preparing for a couple of aerial silks performances this weekend at The Gowanus Ballroom (henceforward, "TGB"). TGB is a very cool space - a former factory that now serves double-duty as a metal shop and an art gallery, and it would seem they're eager to have as much aerial performance in it as they can get as well. I've been looking forward to this opportunity in particular, as it would be my first professional aerial gig, and I really love the space itself.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I've hurt myself a little too badly to carry on.
I'm fine. I mean, I'M FINE. I feel a little silly, in fact, since our teacher very recently had a serious injury that's keeping her off the silks. (Hers had almost nothing to do with the inherent dangers we tend to think of for climbing arts - while she was standing on the ground, a rigging hook fell from the ceiling onto her hand, which is miraculously unbroken but very swollen.) By comparison, my ailments are exceedingly minor. I have a strained right shoulder, and a tweaked left. Were I in Cirque du Soleil (henceforth, "CdS") or some such company, these would indubitably be suck-it-up injuries.
Well, I'm not in CdS. ("What?" I know: right?) Giving it twelve hours after the second tweaking, in which time I napped, took some pain medication and got a decent rub-down, I made the decision I have the luxury to make. In my experience, the reason these sorts of things happen in threes is not because of some cosmic predestiny or communique, nor because it's funny (though, Dudes: it totally is). No, they come in threes because some moron decides he doesn't have to listen to the world around him. I'll not be that moron.
Today, anyway.
That's not to say I feel good about the decision. Why write about it if I feel smashing? No; even past the call, I'm struggling with it. I don't question it in any rational sense. Hauling myself up and catching myself down a thirty-foot ribbon is not what the doctor ordered for a couple of twinged shoulders, and a bad or even hesitant performance doesn't add to my fellow conspirators' performances in any way. Our fearless leader even made sure we knew going in that the commitment was negotiable for this kind of concern.
What is difficult about this is the lost work that went into rehearsal. What is difficult about this is that this is the second time in a row that a silks performance of mine was compromised by health concerns (see 5/25/11). What's difficult is taking the long view, and returning to the dual considerations that: 1) I might need to give silks a rest for awhile, find something else in the physical arts to study; and 2) I am older than I once was, and that's all I'll ever be, because that's how life works.
Stupid life.
I try not to think about things this way, that I'm getting too old for anything. It makes far more sense to me to think that as I age, I need to keep improving my approach to physical arts so I can work smarter and be prepared and more attuned to my body. Of course, part of the beauty of physical expression is that it can be so pure and independent from analysis. This sets us up for a classic showdown: Body versus Mind. Will Mind's rationale wither under the indomitable impulse-control-problem of Body, or will Body be left baffled, staring into an empty corner at its own mortal shadow whilst Mind proves irrefutably that it is the very construct of reality?! Sunday, SUNDAY, Sunday! Two enter the octagon, only one may leave! Except that, oh, well, they kind of need one another after all so let's all sing kumbaya, ma' lord, oh lord, kumbaya...
Anyway. It's not a complete write-off. When I was last in Scranton I finally retrieved my first pair of stilts, which had taken up residence there for almost two years now. My plan is to perform a sort of metalworker character, a tall guy from a different time dropped into the art space and trying to find his way to Gowanus, unable to recognize that he's already there. It's a theatrically satisfying idea, regardless of how physically simple the act ultimately is.
People very rarely take me up on the offer, however. I think I've taught only two folks in nine years. Most people have talked themselves out of it before they've even considered the possibility, which I think is a shame. Sure - you could fall, you could get hurt. Worse, you might even have to give up. The catch is that the best opportunities available are within that risk. It's those painless injuries of never trying that really tear me up.
On May 15, our silks teacher Cody Schreger had her first student showcase: Coming Attractions. It was a great experience all around - a first time performing for many of her students, and a show of which we all felt a sincere ownership. I was, unfortunately, getting over the flu at the time. I couldn't do my whole piece (a loving tribute to Die Hard) but Cody still let me do a little of what we had planned. Below are some of my favorite photos from my portion of the show. All photography by James Glader.
The rest of the class is women, you see. I just wanted to fit in!
I could've done it in the dress.
Adorable argument.
Definitively the shot that shows my post-flu state best.
A couple of real silks performers come out to let me know
I should quit while I'm only so much of a disappointment.
"Well anyway, can you help me down?"
"We don't do that."
This, ma' dudes, will be a long and largely pointless one.
I am a man of many talents, not the least of which is sudden, debilitating illness at irregular yet strangely predictable intervals. I never imagined I would have a show crash (sudden collapse of health and mental faculty following a production's close; not to be confused with Snow Crash) after filming Android Insurrection, yet that seems to be exactly what has happened to me over the past four days or so. How else can I explain a sudden flu in the middle of spring? It even began during a lull in the almost-constant rain we're having. It began, in fact, while I was enjoying an impromptu trip out Thursday night to see Thor.
I don't know, man. It's enjoyable? It's enjoyable. They did a nice job capturing some of that easy humor that made the first Iron Man so palatable, without skimping on serious stakes for the characters. Branagh was in familiar territory in many respects, including regally set father-son relationships. I also found it largely forgettable, though. Probably the most interesting aspect of it was how finely honed Loki's character seemed to be - never being outright evil, never being altogether good. I actually found myself wondering how much he himself was aware of his motivations, at times. Unexpected complexity for this kind of movie.
It's also, unsurprisingly, a movie that cluster-flocks your eyeballs with elaborate CGI. They seemed aware enough of this to make the Earth setting very plain and grounded, but that doesn't help me view Asgard as any less of a carnival of RoyG.Biv-brought pain, a little vacation in a rainbow-decked uncanny valley, a . . . really computer-generated picture-thing. And I really do wish someone would get a memo out to Marvel that this rubber-ized "armor" material they use doesn't read as magi-science metal. It reads as cheese, a la '90's The Flash television series. At one point in the movie, Thor drops one of their shields, and the pick-up of it hitting the ground uses an actual metal shield. It was so jarring to the continuity to me I laughed. Why did no one else? The prop had clearly been made of plastic up until that point! HA HA!
But to some extent, I have to admit, I was probably just disappointed in a similar way to how I was over Batman Begins. It's not that they did an especially bad job, it's just not the movie I would've liked to see. I know it would have made some problems for integrating Thor into the Avengers movie, but I think when life hands you a superhero who is a god, nested in ancient history, you have the potential to do something really different with the idiom. Make him more of a question mark. Dress him in rusty metal, or dare to give him religious overtones. Just a little grit and ambiguity is what makes me more interested in Captain America and X-Men: First Class than Thor. But I may be alone in this, and gods know it wasn't my $150 million, so what do I know?
The rest of my weekend enjoyed the remainder of our "three months free" Showtime (the WORST pay channel?), The Movie Channel and Netflix Instant. (Wife Megan can rejoice that at least a couple of the decidedly unromantic Korean films have been wiped from our queue.) I started out inauspiciously, which may or may not have had something to do with how sick I was compared to how sick I thought I was - by midday my fever of which I had previously been unaware had spiked to 102. I wrapped up Valkyrie On Demand (oh Bryan, what pretty, inconsequential movies you make) and started on Adventureland. I only got about fifteen minutes in to that before giving up. Still can't decide if that was because I found the movie improbably uninteresting (it is) or because my frustration trying to understand Jesse Eisenberg's meteoric movie career hit a bursting point (it did).
But THEN. Oh, THEN. Cruising through channels for something short-term, I found that Big Fan was just starting. This is a little movie I've had some curiosity about. I enjoy it - succeed or fail - when comedians (Patton Oswalt, in this case) tackle serious fare, and I thought the movie sounded like it had potential for interesting conflict when I heard about it a couple of years ago. But I pretty much hate spectator sports (subject for another post) and, frankly, at the time I was a little mixed on Patton. Since then I've had time to learn more about him, and he's grown on me. So I gave Big Fan a shot.
OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS. Oh my gosh. So good. So GOOD. Man. This movie was surprising in all the best ways, primarily because it is deftly handled with incredible honesty. It's ugly - New York and Jersey look like they really do most of the time, and the people are presented in all their fat and crinkles. It's beautiful - so believable, and the most despicable of characters are played with real heart. And what everyone said about Oswalt's performance is true. It's unequivocally wonderful. I think it's entered my canon of great NYC movies, in spite of being contemporary, largely in New Jersey and about football fans. Go to see (er, at home, from whichever delivery service).
After Big Fan, I shuffled back to bed with my peaking fever, and brought the laptop to consume one that I've been hanging on to for far too long. I balked at Let the Right One In; don't know why, but I just keep putting that one off. Instead, I finally hunkered down for Oldboy. Which, I've decided, was a mistake. 1) I waited too long and it got built up quite a bit in my mind 2) Big Fan left me high, not in the mood for hard-boiled noir 3) I've since learned the dubbing on Old Boy is atrocious, and I should've gotten the DVD and watched with subtitles. It's a good film. It's based on manga, and is a revenge story, so . . . BRING THE KIDS! (But don't, at all.) Ugh. That was my overall response. It's difficult to imagine a Spielberg/Smith remake.
But it was awfully well done! With both (dark) humor and good performances! Yay, noir, as well! And one thing, which I can't believe I never heard specifically about: corridor fight scene. Oh my God. Shot over three days with no cuts or CGI edits (barring some small CGI to deal with a stabbing and a few punch connections). All time - it's in my top ten fight scenes, indubitably. Warning: This is violent: No, really:
I didn't feel like leaving Korea just yet (in spite of having a bit of a gorge in my throat [possibly a live octopus]) and ventured thereafter into The Host. This is a movie I can recommend without hesitation. Unless you dislike monster and/or dysfunctional-family movies. It's billed as a horror movie, but I think that's a little reductive. What gives the movie wings (gills?) is its success in portraying a lovable yet serious dysfunction in family, society - really in humanity at large. The struggle against the monster becomes the struggle against our own nature, and its outcome is satisfyingly bleak. That being said, the movie is still very funny and ends on a hopeful note. Great sick viewing. Wish I could have seen it with a NYC audience when it was in theatres.
I tried to move on to Daybreakers which - I've been led to believe - is a largely underrated movie, but alas the weight of sleep was too much. The good Wife and I did finally consume I Love You, Phillip Morris over the course of Saturday into Sunday, which had been laying listless on our sidetable for almost a week. ILYPM is really REALLY good. I think. I was a little fever-hazy, feeling helpless for much of it, so I might have been especially emotionally pliable. But I think it was really REALLY good. A pretty impressive blend of humor, style, and genuine emotion. Great performances from two actors who are, admittedly, favorites of mine (though certainly far from do-no-wrong status). I wanted to stand up and clap for them at the end, but that may speak to my physical state as much as to their work.
There's also a lot of outright male homosexual sexuality. Men, having sex with each other, and enjoying that. So it may not be everyone's thing. I, for one, found its approach to that aspect refreshing. It pulled no punches, while also having a freeing sense of humor about it. Frankly, I expected to experience more of a challenge with it, given how much seeming controversy surrounded the movie's release here in the US. I wonder if that controversy was more constructed to try to market the film post-Brokeback, or if anti-homosexual contingents are more offended by enjoying homosexuality than by glorifying or being coy with it? Whatever. Movie's not about that - surprise, surprise.
Aptly enough, the weekend ended with both the Wife and I performing in our cinema-themed, student silks show: Coming Attractions. Each act was inspired by a different popular movie, Wifey's beingan amazing (and impressively long) solo inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I made it in by the skin of my constitution (and the grace of some OD'ing on Alka-Seltzer Cold'n'Flu) and managed to perform a little less than half of my Die Hard-inspired solo. I wasn't sure if I had recovered enough by Sunday evening to manage the opening move (an all-arm climb) much less anything else, but adrenaline is the best medicine, and in a way I had been studying movie magic my entire accidental three-day weekend. As I got close to my improvised stopping point, hanging from the ceiling by my knees and grappling with sweaty hands to tie a knot below me, I thought:
This is apt, too. John McClane would totally have the flu while having to do something both stupid and awesome. Yippee-ki-yay...
(Wonky title, eh what? Refer to 9/24/10 for context.)
I'm revisiting my first aerial silks piece because this weekend Wife Megan and I will be participating in Streb's Valentine's Day benefit, 2Good 2B Bad. The above is the video I had to submit to get into the Halloween show, the below is the final product. For the next show, I'm raising the stakes a little bit by trying for a more serious piece. Humor's great, but it makes excuses for lack of form, too.
Not that it was the only reason I had for this piece, and choosing to make it clown-like. I thought of the choice more as playing to my strengths, and it rather does. Although I must admit that maintaining a sense of your audience's response from thirty feet up (and upside down) is something of a skill that requires experience. Nevertheless, I ended up feeling pretty good about this product. It wasn't as frenetic - or flashy really - as the initial draft, but it couldn't be - one of the trickiest bits of circus is pulling it off with control, making it look easy such that it puts the audience's mind at ease. That is, until you want to startle or amaze them.
It's interesting to me that I'm not aiming to startle or amaze my audiences with the act I've devised for this weekend. Maybe it's just all the effort I've put into making it more formal, less frenetic, but I'm content to let it be what it is. What it is, is, I hope, a more lyrical piece that hints at a character's story rather than basing it in his immediate struggle for a concrete goal. This too is a departure for me. Even in the circus-theatre shows I've developed and performed in, I've always been the one pushing for an accessible story, something that meets the audience halfway in their task of interpreting the presentation.
I suppose it's my study of silks these past couple of years that has changed my perspective on this somewhat, and made me see the personal possibilities in creating a performance for which the audience fills in their own meaning(s). Audiences do this to some degree anyway, but often with plays and the like it's not as invited as in more "abstract" mediums such as music or dance. These usually don't make a lot of effort to spell out plot details, much less provide them in a chronological or otherwise linear-structured format, even when they are based on a story of some kind.
I'm not exactly comfortable with that. Just like I'm not exactly comfortable with trying to perform a piece that's purely skill-based physical without aiming for laughs. Undertaking this personal challenge is probably a most telling moment about me, and the fact that I am in at least some small part just a frustrated dancer. So I have no training in that field, I get apocalyptically frustrated with dance choreography, and I can't point my toes worth a damn, but . . . here we go, any dang way.
Lest you imagine my absence has been a matter of rest:
ITEM! On October 16th Wife Megan and I performed aerial silks at a Halloween-themed circus show at Streb S.L.A.M. It was my debut on the aerial silks and - now that I think of it - my return to circus performance after an absence of some years. More on this in its own post (promise [promise]), but suffice it to say that I survived and learned a lot in the process. And: enjoyed it!
ITEM! On October 17th I performed in a staged reading of Margo Hammond's The New Me, playing a private detective, which is one of my favorite things in the whole world. (Good role to love, too, since a fella' can play that general type through many different stages of his life.) It went well I thought, and I really enjoyed exploring the guy's subtle self-interests in the midst of performing his job.
ITEM! On October 29th I and my better 50% traveled to Chicago. It was my first time there since 2001 when I toured through it with the partial-German-language farce I starred in (not bragging; educational theatre). It was a great trip that really inspired me in unexpected ways, not the least of which was attending the late show at The Second City and being reminded of the value of sketch comedy in constructing commedia dell'arte.
ITEM! November 1st brought me to only my second participation in a meeting ofThe Pack. At said meeting I had a scene fromHereafter read, and received feedback on it. It was very interesting, and ultimately encouraging for continuing work on the script. Seems like the answer to making it cohesive may be in streamlining the number of ideas represented in it.
ITEM! On November 8th there was a developmental reading for a small, private audience, of James B. Nicola's Closure. In it I read several male characters, and it tested my mastery of dialects, and found it as lacking as it always has been. Some are naturals at accents, but I need to work at it to achieve consistency, and switching rapidly (occasionally having whole scenes with myself) between them was dizzying. It was fun to try, though, and good to notice that as the script went along, I got better.
ITEM! On November 13th I participated in a table reading of The Widow Ranter, adaptedby Adrienne Thompson and directed by the acclaimed Karen Carpenter (no, not that one). In it I played the boisterous, large old Colonel Ranter, eschewing type left right and center amidst a table of over a dozen actors. Interesting to see all the energy and dynamic shifts with that many friends and strangers with a performance bent in one place.
ITEM! For the first time with the revised cast, on November 21st The Puppeteers held a developmental meeting in Scranton. It went well, and rapidly, and of course a great deal of time and work on my part has gone into the show's development 'blog. It's an amazing - and very much ongoing - process, creating an original comedy from scratch. We've had two more developmental meetings since, and begin the rehearsal process in earnest on December 27th.
ITEM! I finally participated in NaNoWriMo! And I failed! Well, inasmuch as I didn't fulfill the word goal of 50,000 by deadline. I did, however, get a great deal of writing done on an actual novel, no matter how questionable its worth. It was very much fun and very much difficult, as my update-only post for November attests.
ITEM! For the first time since I was 23 (by which I mean last year, amirite?) I performed in a musical on December 2nd. Sharon Fogarty's one-act comic musical, Speaking to the Dead, had me playing a game-show host who falls for his ghost-whispering costar in many more ways than one. Actually, initially I wasn't to sing, but at one rehearsal I gave a line a sing-songy quality and BAM: a few lines of song for yours truly. It truly was a hoot. And such a pleasure to finally work with Ms. Fogarty after many near-misses at Manhattan Theatre Source.
So, you know: That. It's been a busy two months, and likely to be nothing but busy through the holidays and on into January. The Puppeteers opens January 19th, and that weekend is the only one in which I'll be guaranteed to be in town watching it. If you have the means and desire to make your way to wintery Scranton, I commend you and recommend it -- it's going to be A LOT of fun.
For almost a year-and-a-half now, I've tried different ways of tying myself up, suspended from the ceiling, at least once a week. Some weeks I let go by without fulfilling this habit, others I manage to engage in it several times. But it's likely that I've tied myself to the ceiling a few hundred times now. For some, that might qualify them as something of an advanced practitioner when it comes to tethering oneself to the inner-roof; Wife Megan, for example, is quite adept after the same extent of experience. Personally, I still consider myself to be an intermediate at best as it pertains to lashing my body in suspension from architectural hoods. It's tough to pin-point the reason for this discrepancy, but I generally chalk it up to Megan having had extensive dance experience, and me being a rather shimmying, scampering, klutzy ol' dork.
(Friend Geoff still think it's hilarious/terrifying that I stilt-walk, since from his perspective it's a dodgy proposition for me to make it regular-walking through a doorway without comical mishap.)
Whatever the reason, this discrepancy is why Megan made her aerial silks performance debut in August, and will be showing her sophomore routine in the same show in which I will hopefully prove to the world that when I fall off of fabric, it's purely intentional. The performances will be in mid-October, as part of an all-ages Halloween show at the STREB studio in Williamsburg. I've been preparing for it since I got back from the Marywood work in Scranton (see 9/12/10) and am just at that stage where one realizes just how much work will actually need to be done to achieve one's vision. Whenever we have an idea for a performance, we never truly have a concept of how much it will take to achieve it. It's similar to what I've read about childbirth in this way, I think: as time goes on you remember the joy better than the agony.
I posted a video the week I got back of my very first draft of the piece. I wouldn't have done this normally, but the curator of the show needed to see a sample and I figured the worst it would do is demonstrate how far I had come by the time I posted a performance video. Even in ten days (six hours' rehearsal) or so, the piece has evolved quite a bit, and I have a clearer sense of where I'm headed. What started out as a concept piece featuring my stock silent-film clown has evolved into something with a larger story, lightly connected to what Megan will perform and featuring a new clownish sort of character - a slightly deluded old-timey strongman. It's fun, recognizable and it works, I think. I've even found a song and buffed down the choreography to a reasonable skill-level and duration.
However: This is hard work of a variety with which I am not terribly comfortable. I have been known, when a show I'm in randomly requires dance choreography, to internally combust, and not in that nice fuel-injected way. It makes me SUPER SELF CRITICAL and HULK SMASH. For some reason I don't get this way with fight choreography, nor acrobalance - love it! Give it to me more please! Aerial silks has a dancier (is SO a word) feel to it for me, though, and so there are some personal blocks there. On top of that, it's awfully specific in a way that people without training can take for granted. As an actor, it's painfully obvious to me when someone is trying their hand at acting, and doesn't have certain (eventually) instinctive specifics going on. So I'm working on that with silks.
I'm also trying to build a piece that plays to both my strengths and weaknesses. For example, I can't seem to point my toes to save my life. You might be surprised what a difference this makes. Heck: Even if I could achieve this WONDER of the classical dance world, my extension (how straight, long and pretty on is) in my legs is worse than a Virginia fence. But I have a certain amount of upper body strength. Nothing that's leading Cirque du Soleil to pound down my door but, you know. So I've devised the circus strongman character as someone who might take pride in his stiff form and right angles. Ah, but there's a trick in that, too. My feet can't just be casually flexed, they must be UBER-FLEXED at ALL TIMES.
Ah, art.
It's great fun stuff, though, in spite of all the struggles. It's still climbing, after all. I'm often at odds about the work required to go from enjoying something to being able to do it reliably well. I gave up on vocal training because I wanted singing to remain something I enjoyed for myself, rather than resented for needing to struggle through. This isn't necessarily an intelligent decision, I realize, but it's one that was and continues to be personally important to me. I don't want to do this with silks, however, which is why performing is so important. It forces me to take things from fun to reliable, and thereby take whatever little talent I have to whatever little skill I can muster. So I remind myself of that every time the move is too complicated for me to remember, or I am too weak to execute a climb for the fifth or sixth time, or the dance belt (O God, that dance belt) chafes.
And then sometimes I just scamper and shimmy to my heart's content.
