Aldous Huxley: “…there is no form of contemplation, even the most quietistic, which is without its ethical values. Half at least of all morality is negative and consists in keeping out of mischief.”
NOW Magazine on the show: “Tomlinson takes the audience on a journey that begins with a stomach-churning fall and ends with transcendence…The design provides an added lift, with Sharon DiGenova’s lighting and Jacob Niedzwiecki’s video and imaging lifting us out of our everyday world.”
Eye Magazine: four out of five stars.
Plank Magazine: “Tomlinson’s insight into the damage love inflicts is piercing…”
Mondo Magazine: “The ceiling-video projections created by Jacob Niedzwiecki successfully enlarged the stage to include a sky and create a space for Tomlinson’s characters to fall and fly.”
Props to the whole amazing team I got to work with: David Tomlinson on lead bass & vocals, Diana Kolpak conducting, and Sharon DiGenova pushing photons like it was going out of style.
A few months ago I got an email from Toronto director Diana Kolpak. I’d heard of Diana’s amazing 2004 clown show, The Gorgonetrevich Corps de Ballet Nationale in “Bethany’s Gate”, though I was unable to see it as I was performing at the time. Diana invited me to collaborate on a show she was working on with actor David Tomlinson, creating video imagery and projections; the connection came through their lighting designer Sharon DiGenova, who I worked with on Bastard Fugue. The script hooked me instantly: it was sexy, contemporary, and brilliantly written.
The last two weeks have been a blur of preparation, as we worked to turn the DeLeon White Gallery (1139 College St. at Dufferin — not on Queen West anymore, despite what Google will tell you!) into a fabulous performance space, with a specially curated exhibition of art from residents and special guests complementing the show. David blogged the process at No Rest for the Wingéd.
The show is a set of three linked monologues based on characters from different mythologies, tracing an arc from falling to taking flight again: Icarus, Lucifer, and Phoenix. We run every night from now ’til next Sunday, May 8th, except for Monday May 3rd. You can get tickets at the door ($20 / $18 students or Equity) or online at Brown Paper Tickets. Tix for next weekend are going fast so come early next week for best availability. It’s hilarious, inspired, and stunningly performed. Come and check it out!
I don’t often post about freelance work on this site — it’s more focused on my own projects. But once in a while I get to do some pretty cool stuff, and this is one of those times.
Over the winter, I had the chance to work with actor and producer Martha Burns to design and create a website for her short film anthology Little Films About Big Moments. I’m really happy with how the project turned out — I got to combine a couple of my obsessions into one piece of work, and the site feels like a really natural extension of the films.
I want to thank my friend Khoa Nguyen for acting as technical mentor on the project, and Martha and her production team for their support and great ideas throughout the process.
I hope you check it out: www.littlefilms.ca!
Today’s recursive Google search: “plays featuring a ‘play-within-a-play’”. Thank you, Wikipedia.
What happens when the academe takes to the stage? You tell me — this is from a description of an upcoming seminar series, at an unnamed Center for Contemporary & Digital Performance Research:
Within the super-saturation of virtuality and technological reproductions in contemporary digital culture are established zones and terrains of indistinction and disappearance (digital kamps). These electronic environments I would nominate as examples of the bio-virtual (perhaps a post-virtual) and model the fields as a space of bio-politics par excellence. For the virtual is not simply virtual anymore as its affect within us is haptic and somatic and leads us to identify the phenomena as a taking place (within the non-place) of the (bio)virtual. The (bio)virtual or post-virtual is no longer a problem of the desert of the real, of representational illusions, but an entrance of a new biopolitics of techno-performativity of doubles and debris veiled through indistinction, confusion, excess. The subject’s role in these digital kamps is one of disappearance: a public denial and a private deferment. My research considers the aftermath of the digital revolution and the resulting bio-political zones of indistinction constructed of bio-virtual doubles, avatars and digital debris.
Apparently the first casualty of the digital revolution is clear writing. I feel like I just won post-structuralist bingo.
Bastard Fugue features Naoya Ebe of the National Ballet of Canada, and live camerawork by yours truly. It premiered at Fresh Blood, a group show of work by young choreographers hosted by The Chimera Project, on October 29th at the Enwave Theatre in Toronto. The piece is set to a Bach fugue for organ, arranged instead for mixed percussion, and uses live projection to explore fugue structure with a single dancer. Special thanks to Naishi (Kamen) Wang for his valuable participation in the creation process. More credits and special thanks after the jump.
I’ll be premiering a new work at The Chimera Project’s Fresh Blood at 8pm on October 29th, at the Enwave Theatre. Bastard Fugue features the National Ballet of Canada’s Naoya Ebe (at right) and is set to the Fugue from Bach’s Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major, arranged for mixed percussion. Including cowbell. Bach + cowbell is like chocolate + bacon: two great tastes that go great together! You can buy tickets here.
Bastard Fugue fuses live performance and projection to explore fugal composition with a single dancer. The Bach fugue, originally composed for organ, is stripped of melody and becomes a propulsive rhythmic fundament for a powerful performance. Some preliminary special thanks:
- Naishi (Kamen) Wang of Toronto Dance Theatre for his valuable participation in the creation process;
- The National Ballet School and the National Ballet of Canada for donating rehearsal space;
- Malgorzata Nowacka for the opportunity to show this work;
- Jeff Morris and Robert Stephen for participating in the technical workshop which spawned some of the ideas explored in this work.
The UK website Eye For Film offers a review of Helioscape’s premiere at DANCE:FILM 09 in Edinburgh.
This is a beautifully composed work. Beautifully danced. Beautifully photographed. But what I particularly liked was there was neither an absence of cinematic technical innovation nor an excess of it.
Thanks to Chris for the thoughtful review.
Update: blogTO highlighted TIFF Bingo in their annual TIFF Film Schedule post.
Instructions: use with your film festival program guide’s film synopses or descriptions. Click for high-res print version. Inspired by yesterday’s release of the Toronto International Film Festival program book. Designed (hastily) by me, written by Pam Steele, Margie Niedzwiecki, and me. I’m going to see if the boys at TIFF will offer any prizes…