Pan Recommends for the week of August 30 through September 5

The Fringe Festival is here, starting Thursday, August 30 and running weekends through September 15, at Frenetic Theater, Super Happy Fun Land, and Bohemeo's. This weekend, I'm looking forward to seeing Character: Drive by Out On A Limb Dance Company, Le Canard Imaginaire by Jessica Capistran and Alexandra Di Nunzio, and Salon by The Joanna (really curious about this one). But there is much, much more on schedule this weekend at the Fringe.

The Capitol At St. Germain Pop-Up Art Show, Thursday, August 30th from 6-10 pm at the Capitol At St. Germain. A pan-Latin American art show, featuring Byron Rabe from Guatemala, Andre Amaral from Brazil, and Norberto Clemente from Cuba. The publicity says that Rabe unveil the largest ever painted 2012 Sacred Mayan Cholqij Calendar, but wouldn't the 2013 calendar be more impressive?

Sasha Dela at the Kenmore at Darke Gallery,  6 pm on Friday, August 31. OK, this is complicated. During the slow period in August, Darke Gallery offers a residency to an artist. This summer the artist has been Emily Sloan. Several years ago, Emily Sloan designated her refrigerator an art space called The Kenmore. So during her residency at Darke Gallery, Sloan offered a residency at The Kenmore to Sasha Dela. The results of this matroyoshka of residencies will be on view Friday.

Dog Park at G Gallery, 6 pm, on Saturday, September 1. You can't go wrong with dog art (unless you are Tom Otterness): G Gallery has dog art out the wazoo, but I can't find a list of artists (including for the piece above--did you paint this green dog? If so, let us know so we can properly credit you!). You can even adopt a dog at the opening.

Blau and Baptism

Sorry Pan readers for light posting lately. I have been in the middle of a busy time. That said, there are several good shows I want to write about and I hope to have new stuff for you soon.

In the meantime, I saw a dance performance last night at Diverse Works, and I want to recommend it. Tonight is the last night. The show consisted of two companies each doing a suite of performances. Vault lead off with a bunch of dances, Blau, that involved trapezes and removing clothing. (No nudity though--the content of the dance wasn't erotic.) I don't really have the language do describe dance works. Some might say the same when I try to write about visual art, but at least I am familiar with how other writers deal with the subject of visual art. With dance, I am stepping into a void. Nonetheless, a lot of what I saw in the Vault pieces made me think of restless sleep.



A lot of it took place on the floor with dancers tossing and turning (artfully, not randomly). Even the removal of the dress made me think about what a sleeper does when she is too warm--she kicks off the covers.
One dance had a dancer who removed her dress three times--she was wearing three dresses. That communicated a feeling of never being able to get comfortable, of unending restlessness.



Maybe when Amy Ell, the choreographer, conceived Blau, she wasn't thinking about sleep. But that was the impression I got, and it was pretty powerful. (The photos above are from here, and there are more there was well.)

Baptism was the second part, and it was by the dance company 6°. They used a lot of water in their program--raining from above or in a bowl on the ground. This work didn't have a single overpowering metaphor for me like Blau did. Dancers at times seemed to be representing animals or even plants. There was one piece where Toni Leago Valle (the choreographer) danced with Bianca Torres-Aponte (a young girl who was part of the company for Baptism) clinging to her front the way some baby animals cling to their mothers in nature. It was a really powerful piece (not the least because it makes you realize how physically strong Valle must be). Blau, despite its apparent theme of restlessness, was full of graceful moves. Baptism was full of deliberately awkward, jerky, even comic moves. (Sorry I don't have any photos of Baptism.) It was a great double program--both Blau and Baptism were fantastic and quite distinct in style.

They had a full house (and you can probably expect the same tonight, so I would buy tickets right away--if they haven't already sold out). Still, Diverse Works is a small performance space. And if you look at these companies' websites, they don't perform in big halls. Sometimes they even stage their programs in people's houses. This is perplexing to me. I was utterly entertained by last night's performance. I loved it. This next statement may betray a sense of me being in an ivory tower, but I honestly can't understand why this kind of work isn't much more popular. As someone with limited time and money to spend on live performances, this was a bargain. (And as a heterosexual man, I was enthralled watching these beautiful, powerful women dance. And yet, the audience was probably 2/3 women and 1/3 men. Why? My guess is that a lot of the women were people who had themselves danced at one time.)

Frenetic Fringe Festival -- Weekend 3 Bullets

I went to the final day of the Frenetic Fringe Festival on Saturday, and have been processing it ever since. This was the first night that felt distinctly fringey. This is not a value judgement, and if anything, it says more about me than about the work. But on other nights, I might have reacted "Hmmm, yes... Yes..." or "Meh," this night's show evoked a few "Holy shits" from me.

Again I apologize for no photos--they really would help. You wouldn't be forced to depend on my inadequate descriptions, delivered insultingly in bulletpoints, as if this were a memo for upper management.

So with that, away we go!

"What The Storm Brought Home" by Jere Pfister

• A one-woman play.
• She tells us about her mother and three aunts from New Orleans.
• After Katrina, she had to rescue one of the aunts, Billie, from a shelter in Baton Rouge.
• Billie is starting to go senile.
• Billie talks to the narrator's dead mother about sexual abuse she suffered from her step-father.
• The narrator realizes that her aunts, who seemed so puritanical and who took obsessive interest in her sex life, were protecting her.
• They never left her alone with her grandfather.
• But they could never say why until they were old and seriously infirm.
• This was one of the "Hmmm, yes..." pieces. It was good but not "fringe."

"Pain, Pleasure, and a Bunny Rabbit" directed by Kieth Reynolds

• A farce like "Spelling Bee Sluts" from the second weekend.
• A father takes his three daughters out to one of those hunting ranches where they keep animals penned for hunters to shoot.
• One daughter is a goth, one daughter is a curvy blonde airhead, and one daughter is a mannish lesbian.
• The animals are mostly dancers, so whenever the ranch manager sets one free, we see some animalish dancing.
• Which is abruptly truncated by the shooting of the four hunters.
• There is also music and singing.
• The music was played on a keyboard set-up and was amplified. It tended to drown out the unamplified singing.
• While I watched this, I kept wondering, what is the point? In short, "Meh."

"Tetsujin" by Rebecca French and Robert Thoth

• These two are the founders of FrenetiCore and the Frenetic Theater
• This film is basically a film of three women dancing in an industrial landscape, while a man does karate movies.
• This seems like something in the air--combining modern dance with other activities that involve the moving body.
• So combine modern dance with kung fu, or with circus clowning.
• It was an interesting piece of work. 
• Tasteful, not very "fringey" except for the unusual combination of dance and martial arts.

"Forever Hold Your Piece (for Now) A.K.A. Bob Hope's Nightmare" choreographed by Rob Davidson (Kinetic Architecture)

• This was the first piece that seemed really fringey.
• Davidson is a dancer who presented a kind of high-camp U.S.O. show.
• He was dressed in drag as a spike-haired Statue of Liberty.
• His dress left his upper chest bare, so we could see his pierced nipples.
• His clunky high-heel boots made dancing a little challenging.
  
• The "chorus line" girls were dressed in frilly hot-pants and red-white-and-blue tops.
• Davidson spoke to the audience and encouraged audience participation.
• One of the dances was to a medley of the armed service theme songs.
• Then he changed into a costume that would allow a little more dance-like movement.
• He danced to "Don't Laugh at Me."
• This is that super corny song that begs people not to laugh at other people because they are different.
• The sentiment is unarguable, but the song is cringe-inducing.
• In his dance of the song, he kept falling down and popping back up.
• It was hard to tell whether he wanted us to experience the music ironically (about the only way I can experience it) or not!
• Davidson was funny, an amazing showman, outrageous, and a hell of a dancer.

 "Alice and the Underground" written by Janet Thielke and Mark Carrier

• A conversation between  three members of the Weather Underground on the day they accidentally blow themselves up.
• Alice, the female member, is unconvinced about the bombing that is planned.
• The two other guys use wacky, fractured logic to try to convince her.
• The conversation deliberately reflects Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the Doormouse.
• It's a clever conceit, and it sort of works.
• But it kind of goes on too long. 

"Easy Credit Theater" by Richard Hubscher

• This is a performance that includes "dance" broadly defined, singing, and extreme physicality.
• It's the second Frenetic Fringe Festival that deliberately recalls Butoh.
• Hubscher is on stage in a Butoh-like loin cloth.
• But more important, he performs under an extreme physical constraint, one he can barely manage.
• This gives his performance unbelievable tension.
• He lifts a wide wooden beam onto his shoulders.
• It must be 30 feet wide, 4" x 4".
• He staggers under the weight.
• It is slightly unbalanced, and when he looks like he is about to fall, he asks for help centering it.
• He speaks into a microphone.
• You can hear him panting.
• He tells us that it is a beam from the floor of his house, which has been torn down.
• He is muscular--he definitely has a dancer's body.
• But he is staggering under the weight.
• You can see his muscles straining, and the mike picks up his panting.
• He then sings a torch song to a recorded accompaniment.
• He finishes while we in the audience were grimacing, awaiting his fall.
• Surely he is meaning to recall Jesus Christ bearing the cross through the streets to Calvary.
  
• His assistants lift the beam off his shoulders.
• He breathes hard, and slowly puts on his pants, shirt, and shoes.
• Then he sings (rants, chants, raps) another song--an angry one about being a Texan.
• It's for George Bush.

Untitled by Jim Pirtle

• Another legitimately "fringe" performance.
• Pirtle is kind of a local performance art legend.
• He has stuff up right now at CAMH, if you want to see his tamer side.
• For this performance, he explains that he heard somewhere that you can get drunk faster if you squirt booze up your ass.
• Uh oh...
• He has a squeeze bottle, lube, and a bottle of wine.
• And "stunt pants" as he calls them.
• And thank god for that--he doesn't actually have to take the pants off.
• Still, we watch the entire awkward process.
• He succeeds in getting a small quantity of wine up there (or so it seems--no way to know for sure, really).
• He gives himself the classic pre-breathalizer sobriety test. He is still sober.
• But he assures us it might take a few minutes before he is "rip-snorting."
• His is the only performance that required no talent.
• Yet he was funny and obviously knew how to keep an audience's attention.
• Pirtle is a showman, that's for sure.

Frenetic Fringe Fotos

I was contacted by choreographer Toni Leago Valle, who had three dances at last weekend's Fringe Festival. She knew one of the photographers present (Ted Viens), and has given me permission to post some of his photos from her dance pieces.


Catalina Molnari in "Silent Victim"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ted_viens/ / CC BY 2.0

Mechelle Flemming in "Interview for a Date/I Take My Dress Off"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ted_viens/ / CC BY 2.0

Toni Leago Valle in "I Am Mother"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ted_viens/ / CC BY 2.0

Frenetic Fringe Festival -- Weekend 2 Bullets

Last week I complained about the Fringe Festival not being quite "fringe" enough. This week was an improvement on that score, and over-all a more interesting and pleasurable evening. You can still see it tonight (Saturday, August 15) or tomorrow. Again to be brief, I'm going to use bullets.

There's a Tsunami at Your Door

• A short play by Mary Ellen Whitworth.
• A woman about to commit suicide is interrupted by a desperate cable salesman.
• Similar to "Velocity" from last week it its use of a tragedy that happened in the past as the cause of what's happening now.
• But it is a straight-forward narrative, not fractured like "Velocity."
• The acting was slightly raw.
• The play had funny moments despite its grim subject.

Dancing Diana

• This struck me as fairly innovative.
  
• Instead of a musical score, there were three short, personal stories by Diana Weeks.
• They were recorded by her and played over loudspeakers.
• She sat stage (she's an older woman, perhaps in her 60s or 70s) while the dancers danced.
• The dancers "interpreted" her story through dance.
• The connection was tenuous, but--
• Both aspects--the story and the dance--were enjoyable.
• It was like, say, riding your bike while listening to your Ipod. You get simultaneous pleasure from both activities.

Spelling Bee Sluts

• A short play by Paul Locklear.
• Slight, farcical story about a hillbilly who comes to L.A. to make it big on the spelling bee circuit.
• He ends up working as a male prostitute.
• A pretty minor piece of work, I'd have to say.

G.I. Joe PSAs

• These were cartoon public service announcements from the 1980s, featuring the G.I. Joe characters telling kids about safety.
• Eric Fensler has recorded new dialogue for them.
• This had the potential to be funny but predictable.
• But Fensler's dialogue (often sounds or made-up foreign languages) was absurd and bizarre.
• It wass still really funny--but not in an easy or obvious way.

Thurmond, W. Va.

• A documentary by Laura Harrison about a soon-to-be ghost town.
• 18 people still live there.
• The National Park Service has bought out most of the folks in town. The intent is to turn this coal mining town into a park along the lines of Mystic Seaport.
• It felt like a typical documentary, one that had neither the power of the old-school documentaries of, say, the Maysles brothers.
• Nor did it use the innovations of Errol Morris or Michael Moore.
• Not that it was bad, just not all that exciting...

Three dance pieces choreographed by Toni Leago Valle

• These were the best things I saw all night, indeed the best out of both nights.
• Three solo dances, three solo dancers. They were highly controlled athletes, but each with a kind of way about her that marked them as artists.

"Silent Victim"

• Catalina Molnari is stranded on unsteady looking rectangular boxes. She barely moves as she grips them and attempts to balance.

"Interview for a Date/I Take My Clothes Off"

• Mechelle Fleming is the dancer in this strangely sexual piece.
• In the first part, there is a film of a girl (Valle) being questioned, job-interview style, about why she would be a good girlfriend for the unseen male interviewer.
  
• The interview itself is forced and calculating, dealing with the value she brings to him as a girlfriend. She is desperate.
• When the interview seems to go wrong, she remembers something.
• She tells him, "Oh, I forgot! I'm good at sex!"
• The whole time, Fleming is sitting on a chair, facing away from the audience.
• She twitches and makes small moves, as if she is constrained and ready to move.
• The movie ends and she starts dancing.
• Her dance struck me as almost tortured. I can hardly describe it in a way that makes sense.
  
• She seem struck by things outside herself, while engaging with a negotiation with herself.
• She seemed buffeted, struck by forces.
• (But, it should be said, it was clear she was fully in control as a dancer.)
• Finally, she took off her dress.
• And it ended with her standing there in her underwear.
• It it appropriate to mention that she is an astonishingly beautiful woman?
• I regret not having photos of the Fringe Festival, especially for the three dances that Valle choreographed.

"I Am Mother"

• The dancer was Valle.
• Her skin was covered with white, pasty makeup except for her eyes, which were kind of a red racoon mask.
• The dance was done seated, under a soft, dim red spotlight.
• Weirdly enough, I was reminded of the installation by Carlos Runcie-Tanaka called "Tiempo Detenido/No Olvidar." The atmosphere was similar.
• Her movements were constrained by her seated posture.
• But the effect was nonetheless electrifying.

I haven't seen enough dance to have a vocabulary to describe what I was seeing. But Toni Leago Valle's three dance pieces were undeniably moving; thrilling even.

General vibe.

• I sat under a fan, so the lack of AC wasn't too horrible.
• They have us fill out an audience poll that includes demographic info.
  
• Apparently collecting this info will help them get grants.
• With which they can, say, buy central air-conditioning.
• The seats at Frenetic are only slightly more comfortable than airline seats.
• It seems like a lot of folks are there just to see their friends or family's performance.
• Consequently, a lot of people leave at the intermission.
• Maybe it's not so bad on Saturday and Sunday.
• But one would certainly wish for more support from people who have no personal connection with the performers.
• (Of course, I could be wrong about the audience...)
• I wish I could photograph some of the performances and put them up here.
• That said, there were two photographers with serious-looking photo set-ups in the audience.
• So perhaps if you search the web, you can find some images.

I thought the show was well-worth the modest ticket price, so catch it tonight or tomorrow if you can.

Frenetic Fringe Festival Week 1 bullets

Friday night I attended day one of the Frenetic Fringe Festival at the Frenetic Theater out on Navigation. This was the first night of a month-long series that combines theater, dance, and film/video pieces. My expectations were for some really avant garde stuff. But what counts as avant garde today, after a 20th century full of it? I imagined the theater would be Samuel Beckett or Charles Ludlam-type things, or maybe pieces related to modern performance art, or Antonin Artaud-Alfred Jarry-like provocations. For the film, I imagined Bruce Conner-like assemblages, Stan Brackhage-ish abstraction, or even Andy Warhol-esque minimalism. And I know nothing about dance, so I didn't have much in the way of expectations there--or so I thought.

The Festival was not as radical (so far) as what I expected. The pieces were all pretty approachable. I was hoping to be challenged a bit more.

Nearing Velocity

• A short play by Liz Gilbert.
• In fragments, we see all the people who were involved in a car accident at Richmond and Montrose.
• One driver Mallory is now paralyzed, a man, Boyd [sic], in the other car paralyzed with guilt.
• It was a strong opener, with good actors and a play that unfolded in an interesting way.
• I now realize that they bookended the opening night of festival with their two best pieces (of the night).
• It might be my old age, but I sometimes had to strain to hear what the cast members were saying.

Beyond the Sphere

• Three women dancing.
• Supposedly about life after death. Music combined with a tape of someone relating a after death experience.
• I have a preconceived notion that all dancers are perfect physical specimens, strong but elegant and beautiful women.
• (See Olga Khokhlova and Lydia Lopokova of the Ballets Russes, for example.)
• But one of these women was a bit on the chunky side.
• People in glass houses should not throw stones, yet this slightly disturbed me!
• The piece was long (it seemed) and by the end, I was in a pleasantly hypnotic state.
• Despite having not understood it at all.

Nevel Is the Devil

• This short film was mildly amusing, but not particularly "fringe."
  
• Office Space was a better movie on a similar theme.

Bruna Bunny and Baby Girl

• The second play of the evening had a tepidly surreal premise.
• A former circus performer's 12-year-old daughter has hair on her chest.
• The girl, Baby Girl, was actually played by a little girl, who did a hell of a job.
• But the play's point was lost on me--it seemed silly without being all that entertaining.

Access Pending

• This dance piece seemed a little more what I would expect from a dance piece than "Beyond the Sphere."
• At least, so it seemed to my dance-virgin eyes.
• I was impressed but the dancer's skills, but not particularly engaged by them.
• But again, maybe that's just me.
  
• I don't know what to look for really.

Kuliman mixes YouTube--ThruYou

• This was a rather astonishing piece of appropriation.
• Kuliman took bits and pieces of solo music uploaded to YouTube.
• (Often these were music lessons, sometimes they were musicians showing off some of their skills.)
• Out of all these disparate bits of music, he created coherent, multi-instrumental songs.
• The lyrics were often based on spoken-word YouTube videos auto-tuned.
• I recall Thomas McEvilley discussing Hellenistic poetry that consisted of appropriating different poets lines into a single poem.
• McEvilley was making the point that post-modernism's practices of appropriation was an ancient practice.
  
• But this piece reminded me very specifically of those ancient Greek poems.
• The skill shown in finding and mixing these fragments is astonishing.
• But the results, while perfectly good, are not great.
• This is a complaint that can be made about much OuLiPo-style art.
• i.e., art that puts a really complex, limiting constraint on the artist with the intent of fostering new, creative ways of making art.
• It's amazing, for example, that A Void was written at all.
• The fact that it is also a great novel is a fucking miracle.
• Kuliman's mixtures are totally listenable--but won't stick in my mind.

So the Fringe Festival's first night was a mixed bag. I would have been surprised if it hadn't been. I will be there for the subsequent shows. My hope is that someone in Houston will amaze me.

(There is an art show along-side the Fringe Festival. The artworks are for sale. Stephanie Toppin, for some insane reason, is selling her drawings for $25 apiece. I personally think this is a bargain. I encourage anyone who liked her work at Diverse Works and Box 13 to pick up a drawing or four, before Toppin comes to her senses.) (Toppin, not "Tobbin"--corrected now.)

Frenetic Fringe Festival Starts Tomorrow

I plan to be there for it and possibly to blog it, in my ongoing project of educating myself about the Houston art scene. The Frenetic Fringe Festival runs every weekend for the rest of August. If you miss the program tomorrow, you can see the same program Saturday and Sunday.

In addition to the the theater, dance and film presentations, there will be an art exhibit. Among the artists is Stephanie Tobbin, who I have blogged about here and here. Here's one of the drawings she will be showing.