Sasha Soren

ARTE SIX
JULY 2004
VOLUME ONE
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Arte Six: July 2004. Volume One
All the arts. All the time.
[Art – Music – Dance – Film – Books – Travel – Life]
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Arte Six is the official newsletter of SashaSoren.com.

Read online: http://www.sashasoren.com/newsletter.htm
Read blog: http://artesix.blogspot.com
Subscribe: artesix@sashasoren.com

NB: Use info listed at your own risk. Arte Six gives no warranty to completeness, accuracy, or fitness for any purpose, ie. use your head, like yo' mama said.
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IN THIS ISSUE:
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LIVES
Joanna McMeikan, singer/songwriter

ART
LA/”Sent”
Munich/”Xtreme Architecture”
Philadelphia/”The Big Nothing”
NYC/“Cartünnel”
Boston/“Myths and Games”

MUSIC
Reviews/Himalayan Project, Alix Olson, Consolidated, Magdalen Hsu-Li,
R-Three, Erin Sitton
Serbia/Festivals/”Exit”
NYC/Festivals/Siren Music Festival

DANCE + THEATRE
INSIGHT/Rythea Lee Kaufman, on “Zany Angels”
Athens/“Mariana Pineda”
NYC/Boccatango
NYC/Flamenco Vivo
NYC/"Movin’ Macbeth"
Miami/"Surreal Saturday"
Vienna/ImPulsTanz Festival
Venice/"Grammar of the Body"
NYC/"Flow"
NYC/"Restless. Native. Dance."
NYC/Von Ussar danceworks
NYC/"Silk and Ume Blossoming"

FILM/SCREENWRITING
Munich/Festival: Fantasy Filmfest
NYC/Festival: Reel Venus
Montreal/FanTasia
London/Rushes Soho Shorts Film Fest

BOOKS/WRITERS
Mini-view: Andrea Semple, novelist
Reading/KGB Bar – “Thirteen Phantasms”, “Winter is Hard”
Writers Bloc series – “Secrets of a Publicist”, Lissa Warren
The Agent series - Jenny Bent, “First Year Out”

TRAVEL
“The Road is My Home”, author/biker Sasha Mullins
Paris-Plage: La vie en beach

SCI/TECH
Stupid movie physics: “The Day After Tomorrow”

LIFE
Red+Black: Subversive’s social calendar
Alles klar on mad kings
More cloak and dagger

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LIVES (interviews and profiles)
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LIVES: Joanna McMeikan, singer/songwriter

Inspiration comes from everywhere. It really can be anything; a painting that moves me, a film that makes me think, a poem, a memorable moment in my life, a feeling I’m working through, a face I see on the street; pain, joy, confusion -- anything that jumps out and grabs my attention.

Songs are journeys through ideas, workings-through of ideas, and ideas are everywhere.

And nowhere, for that matter – sometimes ideas seem to pop into my head out of the ether.

I’m forever getting lyric and melody snippets while I’m driving or talking or walking or just going about my daily routine thinking about something else entirely.

After years of lost material, I finally learned to keep a cell phone in my car and now I call my answering machine whenever I have a song idea and hum or dictate it for myself so that I have it on record someplace.

CONCEPT/COMPLETION

That element varies wildly. The fastest it ever happened was with a song called “Goodbye” (not on this album), which came to me in a blinding flash, and almost wrote itself, as if it were being dictated to me from somewhere else. I think it took about 20 minutes.

The longest period I can think of between concept and completion was a song called “Past Unconditional” (track 6 on “Breaking the Habit”).

I wrote the lyrics for this very quickly after an inspiring day with a friend at an art exhibit of Lee Krasner’s work (Krasner was Jackson Pollock’s wife). We’d been discussing reincarnation, creativity, karma and TS Eliot, among other things.

I knew the song would be largely spoken, and I had an overview of how the parts would fit together, but I just couldn’t quite make it work.

So it sat in my half-written songs folder for three or four years. I’d think of it from time to time, have an idea for it, forget about it...then suddenly one morning, when I was halfway through working on “Breaking the Habit” and not thinking about this song at all, I woke up and knew I could crack it.

I can’t explain it any other way, I just knew it was ready to be born, and it wanted to be part of the album.

So I sat down at the keyboard and a few hours later had the outline for much of the recording you hear on the CD.

I write differently every time – sometimes music first, sometimes lyrics, sometimes melodic or rhythmic ideas that the song gets built around; sometimes an idea comes to me in the car like a gift, sometimes I sit down at the piano and go hunting for inspiration.

It’s all very haphazard. I know this is different for everyone – but for me, songs that matter to me artistically (writing on commission is something else entirely because less of your soul is invested) are born however and whenever they want to be born,
there’s no incantation or ritual that’s going to bring one along when it’s not ready to occur.

NATURE VS. NURTURE

Talent is absolutely necessary at the higher levels of playing music.

You can’t train that spark into someone who hasn’t got it. You can train them to be competent -- but never brilliant.

Then again, if you have the talent but don’t train it, it’s worse than useless. So both are necessary.

EXPERIENCE

Every song I have ever written has its basis in something that happened to me or to someone I know, or to someone or something in an artwork that I relate to in some way.

This is not to say that every song is a literal and true depiction of my life; I often take poetic license and add fictional elements and exaggerate the parts that seem most interesting in order to explore whatever feeling or issue I am trying to explore.

All of the songs on “Breaking the Habit” have some piece of my experience in them, sometimes exactly as I tell it, sometimes quite far removed and sideways.

Know what, though, I don’t think there’s much difference at all between fiction and real life; both are essentially stories, adventures, comedies, tragedies that get made up as we go along.

If there’s a difference, I suppose it’s that we have less control over our real life, and the ends are seldom neatly tied-up.

The ink goes down on the page but much of the process is largely beyond our control or understanding.

And because we’re unavoidably embroiled in it, in a temporal sense, living from moment to moment, I think the question of whether real life is aspredetermined, as set in stone as a completed work of fiction, becomes largely irrelevant - since we have to experience it as choice either way.

So then the most important lesson becomes learning to let go.

LEARNING CURVE

The most insightful thing anyone ever said to me was: “It’s all about expectation.”

To be honest I’m not sure who said it – it may have been my friend Cheryl, or it may have come from a Buddhist text of some sort.

Wherever it came from, it was a life-changing lesson for me. I think almost all unhappiness comes from deflated expectation.

We’re all forever painting pictures in our minds of how things are going to be, how we expect things to go, and then we freeze-frame our idea of things and invest so much in the frozen image that when the actuality happens and is not exactly what we decided we wanted, we feel cheated somehow.

Even worse, when this happens to people who are not living in awareness of themselves and their emotions, they can often go into a place of great fear and start striking out blindly.

You can see a macrocosm of this process any time there’s a war. It’s all rooted in fear. We’d all be so much better off just floating, untethered to expectation, free to navigate the ebb and flow of the river and negotiate the bends as they come -- which is not to say we can’t plan things or hope for things, just that we shouldn’t get so invested in specific outcomes that we can’t appreciate the surprising realities that often pop up and the unexpected rewards and lessons they can bring.

I make a conscious effort to remember that, and practice it a tiny bit more every day. It’s going to take me a lot more than a lifetime to get good at it.

THEMES

For the title of my first album -- I actually went looking for it.

I gathered together the songs I wanted, and looked at what they had in common, at what had defined that period of my life.

What I found was a number of songs about obsession, addiction and trying to break out of damaging patterns of behavior – in a few different ways, but most conspicuously in the relationship arena.

So, “Breaking the Habit” it was.

In this album, I was working through ideas of obsessive, compulsive, addictive behaviors.

Also, generally, ideas about living a conscious life and letting go of expectations and obsessions, ideas about reincarnation, about distorted reality perception, about love and anger, about youth and age, about that kind of bittersweet starlit universal sadness that can seep in under your skin on lonely evenings.

I used different sides of the experience of being in love as one way to explore the idea of obsession.

And of course there is an endless amount to comment on in the love arena, and so much we don’t understand about it.

That’s why artists never stop exploring the topic – and why so few of us ever really get relationships quite right.

LOVE

Music is the ultimate universal language. It speaks directly to the soul. It crosses boundaries of country, belief, gender, race and sexuality.

It’s one of the only things I can think of in this mundane, harsh, confusing world that actually is magical. It soothes, it feeds, it inspires -- what could be more necessary than that?

HATE

I’m trying to be more Zen, to be calmer and more accepting in life, but until I succeed, here’s a short list of stuff that really irritates me:

- Los Angeles traffic jams
- People who eat noisily and smack their lips together (my friend and I call this “groinking”)
- George Bush
- People who spit in the street
- Physical violence, particularly the strong attacking the weak. One of my
big personal peeves is the way people treat animals, as if their lives were somehow not worthy of respect and care.
- Chewing gum/bubble gum
- Prejudice/racism/sexism/homophobia/fitness and diet Nazis/religious zealots/anything with a “clique” or an “I know better than you do and I’m going to tell you all about it” type of mentality behind it.
- Getting sick when I have things to do

Something that puzzles me: All of the above.

MINOR OBSESSIONS

All my life I’ve been fascinated by reality perception.

How do we create the bubble we each call “reality”, and why do we have a tendency to assume our bubble is the “real” bubble?

Is “insanity” simply what happens when you create a reality that not enough other people in a particular society are willing to corroborate?

When we very clearly do not have the whole picture (as to why we are here, if there is a reason, what happens next, what are we doing and so on), isn’t it somewhat insane for anyone to assume they know anything at all?

I’m not sure that there are answers available to us here. Just more questions, layers of onion, deeper and deeper. But I’ve certainly delved a long way into the question and continue to do so.

WORDS AND MUSIC

Songwriting is an incredibly cathartic process for me. If I’m thinking about an aspect of my experience or life in general, chewing it over in my mind, or if I’m suffering in some way, it will inevitably end up scribbled down in song lines on a piece of paper somewhere...and because songwriting is such a process of condensation, it’s the perfect means to work through something and come to a place of peace with it.

You really don’t have much time to say anything in a song -- you have to express yourself in a couple of verses and a chorus – you have to boil your story down to its essential elements, and that unavoidably leads to a greater understanding of the core, the center, of what you’re trying to get at. The truth of whatever you’re feeling.

Writer’s block? Oh, God yes! It exists. Sometimes, the well is just dry, dry, dry.

When that happens, I think it’s best to walk away and go do something else for a while.

INFLUENCES

I absolutely love Joni Mitchell as a songwriter, I think she’s just an amazingly talented poet and musician.

Lines like:“You are in my blood like holy wine/you taste so bitter and you taste so sweet Oh I could drink a case of you/And still be on my feet” just blow me away.

And her albums are packed with lyrics as good as that one, and music of equal caliber. Kate Bush is also a favorite of mine, she’s so individual and unafraid, such a creative trailblazer.

Other artists I listen to a lot would be Sting, Tori, Alanis, Tom Waits, Suzanne Vega, Beck, and many others.

Songs I wish I’d written: There are so many!

A few I can think of offhand - at this moment - would be “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell, “Shape of my Heart” by Sting, Sheryl Crow’s “Weather Channel”, Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up”, Billy Joel “And So It Goes”, Tori Amos’ “God”, Beck’s “Paper Tiger”...I could go on and on.

On a related subject, the performance I wish I’d sung, or the performance that affects me the most strongly, is Eva Cassidy’s rendition of “Over the Rainbow” on the “Songbird” CD.

I have to listen to it sparingly, since I can’t get all the way through it without crying. I think Eva had an absolutely unparalleled genius for heartfelt vocal performance.

As for books – I studied English Language and Literature at college, so I’ve read far more than I ever wanted to and I’m sure most of it has influenced me one way or another.

A few writers I especially love, though, are poets Sylvia Plath, Shelley, Blake, TS Eliot, Yeats and Philip Larkin, depth psychologist James Hillman,
sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, and Virginia Woolf.

Other things that interest me: Psychology and philosophy – particularly the areas where the two coincide, such as reality perception, the line between “madness” and “sanity”.

If I wasn’t a singer/composer, I’d definitely
be either a poet or a psychologist/psychiatrist/psychological researcher in reality perception.

Or both.

DOWNTIME

What I’m reading right now: “Birthday Letters” by Ted Hughes, a collection of poems written just before he died, about his relationship with Sylvia Plath – almost a response, decades later, to her posthumous volume “Ariel”.

I’m also halfway through “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” by Sogyal Rinpoche, which grounds me when I start losing it in the Los Angeles madworld.

Also love fine art, poetry and movies, and anything absurd or unusual. My favorite comedian is Eddie Izzard. If you haven’t seen “Dressed to Kill”, you’re missing out.


INSIDE TRACKS

I’m not a great believer in telling anyone my idea of what my songs mean, simply because I think one of the most beautiful things about a song, or any work of art, is how much it changes, metamorphoses, depending upon the eyes and the soul of the person who’s viewing it.

So I’ll just take the last song on the CD, “Today”, and tell you the story behind the writing of it:

“Today”
[http://www.cdbaby.com/mcmeikan]

She walks every night
In a world without air
And there's blood on her hands
There's death in her hair
Watch her crawl
To the surfacing world
It ripples and shimmers
In the eyes of a girl

When you've seen through the mirror, how can you unlearn?
Or make a return to straight lines?
Well, they say that in time we'll be saved –
It's a lie
All we have is today

They tore her away
From the place she was born
Now she spends all her days
Just trying to get home
And the answer she seeks
Drifts like foam on the seas
And the pain in her chest
Brings her down to her knees

When you've seen through the mirror, how can you unlearn?
Or make a return to straight lines?
Well, they say that in time we'll be saved –
It's a lie
All we have is today.

Ah -
Soon I'll be under the earth
In dreams again…

I wrote “Today” as a poem, originally.

It was a little different from the song lyric as it now stands, it started something like:

“How do you come back from that place without air
When there’s blood on your hands
When there’s death in your hair…”

The poem was inspired by, of all things, a rerun of the final episode of “MASH”, where all the doctors and nurses are finally going home.

It got me thinking about servicemen and women who return from wars, and how jarring and surreal and beyond awful it must be to have to try to wrench yourself back into the workaday world after the hellish, inconceivable experiences of war.

Once I’d finished the poem, it touched me, and it seemed like it wanted to be a song.

So I sat down at the piano. I knew it was going to be eerie and intensely intimate, so I chose F minor (my favorite key) and kept it minimal, leaving a lot of space to say what the words don’t. Music and melody flowed along fairly easily.

For the chorus, I adapted some lines from the poem’s second verse, which went something like this:

“When you’ve seen through the mirror, how then to unlearn
Or make a return to the straightening line?
The eye of the storm in its spiral and gyre
Cries “Time. Only time. Only time. Only time.”

Somehow, though, once I’d reached “or make a return to straight lines”, the song itself took over and refused to accept the idea of the poem, which was that time can at least go some way toward healing.

The song didn’t want to be so simplistic, I guess, and the melody and lyrics: “Well, they say that in time/we’ll be saved/It’s a lie.All we have is today” appeared in their entirety out of the ether.

Or maybe out of the music. I’m never quite sure how
that happens, all I know is those lyrics were not part of my intention.

But they settled into the song, and that was that.

I wrote the second verse in the usual way, and once that was done, the whole song seemed to have another facet to it somehow.

It now seemed to contain an additional story about being ripped away from the place we came from and forced to live out these lives, never knowing how or why, and so the closing lines came into being, tying up both the element of dreamscape and the element of life/death that were now running through the song alongside everything else.

My favorite thing about “Today” is that I think it’s wide open for interpretation.

I think it will mean a hundred different things to a hundred different people, and that makes me happy.

Artist bio: Joanna McMeikan's songwriting has been variously described as "pathological", "unforgettably original" and "hauntingly beautiful"; her memorable vocal style as "Loreena McKennit meets Natalie Merchant, with a little Tori Amos thrown in for good measure".

Joanna [http://www.joannamcmeikan.com] was born in England and trained in classical piano. She focused on her other passion - writing - during her college years, studying English Language and Literature at Oxford University; but she sang in choirs and musicals, a cappella groups and bands along the way.

Arriving in Los Angeles in 1996, Joanna found day jobs on the TV shows "Frasier" and "Star Trek", did session work for Vitamin records and the Animal Planet channel, and formed the band DragonEye in 1999.

She had a moment of epiphany when she realized she could combine her two great passions by penning the band's original material as well as performing it.

She has been writing songs like a crazed thing ever since, pausing only to compose a couple of film scores (including the award-winning short "The Picnic").

Her solo debut "Breaking the Habit" was released in February 2004. The album was co-produced by McMeikan and Mario Maisonnave.

She will be playing live in Los Angeles very soon. Find out more about this artist, and download track #1 "Again" for free, at her official site. [http://www.joannamcmeikan.com]

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ART (events and news – painting, photography, sculpture…)
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ART/LA
“Sent”
July 10-17
Reception: July 10, 7pm

Phonecam exhibit “Sent” takes a look at what happens when you send a dozen invited artists (including, strangely enough, Megan Mullally and “Weird Al” Yankovic) out into the world clutching Motorola V600 cameraphones.

The resulting images, of course, are only the starting point.

Phonecam images...Postcards? Indie news coverage? Frivolous novelty? Necessary cultural evolution? Updated version of 'gimmee your digits'? Invasion of privacy?

Or...art?

“Sent” exhibition co-curater Caryn Coleman gives us her take:

The premise of the show is essentially this: as phonecams become an everyday accessory, how will this immediate accessibility to take pictures change the way everyday people aesthetically view the world around them?

And how will artists utilize and manipulate this new medium?

Technology has always been accepted by emerging artists. For instance, in the 1970s, artists like Barbara Krueger or Louise Lawler used photography in a very different way than just taking straight pictures.

Today, with phonecams, artists are able to document everyday performances, places and portraits in the blink of an eye.

I'd like to stress that the work being produced by phonecam shouldn't be strictly labeled "phonecam art", rather I think that it's just a new form of photography.

THE SET-UP

All artists were provided with Motorola V600 cameraphones.

For the invited photographers (among them musician Cynthia Connolly, bloggers Mark Cuban and Warren Ellis, photographers Elizabeth Daniels and Clayton James Cubitt, a.k.a. “Siege”, actress Megan Mullally, phonecam blogger Ruth Waytz and performer “Weird Al” Yankovic), we’ll be printing out their images.

Phonecams currently produce low-res images so the actual image will be around two inches; paper size will be 4”x6”.

For those who submit images [http://www.sentonline.com] to our open/online component to the show, we’ll be displaying rotating images on four flat screens monitors.

All of the images, both invited artists and general public, will be available for viewing at sentonline.com.

ONE VIEW

Actual fine-art and professional artists and photographers have been asked to submit photos to this exhibition, so, as to whether or not the final product is art – that’s a loaded question.

When a new medium is being explored, that age-old question of "is it art" is sure to come about, but with the artists’ intent behind this project being to create artwork in a new medium, I would say that, yes, this can be considered art.

Why? The intent to create art is there and the product is visually significant.

"Sent" doesn't explore whether or not this is art but, rather, how [new technology] is used to create imagery.

As for restrospectives; as with most things, it depends on how good it is. For anything to have a retrospective, it has to have value.

If artists begin to use a phonecam in interesting ways, then there shouldn't be any reason why it wouldn't be museum worthy.

“Sent” is co-curated by Caryn Coleman and Sean Bonner (sixspace gallery, LA) and tech journalist Xeni Jardin. View images online, or at Standard Downtown. Free WiFi access is available throughout the hotel lobby area.

Find it: (Physical show location)
“Brunette” Room
Standard Hotel Downtown
550 Flower Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071
Get info: (213) 892-8080
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ART/Munich
“Xtreme Houses”
Through August 1st

We are all architects. Perhaps we haven’t studied architecture or taken a degree in architectural engineering.

Nevertheless, we all need shelter; we arrange our environments to best suit our needs.

But what is a “house”? And what is “home”?

The “Xtreme Houses” exhibit examines ‘artitecture’ from numerous angles, but from a single starting point: what’s out there, beyond the standard four walls and a roof?

The houses shown in this exhibition, are ‘extreme,’ because they challenge traditional civil engineering and homogenized construction, present new ways of utilizing space, solve problems related to overcrowding, or adapt rudimentary tools to provide emergency shelter.

Many of the pieces selected for this exhibit originate from solutions found at the very edge of the society, where housing is arranged to meet extreme environmental situations with any elements which are readily available.

The exhibit also asks us to think about the natural evolution of housing in response to hyper-mobility, skyrocketing real estate costs, responses to natural catastrophes or war, mass migrations, and homelessness.

Many of the houses selected for the exhibit make use of either exclusively new design, such as the rotating sleeping/eating/working wheel “Turn On”,
or in discarded materials which can be used to maximum effect, with a little ingenuity; “Dome” for instance, is literally just that – a spacious dome constructed of triangular panels sliced from discarded cardboard.

What about hyper-mobility? With GPS able to pinpoint location precisely, is there any real reason to stay put at a single geophysical location?

Rather than take ourselves to our home, can we take our home with us, wherever we happen to be? Sure, says Valeska Peschke, in her contribution to the exhibit: “Inflatable House”.

Another issue to think about: given a limited area of terra firma available for building, are there other solutions? Maybe. If we consider housing that can float on water, or reclaim square footage underground.

Environmental concerns are addressed by the use of DIY solar panels, in “Future Shack”, by Sean Godsell Architects, and Michael Hönes’ “Dosenhaus”, a cottage created out of hundreds of soda cans.

Each of the houses included in the exhibit was created as an answer to an urgent need, or as a solution to a problem. The exhibitors consider economic viability, spatial efficiency, and the most intangible factor of all – creating a “home”.

A mixture of designs, photographs, small-scale models and life-sized prototypes, the “Xtreme Houses” exhibit delivers some intriguing answers to the problem of habitat.

Find it: Lothringer Dreizehn (13)
Lothringer Str. 13
Munich, Germany
Get there: S-Bahn: Rosenheimer Platz, Ostbahnhof
Get info: 49-89-448-69-61
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ART/Philadelphia
“The Big Nothing”
Through August 1st

On the offchance you’ve been waiting for it, here it is: a new show about absolutely nothing.

The void, the ineffable, the sublime, nonsense, nihilism, zero – all packed into Philly ICA’s “The Big Nothing” exhibit.

Filling two floors and both main gallery spaces, the exhibition at Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art includes painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, video and film. So there’s something about nothing for everyone.

In the first floor gallery: a hodge-podge of approaches to the big theme. Works by Andy Warhol and Richard Prince explore pop art's ties to vacuous consumer culture.

A different section approaches nothing from a more metaphysical angle: paintings by Jack Goldstein, for instance, depict “invisible” natural phenomena like heat or star clusters, while Yayoi Kusama's paintings represent the theme of infinity.

Philadelphia artist Thomas Chimes displays a series of nearly all-white paintings of romantic, dreamlike landscapes.

His work also references work by nineteenth century writers Alfred Jarry and Edgar Allan Poe. Both of whom generally wrote stories about people who bopped along thinking nothing was wrong, but aha, there was. Boo.

Walk through the first floor gallery to reach works addressing reduction, refusal and negation. The section includes photographs by Louise Lawler, who takes pictures of empty or de-installed museum spaces.

Also in display, “Black Paintings” by Jutta Koether, their imagery blacked out and painted over by the artist during intense, discordant musical performances.

If that’s not enough nothing for you, the ICA serves as the anchor venue for an entire series of exhibits and events in Philly, all about “The Big Nothing”.

Take a significant other along. For once, you’ll have a great excuse to argue about nothing:

“It’s art.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“True. It isn’t. But it’s not supposed to be.”
“Uhm, well, yeah, it is. Art has to have meaning.”
“The meaning is non-meaning.”
“Non-meaning means ‘no meaning’, right?”
“Not in this context.”
“Not in this context? Contradicting yourself. Think.”
“You’re not supposed to think. That’s the whole point.”
“So now I’m not supposed to think? Why’d we come, then?”

Have fun.

Then, once no one is talking to anyone (in keeping with the spirit of the ‘big nothing’ theme), park yourselves in the kino for “Entr’acte”. Continuous screenings of the film run from 10am-6pm on July 15th and 16th, in the ICA Auditorium.

However, there will be literally no performance, as the eight musicians will be replaced by eight speakers 'playing' the live accompaniment to the film.

Failing that, there’s the “Nothing Cabaret” on July 21st, at 7pm on the ICA Terrace. On the program: A night of Dada celebration including sleight-of-hand, poetry, silence, and a screening of Andy Warhol’s short film, “Sleep,” which lives up to the title.

“Arte Six” nota bene to the Pew Charitable Trusts:

We will be glad to contribute the remake of “Sleep”, (“Sleep 2: The Big Sleep”), wherein that’s what we’ll do, for days on end, if you will kindly forward a whopping big grant and a fluffy pillow.

And if we rope Spencer Tunik into the whole deal, we will have NAKED sleeping people all over the streets of – everywhere. While this will not improve traffic congestion, it will give everyone something to discuss on the morning commute.

Thanks so much.

Highlights elsewhere:

“Erasure” at Vox Populi
Through August 1st

From politics to personal concerns, the exhibition focuses on the act of destruction, what remains after the destruction, and the concept of memory or nostalgia for the destroyed object, idea or person.

“Strike” at Basekamp
July 9-August 20

“Strike” is a large-scale exhibition of artistic responses to a single question: How does/could/would the withdrawal of art affect the world?

Find it: Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)
University of Pennsylvania
118 S. 36th St. Philadelphia, PA 19104-3289
Get info: (215) 898-5911

Find it: Vox Populi
41315 Cherry Street, 4th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Get info: (215) 568-5513

Find it: Basekamp
723 Chestnut Street, 2nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Get info: (215) 206-8176

[Visual: “Bombhead”, (2002)
Pigmented ink jet, acrylic paint on paper, 38 3/8 x 31 1/8
Bruce Conner
Courtesy of Susan Inglett Gallery]
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ART/NYC
“Cartünnel”
July 3: Launch party @ Flux Factory
July 10, 11: disc/tour @MoCCA
Exhibit through August 7th

The project: create a walk-through art maze in the Flux Factory gallery space over which comic book characters (the audience) interact with their environment and develop their stories, based on the choices they make.

The artists: established and emerging cartoonists, illustrators, and graphic novelists.

Visitors walk through the life-sized art maze and put together a 3-D “Choose Your Own Adventure” story, with side-plots, dead-ends, and parallel narrative universes, created in a collaborative atmosphere.

Depending on which directions visitors choose at various junctures along the way, the course of the story is altered accordingly.

Narrative labyrinth or art funhouse for grownups? Both. Don’t lose your map.

Participating artists include comix artists Daupo Gassaway, Jason Little and Alex Holden, artist/writer Andrea Dezso, and illustrator Aya Kakeda.

Artists will be in attendance for launch party/tour on July 3rd.

Open to public: Saturday/Sunday, 2pm - 8pm
By appointment/reserve: (646) 319-4413

Find it: Flux Factory
3838 43rd Street
Long Island City, NY 11101
Get info: (718) 707-3362

Related events: Discussion/tour @ MoCCA
July 10, 11, 2 p.m.

Brooklyn-based cartoonist Jason Little discusses the creative process and final product of the "Cartünnel" project, at MoCCA, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art.

After the lecture, attendees swoop out on a field trip to visit "Cartünnel" at the Flux Factory. No, they don't really swoop; no brooms.

About lecturer: Cartoonist Jason Little is the author of "Bee", the weekly "bubblegum noir" cartoon strip. In addition to suspense cartoons, he is also pursuing a series of experimental cartoons; he's drawn narrative cartoons based on the Heimlich maneuver restaurant instruction poster, as well as an airline safety instruction card. Among other experiments is the Xeric Award-winning "Jack's Luck Runs Out", a story told through playing cards.

Find it: MoCCA (Musueum of Comic and Cartoon Art)
594 Broadway (between Houston & Prince)
Suite 401
Get info:(212) 254-3511
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ART/Boston
Through July 30th
“Myths and Game”

In tribute to the upcoming Olympics in Athens, Tepper Takayama Fine Arts’s summer exhibition is “Myths and Games” featuring works by Milton Montenegro, Daido Moriyama, Paolo Rosselli, Hiromi Tsuchida and others.

Milton Montenegro’s “Nebulae” series comprises avant-garde, partially digitally created, partially photographed recreations of Greek Gods and demi-gods.

Athena, goddess of wisdom, is interpreted as regal and imposing, while Icarus is shown poised to take off in flight, before his ultimate fall.

Daido Moriyama reflects his nation’s fanatic devotion to baseball in his characteristically irreverent and oblique manner, photographing a poster of a baseball game.

Paolo Rosselli’s cool elegant work captures the awe-inspiring power of the Parthenon whose columns diminish its tourists and the breadth and sumptuousness of Sravana Belgola, an Indian Shrine which is a center point for multiple myths.

The works of artists Yoshi Abe, Evandro Teixiera, Robert Welsh, Cassio Vasconcellos, and George S. Zimbel complete the exhibition, which focuses on the enduring allure of myths and games in this summer of the Olympic games.

[Image: Milton Montenegro, “Icaro” (Icarus), (1998)
Digitally manipulated photo. QuadBlack inkjet print on Arches paper,
Edition of 10. 41.5 x 41.5 cm]

Find it: Tepper Takayama Fine Arts
20 Park Plaza, Suite 600
Boston MA 02116
Get info: 617-542-0557

[NB: We’d like to cover more art events. If you’re in touch with artists or gallery directors who’d be interested in being mentioned in upcoming issues, please tell them to get in touch:
“Arte Six” c/o artesix@sashasoren.com]

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INDIE MUSIC (reviews, features, events, info)
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[Reviews courtesy of: CDBaby.com, http://www.cdbaby.com]

This month, outspoken dissections of the status quo. Solid albums from musician/activists, for your favorite political animal:

HIMALAYAN PROJECT: The Middle Passage
Next level hip hop from a global perspective. Touching on political topics like immigration, religion, capitalism and global imperialism while still managing to rip the mic with the same fury that made them an underground classic in the first place. Intelligent trip-hop -- hard to pass up.

ALIX OLSON: Built Like That
A feminist spoken word folk-hop extravaganza, backed by musical talents Catie Curtis and Pamela Means. Outspoken poet/activist Alix Olson spends at least 300 days out of the year on the road. Related: "Independence Meal" is Olson’s latest CD.

R-THREE: Perceptual Distortion
Applied synesthesia – a mélange of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. Conceptually, "Perceptual Distortion" might be a distant relative of Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" and Roger Waters' "Amused to Death"; but while it explores many of the same themes – quest for clarity, spiritual cohesion and the end of distorted perception -- this album takes the listener on a very different kind of journey.

CONSOLIDATED: Dropped
Activist/performing group combines industrial beats with heavy funk and rock influences to deliver a hard dose of political/human reality. The issues don’t go away, so the beat goes on.

MAGDALEN HSU-LI: fire
Acoustic/pop/alternative poetry. Hsu writes universal, personal, and political songs that resonate; an outspoken but quietly compelling musician and singer. Easygoing, breezy pop with sharp lyrics: “I've seen kinder eyes than yours behind the barrel of a gun.”
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/magdalen

ERIN SITTON: Gone by Noon
“Gone by Noon” starts off like an offbeat collection of poetry set to music – which isn’t a bad thing. Clever, twisted lyrics(“...and your house might be just a stone’s throw away/but c’mon now/when’s the last time we threw rocks?”), commenting on social connections, changing relationships, and loss. Commentary on the interpersonal, set to upbeat folky-pop riffs. Mellow post-rally musique. With bongos.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/sitton
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MUSIC/Festivals/Serbia
«Exit»
July 1-4
Serbia's «Exit» summer fest isn't just a music festival; the open-air festival is an urban bohemian...experience.

Which stands to reason – not too many festivals this year include Massive Attack, Iggy Pop, Cypress Hill, Adam Freeland, Neneh Cherry, Senor Coconut and Goldfrapp on the main stage, with heavy-duty backup by DJs Roger Sanchez, Timo Maas, Way Out West, Steve Lawler, X-Press 2, Satoshi Tomiie, Lexicon Avenue, Technasia, Pako, DJ Hyper and Smokin’ Jo.All in a fortress on the Danube River.

Never mind the fact that U.S. bombing raids gutted Serbia’s communications infrastructure; “Screw that,” said the ‘Exit’ folks, “we’re still gonna party like it’s 1999.” And there it was.

The Petrovaradin Fortress, for those who like to know these things, was historically called the “Gibraltar on the Danube,” and served as a major defensive stronghold.

Construction on the fortress started in 1692 and didn’t wrap until 80+ years later, in 1780. Historians blame long lunch breaks.

Actually, we just made that up. But it’s a good working hypothesis, eh? Can debate that over lunch…

And, just a dash for people who’d rather know about stuff like outrageous artist tour riders – tough noogies. There are none, only this blurb about U.S. import, “Cypress Hill”: “The crew of ‘Cypress Hill’ didn’t have any special or exotic propositions and wishes for lunch and dinner, such as dove eggs, stuffed giraffe neck meat or eucalyptus steaks – they just stated the number of meals required.”

Apart from the almost mystical atmosphere, the fortress has something a lot more useful for “Exit” – fantastic acoustics.

So, back to the music...“Exit” is the biggest festival in Southeastern Europe, and draws the best underground and emerging artists, along with established artists. Forget Ibiza -- this month, party people are making like the barbarian hordes at Petrovaradin.

For the easily bored, the festival offers more than twenty different sound stages: Voda Main Stage, Energis DJ Arena, Lav Balkan Fusion Stage, Lav Progressive Stage, Sinalco Jamaican Stage, Axe Latino Stage, Blues and Jazz, Deep, Down & Dirty Stage, Electronic Culture Space, Art Stage, Crossroad Stage, Future Shock Stage, DJ Superstar Stage, Café del Mar Stage, Extreme Sport Stage...

That’s just for starters. They’ve also got cutting-edge art exhibits, extreme sport events, and one of the biggest open-air dance floors in Europe.

In Europe this month? Do not miss this one.
Find it: Petrovaradin Fortress, Danube River, Novi Sad, Serbia
Get there: Festival buses leave from Belgrade. Call the festival line, they'll hook you up.
Get info: (SERBIA) +381-21-420-735
Get info: (LONDON) +020-7240-5252
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MUSIC/Festivals/NYC
Siren Music Festival
July 17
12 noon through 9pm

Free, all-day music festival features live international, national, local bands and DJs performing throughout the Coney Island amusement park on two outdoor stages.

Organized (semi-organized) by the “Village Voice”, the Siren Music Festival is a crowded but fun venue, showcasing indie rock veterans and emerging artists.

Playing this year: Electric Six, Vue, Death Cab for Cutie.

Find it: Coney Island/Stillwell stage, main stage, various.
Get there:
W train to Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island.
or F train to Ave. X, transfer to Coney Island shuttle bus.
or Q train to Brighton Beach, transfer to B-68 bus to Coney Island.
Get info: (212) 475-3333

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DANCE (events, news, opps)
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DANCE/Insight: Rythea Lee Kaufman, for “Zany Angels”
[http://www.zanyangels.com]

“I think if all people were required to get up in the morning and boogie for 45 minutes, the world would be a different place.”

I find that in order to be inspired creatively, I have to be practicing the art itself.

When I dance, I’m inspired to create dances.
When I write, I source ideas and desires that demand to be written. Making art inspires me to make art.

Sharing creative space with other artists fuels my work. The process of sharing that timeless place, that right brain space that’s so counter-culture, with someone else who comprehends the impact of creativity -- there’s nothing else like that.

LIFE IN ART

Me and my collaborative partner play with movement, spontaneous monologues, automatic writing, and once we dive in, our life stories pour out.

We use voice, movement, monologue, and song. We take our time birthing a performance piece. Our new show, “Shameless,” took at least a year. But now it feels complete and has the dimensionality and depth we wanted when we began.

Our work is autobiographical. However, we experience our stories as universal and have gotten feedback again and again from people who say we are telling their own stories.

Our new show “Shameless” is about living through childhood abuse and trauma, how we coped, how we healed, how we have come to find ourselves innocent and beautiful despite what we lived through. It seems to me that childhood sexual abuse in particular is the number one suppressed epidemic in American culture. Even when it turns up in movies, it’s sensationalized and doesn’t touch the reality of what millions of children are living through every day.

My collaboration with Rose Oceania has been a spectacular gift in this lifetime. We’ve been collaborating for ten years, as artists and friends.

We have a similar history of abuse and used our rehearsals to transform our own lives. In the beginning, there was a lot of pain, we were remembering the past and it was intense. But even then, we made dances, performed, painted, wrote.

Through the years, our healing process took hold and our creations became more empowered, joyful, and effective. We’ve become adults through this process and matured as artists. We share creative time together and it feels utterly natural, a whole universe with new rules.

I’m moved and inspired by my purpose. I know that part of the reason I’m here on the planet is to speak out about what I believe in: specifically, injustice.

I’ve spent many years healing the injustices that I’ve lived through. It gives me great satisfaction and energy to give voice to what is right and wrong concerning abuse, violation, and trauma.

I’m not willing to be quiet about what I know to be true. My values, my knowing about how children should be treated, about the ignorance that covers up the pain people live through. These kinds of issues profoundly inspire my work as an artist on a daily basis.

LEARNING CURVE

The biggest myth about being creative is that only some people can [be creative]. The truth is that every single person is naturally creative. If they think they can’t be creative, they’ve just shut down a core aspect of themselves.

Children get shamed, compared, and suppressed at school, by other children, by teachers and adults. They’re told that art isn’t practical, that it’s a waste of time and it’s selfish.

It’s has been a great joy of mine to help adults get back to their creativity. The only way to start is to be willing to do it just for fun or just for healing, not to make anything beautiful or “good.”

Take the judgment out of it and just do it.

Other things I’ve learned: When I was first starting to dance, I wish someone had told me that I don’t have to hurt or push my body or starve myself to be a dancer. To dance gently, to treat my body gently. I wish someone had told me to do it out of love.

DANCE AS THERAPY

I think if all people were required to get up in the morning and boogie for 45 minutes, the world would be a different place.

“Zany Angels” is a dance/theater company with a mission to expand awareness of the issues of trauma and abuse through performance art that is accessible and playful. To create an environment where stories of triumph and courage are part of a universal narrative that crosses barriers of gender, class culture, and sexual orientation.

Dance as a private, studio form can be therapeutic and transformational. I think performance can be therapeutic, also, but the difference in creating art [for public consumption] is being clear about intent.

I think people take issue with emotionally-oriented art because it can be re-traumatizing.
It’s important for artists to be aware of the impact of their stories and where their motivation lies, in themselves.

The name “Zany Angels”: We came up with it one day while batting key words around. The “zany” speaks to our weirdness and the “angels” speaks to our intention to make a difference, to use our creations to foster change and healing.

Real life as I have been taught is lonely and controlled. Through school and the media, I was taught that real life is a constant push, a never-enough kind of reality.

Creative life is unknown and requires trust, letting go, unfolding, tenderness and in that space, Spirit can get in.

There is great relaxation in the creative process. A place where God(dess) makes me an instrument and uses all my talents and faculties for good. Creative life is a spiritual practice for me.

IN PASSING

Marilyn Van Debur is a former Miss America who now travels the country talking about incest. I heard her speak at a “To Tell The Truth” conference in New York City a couple of years ago. The woman changed my life. She was fearless and full of feeling. She wasn’t numb.

She talked about her history as an incest survivor and what it had been like to heal. She talked about winning Miss America and how her parents came up on stage and they all looked like the perfect American family. She spend time undoing the myth.

She asked at the end for anyone who had been sexually abused to please stand up if they felt comfortable. Because it was a sexual abuse conference, just about everyone stood up. We all looked around at each other and everyone just started crying. It was an amazing moment in my life when I realized I was far from alone.

DOWNTIME

I love the movie called “Celebration.” It is done with great artistry but it’s very sad.

I love to play my guitar, sing, write music, paint, journal, play outside, eat good food, sleep in, improvise, go out dancing, mush (meaning ‘be in
love’).

I am a therapist as well as an artist. I have a private practice here in Northampton, MA but also do phone sessions with people in different parts of the country. I’ve found that being a therapist feeds my art and vice versa.

MOTIVATION

My frustration is rather typical, I think. I’m really disgusted with mainstream cultural messages, all the ‘isms’; sexism, racism, looks-ism, class-ism.

I can’t stand the way young girls are being objectified in movies and television. I won’t even get into my political rant. Also: the way the arts are being crushed financially, the way creativity has become extinct in our school systems, the way abuse and violence have become “just the way it is.”

I find this all appalling. We are a rape culture. Children are raped and don’t get help and we go and rape other countries, we rape our earth. The whole cycle of violence overwhelms me and I just can’t think about it sometimes in order to carry on.

I do my work, I say what I think and then I have to focus on joy. I have to bring in some real joy in order to keep my body alive, to stay creative, to stay close to the people in my life who are just amazing beings. I feel blessed to have created a community where my friends are in a healing process. Where waking up to what is true and real is a priority. We’re not acting out addictions to block the pain. But to keep that, to stay awake in the face of global pain is a challenge.

I don’t really understand why human beings have to learn about Spirit or God through such immense pain. I imagine visiting the gods and saying: “I think the whole system sucks, the whole learning curve ain’t working for me.”

The whole way that people get born into such toxic agony and get broken and some heal and others don’t and how people pass down their hurts to other people, the whole thing just seems pointlessly agonizing.

Every now and then, I realize how it was all worth it, that being here, falling in love, opening my heart, loving people, even having healed horrific trauma, every now and then it seems really worth it.

Then I think: I made it, I did it and now I just get to fly.

About this group: Rose Oceania and Rythea Lee Kaufman began their collaboration over ten years ago with an interest in developing the merging of dance, clown arts, voice, and monologue. They’ve performed their choreography and theater work in Mobius Theater, Boston, and A.P.E Gallery in Northampton, Mass.

Separately and together their work has been presented at The Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance, The Theater Resource Center in Toronto, and NYC venues including P.S 122, St. Marks Church, The Joyce Soho, Judson Church and Movement Research.

Official site: http://www.zanyangels.com
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DANCE/Athens
“Mariana Pineda”
July 10, 11

On par with flamenco superstar Joaquin Cortes (who, incidentally, performs in Athens the same week), Sara Baras won Spain’s National Prize of Dance in 2003.

“Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras” presents the production "Mariana Pineda", a flamenco version of Federico Garcia Lorca's work that bears the same name.

Rebel Mariana Pineda was a heroine of the liberal cause in 19th century Spain, whose short and turbulent life came to an abrupt end when she was hanged for embroidering a revolutionary flag.

Her story was immortalized in a traditional folk ballad, which inspired Federico Garcia Lorca to pen his well-known play depicting her life story.

Stripped bare of political connotations to focus on strictly personal themes, “Mariana Pineda” comes to life via heartstopping flamenco choreography by Sara Baras, and music by composer Manolo Sanlucar.

Baras is a staunch admirer of feminine, passionate and dedicated characters, such as Pineda. Luis Pasqual has created a script that does not follow a chronological line; instead, it touches on core events in the life of the powerful but ultimately doomed protagonist.

About the artist: At present, Sara Baras is the most prestigious bailaora at an international level; she has performed all over the world. She learned how to dance from her mother, Concha Baras, and started working with guitarist Manuel Morao in 1989.

Baras’ talent has been recognized with awards like the Madrono Flamenco of Montellano (Seville). In both 1999 and in 2001, she received the Max prize for Best Female Dance Performer.

About the Odeon: Built by Herodus Atticus in the second century A.D., in honor of his dead wife, Regilla. The theatre seats 5,000, and has near-perfect acoustics.

Find it: Odeon of Herod Atticus
Dionysiou Aeropagitou Str., Acropolis
Athens, Greece
Get there: Metro to Akropoli

Get info: +30-210-9282900, +30-210-3221459
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DANCE/NYC
Boccatango
The Joyce Theater
July 26 – August 14

American Ballet Theatre star Julio Bocca, dancer Cecilia Figaredo, two singers, male dancers from Ballet Argentino and an orchestra of eight musicians present a sensual, unforgettable program capturing the soul of tango.
Find it: The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street
New York, New York 10011
Get info/showtimes: 212-868-4488

Also at the Joyce:
Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana
July 19 – 24

Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana performs “Bailaor/Bailaora,” in a colorful display of virtuosity, speed and energy, merging traditional and contemporary flamenco into a mesmerizing blend of style and artistry. Flamenco Vivo pays tribute to the passion and elegant purity of flamenco.
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DANCE/NYC
"Restless. Native. Dance."
Joyce SoHo
July 8-11

Always evolving, "Restless. Native. Dance.",
led by former Pilobolus dancer, Tamieca McCloud returns to Joyce SoHo, with the premiere "geena,"
a new work inspired by and featuring the writing of visual/vocal/spoken word artist Kimabe.

Find it: Joyce Soho
155 Mercer Street
New York, NY 10012
Get info: (212) 431-9233

Also at Joyce SoHo:

Von Ussar danceworks
July 15-18

Founded by choreographer Astrid von Ussar, this contemporary dance company is comprised of seven young dancers of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and styles.

Fusing the dancers together, von Ussar weaves together a wholly unique and dynamic movement style -- evocative, energetic and bold.

"Silk and Ume Blossoming"
July 29-Aug.1

Michi-I Dance Company performs "Her Silk Mother" and "The Plum Tree Is In Bloom."

Choreographer Michiyo Sato, inspired by myth and stories, typically creates dances that reference both Eastern and Western body language and gesture.
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NYC/Theatre
“Movin’ Macbeth”
July 9-18

Something wicked this way comes…it’s Amanda Barron, who plays the juicy Lady Macbeth role as a blend of Norma Desmond meets Martha Graham. The three witches slither down the aisle casting spells on the audience – with flags.

It’s not quite ballet. And it’s not quite theatre. And it’s not quite Shakespeare. But who cares, because this is one of the most colorful, weirdest takes on “the Scottish play” you’ll see this season.

Shakespeare’s shortest play, his most action-packed drama, and an apple are all it takes to get things rolling in e/Motion’s theatre and dance adaptation of Shakespeare’s gory classic. Bloody good.

Find it: HERE Arts Center
145 6th Ave.(Btwn Spring/Broome St.)
New York, NY 10013
Get info: (212) 647-0202
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THEATRE/Miami
“Surreal Saturday”
July 3, 9pm

From the day Candy Darling walked into Andy Warhol’s avant garde circle in the late 60s to today’s representation of famous drag queens in films
like “Girls Will Be Girls”, drag performers have been crossing the line between entertainment and art.

Miami’s drag queens are seen on postcards and pin-up calendars all over the world representing the South Beach club scene.

“Surreal Saturday” showcases some of the current hot drag performers including superstar Adora, underground stars Mari Trini, recent star acts like Las Divas del Jacuzzi, the highly theatrical Argentine Fernie-Q and Haitian import Ebony. Other
performers include Geraldine and La Maroca.

Photographers Ali, Dale Stein and Tom Franks exhibit work devoted to drag.

Also on exhibit, early photos by Jamie Robinson from her celebrated 1995 calendar for "The Manipulator,” photography by club personality Ernesto Galan and work by fashion model/ photographer Marlene de Lazaro.

Drag beauty pageant video "Miss Lauderhill 1998" by Guillermo Manrique and Miguel Vivas and “Adora Adora” by Danilo de la Torre and David Rohn round off this surreal Saturday in Little Havana.

Find it: PS 742
1165 SW 6th Street, Little Havana
Miami, Florida
Get info: (305) 324-0585
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DANCE/Vienna
ImPulsTanz Festival
July 8-August8

Brilliant showcase of international dance works, brought together in Vienna. The “Festival Lounge” starts up on July 15 at quarterier21, then runs concurrent to the dance program, giving people a sexy central place to meet up. Heavy on soul/world dub/jazztronica.

The festival also features “tradeMARK”; a series of informal interactions/performances with choreographers, to view works-in-progress.

Held at Arsenal/Art for Art, “tradeMARK” takes place every Tuesday at 6:30pm. Tentative program:

July 13, Raimund Hoghe and Helmut Ploebst
July 20: erikM, Mathilde Monnier, Nuno Rebelo, Christian Rizzo
July 27: Alain Buffard, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet, David Zambrano
August 3: Isabelle Ginot, Benoit Lachambre, Helmut Ploebst, Frans Poelstra

Main program/Highlights:

"Once"
July 11, 9pm – Volkstheater
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

A record player, a chair, a thermos flask – and dancer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. An old vinyl record: Joan Baez in concert, 1963.

The dancer wears a blue dress, like the one worn by the singer on the cover. She turns on the record player – a plea from the past, directed towards the present.

With precision and simplicity, De Keersmaeker levels her gentle accusation at a ghostly audience, both past and present: in the interim, she seems to say, we’ve learned nothing.

Created before the war against Iraq, “Once” is a manifesto, the Belgian choreographer‘s touching statement against arrogance, destruction and war.

"ZZ"
July 17, 9pm – Odeon
Akemi Takeya

An ordinary table glass is singing. The dancer’s fingers move along its edge, an unearthly melody fills the room.

In "ZZ," choreographer Akemi Takeya successfully unites sound and movement; we watch her dancing the water, and drinking the dance, summoning and assembling splinters of memory. Takeya’s presence on stage is captivatingly intense; a restrained and emotionally taut performance.

"déroutes"
July 21, 23, 9pm – Odeon
Mathilde Monnier/CCN Montpellier

A network of hidden relationships develops onstage. Thirteen dancers, male and female, encounter each other and start to walk, at random.

Mathilde Monnier’s piece "déroutes" is based on Georg Buechner’s "Lenz", but the original piece is ground out under the weight of countless steps, scattered to form a pattern of hooded cues, deleted movements, reluctant steps and random time/traffic pattern units.

Within this apparent chaos ("déroute"), however, are stable, geometric patterns. Electronica icon eRikm contributes a live score.

"Publique"
July 26, 9pm - Volkstheater
Mathilde Monnier/CCN Montpellier

More Mathilde…This time, Monnier’s group piece, "publique," focuses on a public phenomenon: dancing in a club. Here, dance is deconstructed to become a chronology of gestures, common property in a world governed by rhythm, allure and infatuation.

"No Comment"
July 28,30, 9pm – Akademietheater
Jan Lauwers with Needcompany

"No Comment", the latest production by versatile Belgian artist and founder of Needcompany, Jan Lauwers, presents four portraits of strong women and their rebellion against rigid gender roles and images.

A Bali dancer (Grace Ellen Barkey), describes the death of her fuller self, when the audience expects her to conform to a one-sided image: they want nothing more from her than sensuality, passivity and exoticism.

"Salome" (Anneke Bonnema) tells a tale of violent orgies that caused the death of several young girls and her own sister, yet she’s curiously removed from the trauma, behaving as if all this happened to some other person.

Terrorist Ulrike (Viviane De Muynck), is a ticking time bomb, losing her self to a cause greater than her own identity. She’s haunted by images, and struggles to separate cause and effect. All alone, in a department store, she begins her final mission...

In the fourth and final piece, Tijn Lawton dispenses with words. By means of body language alone, she creates an expressive self-portrait taking the shape of one solitary dance solo which repeats itself in tense, infinite loops.

A rational, unsparing stocktaking of four different lives and ways of life, all full of violence, love, death and eroticism.

[Visual: Scene from "No Comment".
Photo credit: Maarten Van Den Abeele]

"Tempus Fugit"
July 29, 31, 9pm - Volkstheater
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui & Les Ballets C. de la B.

Time flies, carried by a wind of irretrievable moments. In his latest piece, 28-year-old Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, choreographer of "Foi", concerns himself with the rhythm and speed of time, fascinated by its pattern of repetition and déjà vu.

In "Tempus fugit", created in collaboration with Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal, eight dancers, male and female, three singers and a group of musicians dive into the sea of time, exploring caverns of timelessness in dance, commenting on our experience of present time, our relationship with the past and future, blurring the boundaries of cultural ties and national identity.

He also explores our perception of time: how quickly hours of pleasure pass, and how slowly those we spend waiting or in pain.

Find it/main venues:

Akademietheater
Lisztstrasse 1
Get info: (01) 51444- 4740

Odeon
Taborstrasse 10
Get info: (01) 216-51-27

Volkstheater
Neustiftgasse 1
Get info: (01) 523-35-01-331

Arsenal/Art for Art
Ghegastrasse, Objekt 19
Get info: (01) 514-44-5412

Festival Lounge (10pm-3am)
Ovalhalle/quartier21, Museumsquartier
Museumsplatz 1
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DANCE/Venice
“Int’l Festival of Contemporary Dance/Grammar of the Body”
July 9-30

Dance, and nothing but dance, is the main theme at the Venice Biennale's second “International Festival of Contemporary Dance.”

Running counter to the frequent conjunctions of dance with other disciplines - from theatre to cinema, video and all the new media – punk rock ballet choreo and festival head Karole Armitage dedicates this year’s fest to "the universal grammar of the body"; centered on choreographic themes, combing technique and dance history, the groups this year use the body, unadorned, as a primary language.

Some deconstruct movement, others accelerate it, rendering lines and vocabulary more extreme, or simply restore it alongside other techniques. Sixteen companies and over 40 choreographers are on the bill this year.

This month: Sarah Michelson, who elaborates her highly original choreographic vision by constructing, deconstructing and subverting stage sets. Recently invited by Baryshnikov's White Oak Project, Michelson brings a diptych to Venice called “Shadowmann Part I and II” (July 9/10, 13/14, Corderie dell'Arsenale).

From California, Alonzo King with the Lines Ballet (7/10, PalaFenice). King is committed to the renewal of classical ballet, the limits of which he explores and extends, in “Koto”, “Meyer Violin Concerto Pas De Deux”, and “Who Dressed You Like a Foreigner?”.

Choreographer Isabel Buston makes her Italy debut in Isabel Bustos (7/15, PalaFenice), with “Solamente una vez” and “Al filo exacto.” When Cuba was in crisis during the 1990s, Isabel Bustos chose to do without sets, lights and costume, and took her pieces into the roads in full daylight.

Next, Shen Wei (July 24, PalaFenice), who has lived in New York since 1995 but is strongly influenced by the body language used in Chinese opera; she’s a former dancer in the Guangdong Modern Dance Company.

From this melding of old and new emerges “Rite of Spring,” and “Folding,” which was originally choreographed for the Guangdong Modern Dance Company.

Wei comments on her work, “Folding”: "I was extremely attracted by the movement that the unwinding of something provokes - whether a sheet of paper, some fabric or [the body]…The broad hand-painted backdrop alludes to a certain surreal scene inspired by an 18th-century watercolor by Ba Dan San Ren.”

Karole Armitage's new creation “Echoes From The Street,” makes its international premiere, interpreted by supple dancers from her New York company “Armitage Gone!” (July 21-25, Teatro alle Tese).

To close the Festival (July 29), a Venice dance rave. Armitage’s cult show, “Rave,” has been adapted by the choreographer for the festival. With the help of the Ballet de Lorraine, joined by yoga performers, Bollywood dancers and House of Ninja dancers, the whole motley crew and innocent passersby spill out into the streets of Venice and boogie till dawn.

Find it: Various venues, including Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, the Corderie dell'Arsenale, the Teatro alle Tese, and the PalaFenice.

Get info: +39-041-5218898, +39-041-5218828
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DANCE/NYC
“Flow” workshop
July 7, 22, 7pm
July 17, 2pm
Flow Technique is a dynamic mind-body workout combining a variety of both Eastern and Western holistic movement techniques. Flow's smooth, organic style of movement emphasizes placement, coordination and develops core and upper body strength through the use of repetitive motion.

An invigorating, synergistic blend of dance, movement and music, Flow workshops are led by a master flagger, an