A Piece of: My Heart (Breaking) June 12th
1st show yesterday. It was amazingly weird. I’ll write more about the experience soon.
Today I’m in recovery & promo mode. There was a tiny bit in the Gazette this morning (& I think there’s a full article coming soon!), and Christine Long from CTV made an awesome segment on us that aired yesterday:
Get your tickets as soon as you can, because I think that we’re going to start selling out shows soon:
Just escaped from a weird nightmare. Must have been my punishment for breaking the old ‘no pizza before bed’ rule, or maybe I’m just going through a non-funky phase, as I pretty much consistently do whenever I take a few days off of breaking to try to let my body recover.
I was dreaming that Solid State was reworking their newest show to tour it [they are], and that I was in it [I am], but first we were going to perform the show at a theater in someone’s basement on my street. I had shown up before everyone else to warm-up, but I was the only one there and I was early, so I left, and then couldn’t find my way back.
The show was about to start, and I think that there were some new changes that we needed to try for the first time, and somehow this basement theater was actually a pretty big theater.
Dad called me on my cell phone, telling me that he wanted to come, but I was annoyed that he had called after the show was supposed to have already started, so I told him that I would try to call him back, but that I probably wouldn’t have time. I tried to call Helen, but I couldn’t figure out how to use my cell phone. Maybe I had the showtime wrong, and there would still be time. Or maybe the show would start a little later for me. Fueled by hope, I ran up and down the street [it wasn’t my street anymore] looking for the theater, while trying to use my phone. I saw someone that I knew, but I ignored her, because I didn’t want to spend a second talking to anyone about anything that wouldn’t get me to this show. I saw someone else that looked vaguely familiar, and I asked her to call Helen for me. I read out Helen’s number to her, but when she handed me back my phone a few seconds later, she had only entered 4 or 5 digits, including an attempt at the ‘514’ area code, but she told me that Helen had called twice. My fear was driving me crazy by this point, and I even found myself surprised, not even so much by how irresponsible I had been, but at how awful I was actually feeling.
I tried to call Helen back without having time to listen to her message(s?), but somehow I now knew that they would start the show without me (I even somehow had Helen’s voice in my head telling me this). I ran past a rabbi on the street who asked me to take a moment to celebrate the Jewish New Year of Shavuot [which isn’t actually the Jewish New Year], and I told the rabbi that I didn’t have time, as I frantically touched the torah that he cradled in his arms. “Properly!” the rabbi boomed, so I touched the torah with the most holy thing that I had (probably my cell phone), and then I kissed my cell phone[?]. “You won’t be needing this where you’re going,” the rabbi said to me, and started to take my cell phone away from me. “I’m not going to synagogue!” I yelled at the rabbi, grabbing back my cell phone, and fighting with every fiber of my being against my urge to start swearing at this guy for wasting my time.
I found a tv monitor showing Solid State performing. I knew that this was live, so the show had already started (or maybe it was ending), and they were performing something that I had never seen them do before. Maybe this was the new material, or maybe they were making this up because I wasn’t there to do my part. Helen & Jen were wearing clown costumes (like in Dancing Doll), and JoDee was there, but Jo was missing, too. All of these realizations happened in a split second, and I pointed to the screen, asking a passing stranger, “How do I get in that theater?”
They pointed out a corridor that I somehow hadn’t seen before, and I ran down it, running through a maze of corridors, the floors and walls hard tile like a theme-park. The show is getting closer and closer to the end, and I know that I have already wrecked this show, and maybe I should have accepted this fact, and experienced what it would have been like to have gone to synagogue, but I continue running, almost breaking into tears, and I find a metal door which I think leads to the stage, but there’s no door handle from the outside; no way in, and I bang on it hard in frustration, but the show is going on, and nobody will hear me, or maybe my efforts will disturb this show even more, and running down a corridor I see that above the side wall is another floor, and I climb the wall in a rush of adrenaline, and as I climb over the railing at the top, I see a man sitting patiently, writing into a notebook. I ask him how to get into the theater. He says nothing, but tosses me his notebook and his pen, the pen falls, but I now I have the notebook, and I open it, and…
“Something very exciting is going to happen with my journal from Creative Process class…”
I was thinking of leaving it at that for now, but hey, this isn’t twitter.
Basically, the Creative Process diary that I kept last year is going to be interpreted by our city’s favorite dance bloggers, CKUT’s Movement Museum radio show. It should be aired in the next couple of weeks (more info to come!).
It seems like they have a cool concept to present excerpts of the diary. I’m really excited to hear my writing on the radio, but I obviously feel a teeny bit weird about something that was essentially written as a diary, finding its way onto the radio. I’m justifying it by reminding myself that it will be great publicity.
(Aaaaaaaah!)
Our awesome flyer that Helen conjured up:
My 1st experiment with dance & text:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sneqpzjjymw
I’d kept this private for quite awhile, but it’s a whole lot less private than my Fringe show is going to be, so I might as well finally put this out there!
I made this last Fall for my 1st project for Creative Process class in Concordia University’s contemporary dance program.
The Fringe Festival’s program book, and our show’s Facebook event page (http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=121841714500930), will inevitably lure the wrong audience to see my show.
“THRILL SEEKERS BEWARE! See headspins as never before, as Still Milking the New Sacred Cow and Les Flip Femmez bring you their smash hit, back to back, BREAKDANCE DOUBLE FEATURE!! Never has one fringe show delivered so many thrills, chills, and windmills in 60 minutes of action packed high jinx entertainment.”
Everyone’s been agreeing that the best way to fill up the theater is to sell a big, flashy, hot breakdance show, and that my piece’s actual artistic content should be left as a (hopefully) pleasant surprise.
Helen sent me her description of our double-feature in 50 words or less, and I sent it off to Fringe, changing nothing but her spelling of ‘high jinx’ to ‘hi jinks’ (I would later regret changing her spelling). 10,000 copies of this description will soon be found all around the city. All I can hope for is that it will convince Fringe-goers of the fact that our show is this year’s hot breakdance Fringe show’.
I know that people will find Helen & Jen’s show insanely entertaining. Our description probably does describe their b-girl clown show pretty well, although vaguely. Mine will show ‘headspins as never before’. But how could I have fit terms like ‘human condition’ & ‘existential crisis’ into that very same 50 word description?
So basically what I’ve decided to do is to promote my piece’s simple, impressive breaking moves in most of the major media opportunities that I have. I will try to use this blog, Facebook, the people that I talk to, CKUT’s Movement Museum radio show, as many ‘more than 50 word opportunities’ as I can find to talk about my show for what it actually is.
I’ve promised Josh & Tamara an outline of the show by tomorrow: 1 month before the show premiere.
Difficult choices are easy, if I think that they may still be reversible.
I had hoped that by writing more consistently than I ever have, these past few weeks; writing with the same discipline that I apply to nothing but my breaking, that I would find my mind wandering far away, constructing words heavy enough to break apart from the source of this piece.
I’ve spiraled ever deeper into the piece that I performed for Spirale, rather than going off on a tangent for the show at Tangente, I guess you could say.
The awful playing on words can only get worse from here…
This page is the barest of reflections of my first show, which will debut at Tangente in Montreal on June 12th.
Like throwing stones in a pond, with a moment’s patience, this reflection might become clearer.
This is Not a Blog 