Sunday, February 26, 2012

Time Travel

"It's like you're earning a day," Alejandro, the new housemate in Philip's house, said.

Our Hero relaxed, glad to finally find someone who understood when he was going to arrive on the next site.  His flight itinerary had stated the date of departure, but not the date of arrival.  After several emails in crude translations with a potential new host, Our Hero's arrival date could have been this coming Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.  Silly details such as time zone differences ["You know that Australia is ahead by fourteen hours, right?"], the direction of the flight ["Are you flying over the Pacific or the Atlantic?"], and the direction the world was turning ["Because you might be flying in the opposite direction the world turns"] confused Our Hero.  He couldn't think of time like that.

Yet.

"If you think about it, it's like you're jumping up in the air, letting the world turn below you, and coming back down.  So while you leave at 11:00 am on Monday, you'll actually arrive at 10:00 am on Monday."

This made sense.  Alejandro clearly knew what he was talking about; after all, he was born and raised in Our Hero's next site.

"And then your body gets messed up.  When you leave Adelaide and head to Sydney, you'll be traveling for so many hours.  Then you have your 13 hour layover.  Then you head off from Sydney and go to the next country...  You're traveling for more than a day and a half, and you get little sleep, and you arrive.  But it's still the same date and time as you left."

"Kind of like Narnia?" Our Hero asked.

The joke must have not translated very well.  Alejandro shrugged and continued to make a sandwich.

"Buenos Aires will be amazing," he said through a mouthful of bread and tomato.  "Just make sure you're awake to experience it."


[Marty McFly]

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Steal Fire Extinguishers

An easy to follow step-by-step 'How To' tutorial for one of the most important skills necessary in life!  In less than a week, you too can [illegally?] play with an Australian fire extinguisher!


-||-

Step 1:  Invite random friends who you don't really know from one of your dance classes to drinks, not romantically, but because going home early during the day is embarrassing to you and your hosts.

Step 2:  Get invited to the birthday party of said dancer friend's friend, preferably a karaoke bar, three days later.

Step 3:  Go to said karaoke bar birthday party, with the promise of everyone at the karaoke bar to have tone deaf ears.

Step 4:  Upon entering the bar, notice the 38 year old Malaysian woman singing "I Will Always Love You" and "The Power of Love" sings with the vocal accuracy and intensity of Whitney Houston and Celine Dion.  Also notice the poorly dressed [mysterious red dress, oversized men's blazer, coke-bottle glasses, shabby red wig, wrinkly white stockings, and 4-day facial hair] drag queen sitting in the corner.

Step 5:  Realize that everyone in the bar actually can sing, including all of the birthday party guests.  Except for the drag queen, who attempted to sing "Dancing Queen."  Not so mysterious symbolism.

Step 6:  Come to the resolution that you won't sing in front of these strangers.

Step 7:  Fall under the peer pressure to imbibe on the many bottles of beer and cider bought for you by said dancer friend and new not-dancer-friend-of-dancer-friend, and in return buy the house chicken wing specialty.

Step 8:  Talk about heartbreaks for at least 20 minutes.

Step 9:  Sing Savage Garden's "I Knew I Loved You" in a trio with said dancer friend and new not-dancer-friend-of-dancer-friend, and not realize that no one clapped at the end.  Continue partaking in beer and cider.

Step 10:  Bike home safely whilst under the influence.

Step 11:  Eat a quick snack of peanut butter and jelly on toast, and a few bites of the gnocchi and tomato sauce you made for dinner earlier that day.

Step 12:  Vomit the food you just ate.

Step 13:  Sleep for 5 hours, and get up mid-morning to make a breakfast of Weet-bix and bananas.  After taking one bite, realize you still feel like vomiting and go back to sleep.

Step 14:  Wake up in the afternoon, make two bowls of ramen and eggs, and notice how thankful you are to be alive, and how you'll never touch a drop of alcohol again.

Step 15:  Get a text from new-not-dancer-friend-of-dancer-friend inviting you to the Wine & Food Festival nearby.

Step 16:  Arrive at the Wine & Food Festival to meet up with new-not-dancer-friend-of-dancer-friend for a few minutes, and watch as he and his friends leave.

Step 17:  Wander around the Festival on your own, watching Australian bands cover 80s rock songs and Beyonce.  Additionally, notice how many people are walking around with glasses of wine, and how looking at said glasses delivers a hard pang to your stomach and kidneys.




Step 18:  Watch Master Chef Michael Weldon make ratatouille.



Step 19:  Get two free loaves of bread.  WHAT.


Step 20:  Stop by the American Candy Stand Cupcake Cafe, and inquire on what makes the American Hot Dog they sell American.  Note how expensive the candy is [$4 for a single Twinkie, $1 for a Reese's Mini Peanut Butter Cup, $1 for a single Twizzler, etc.].  Buy a chocolate cherry ripe cupcake instead.



Step 21:  Read Sun Tzu's The Art of War.  Get asked by the girl sitting in the table next to you what could make war an art.  Carry on the conversation for several hours.

Step 22:  Get invited to go with Kaitlin Honeychurch [yes, that must be her name] and her friend, both of whom who work in the Cupcake Cafe, to drinks.

Step 23:  Just drink water.  Keep rehydrating.

Step 24:  Meet friends of Kaitlin Honeychurch's friend.  Discuss traveling, security guards, sticky floors, romance, and wine.

Step 25:  Insist on going home, because you have important dance school teachers to meet in the morning, and end up walking with new friends.

Step 26:  Walk past the deconstruction of the Wine & Food Festival, and watch as your new [inebriated] friend picks up the fire extinguisher a few feet away from the construction men, and let yourself be whisked down a different street [leading away from your bike] to avoid being caught.

Step 27:  Let chaos ensue with said fire hydrant.



Step 28:  Explain to one of your new friends [who bears an uncanny resemblance to Amy Winehouse, Megan Fox, and Katy Perry] that running into the carbon dioxide spray won't melt her face and turn it into acid and force her to live on the outskirts of society.


-||-

These twenty eight easy-to-follow steps are now in your hands!  Good luck, future renegade of the law!  Steal those fire hydrants; no life is worth living if you haven't done so.  Although the material gains are minimal, the moments experienced and the memories made are worth more than their weight!

I myself have tried it only once, but I can attest to the effectiveness of this program!  If I've learned anything from this How-To, it's this: if you turn down alcohol offered from a semi-stranger, it might cost you the opportunity to break the law.

Note:  I made the poor decision to not hydrate whilst partaking in delicious beer and cider.  Don't make the same mistake.  Water water water.


[Dillinger]

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Aren't You

-| Masterclass |-

In response to the Ranters' Theatre workshop held two months ago, Jo Stone of Stone/Castro has hosted a series of master classes over the past few weeks to answer the following questions:

Who aren't you?
What defines your identity?
What defines your physical language and performance language?
How far can you get away from it?

Defined as an 'attempt to define your natural physical habits,' Jo's classes have been an attempt to define natural movement tendencies [i.e., keep dancing alone in front of all 25 of us until you run out of things to do, then keep on going until you're paralyzed from having nothing left to do], and push into places of performing that don't sit right with the body.  You know, things that feel wrong.  A space that goes against all of your natural instincts.

-| 3.5 Weeks Ago |-

Philip [referencing a freestyle session with Restless a few days before]:  It's interesting, actually.  You put up this wall - physically - and keep people from interacting with you.  You don't allow yourself to go to their place.  It's like you just want to initiate the relationship with someone, but you don't want to receive it.  At least, that's when you're dancing.  Compared to your real world, where all you want to do is receive and not initiate...  It's just interesting how this part of you is manifesting itself.

Cass [in an email]:  It's just like Bisbee [professor] back at Bowdoin, Magno.  Sometimes art reflects the inverse of your behavior.

-| The List |-

Jo:  Now let's go around and try to describe Josh's movement in as few words as possible.  Feel free to explain why you chose that word, or those words.

chicken
Jo:  Kind of like how a chicken has that outer layer of feathers, your shirt was kind of hiding what you were doing.  Like, you know how those muscles are moving underneath all those feathers but you can't really tell what they're doing?  I wanted to see what your body was doing underneath that shirt...

isolation

panic

warrior
My internal monologue [MIM]:  That... doesn't really go with the last word...  Right?

getting knocked backwards

reaching up to the sky

pharaoh

sacred ritual
Jo:  It just looked like you were doing this for something, someone, up there.  You know, like something was supposed to happen after you finished.

prayer
MIM:  I'm noticing a theme here...

Michael the Great
Had to Wikipedia this one.  Not that it makes much sense, but it has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

ghost
"When you went to the wall, it was like... like... like... like you split into two different people, and you passed through yourself.  I... I... I...  I really felt that, Joshua.  I felt that.  I felt it here [points to chest]."

spirit

stylish

svelte
I had to look this one up in the dictionary:  slender, especially graceful in figure; lithe; suave; blandly urbane.

sexy
MIM:  [Wrings hands in bashfulness.]

love
MIM:  [Continues to wring hands in bashfulness.]

believe in himself
MIM:  [Sweating profusely and finds an interesting mark on the ground to inspect.]

prince
Jo:  Tara, what do you mean by 'prince'?  Like, the singer, or-
Tara:  -the kind to marry.
Jo:  Oh.  Okay.  I'll write that down just so that Josh remembers.  The kind to marry.

self conscious

petite

Justin Bieber
I wasn't the only one to get this comment.  Fortunate or unfortunate, I'll leave that up to you.

karate kids + karate man

fast and slow

dramatic + sudden

James Bond

trapped

angular

Nile River
Matt:  Yeah, he just had this royal theme going on.  But sometimes he was like water, like a river.  So I put two and two together, and it's definitely the Nile.  You know, Egyptian and all that.

sharp

precise

Aztec
Alice:  Yeah, I just wanted to go along with the ancient ethnic royalty theme...

perfectionist

body fix
Zoe:  I just really noticed the parts where it looked like you were trying to 'fix' parts of yourself.  Like trying to replace something that was missing, or something that was broken.

my body reaching out to you

peacock
MIM:  The vainest of the birds.  Am I really coming off like that?

handsome
MIM:  Oh.  I guess so.

thriller
Andrew:  He's like.  Michael Jackson.

pirate

Thomas the Tank Engine in a hip hop competition
MIM:  Compliment?  Insult?

mystery and horror

abandon
Jo:  I just had one more word.  You just remind me of someone who's letting go, letting something inside out, just releasing something.  For someone.

-| Confound |-

For this week, we're supposed to choose two or three words that we really like from our list, think of the opposite of those words, attempt to embody them [our interpretation, of course], and create a solo out of those opposites.  This will result in our 'who aren't you' solo.

One problem:  according to Philip, I naturally move the way I am not in the real world.  If I move the opposite of my movement - supposed to be my 'who aren't you' - won't that actually result in my 'who are you' solo?

Bum bum bummm.


[Not]

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Kailea

Imagine, at Australian Dance Theatre's beginner contemporary class, a teacher who calls out choreography.

"run, run, run, run
Tina Turner, Tina Turner
and swing, and swing
back, back, fence, fence
and lovely!
beautiful!
lovely!
beautiful!"


Hilarious, and loving every minute of it.


[Not Letting Go]

Friday, February 3, 2012

Quote I

The greatest gift I ever gave myself was the freedom to be who I was.
- Philip

[Giving]