"it’s strange to be here, the mystery never leaves you", Rosy Simas Danse at Bedlam

I’m generally a major skeptic of dance as an art form. I freely admit, I’ve seen some groups use movement as a critical part of a larger work but when it’s all about the dance I usually find myself wishing I’d sat closer to the door. (No joke, the last time I saw a dance show I seriously considered climbing down the back of the risers and sneaking out the fire escape.) I believe it’s an inherent flaw to the art form, that there’s just something about dance and musical theater that it way too easily turns into heavy handed pretention and repetition, high-strung divas so busy sniffing their own farts they miss that the restlessly bored audience got the whole point in the first three minutes... in short, keeping my attention with dance theater is harder than dubbing a Nicholas Cage movie into Cantonese*.

With that in mind, I have no idea what possessed me to hike down to Bedlam on Friday night for "it’s strange to be here, the mystery never leaves you", a new dance work presented by Rosy Simas Danse. Realistically even the dancers don’t want me there, scowling and jaded and about the worst audience member a dance company could ask for, grabbing a chair up front scowling and rolling my eyes. And after work I really wanted nothing more than to sink into my couch for the night, not shower, change clothes, and head back out into the damp washcloth of humidity this city has been all summer, but some instinct whispered “Go see something. Anything. Find some life somewhere tonight."

To my surprise, I loved it, and I couldn't take my eyes away (even for the cute baby dykes in matching knee-high ring socks sitting next to me). And here I really thought getting stuck with a front row seat was going to be a brutal exercise in forcing a smile and taping my eyelids open. As often seems to happen when people like me who are decidedly not dance aficionados see something we love, I can’t really find the words to explain what I saw in it or why it moved me about all three pieces of the show. I can say that the wet, naked finale in which several dancers gathered in a gentle downpour of water and then slid and spun around the slick stage was beautiful, and oddly reminded me every time I’ve tried to explain sports to art folks: sometimes in that sweaty, emotional celebration of the body you see something brilliant happen. So I may have been selling you short, dancers.

When I got out of the show it was that perfect moment as the heat of the day started to break, and I borrowed a free city bike and rode home with the buzz of that show still in my legs. Everything in the world seemed fresh and fragrant and calm, and I became aware of that paradoxically energized, lavender tranquility that I have spent fifteen fevered years searching for and found in only a few disconnected places, like watching the waves crash into the taiga on Selwyn lake, sweated into the sheets of a certain blonde, or the Baha’i temple in Evanston that seems suffused with it it’s left a purple vein flowing all the way back into the heart of the city… but as usual, I digress.

In short, I simply felt good walking out of the theater that night. And that’s why for all my endless whining, I keep crawling back to the big G, keep dragging myself kicking and screaming to shows when my eyelids and my legs are ready to come tumbling down… because sometimes you see something beautiful and it washes away the rest of the day.

Keep spinning, dancers... I hope we can see this work presented again.

*-He never opens his mouth!

Career Advice for Amstelbooij

The way I see it, you have three choices:

Singapore autumn
warm rain and money splashes
ladyboys blossom

Neon streetlights blinking
At night the city screams
a thousand diamond dreams
Christopher Street winking

There once was a banker from Gold Street
Who moved to Brooklyn but got cold feet
Fifteen dollars for the zoo!
I Can't believe it can you?
Now back in Chi walking his old beat
 
I think that pretty much sums it all up, don't you?

On Bikes and Pedicabs

I like the initiative behind providing free (sort of) bikes in Minneapolis, to try and make the place that much more liveable and get a few more cars off the roads. I can't say whether it will work and be sustainable, but after examining the pros and cons, I'm definitely a huge fan. And considering that the majority of the installation costs are paid and the machines seem to be solar powered, I would think it wouldn't take too much in fees to justify maintaining the system, although I wonder where they'll store all those bikes.But here's what I like about them:

The Last Mile
I don't know how many of the target market of downtown commuters will jump on these bikes, but it is great as an easy option to make a couple stops without having to walk miles in between or the achingly slow and disconnected mess that is our public transit system. Plus you don't have to sit next to that guy on the #14 line who just bought a new machete to cut people's hands off with (of all the people to accidentally make eye contact with, I just had to pick him). The frustration of transit does make me wish the system was expanded just a bit more, with a bike rental stand at each LRT station so you could hop the train to the right neighborhood and then take a bike to the Seward Co-op, the Smitten Kitten, Chris and Rob's or your favorite not quite on the transit map destination. It's much cheaper to add a bike kiosk to an under-served intersection than to re-route a bus line, and that's why I think it's a cool last mile solution. (Technically there's actually nothing stopping me from using my own bike for this purpose, but read on.)

Traveling Light, or the second most fun I've had in a cemetery

I really enjoyed this show, in which Theatre Pro Rata borrowed the Layman's Cemetery to stage a late night meeting between playwright Joe Orton and Beatles manager Brian Epstein in 1967 London, a few weeks before their ghastly deaths. For this one night, Epstein and Orton get to discuss art, sex, identity and clothes, and a taste of a world in flux as they argue, exchange clothes, and tangle with the police. It ties the deafening scream following the Beatles to beginning the decriminalization of homosexuality, and the larger and brighter world we find ourselves in when the violence of control is banished by the light. It achieved this best through WPC Foster laying bare the tragedy of Orton and Epstein's deaths, making me ache to see them finish what they'd started, plundering a sweet grave and birthing something beautiful with Orton's edge and Epstein's finesse, driven by the romantic power of the Beatles, and maybe also through the grotesque metaphor of the title.

But actually never mind about all that, that's not really the reason to go see it. Go see it because it's fun. Go see it because it's moving. Go see it because it's funny. Go see it because it just works.. putting so much dated counter-culture kitsch into one play, from the Beatles to swinging 60's London to nasty bathhouse humor to a gimmicky setting and the safe culture wars of a half century ago under the banner of the Sgt. Pepper's cover in most hands would make for a deathly tiresome masturbatory fantasy, but in this case playwright Lindsay Harris Friel and Theatre Pro Rata find the heart in all of it that drives the pulse of a bloody, sweaty breathing play. The kind of play that delights as it gently tugs on the creases of the brain, adding like a dream to our memories. It's the kind of show that makes me want to go home and write, until I remember I burned out long ago and I have nothing left to say.

So yeah, I liked it. Maybe it's just that the button-down chick with handcuffs in the graveyard was a deep scoop through the memories of another time in my life when I stood closest to love and art and death, so I hope others will try it and decide for themselves. I do recommend a bit of bug spray, and perhaps not drinking a liter of water then forgetting to scout out a bathroom beforehand... when I got out everything was closed, and by the time I caught my train home my back teeth were floating. (That may have been more information than anybody required.) And if you do take a chance, consider the worst case scenario is you have a cool hipster story about attending a show in the graveyard, right?*

More details and a study guide are available on Pro Rata's website:
http://www.theatreprorata.org/home.htm

*-Actually the worst case scenario would be my friend who may have gotten bit by a bat and may also be hallucinating the presence of a giant clown in her backseat, but I think it's still worth it.