POST 21: La Nausee: refugee arts; youth theatre

Whilst Alice Underground  unsettle one's compass and Love Bombs and Apples' explorations invert cultural  presumptions, Let Us In by A-Level drama students at Corelli College turn intercultural expectations inside-out in a different way. 

London's Migration Museum Project--which, tellingly, after 3 years still does not have a 'home'--produced this event at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, comprised of 3 performances made by 3 different groups of students, who each sagely fielded questions from the audience following their respective showings.  In the performance I saw, five young women (Ruth, Ayo, Khadija, Isatou and Elvine)  of African, Caribbean or sub-continental origin, presented a tale spun out of refugee stories, placed before, during or after migration.

c. Migration Museum Project

The performance piece delivered poignant tales with wry humour and a sophisticated understanding of crafting for the stage. Fuelled by an impassioned drive to tell their own and their ancestors’ stories, they perform with sass, skill and aplomb, representing refugees on a long boat journey;  the Caribbean mother with very little English seeking work as a nanny; themselves as schoolchildren frustrated by the limited 'African history' classes repeated year after year. They also slip back in time and portray black slaves and white southern belles, white teachers amongst black girls condescending to the class. Their performances alternately represent and subvert the position of immigrants trying to 'fit in'. Each has a singing voice and stage presence to die for. They are aware they live in a country safe to tell these tales, and sacrifices people made to afford them the dream of a career on stage.


Meanwhile, Counterpointsarts and Platforma—refugee and intercultural arts network hubs— produced dis/placed, a week-long exhibition and 'Learning Labs' event, in the basement of  the old Shoreditch Town Hall. The basement's peeling walls are an appropriate setting for films, photographs and performances taken or centred in refugee camps, or on the lives of refugees settled away from their homelands.

http://counterpointsarts.org.uk/event/displaced/

Platforma runs a biannual conference, the next being in November 2015.

http://www.platforma.org.uk/pf_events/platforma-conference/

This year it comprises two events; the first is a free event which aims to 'explore new collaborations and networking between English and international artists' [Nov 4]; followed by a Conference from Nov 5-6 with an aim to 'bring together artists in all disciplines, organisations and academe with an interest in the arts by, about and with refugees.'

See more at: http://www.platforma.org.uk/pf_events/platforma-conference/#sthash.pJpPJiuF.dpuf


c. Z Soboslay 2015.

POST 19: The perfect circle: the social fabric of the times.

On the subject of the circle:

I remember that my father, who would be 101 if he were alive now, had been able to draw a perfect circle freehand.  It was part of his art school training in Budapest.

So it was a surprise to visit the Black Mountain School (California) exhibition currently on at the Staatliche Museen (SMB) in Berlin. The exhibition as a whole focusses on the historical period when the Californian school invited many artists over from Germany following the Nazi closure of the Bauhaus.

A short film shows  Josef Albers slowly rotating a large disc in his hand. His mesmerised students trace circles and ovoids in the air.

(You can view the footage here: 

http://albersfoundation.org/teaching/josef-albers/introduction/)

Of course, Albers' most famous works focus on the purity  of the circle and the square. My father was a neo-classicist: the circle never became his subject-matter; the human form retained supremacy in his work.

But I did a double take whilst reading one of Albers' philosophical treatises: this was the reflection, the tone, the discourse I sometimes read in my fathers' notes. With a jolt I suddenly realise he could have been a student of Albers for a short time in Germany just prior to 1933. But like a duster on a blackboard, he had erased that part of his life—in fact, of most of his experiences before the war and his stint at the Russian front--from what he brought to conversation. Except for the story about the perfect circle, which he always executed to perfection.

Berlin has wide streets and  a slower pace than London. My friends Heather and Graham live in a commune, a hangover from the squats of the 1980s, which eventually received government assistance for maintenance. There are still original squatters who live there.

Following dinner, Heather and Graham asked if I'd like to go to the "Bowlo". They took me here, beneath a small bar near Reicherstrasse:

photo: Graham Anderson

Photo: Heather Boyer

Two strikes in one.

c. Z Soboslay 2015.

Post 18: Toro Toro Toro

Israel Galvan, Akram Khan. c. Jean Louis Fernandez

Torobaka, by Akram Khan and Israel Galvan, Sadler's Wells, June  2015.


So, from rabbits and caterpillars to cows and bulls.

Torobaka, by Akram Khan and Israel Galvan.  A duel, a duet, becoming a sextet, a trio, and then also solo dance.

There is the exquisite technique we expect from Khan's collaborations--the wit, the surprises, the playfulness--but there is the deeper examination of what makes men, men, and what makes men dance. From the agon contest/fight of the flamenco--Galvan "brings a knife to the stage"--to the earth shimmering and sylllabic splintering of Khan's kathak tradition, these dancers meet in an arena where their respective traditions play up and out to each other.  The Toro is the bull and the Vaca is the cow. Both embrace both qualities, even laughing at themselves, sometimes one mimicking the other. Several times they even gag each others' mouths. But they also give over--to the need in Flamenco to command the stage, and the ability in Kathak to make a temple offering of the dancer to the gods.

The stage is also given over to the musicians: a diverse quartet of David Azurza, BC Manjunath, Bobote and Christine Leboutte, with Bobote also taking the stage for a short but exemplary traditional flamenco solo, which is meet with deep approval from a knowing audience.  Ola!

Galvan states that he, from his more aggressive practice, learnt and absorbed something from Khan's more 'relaxed and peaceful' process, whereas Khan admits the collaboration brought out his 'warrior'. Intriguingly, this dance amongst equals  did not equate to sharing equal stage time, with Galvan's solos running to many more minutes. But then, the evening 'gives over' more than once--to the singers, to Bobote, to the space. In the end, Michael Hull's  huge black chandelier ring--straight from the dining hall of a Spanish castle--descends to mark and complete the temenos, crowning, containing and completing the whole. For indeed the arena of the bullfight and of the Kathak ritual are both marked  by the  ancient symbol of an agon, the arena, and the circle of birthing new form.

Not everyone has been happy: two Indian women, restless from the beginning, leave within the first half-hour, whispering, ‘where‘s the Kathak?” Presumably, they are missing the pure cultural code they long to see preserved.  But Khan and Gavan’s engagement is not one at the cost of the other, nor of the traditions which both nourish and provoke them and each other.  

c. Z Soboslay 2015.

POST 17: Undergrounds and Overgrounds: performance, labyrinths and scale.

I think of the Tube as a poem by Edward Lear.
15 lines for 15 cats.  15 cats for 15 maps. 15 maps tracing the whole of underground London. 

But mind the gaps.

And then of course there are the Overgrounds, particularly useful when Tube drivers strike. And the bus routes--26 of them. Buses, lines and cats. A cat's cradle of maps. Incidentally, dogs ride the transport regularly. Bakerloo. No, that is not true. The dog-owners are very careful. But it is intriguing to see little tails disappearing up the escalators.

Maps and lines meeting us, and each other, taking us home. Like flags of different nations.
Victoria, Picadilly, Jubilee, each a little country of its own.

And then there is Waterloo,  "the UK’s largest and busiest railway station, covering an area of nearly 100,000m2 and handling over 95 million passengers a year" ( http://www.laingorourke.com/engineering-the-future/digital-engineering/eej/history-advanced-at-london-waterloo.aspx#sthash.EavzFk0q.dpuf). 


Beneath its overground and even its underground, there is a deeper level of Vaults which, at various historical periods, have 'done time' as an emergency mortuary, as air raid shelters, and more recently as performance-spaces for the avant-garde. They are now owned by a private consortium, The Vaults.org, ready to transform their cylindrical grunge into a swish cinema, night-club and bars, with a Festival launch early 2016 (http://www.the-vaults.org/#!about/c10fk).

Meanwhile, theatre group Les Enfants Terribles transform the labyrinth into Alice Underground. We are lead by the White Rabbit--or the Ace of Hearts, how to choose? –into various curtained areas tunnels, channels, and dorms for story-telling in the half-light of this underworld.  

The scruffy walls are part of the story. A den of old books, baubles and mirrors suddenly begins to whisper, Alice appears and disappears in the glass of cupboard doors.  This is a memory room of heavens we can't remember, piled high with too much to piece together.

Often, one group passes another in the passageway, or we see a card or rabbit appear and disappear in the middle distance. Sometimes, in one cave-like space, being inveigled to eat a stolen tart,  we hear shrieks,  whispers, or music from another.  And then there is the clatter of trains overhead, emphasising the otherworldliness of this space, as if we are folded in the leaves of an old book, falling apart with it, becoming a leaf in the familiar story—that is, the story about society, families, and expectations, is it not? 

                       Mark Sanderson as the White Rabbit, Grace Carter  as the March Hare and 

                      Hayden Wood as the Mad Hatter.  Photo: Jane Hobson

                        

The dinner party is a delight; the Longest Table Ever Seen (Mssrs Piano, Rogers and Shuttleworth take note : sometimes length is superior to height), seating at least 40, set with relics from past performances (err…is that a squashed tart I see, amongst puddles of old tea??), with occasional squirts of tea from within the table and along it. The genius of water. Its amber puddles give the scene a certain seedy gleam.  

Aboveground, the Grater roasts people walking beneath, along its concourse, amplifying the sun’s great rays and turning ground level into a furnace. “Middle Earth” above -ground, while we sip tea below.

The Caterpillar is an articulated puppet, manned by two puppeteers, and it is fat and huge. The use of puppetry very nicely draws together the relationship between chaos and order, reality and imaginings, truth and blame, and between human and animal, which is perhaps a realisation made clearer in performance as opposed to reading a book. For the Rabbit is huge, as is the caterpillar, and I've' already mentioned the scale of the dinner table. Only the tarts, the interval bar and the chairs we sit on are to scale.  Although essentially light in touch, there is nonetheless a dirtiness in this production that I appreciate, and I think Artaud--who objected to the primness he perceived in Carroll--would have approved. 

c. Z Soboslay 2015.

POST 16: Austerity and Abundance--and the forward march of time

In the wake of the Tory Government announcement of ‘austerity measures’, the London arts community quakes.  Now there is a precedent in Australia, with George Brandis’ particular version of rendering artists’ lives even more austere by siphoning arts moneys into a self-managed fund (see: “Coalition Arts Slush Fund”—the $104.8 million heisted from the Australia Council to fund the new “National Programme for Excellence in the Arts” http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue127/11963).  Some wag asks Brandis to agree to a quarter of his personal income being taken away and ’managed’ by someone else. 

A precedent in law or policy is unfortunately like the flutter of a butterfly: it spreads out from the shudder where it begins. Once such a policy is out in the world, it's hard to dis-appear. What can halt the forward and cross-continental march of this narrative?  Kindness, generosity, respect, compassion, sustainability, and useful employment –for artists and whoever else, and what they contribute to culture--are too thin in that storyline.

ELDERS, AGING, AND CONTIGUITY.

Kindness, care, and relatedness is key to a future which has to face what to ‘do’ with an ageing population. Entelechy, in their work with Elders, asks key questions central to most people’s lives: What makes life meaningful? How can I contribute?—questions which are strange to think of having a cut-off point at age 65.

Accompanying the ‘forward march of time’ (our brains just keep growing, did you know?),  some parts become more frail. So do we focus on the frailty, or the resilience? The brightness, or the decay? Colin talks of  ‘curved space time', which seems to indicate that linear time does not exist. It is a partial consolation and mental reprieve for those experiencing the 91 years in their bones. 

Later, at the airport for a trip to the Continent, I wonder at the grace of people who  have to wait. As I, too, wait in a wheelchair, due to a temporary ailment, I see all the others who are used to waiting, for hours, without information about when they will be moved or tended to.  As if they do not need to be spoken to.  

I am aware that for every one sitting here, there are hundreds and thousands who also wait. So, too, with marches, where those present represent the multitude of others who could not come. I look here at the pram and think there was probably a woman who wants her voice counted, but is busy giving birth at home...

"Anti-Austerity" March, Bank, London, June 2015.

If appearances can ever be trusted, there is wealth still here in Britain, and we are marching through the marble heart of it. ‘Everyman’ ‘everywoman’ and ‘everybaby’, perhaps marching for themselves,  but also representing all the other everypersons who worry about the rent, education, and enough food on the table.  

The march makes it on to Channel 4, which is notorious for avoiding such events. Notorious, indeed, for every so often plying tricks of the trade such as reversing film footage, turning the assault of a civilian by police into an attack by civilians (see http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/12/ipcc-will-not-investigate-orgreave-police-action-during-miners-strike). But here, the Beebs  broadcasts the aerial shot of some 200,000 who came  from as far away as Wales. Railway workers, nurses, teachers, the Greens, and vegans who distribute pamphlets proclaiming their diet will solve all the problems of the world. Bless them. Abundance in their austerity.

A few pipers and drummers by the side, cheering.

A group of Hare Krishna followers in their saffron robes, adding colour, chants and bells.



                                                                            With thanks to Rebecca Swift and Julia Honess.

c. Z Soboslay 2015.

  

Post 15: Beds

The room is frozen. A bed, a chair, both empty.What does it mean?

Bed. Home. Remembering isolation.

It is one of those hushes in the room.

But then young E. calls out, it must be different if you are married. It’s no longer your bed, but shared; but this brings to my mind the intolerable  times when you cannot share it, when you are the one who has had to move.

And as I ponder this, privately, quietly, there must be so many other ‘bed’ stories people will not share--because it is too painful, or tender, or caring. Maybe watching someone pass away, or the fear of their pained selves left alone--but one elder lets that one speak through her tears.  Or even the good memories when the earth opened and the baby came. On that bed:   two for tea, but home  for 3.  Or of beds shared with sisters, top to tail. R again pipes up: under the bed; that’s where many slept when they were young.

I never once hear anyone here talk of their poverty whilst younger, not in those terms, but yes to the lack of space, of sharing space with others, of not being able to spread.

Beds.

Rest. 

Isolation.

A trampoline.

The complexity of those sheets, what is wrapped in those sheets, what thoughts rest on those pillows, I am quite sure dreams revisit me, fully, when I put my head back to the pillow, from the night before. That rich veil-- the unconscious, painting and pooling a landscape so colourful that your cheek on the pillowslip draws you back down.

No body mentions sex.

Maybe that’s because it actually is a hospital bed in front of us and who links sex with hospitals?  and for a group of ageing people, it threatens a finishing, rather than a beginning.

Then K. really sparks things up, talking about being naughty and ‘sent to bed’. Naughty beds, naughty beds, what a wonderful sound. Naughty beds, with the elves dancing, bruising the sheets, kicking up their heels.

R. then leans across and chats about money stashed in the bed, about disordered sheets, dirty beds, bedbugs and germs, about hiding under beds, or a large family with children having to fit in and sleep under it.  Of the comfort and need for your own, even after a nice holiday. What is that. Of imprints left in the bed, I thought of dreams left in pillows, other peoples smells. R’s children crawling into her bed, when they were sick; young E. says she stills crawls in to her mother's whenever she visits home. 

David throws gladioli across  the bed; it becomes a coffin. R. says 'not like those tiny flowers and chocolates on pillows in hotels'.

Ba boom. The punch line, and the heartbeat. The heart comes home, to a taste, a delicacy. Beating home.

c. Z Soboslay 2015.

Post 14: the strange case of the disappearing bus

And so the heavens opened. Suddenly. On the sudden, the calm day began to pour. There was whining in the streets, if cats could fly they did. A dog stuck his nose in my shopping. And the old gent had just missed the P13.


So when would the next one arrive?
The flashing neon hailed all arrivals for the next half hour. The blessed 39, the sainted 185; the 176, stalwart knight taking pilgrims all the way to the Elephant and the Castle and beyond. The 40 as well. Twice. But not the next P13.

Wait--I had seen a mention flash by a few eye flicks ago.  And then-- disappeared. Gone the way of the wicked into the chasm.

Again, and again, and again, no sign.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps up its petty pacing.  My skin crawls in the sour wind. We sit, imagining the funeral party for the P13, which must have met its end somewhere in Penge.

Having just had a courier fail to arrive after waiting for 6 hours, with false phone numbers displayed on my receipt and on their webpage; having just had a pay machine keep spitting out the 5p which would balance my bill;  I was not surprised, no, not surprised to be the witness of the disappearance of the P13.

And then, suddenly, it arrived.
From whence?
And why?

One is happy to be home, but the 'why' hovers deep in my pillow slip as I try to sleep.
Why why why





c. Z Soboslay 2015.