Posted by matthew on Mar 20, 2005 in
life The other thing we did yesterday was attend parties. First there was Olivia’s 30th at La Camera at Southgate. An excellent lunch with good company, including our new friends Sherry and Jason. For some reason we’ve met them several times over the past few weeks at dinner and jazz related activities organised by Ben & Olivia. We just seemed to hit it off. Jason is from Atlanta, Georgia, and has the kind of unshakable accent you can only find in the south of the US. The trick is that the Georgian drawl shares some vowels with a broad Australian accent, and having been here for a couple of years Jason tends to say names and proper nouns in the native lingo, so you’re left staring at his mouth wondering exactly where to place him. Anyway it turns out that Jason is a jazz and MST3K fan and Xbox enthusiast, so we have a lot to talk about. We’ve decided we’re getting together soon for an MST3K night.
Yesterday night after Dance Card we headed to The Swedes’ abode for their official housewarming. I can’t quite figure out why the house needed to be warmed, because they moved in a fair while ago and one of their housemates is moving out as well, but we had fun nonetheless. Here’s a pic, courtesy of Doz.
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Posted by matthew on Mar 20, 2005 in
dance Yesterday was a busy day. We actually went to two dance performances in between everything else. In the morning we went to the National Theatre in St Kilda to see this year’s VCE TOP Class Dance — basically the cream of the crop from this year’s secondary school dance students from the VET and TOP programs. They had three divisions: TOP Technique, TOP Composition, and VET. We were both blown away by the quality of the perfomances. These kids are amazing.
Then at night we went along to Dance Card, a program of improvised dance solos by 5 very different dancers to ‘live’ sound and audio. In fact the music was produced mostly electronically with occasional instrumental interludes (banjos and cowbells and things) by a guy called Mark Lang. The main reason we went was to see Lotte’s teacher Helena, a Korean born dance master whose performance eclipsed the others for me. I highly recommend checking it out, but I think the last performance of the season is this afternoon at 5pm, so you’d better be quick.
Posted by matthew on Mar 18, 2005 in
dance One of the nicest things about having a partner who is just as into dancing as me is that we get to go to dance performances together. On Wednesday night we went to see a show by local choreographer Lucy Guerin called Aether. The promo material says this about the show:
Aether is inspired by the increasingly invasive onslaught of communications we receive through email, phone, newspaper, television, billboards, radio, mail, fax, internet, text messages and myriad other forms for disseminating information. From devastating world events to advertisements for increased libido, we inhabit a world where information reaches us in many forms and often overwhelms us with its intensity and quantity.
What it doesn’t say is that it’s actually also pretty funny. The aim was no doubt to show something about how ludicrous it is to live in a mediated world, but they managed to achieve such a level of satirical comment that it was obvious that they were not taking themselves too seriously. I really enjoyed the performance also for the movement and technique — a sort of mixture between Cunningham and contact improvisation partner work as far as I could tell. The first half concentrates mainly on depicting electronic communication using stoccato, sometimes robotic, movements, while the second turns its attention to the interlocutors themselves in their frustrated mediated interactions. The dancers go to address each other, but instead of speaking or gesturing they emit strange (and usually silly) noises while using whole body movements to show what they mean. I belly laughed most of my way through the second half and so did Lotte.
Aether is playing at the North Melbourne Town Hall until March the 27th. There seem to be double passes being given away over at The Program, but I can’t tell if they are all gone yet. Check it out.
Posted by matthew on Mar 17, 2005 in
funny,
music I was browsing the BBC news headlines today when I found this article on Billy Joel going into rehab again. Now that in itself wasn’t much of a shock, but the photo of him was. Is it just me, or does Joel bear a strange resemblance to Tatu from Fantasy Island? Put that guy in a white tux and…
Posted by matthew on Mar 16, 2005 in
creativity,
dance The Improv & Choreography workshop went well. There were 6 of us in total, with thepaulguy stepping in to help with numbers at the last minute. I have to say it was a lot of fun. There is something particularly interesting about introducing challenges to spice things up, improv-wise. I guess that is no secret to anyone who has tried other forms of improv before, like Theatresports. There’s almost always a game or a rule to get your creative juices flowing, isn’t there?
The only alteration I made to the plan posted yesterday was to have a little more time at the end of each challenge to let everyone show the stuff they came up with to everyone else. This was a popular part because it allowed everyone to see, for example, a move they had made up on the spur of the moment being interpreted by someone else. Sort of like Chinese whispers. It was really funny and we came up with some stuff that was truly different from the usual. The process could definitely be used with a particular song or part of a song that you really want new ideas for. Cool.
Posted by matthew on Mar 15, 2005 in
creativity,
dance,
education Today I finally wrote down in words an idea on Improvisation and Choreography that I have had in mind for a workshop plan. The act of writing it down made me revise my ideas, which is always good, and I looked around a bit (i.e. Googled) for some resources that have to do with learning objectives in the area. I found a few things that were useful and seemed to validate the idea I had in mind. The plan I came up with is below.
Improvisation and Choreography
Learning Objectives:
1. Increase understanding of choreographic principles, processes, and structures.
2. Improve improvisation skills in partnered dancing.
3. Develop cooperative skills in improvisation and choreography.
Activities
Impro Challenge # 1: Use three basic movements — twisting, stretching, and bending Dancers improvise movements with these ideas on their own (to music). (3 mins)
Partner work. Partners stay in couples for this activitiy without rotating. Dancers take it in turns to incorporate twisting, stretching and bending movements into their dancing. Follows improvise for about 1 minute while leaders dance basics and observe. Leaders improvise while followers observe for about 1 minute. Then try to incorporate these movements (together) into regular social dancing for 2 minutes. Try to remember 3 of the movements your partner did during the improv. (5 mins)
Revision. Partners change. Each person should demonstrate their 3 favourite movements that your previous partner did during the improv (they don’t have to be 1 twist, 1 stretch and 1 bend). (5 mins)
For the next song, the new partners should incorporate the learnt movements into their dancing. (3 mins)
Impro Challenge # 2: use 3 dynamics — high vs low, use space vs be stingy with space, move with vs against music.
Using these ideas, and working in partners, take 5 mins to improvise. Start with trying out all 3 ideas. Choose your favourite and select any 3 movements you like that come out of the improv. (5 mins)
Choreography: Spend the next song coming up with a sequence of 3 or 4 steps that you will teach the rest of the group. (3 mins)
Review: Each couple spends 3 mins teaching the group their sequence of 3 or 4 steps (12 mins)
Incorporate: Partners change and incorporate their favourite sequences into their dancing (3 mins)
Posted by matthew on Mar 14, 2005 in
dance,
life The weekend was all about hanging out with friends. It might have been a long weekend for most, but Lotte was working for much of the time and the University doesn’t believe in Labour Day so we had to make the most out of our time. So we organised a packed schedule.
Friday night was busy, with a 2 hour meeting with Ryan about the MLX video production followed by Diga Diga Doo (see previous post) while Lotte was working. I went to bed fairly late as a result, and Lotte came home with the new car around 10.30am. We went for breakfast at A Minor Place (pictured below) which is one of our favouite weekend indulgences.
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We decided we wanted to test out the new car and called the Swedes and the Crinster for an impromptu trip in search of a swim. It was a hot day and we felt like having some fun. We ended up at Sandringham beach at around 4.20pm, which meant that Lotte had a quick dip before we needed to get her to her shift. She was late even though we had the new shiny red auto at our disposal. I dropped her and headed back towards St Kilda to meet the others for what turned out to be a delightful meal at Soul Mama in St Kilda. Highly recommended. After wandering down Acland St for dessert at Big Mouth I headed back east to pic Lotte up. Phew — quite a few clicks on the digital odometer that day! The rest of the night involved some much needed household chores and an early night.
We must have been pretty tired because on Sunday morning we were nowhere near ready for James the Builder’s arrival (see previous post). That was pretty funny because we actually had to ask him to wait while we got out changed out of our jim jams. Oops. Well in our defence, he was a quarter of an hour early.
So after that we meet up with Doz at A Minor Place to plan out our trip to Europe. She’s going to come and hang with us at Hameau du Lac and then spend some time up in Holland.
After the Dozmeet we went to pick up Thepaulguy from the airport. TPG is here until Wednesday and will be staying at our place on his way out to the States for some film school interviews. Here’s a picture of Paul trying to look like Guy Sebastian:
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So after we picked up Paul we went over to a BBQ organised by Ali and Kat at the house they are sitting in Northcote. It’s been quite a while since I got to hang out with the swingtwins so it was really fun to see them, and once again I decided that it should happen more often.
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Then we all headed down to Mayfields. It was the first time back to Mayfields for a few of us for a loooooong time. Sam and I think we haven’t been there for about 2 years. DJ Doz was in da haus and Crin was there too. It was way too hot and I was wearing jeans but I still had fun.
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Afterwards we went to Trampoline in Brunswick Street and ate ice cream. I had pear-caramel, bloody orange and wild berry. The bloody orange was one of the nicest flavours of gelati I’ve ever had. Mmmmmmmm.
Posted by matthew on Mar 13, 2005 in
life Luckily for you, dear reader, this blog started well after a very long and very expensive court process involving a claim against the builder of our house. The short story is that the court found in our favour and we are now able to get the house fixed up entirely. This is the happy ending we’ve been waiting for.
James (not the original builder) is in charge of the reparations, and today he came over to discuss the work with us. What we most wanted to know was whether and for how long we would have to vacate the premises, as well as a few other logistics. Would we need to move our stuff out? How long will all of the work take? Are you gonna fix the back door??
The news was all good, it seems. Work will start in about a month. We may not have to move out during that time at all. We will need to move our furniture around a fair bit though, because they’re going to bring the floorboards in our bedroom up to do some ventilation work. We’ve decided it’s a good idea to find some storage space for some of our boxes of stuff to provide more shifting room while the work is going on.
The builders will re-hang all of the doors and windows in the whole house that need adjusting after the work too. They’ll replace all the broken tiles and fix the paintwork and skirting boards. And all the cracked plaster will come off too, of course. Dusty work, but they also clean up as they go, so it shouldn’t be too disruptive. Very good news.
The best thing of all was that James himself was patient and easy to talk to. He gave us a lot of confidence without trying hard at all — he’s got about 22 years experience and for the last 3 or 4 years has been doing only insurance repair jobs like ours. We just can’t wait for them to get started.
Posted by matthew on Mar 12, 2005 in
life Lotte arrived up this morning after her overnight shift with the new Corolla. And here it is:
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The only sad part of the story is that they apparently didn’t fit the driver’s side front wheel guard correctly, so that on its maiden journey the wheel guard came loose and started rubbing on the tyre. It snapped off, of course, and wore down immediately. Even though Lotte pulled over straight away, the damage had been done.
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Posted by matthew on Mar 11, 2005 in
dance Tonight was a sad night in Melbourne Lindy Hop history — the closing of the fortnightly DJ’d event started a year ago called Diga Diga Doo. I happened to be on the DJ roster this time and it was certainly a shame to think that this one was going to be the last. As expected there were quite a few people out for the last one. If only everyone would support these gigs every time — but I think it’s probably expecting too much. My own unsurprising and unscientific take on all this is that we simply don’t see enough new hoppers starting social dancing these days. There is always going to be some kind of attrition rate among the experienced group. So it’s a revolving door. Only a very small hard core will be around for more than a couple of years at a time.
So, happy birthday DDD, and rest in peace.
