This week I got the very exciting news that my play Weekend Special will be performed at the Windybrow Theatre in Joubert Park... the daring dangerous heart of Johannesburg... in the shadow of Ponte Tower! So excited.
Weekend Special is set on the streets of a Johannesburg Township. It tells the story of the relationship between a daughter and her single young mother, her best friend and the local gossips... And the actresses Deborah and Yule rock. I made it especially to perform for a youth audience - where it does really well. It's relevant, it's funny, it's wacky - They dig it. In South Africa we don't have a massive theatre going audience - and by taking good work into schools we hope to convert even just a few to darken the doors of theatres in the future. Mmm.
I'm your Weekend... Weekend Special! from Jenine Collocott on Vimeo.
This was the show we did for Dainfern College and one of the students in the front row filmed it - I think she did a fab job!
The shows are on the 16 and 18 June 2010 at 6pm - Come! Yay
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Breathe in...
We completed the massive journey through the abstract... neutral mask, elements, materials, colours and poetry... to arrive at human characters. Yay. And human emotion. How exciting. And it was... albeit really weird in the beginning... mind bendingly brilliant.
We started with breath work, which when used in therapy is called re-birthing or regression therapy. However when used in a theatrical context brings about fantastic and totally surprising creative results. Connected breathing and movement takes one into a trance-like state where emotions swirl, and it is this that is channeled into performance... one could say that all performance, all creativity, is channeling emotional energy and that this is an extremely vivid visceral experience of that.
I'll try and explain it as best I can... Firstly we all stood around breathing together... and because I'm not the worlds most gung-ho 'let's all stand around and bare our emotions to each other' individual, I initially found it quite difficult. But soon enough it stopped feeling personal and the work began. So yes, there we were, doing a bit of heavy breathing connected to specific organic movement and ultimately sound... all with the gentle guidance of Pol and Imanou who are breath masters from France. So it's all legit and brilliant. Breathing is a doorway into the unconscious world... blinking and breathing are the only actions of the conscious and the unconscious mind... but blinking yourself into and altered state is not really as viable an option. So yes, breathing takes one to the door of the unconscious. Knock knock. Who's there? Hello emotion. And it's amazing. We breathed and connected what came up to the theatrical world of grotesque characters... meaning how far could you push a character, amplify an emotion, and remain believable - like the human craziness you see every day if you dare to look... for example, a mad man on the street who shouts and spits and has lost all sense of himself... or a wild woman of the night whose ego has no boundary... or a spoilt adult throwing a wild unreasonable tantrum to get what she wants... or a tyrannical man who needs to state his claim on being a man. Life in extreme forms. After the breath work, once we were open and on the precipice of the unconscious if you like, we played these extreme forms in a way that each performer somehow disappeared behind 'the mask' of their grotesque/extreme form... a kind of theatrical shape-shifting or shamanic-type performance. In the same way that we all have a clown we all have a grotesque form... and perhaps many. We gathered in an intimate circle in our studio each exposing a amplified wild character that lives within us. And we laughed until we cried and sometimes we cried until we laughed. But most of all we breathed for what in a fleeting moment felt like for the first time. And we grew expanding ourselves in every direction.
And this, while not so far away the rest of the world - Egypt, Lybia, Japan - is falling apart. Humans. Nature.
As Giovanni said we dare to be creative with the time we have... Who knows what happens tomorrow.
Nick came to visit me for a week in our break... It was completely wonderful we spent a day in Bologna, an amazing Gothic city, where we climbed a terrifyingly high, frightfully narrow tower whose only purpose, however many years ago, was as a show of wealth... Italian men, seriously.
The Neptune fountain in the main square in Bologna - the four mermaids around him sprouting water from their breasts represent the only four major rivers in the world known at that time.
Nick and his favorite indulgence... drinking coffee x
We spent a day in spectacular village, San Gimignano, where we wondered up and down the beautiful cobbled streets amongst a vast number of boastful towers pushing against a determined ice cold wind wishing that the sun was out and that we could sit on a little bench looking out on the rolling Tuscan hills and drink red wine and eat cheese. Instead we found ourselves in a cosy little coffee shop drinking delicious coffee and eating pastries.
For the rest of the time we were in Florence... The Duomo (beware the Christian God!), Santa Croche (where all the big guys - Dante, Michelangelo, Galileo - have their tombs), San Lorenzo, The Uffizi... oh and the Damien Hirst exhibition 'For the Love of God,' in Palazzo Vecchio. An exhibition of a single art piece, a diamond and platinum covered skull, a real human skull yes. It was wild. We walked up a short ramp lined with information about where the skull was brought, who it is believed to have been... and so on... at the top a serious looking security guard pulled aside a heavy black curtain and we entered into a tiny pitch black room with a single dim spot light hitting the jeweled skull in a brilliant spangle of refracted of light that honestly you have to see to believe how beautiful such a macabre thing can be.
Nick in Italy from Jenine Collocott on Vimeo.
We wondered around holding hands, eating alot, drinking more, talking about theatre and planning the future. Breath out. x
We started with breath work, which when used in therapy is called re-birthing or regression therapy. However when used in a theatrical context brings about fantastic and totally surprising creative results. Connected breathing and movement takes one into a trance-like state where emotions swirl, and it is this that is channeled into performance... one could say that all performance, all creativity, is channeling emotional energy and that this is an extremely vivid visceral experience of that.
I'll try and explain it as best I can... Firstly we all stood around breathing together... and because I'm not the worlds most gung-ho 'let's all stand around and bare our emotions to each other' individual, I initially found it quite difficult. But soon enough it stopped feeling personal and the work began. So yes, there we were, doing a bit of heavy breathing connected to specific organic movement and ultimately sound... all with the gentle guidance of Pol and Imanou who are breath masters from France. So it's all legit and brilliant. Breathing is a doorway into the unconscious world... blinking and breathing are the only actions of the conscious and the unconscious mind... but blinking yourself into and altered state is not really as viable an option. So yes, breathing takes one to the door of the unconscious. Knock knock. Who's there? Hello emotion. And it's amazing. We breathed and connected what came up to the theatrical world of grotesque characters... meaning how far could you push a character, amplify an emotion, and remain believable - like the human craziness you see every day if you dare to look... for example, a mad man on the street who shouts and spits and has lost all sense of himself... or a wild woman of the night whose ego has no boundary... or a spoilt adult throwing a wild unreasonable tantrum to get what she wants... or a tyrannical man who needs to state his claim on being a man. Life in extreme forms. After the breath work, once we were open and on the precipice of the unconscious if you like, we played these extreme forms in a way that each performer somehow disappeared behind 'the mask' of their grotesque/extreme form... a kind of theatrical shape-shifting or shamanic-type performance. In the same way that we all have a clown we all have a grotesque form... and perhaps many. We gathered in an intimate circle in our studio each exposing a amplified wild character that lives within us. And we laughed until we cried and sometimes we cried until we laughed. But most of all we breathed for what in a fleeting moment felt like for the first time. And we grew expanding ourselves in every direction.
And this, while not so far away the rest of the world - Egypt, Lybia, Japan - is falling apart. Humans. Nature.
As Giovanni said we dare to be creative with the time we have... Who knows what happens tomorrow.
Nick came to visit me for a week in our break... It was completely wonderful we spent a day in Bologna, an amazing Gothic city, where we climbed a terrifyingly high, frightfully narrow tower whose only purpose, however many years ago, was as a show of wealth... Italian men, seriously.
The Neptune fountain in the main square in Bologna - the four mermaids around him sprouting water from their breasts represent the only four major rivers in the world known at that time.
Nick and his favorite indulgence... drinking coffee x
We spent a day in spectacular village, San Gimignano, where we wondered up and down the beautiful cobbled streets amongst a vast number of boastful towers pushing against a determined ice cold wind wishing that the sun was out and that we could sit on a little bench looking out on the rolling Tuscan hills and drink red wine and eat cheese. Instead we found ourselves in a cosy little coffee shop drinking delicious coffee and eating pastries.
For the rest of the time we were in Florence... The Duomo (beware the Christian God!), Santa Croche (where all the big guys - Dante, Michelangelo, Galileo - have their tombs), San Lorenzo, The Uffizi... oh and the Damien Hirst exhibition 'For the Love of God,' in Palazzo Vecchio. An exhibition of a single art piece, a diamond and platinum covered skull, a real human skull yes. It was wild. We walked up a short ramp lined with information about where the skull was brought, who it is believed to have been... and so on... at the top a serious looking security guard pulled aside a heavy black curtain and we entered into a tiny pitch black room with a single dim spot light hitting the jeweled skull in a brilliant spangle of refracted of light that honestly you have to see to believe how beautiful such a macabre thing can be.
Nick in Italy from Jenine Collocott on Vimeo.
We wondered around holding hands, eating alot, drinking more, talking about theatre and planning the future. Breath out. x
Sunday, March 20, 2011
A Turtle's Birthday
In the second week of animals... I finally played a Giraffe... and I think perhaps in my previous life I may have been a Giraffe. In fact I'm sure of it. Animals give one a very specific physicality - ah obviously - and that instantly brings a sentiment to the actor which gives a delightful sense of play to performance... like, for example...
Status - a Giraffe out ranks a Bulldog. Amplified emotion - a Turtle is instantly vulnerable and somehow tragic. Behavior - a Monkey cannot help doing the very thing she's not supposed to do.
That week for our creation we told a story of a Giraffe mother whose Pig and Hamster daughters ruin their Turtle Grandmother's birthday. Flirting with tragedy on the edge of comedy... We performed it at an open evening to the public. Animals are understood in all languages. Even Italian. What a luck.
That week I was thinking about mime... Mime is a fascinating thing. And a difficult thing. Playing pretend. Creating that which is not there... in the mind of the audience. Our piece started with the Giraffe setting a table. The table was of course mimed. So there is no table... obviously... that's why it's mime. Matteo, our wonderful movement guru, was talking about mime and about the fact that you cannot as an actor stand there, on the stage, and tell yourself... 'I can see the table... it's right there...' Because it isn't right there - there is nothing there but the space... where the table should be. If the table was physically on stage and then you took it away the space where it was is real. So if you, the actor, can see the space of the table, then the table is real in the mind of the audience. Mime is like magic and it's because the space is real. Art.
Matteo does a Shakespeare play in the style of Commedia dell'Arte every year with a group from England and this year he is doing... A dream of summer in the middle of the night. Poetry.
Giraffes at Pistoia Zoo, Italy from Jenine Collocott on Vimeo.
The Giraffe at the Pistoia Zoo that I studied for movement. I put upbeat music to it but i'm not sure it goes a long way to make it a less grim than what it was. So moving on to happier things...
That week I made Koeksisters... I really did. The syrup and everything... I went on line I got the recipe and then the lovely Sarah Foster helped in her somewhat more equipped kitchen and that Friday there was a little South African Afrikaans cuisine in the Progresso, the old Communist headquarters in Florence where our studio is. Strange.
Aside from the one or two that were a little too crisp... they were really quite delicious. Mmm.
Status - a Giraffe out ranks a Bulldog. Amplified emotion - a Turtle is instantly vulnerable and somehow tragic. Behavior - a Monkey cannot help doing the very thing she's not supposed to do.
That week for our creation we told a story of a Giraffe mother whose Pig and Hamster daughters ruin their Turtle Grandmother's birthday. Flirting with tragedy on the edge of comedy... We performed it at an open evening to the public. Animals are understood in all languages. Even Italian. What a luck.
That week I was thinking about mime... Mime is a fascinating thing. And a difficult thing. Playing pretend. Creating that which is not there... in the mind of the audience. Our piece started with the Giraffe setting a table. The table was of course mimed. So there is no table... obviously... that's why it's mime. Matteo, our wonderful movement guru, was talking about mime and about the fact that you cannot as an actor stand there, on the stage, and tell yourself... 'I can see the table... it's right there...' Because it isn't right there - there is nothing there but the space... where the table should be. If the table was physically on stage and then you took it away the space where it was is real. So if you, the actor, can see the space of the table, then the table is real in the mind of the audience. Mime is like magic and it's because the space is real. Art.
Matteo does a Shakespeare play in the style of Commedia dell'Arte every year with a group from England and this year he is doing... A dream of summer in the middle of the night. Poetry.
Giraffes at Pistoia Zoo, Italy from Jenine Collocott on Vimeo.
The Giraffe at the Pistoia Zoo that I studied for movement. I put upbeat music to it but i'm not sure it goes a long way to make it a less grim than what it was. So moving on to happier things...
That week I made Koeksisters... I really did. The syrup and everything... I went on line I got the recipe and then the lovely Sarah Foster helped in her somewhat more equipped kitchen and that Friday there was a little South African Afrikaans cuisine in the Progresso, the old Communist headquarters in Florence where our studio is. Strange.
Aside from the one or two that were a little too crisp... they were really quite delicious. Mmm.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Stolen from Africa, India, America and brought to Italia...
The zoo in Pistoia was very old and very sad.... the two elephants kept in a space about 5m by 12m were quietly resigned... the Jaguar continually pacing up and down looked totally tormented... so did the Bear... the lonely or perhaps bored Tiger was wondering around... the Giraffes were often agitated, and compulsively licking the metal fence... the Rhino just stood there and every now and then rubbed his horn on something metal, changing its shape in a desperate cry for help... the one Zebra, a herd animal, alone in the smallest of enclosures, running along the fence visibly going insane... the Sea lion just kept swimming around and around and around by himself. I know these are all projections... but it was tragic. Viewing the world how it is - and not how you would like it to be. The goats were very happy. At least. Yay. And very funny. As were the peacocks who marched around freely, and often with their tail feathers fanned out skwaaking the odds...
Our assignment was to study the animals for movement purposes. Starting with the state of the animal... the animals vibration which comes from their stillness and their articulation... animals are always in movement sentences. When they stop they are ready to go. When they go they are ready to stop.
From there, studying and imitating their extremities and finding ways to transpose these for the stage... ears, tongues, whiskers, tails, hoofs, arms, legs, hands... How they each touch the floor... An Elephant is so light for being so very dense. The mouth movements... Giraffe's for example are extremely animated and expressive.
Finally their side and or vertical undulation when moving... and their relationship to the ground... which often shows who is the hunter and who is the hunted. The Jaguar is energetically much closer to the ground than a Goat... and the Jaguar is going to win!
I spent most of my time with the Giraffes and the Indian Elephants... they made me think of Botswana, where I grew up... and where I spent countless days and nights in the bush... seeing Giraffe elegantly pluck leaves from the tallest trees, and turn to look at you, the stranger in the Landrover, pause, and then continue unquestioningly chewing and blinking... I cannot count the number of times I have seen a massive herd of Elephants cross the road and then immediately and silently disappear into the bush as if they were never there... Or gigantic herds of Zebra and Wildebeest migrating across planes kicking up mountains of dust and causing the earth to rumble. Just normal. But it's not just normal... That wild animals live totally in the wild.
The grace and elegance of the Giraffes and Elephants, even besides being in criminally too small enclosures, put a lump in my throat. I of course focused on these two to transpose for the stage. However in that weeks creation I ended up playing a Chicken! Which was fun. A lot of fun. Chickens are crazy. So yes, a Chicken that checks into a hotel run by two carnivores. Mmm.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
It's never too late to change your childhood...
Onward from colour and deeper into the wide open world of The Abstract... where anything can happen. My favourite place. Mmm. This is connected in some way to the fact that theatre - all art - is somehow much much bigger than you. The story itself has it's own vibration in the space which is far greater than if it were simply your story, that you were improvising, you... the person in rehearsal room wondering what the hell to do next. And then if you have really connected with this sense of 'play' the story starts to write itself. Abstraction is a key into this... the driving force of a character. So yes... from colour and into music rhythm rhyme and words...
The onomatopoeic quality of words in different languages - that on the surface of it you don't understand - is astounding. There is a part of you that does actually understand. We moved poetry by Finish, Danish, Slovene and German poets... through movement provoked by the poems we touched the sentiment of the words, we then had to say what we thought the poem was about... with astonishing results.
With Norman Taylor movement master... amazing man... we had another 4 day intensive workshop... we started off with the mime movement of the weight lifter and it was all rather straight forward. Mime technique 101. So you too can pretend to be like those scary athletes that just about pick up the weight of their houses and rise it above their heads... like those women who look, well, a bit weird really. Of course it was not this simple. Norman divided the sequence into three parts... a beginning middle and end...
We then had to think of a moment in our lives, an event, that had this structure. And then, of course, we had to move it. Only we knew what we were doing - there was no dialogue - wonderfully bizarre. Modern dance gone a bit wrong. In pairs we then performed for our partners who wrote the poem of our abstract movements... totally off the wall.
The wonderful Freya did her movement piece for me and the poetry simply pored out... in what Norman best described as rhythmical and lyrical... the verse of a song... in a heart-wrenching melodrama! I moved for Freya and she put pen to paper in what came out as sparse surrealist poetic genius! I'd publish them here... but I won't. Even though they were brilliant... with far reaching emotional depth!
That weekend we went to Pisa to see the Miro exhibition and passed this wall... by a lesser artist perhaps... or perhaps not... but none the less...
"It's never too late to change your childhood." I liked that.
From poetry and text to a nose dive into music. Where once again Norman started off with mime sequence of climbing up and jumping off a wall and then putting that into the very strict 59 step chase sequence. But soon enough that turned into the most fantastic piece of choreography set to music... with different tempo's, off beats, slow motion, double time, reverse action, repetition... the studio was instantly turned into a unusual dance hall with a host of newly inaugurated movers improvising the 59 steps together. One moment we were laughing and the next moved to tears. The theatrical space is indeed much bigger... even in a heated studio, smelly with sweat of hard work and exposed with bright light. My favourite was Dire Straits... 'we've got to move these refrigerators, we've got to move these coloured TV's...' It reminded me of my childhood. Long trips across South Africa from Botswana to Cape Town. The seaside. Even though this was a funny sequence I got a little lump in my throat.
Pisa was wonderful... we started the day with the amazing Miro Exhibition and then we were shown around by Julia who lives in Pisa... and she told us fascinating things... like this one. The Joan Miro exhibition is in Palazzo Blu. The fact that it is blue is very important as no other building in the whole of Pisa is anything but orange - terracotta - yellow - that's it really. So yes this building was painted blue by a very important man who temporarily changed the rules so that he could impress his mistress... what a romantic guy. You have to admire the Italians.
Another man, a very long time ago, was locked up in this building... one of the small windows at the top. A wealthy man. Tragically he was locked up with his kids. Not sure why. And the man in due course ate his kids. Lovely.
Then she took us to this divine authentic little restaurant where we ate traditional - vegetarian! - delicacies. And touched up our lipstick.
Compulsory cheese when visiting Pisa.
Freya - being Freya x
Exciting work. Exhilarating day out.
The onomatopoeic quality of words in different languages - that on the surface of it you don't understand - is astounding. There is a part of you that does actually understand. We moved poetry by Finish, Danish, Slovene and German poets... through movement provoked by the poems we touched the sentiment of the words, we then had to say what we thought the poem was about... with astonishing results.
With Norman Taylor movement master... amazing man... we had another 4 day intensive workshop... we started off with the mime movement of the weight lifter and it was all rather straight forward. Mime technique 101. So you too can pretend to be like those scary athletes that just about pick up the weight of their houses and rise it above their heads... like those women who look, well, a bit weird really. Of course it was not this simple. Norman divided the sequence into three parts... a beginning middle and end...
We then had to think of a moment in our lives, an event, that had this structure. And then, of course, we had to move it. Only we knew what we were doing - there was no dialogue - wonderfully bizarre. Modern dance gone a bit wrong. In pairs we then performed for our partners who wrote the poem of our abstract movements... totally off the wall.
The wonderful Freya did her movement piece for me and the poetry simply pored out... in what Norman best described as rhythmical and lyrical... the verse of a song... in a heart-wrenching melodrama! I moved for Freya and she put pen to paper in what came out as sparse surrealist poetic genius! I'd publish them here... but I won't. Even though they were brilliant... with far reaching emotional depth!
That weekend we went to Pisa to see the Miro exhibition and passed this wall... by a lesser artist perhaps... or perhaps not... but none the less...
"It's never too late to change your childhood." I liked that.
From poetry and text to a nose dive into music. Where once again Norman started off with mime sequence of climbing up and jumping off a wall and then putting that into the very strict 59 step chase sequence. But soon enough that turned into the most fantastic piece of choreography set to music... with different tempo's, off beats, slow motion, double time, reverse action, repetition... the studio was instantly turned into a unusual dance hall with a host of newly inaugurated movers improvising the 59 steps together. One moment we were laughing and the next moved to tears. The theatrical space is indeed much bigger... even in a heated studio, smelly with sweat of hard work and exposed with bright light. My favourite was Dire Straits... 'we've got to move these refrigerators, we've got to move these coloured TV's...' It reminded me of my childhood. Long trips across South Africa from Botswana to Cape Town. The seaside. Even though this was a funny sequence I got a little lump in my throat.
Pisa was wonderful... we started the day with the amazing Miro Exhibition and then we were shown around by Julia who lives in Pisa... and she told us fascinating things... like this one. The Joan Miro exhibition is in Palazzo Blu. The fact that it is blue is very important as no other building in the whole of Pisa is anything but orange - terracotta - yellow - that's it really. So yes this building was painted blue by a very important man who temporarily changed the rules so that he could impress his mistress... what a romantic guy. You have to admire the Italians.
Another man, a very long time ago, was locked up in this building... one of the small windows at the top. A wealthy man. Tragically he was locked up with his kids. Not sure why. And the man in due course ate his kids. Lovely.
Then she took us to this divine authentic little restaurant where we ate traditional - vegetarian! - delicacies. And touched up our lipstick.
Compulsory cheese when visiting Pisa.
Freya - being Freya x
Exciting work. Exhilarating day out.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Lost in a world of art...
We moved into the wonderful mad world of colour. More specifically, how a colour moves... mmm... We discovered through abstract movement improvisations that there really is general consensus of how a colour moves... the crazy order of red... that knows exactly what it is doing even though it is kind of random. The horizontal lines of green... that gives structure and organises space. The wild energetic bursts of yellow... that gives itself away tirelessly and relentlessly. So now we are able to give fantastic arty feedback like, 'there's too much purple in that blue,' and everyone agrees. To the outside listener... that fly on the wall who's rolling his eyes... we must sound completely pretentious.
The point of this abstract work lies in the dynamic that is within the different colours - and it is this gives life to art... all art. Visual and expressive. Push and pull - expansion and compression - heavy and light - high and low - fast and slow - a moment of suspension.
Out of this - just when we thought it couldn't get any more abstract - we had to chose a painting by a master artist whose work compelled you in some way... and then through abstract movement we had to bring the painting to life... the colour, the dynamic, the architecture and ultimately the sentiment that painting leaves you with. The feeling that sticks to you.
We chose Munch... Not The Scream luckily. Although the work was heavy and really quite hard that we did want to scream rather often. Munch completely freaks me out. Makes me feel uncomfortable. His work is frightening, horrific, tragic and depressing. And of course we chose a totally down in the dumps painting of a woman looking out of a window at a world she is apart from... well that was my sentiment at least. And so we moved it. We found a balance between abstract and figurative - where we each found a moment to manifest her... her look, tying the knot in her gown, putting on lipstick, pinning up her hair. The rest of the performance took us through a whirlwind of colour, perspective lines, window frames, brush strokes... evoking a world out of which the figurative images could appear... and in some way to tell a story of a woman standing on a veranda looking out a window - not just any window anywhere - a window in Munch's world. From here we developed a linear narrative that contained within it the dynamic and the architecture that the painting had given us... the painting provoked the writing. Completely divine.
A movement studio transformed into an art studio...
That weekend on a manic colour high - we caught the bus to Siena. So pretty.
Cultural experiences with Vika - the Danish Queen - are simply divine. She's somewhat of a history book... filled with wonderful facts that enrich sight seeing tremendously. So this is a statue of the Wolf who brought up two orphan brothers, Senio and Ascanio who founded Siena. Apparently sons of the famous Remus (who founded Rome along with his twin brother Romulus - quite a family)... anyway the twins got lost somehow... and were luckily found by this Wolf who brought them up as her own cubs. But apparently this cannot be true... because actually it was the Romans who founded Siena... Yes... How spectacularly dull to change a perfectly believable story with fact. So now this bizarre statue of two young boys suckling on their Wolf mother is a rather regular sight on the cobbled streets of Siena.
A lone tree fighting for the smallest promise of sunlight in a city of high art and architecture... but a bit bereft of nature.
The Duomo of Siena... it's black and white... the one in Florence is green and white... thanks Vika. I would have missed that.
The old city wall.
The floor of the Duomo... you know - like where you walk. But hey we have loads of trees in the city... and Elephants... not in the cities... but you know what I mean. The Italians don't have Elephants. Elephants rock.
Middle age music books. With detail you cannot imagine and real gold detail - obviously.
On the ceiling of the glittery gold room that houses the massive music books... this is a classic image used to show the style of dresses back in the day... thanks Vika. Vika would like to dress like this on a daily basis. But that would be weird.
Freya and Tara in another of the many meeting rooms in the City Hall with grand chairs that looked very much like place for very serious wedding vows.
The main reason to visit the City Hall... two fresco's showing good and bad governance... this, in the good governance fresco, shows 'Peace' reclining on a pillow hiding the armor that has no place in a society at peace with itself. But should peace not be possible... at least they know where the armor is hidden... that's all I'm saying.
Tara, Vika, Lucy and Nicole looking out over Tuscan hills... an ice cold breeze picks up as the sky slowly begins to change... Vika sighs and announces 'This is Africa.' Yes, perhaps. If you have never been to Africa.
The sun sets. A fab day in Siena. Yay.
The point of this abstract work lies in the dynamic that is within the different colours - and it is this gives life to art... all art. Visual and expressive. Push and pull - expansion and compression - heavy and light - high and low - fast and slow - a moment of suspension.
Out of this - just when we thought it couldn't get any more abstract - we had to chose a painting by a master artist whose work compelled you in some way... and then through abstract movement we had to bring the painting to life... the colour, the dynamic, the architecture and ultimately the sentiment that painting leaves you with. The feeling that sticks to you.
We chose Munch... Not The Scream luckily. Although the work was heavy and really quite hard that we did want to scream rather often. Munch completely freaks me out. Makes me feel uncomfortable. His work is frightening, horrific, tragic and depressing. And of course we chose a totally down in the dumps painting of a woman looking out of a window at a world she is apart from... well that was my sentiment at least. And so we moved it. We found a balance between abstract and figurative - where we each found a moment to manifest her... her look, tying the knot in her gown, putting on lipstick, pinning up her hair. The rest of the performance took us through a whirlwind of colour, perspective lines, window frames, brush strokes... evoking a world out of which the figurative images could appear... and in some way to tell a story of a woman standing on a veranda looking out a window - not just any window anywhere - a window in Munch's world. From here we developed a linear narrative that contained within it the dynamic and the architecture that the painting had given us... the painting provoked the writing. Completely divine.
A movement studio transformed into an art studio...
That weekend on a manic colour high - we caught the bus to Siena. So pretty.
Cultural experiences with Vika - the Danish Queen - are simply divine. She's somewhat of a history book... filled with wonderful facts that enrich sight seeing tremendously. So this is a statue of the Wolf who brought up two orphan brothers, Senio and Ascanio who founded Siena. Apparently sons of the famous Remus (who founded Rome along with his twin brother Romulus - quite a family)... anyway the twins got lost somehow... and were luckily found by this Wolf who brought them up as her own cubs. But apparently this cannot be true... because actually it was the Romans who founded Siena... Yes... How spectacularly dull to change a perfectly believable story with fact. So now this bizarre statue of two young boys suckling on their Wolf mother is a rather regular sight on the cobbled streets of Siena.
A lone tree fighting for the smallest promise of sunlight in a city of high art and architecture... but a bit bereft of nature.
The Duomo of Siena... it's black and white... the one in Florence is green and white... thanks Vika. I would have missed that.
The old city wall.
The floor of the Duomo... you know - like where you walk. But hey we have loads of trees in the city... and Elephants... not in the cities... but you know what I mean. The Italians don't have Elephants. Elephants rock.
Middle age music books. With detail you cannot imagine and real gold detail - obviously.
On the ceiling of the glittery gold room that houses the massive music books... this is a classic image used to show the style of dresses back in the day... thanks Vika. Vika would like to dress like this on a daily basis. But that would be weird.
Freya and Tara in another of the many meeting rooms in the City Hall with grand chairs that looked very much like place for very serious wedding vows.
The main reason to visit the City Hall... two fresco's showing good and bad governance... this, in the good governance fresco, shows 'Peace' reclining on a pillow hiding the armor that has no place in a society at peace with itself. But should peace not be possible... at least they know where the armor is hidden... that's all I'm saying.
Tara, Vika, Lucy and Nicole looking out over Tuscan hills... an ice cold breeze picks up as the sky slowly begins to change... Vika sighs and announces 'This is Africa.' Yes, perhaps. If you have never been to Africa.
The sun sets. A fab day in Siena. Yay.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
2011... begins...
The sun rise over the Alpes from Zurich to Firenze... ahhh... 
At the Zurich airport I rode on a train with no driver and on this train-lift thing there was a sound scape of cows and birds... no really. It felt like being on the set of The Island.
I arrived back in Florence after a glorious break - of family, hand made Christmas cards, lanterns, wishes, gifts, sunburn, paddle skiing and far far too much food!
Back and straight into it... playing 'boiling water' on day one - yip - boiling water that 'spaghetti' gets thrown into... and cooked. Of course. It was fun. Bizarre. But fun. After finding the material dynamic we tried to turn it into a narrative scene of tragedy... A funeral. It almost worked... but it couldn't help but be funny. A mourning party of stiff rigid spaghetti strands weakened and softened by the bubbling and boiling-over grieving duo of water... Being funny is hard. Not being funny is also hard. Being abstract... a wonderful way of approaching a scene.
The kids on holiday. Missing them. A lot. Actually.
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