Recently, I attempted to write a paper.  Here are the results:

Impossible Scores: The Mischief of a Renegade Dance Notator

A process of generating movement with creative Laban dance notation scores repurposes this system of movement description while challenging its traditional use as a tool for documentation and preservation of choreographic works.  This paper describes my work with creating, dancing and disseminating scores that convey indeterminate choreographic ideas.  I discuss the initial inquiry, sketches, subsequent challenges, final product, and proposed next steps with attention to the conceptual aspects.  I draw from firsthand experience; my own thoughts, discussions and studio practice as well as writings from music, dance, and cultural theorists support and situate the work.

This project arose as an idiosyncratic response to several factors.  I was inspired by salient facts about the history of dance notation and perceived attitudes among dancers about the system.  Experiences reading and writing dance notation and a personal interest in destabilizing the predominant, positivist approach to dance reconstruction found in my field were also factors that led to this particular investigation.

Dance notation has historically had a mysterious polarizing effect in the culture of Western concert dance.  Practitioners who feel that notation of dance legitimizes, proliferates, and supports the work of dance argue with those who view notation as a reductive activity that eviscerates dancing of its ephemeral essence.  Many students in my dance department resist the required coursework in Laban studies, as they would mathematics classes—only more vehemently.  Students are offended by the static appearance and reductive nature of structured notation.

Moreover, dancers in the pro-notation camp have responded to predominant anti-notation sentiment with defensiveness about their practice that seems to deepen the divide.  Notators discuss among themselves the benefits of their practice with a sense of being misunderstood and underappreciated.  In a discussion of the demise of Feuillet notation, Ann Hutchinson Guest sides with Angiolini in criticizing Noverre, with his strong sentiments of opposition to that system (Dance Notation 66-67).

Dance notation is also the site of conveyance of power within the field of dance. Hutchinson Guest links the fall of Feuillet’s popularity to the ascendancy in dance among the uneducated, here with a tone of lament:

However the benefits of written dance are not to be assumed.  Activities of dance preservation and reconstruction spark lively discussions of the location of original dance and issues of ownership and copyright (Cohen, 1-18). The relationship of Feuillet’s work to the increase of nationalistic identity France is an example the use of dance writing to exert political control (Louppe 82).

Dance practice al also characterized by constant, intentional change in methods of making, performing and seeing dancing.  Systems of movement notation fit the dance styles they describe (Marion 139 – 147), and thus rapidly adapt or are thrown out for new ones (Hutchinson Guest, Dance Notation 78-116).  Laban notation is a highly comprehensive, rational system of movement notation in which the space, time and body aspects of movement are most aptly recorded (Hutchinson Guest Labanotation 11).   Imagery and process driven choreographic methods are ascendant in dance as exemplified by William Forsythe and the Gaga technique method of Batsheva.  Dances in which the motivations are more determined than their results call for new systems of notation.

Despite the decreasing utility and popularity of Laban dance notation, I am not ready to give up its use.   The system is comprehensive and deterministic, but it is also emergent.  Rudolf Laban left it open to be developed by other users (Hutchinson Guest Dance Notation 87).  In Laban theory classes at the Ohio State University, I have found that working with Laban notation deepens and enriches my understanding of meovement, adding layers of conceptual complexity that I feel, rather than reducing the experience.  In particular, I developed a curiosity about my own attempts to literally read mistakes in written Labanotation.  In a respectful spirit of repurposing and recoupment I decided to explore the ways I could adapt and undermine Labanotation towards my own interests.

Initial research

Brian Ferneyhough is a composer who writes musical scores so intricate as to be impossible for the performer to accomplish.  I wasn’t able to determine what difference this complicated notation made in the sound of his music.  I found it important to look for a specific effect Ferneyhough’s use of notation had on the outcome of the music that set it apart from traditionally notated music.   I looked for critical writing on him to help me make sense of this work.  This led me to contemporary composer and writer Trevor Wishart’s theory of musical gesture (126-129).

To paraphrase this theory, Wishart backgrounds his critical analysis of music and its notation with a short history of the written word in Western thought, beginning with the work of Plato.  He also draws on the Marxist theory of praxis to call for a theory of sound based not on the written symbols of what he describes as the “scribal culture”, but on the “musical gesture” (Wishart 45-70).   He discusses the dialogue between musical notation, instrument technology and Western music common practice, and uses the term “lattice” to describe music notation – it is a system of recording time and abstracted pitch. Wishart discusses Ferneyhough’s scores with ambiguity as to whether Ferneyhough subverts or enhances the performance of musical gesture.

Parallels can be drawn between dance and music and their respective traditions of practice and notation. Labanotation, though it can describe elements of movement such as relationships between body parts, or anatomical motivation, focuses primarily on directional motivation of movement, omitting information about the inner and outer stimulus for movement and the muscular response to that stimulus (Hutchinson Guest, Labanotation, 12) Overall, the impression is of a critique of ossification in Western music and political control through, and the loss of a purpose for the music itself. While dance has not progressed in service of its notation system, analogies can be drawn between instrument technology and dance style.  Style in dance (my own definition) is the result of specific technologies in dance practice, which can place limits on choreographic outcome.

Still unsure of the mechanics of my proposed scores, I began to sketch dance phrases and try to perform them.  I used several approaches; I could write movements that were logically or anatomically incorrect.  I could include symbols for images in my notation to create physical relationships to images.  I could also, like Ferneyhough, write logically sound scores that would be so physically intricate as to create the opportunity for the performer to enter a state of attention that in itself would be a compelling movement expression.   As a way of addressing choreography and techniques driven by specific states of attention, such as that of Meg Stuart or Ohad Naharin, I could use relationship signs and symbols creatively to notate these states of attention.

Challenges

My sketches revealed practical and theoretical problems.  Some had to do with the intricate and comprehensive quality of Laban notation, and other problems arose out of my own conditioning as a dancer.  Conceptual problems arose as to how these dances addressed issues of power and how they would be conveyed to an audience.

The first challenge I came up against was the great amount of detail that can be described using Labanotation.  Almost any physically possible movement I could conceive of is describable using structured movement description.  In addition, motif description already allows for open-ended scores, which can be solved with consideration of individual process.  I was immediately forced to refine my process to focus on highly intricate notation and physically or logically impossible tasks, as well as motif description of poetic images rather than spatial, temporal, and anatomical information.

In the writing of illogical scores I thought of the score as notation poetry – however the comparison to poetry breaks down in that notation symbols do not convey meaning visually as words do, (even when the syntax of the words is illogical).  Movement notation must be reassembled into movement to give access to the meaning of the movement.  Louppe describes Fuillet’s notation system using Rousseau’s terminology: “. . . we can say  that the language of Feuillet is a ‘geometer’s tongue,’ not a ‘poet’s tongue’” (82).  And the dances I was creating, once reassembled, were not necessarily things of beauty, as you can see in this silly video:

In addition, my intent to transgress rules of Labanotation was undermined by my own rudimentary understanding of this amazingly complex system.

My attempts to create scores based on visual beauty brought me to similar challenges.  Was I creating an object or a dance?  I find a well-written, hand-drawn notation score to be a thing of beauty, but even some of the most beautiful notation scores are written on graph paper that shows their utilitarian purpose.   I became interested in repurposing dance notation as visual art and considered whether pencil drawings or Labanwriter symbols, refined in Photoshop, would be more appropriate.  Here I came up against a conflict between formalism and attention to fuction.  The scores I created out of primarily aesthetic concerns left out direction symbols (also the primary unit for describing movement in the Laban system) and were written in motif to give a more spacious, sinewy design.  But they seemed without much content.  The best feature of these “aesthetic scores” is that they address dancers’ complaints about the ugliness of the blocky, modernist direction symbols.

At this point it seemed the illogical and anatomically impossible scores were potentially the most generative of ideas.  Attempts to describe my process led to the question, “aren’t you just writing bad code?”  It seemed that writing something illogical with a system based on logic might just cause the system to fade away, and create a piece of nonsense.  It became apparent that I would need to be judicious in the scores, attempting to break only one or two rules of the system at a time and keeping the scores as tidy as possible outside of that.

I was challenged by my own dancing, which while keeping me generally safe from accidents and injury, also serve to limit possibilities of movement open to me.  I approached the scores with as much determination to accomplish what was written as I could muster, but my body’s self-protective mechanisms took over at times.  I was also concerned not to further the rationality and abstraction of the system of notation that I was attempting to repurpose and undermine.

As I worked I could not quite imagine the purpose of these scores.  While the project called for bodily application to bring it to its completion, nothing that I generated particularly merited stage performance without further development.  I thought the scores had potential to address the story of the power structure in dance, and to further destabilize the idea of notation as a tool for fixing dance, preserving “original” works, and making present the “aura” of individual choreographers through fetishizing of their work through scores (Thomas, Helen 129).  I would have to refine my idea of the final product and audience for these scores or the dances they created.

Generative Experiments

In order to address the challenges, I conceived of two separate ways of packaging and conceiving of the scores, and separated the types of scores I was creating by method.   I rehearsed in order to develop a sense of play within rigorous compliance to the scores.

I found the scores provided parameters that pushed beyond my own techniques.  Fuillet’s notation may have done the same for French dance (loupe 90 – 91).  The most appropriate mode for developing movement based on illogical scores would require a development of a technique of honest and rigorous exploration of what was written.  In this sense I count these scores as useful compositional tools.

The scores were interesting in that they have reliable and repeatable aspects, therefore they retain the structural support to for solving abstract or multi-level choreographic problems.  While improvisation is an extremely useful tool for cultivating awareness and exploring unknown movement, the results can be as unreliable as the situation of the improvisor, which contributes to the exploration.  However, since the scores are not performable in an exactly reliable way in space and time as such, there is an aspect to them which must be created with each performance, a usage of dance notation which Jeschke calls for (Jeschke 4).

The issues of purpose and audience for the scores resulted in several different iterations of the actual documents.  I solved this problem with one project which will move towards a greater sense of refinement in the object of the score itself, and which is not necessarily designed for utilitarian purposes, and one product that is a cheaply reproduced pamphlet designed to emphasize the use of mechanical reproduction and focus on dissemination of the score.

Helen Thomas considers that scores may be a way of cheaply reproducing dance on a mass scale, with the implications of mass distribution discussed by Benjamin (Thomas 130):

One iteration works with the idea of creating an aura for an original handmade art object in the form of a screenprint of handwritten notation on fine paper, presented on the white space of a gallery wall.  This brings the visual aspect of the symbols forward, but sets up a double bind in which the dance becomes identified with the score and loses its embodiment, as well as heightening the sense of the artists’ hand, and thus, aura.  The other iteration is a pamphlet inexpensively Xeroxed on newsprint.  Newsprint uniquely conveys the greytones of the pencil drawing, but the graph paper lines are retained.  This method highlights inexpensive mechanical reproduction as inspired by Benjamin.  This form of reproduction and dissemination are appropriate for my agenda for dance experience and notation.  The irony in this expression is the dearth of actual audience members who could make heads or tails of the scores within.

Next Steps in the Process

The results of the process to this point were rough drafts in terms of both the dance phrases and physical scores.  The next step in the process would be refining the scores themselves with a focus on clarity of grammar for the sections that do hold to the rules of labanotation.  Further iterations might drop the use of notation of imagery through made-up symbols due to the lack of any real need for notation of these movement motivations (words seem to work fine for the practitioners of Gaga, and Forsythe’s improvisation technologies make use of words, video and animation very clearly.)  The aesthetic score could benefit from further development of its visual appeal.  I would also like to explore scores designed around aesthetics but that use structured description.  These concepts could also be further developed in a course integrating composition and Laban theory.  As a whole, the pamphlet of scores would need more detailed notes on performance of the scores, as well as references to direct non-readers of Laban notation to resources for deciphering the scores.

Conclusion

Writing these scores was a cathartic exercise in focused mischief.  The scores were interesting in that they have repeatable aspects.  Therefore, they retain structural support for a process of solving abstract or multi-level choreographic problems.  While improvisation is an extremely useful tool for cultivating awareness and exploring unknown movement, the results can be as unreliable as the situation of the improvisor and extremely fleeting.  However, since the scores are not performable in an exactly reliable way in space and time as such, aspects of them must be created anew with each performance, and become “texts of performative knowledge” (Jeschke 1).  The project allowed me to take aspects of Laban notation that I consider valuable and (at least for a time) throw away the rest.  While the end results were rough, the process of inquiry led to a pragmatic methodology for examining issues of political power in systems of dance notation.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Visual Culture: The Reader. Ed. Evans, Jessica and Hall, Stuart. London: Stuart Hall, 1936. 72–79.

Cohen, Selma Jeanne. Next Week, Swan Lake. Middletown: Wesleyan, 1982.

Hutchinson Guest, Ann. “Historical Development.” Dance Notation: The Process of Recording Movement on Paper. London: Dance Books, 1984.

—. Labanotation: The System of Analyzing and Recording Movement. 4th ed. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Jeschke, Claudia. “Notation Systems as Texts of Performative Knowledge.” Dance Research Journal 31.1 (1999): 4-7.

Louppe, Laurence. “Feuillet’s Thinking.” Traces of Dance: Drawings and Notations of Choreographers. Paris: Editions Dis Voir 1994: 81–90.

Marion, Sheila. “Toward a New Paradigm for Exploring Dance Notation.” International Council of Kinetography Laban Proceedings of the Twentieth Biennial Conference.  Hong Kong: ICKL, 1997.

Thomas, Helen. “Reproducing the Dance: In Search of the Aura?” Preservation Politics: Dance Revived, Reconstructed, Remade. University of Surrey, Roehampton, Nov 8-9, 1997.

Wishart, Trevor. On Sonic Art. New York: Routledge, 1996.

After a beautiful opening on 14th of November, with a delicious and thought provoking edible art installation from Djeribi, The Dock has seen a steady stream of people travelling from all over the country to see this show. The exhibition also features painting by Bernadette Kiely (see above), Slow Dancing – a film piece by David Michalek, a new sound/performance work by Aileen Lambert and ceramic sculpture by Katherine West. The show was curated by Siobhán Garrigan, Associate Professor of Liturgical Studies, Yale University.

This is just a gentle reminder, if you haven’t seen it yet, that the show only continues until 2nd January and Slow Dancing by David Michalek closes before that on Christmas Eve at 3pm. As many have experienced already over the last couple of months this piece is well worth the trip to Carrick on Shannon, featuring 50 of the worlds greatest dancers and choregraphers, from Trisha Brown to Gabriel “Kwikstep” Dionisio to Bill T. Jones, before it leaves The Dock to be shown in Trafalgar Square, London in the new year.

Click the image below to watch a short film on the making of the art work called “Sculpting Movement and Time: Making Slow Dancing” by Nel Shelby, shown at Jacob’s Pillow, 2008.

The following is an essay by Siobhan Garrigan, Curator of SACRED, about the exhibition…

It is impossible to describe the sacred; that is one of its key characteristics. However, throughout history people have felt the instinct to say something of sacred-ness, and so these words —and the exhibition they introduce — stand in a long line of attempts to speak of the sacred. Such attempts suggest that while it may be futile to describe the sacred, it is possible to describe something of human beings’ relationship with it.

Ireland is a particularly interesting place in which to mount a show called “sacred” at the moment. Irish society has undergone mammoth upheaval in recent years. The “Celtic Tiger” brought an economic boom that reversed the sad tide of routine emigration and improved the standard of living for many, but it also created a chasm between richer and poorer people, and contributed to numerous losses in community bonds and expectations. The influx of refugees and migrant workers mercifully debunked the myth of Irish homogeneity, but also raised the spectre of the racisms that haunt us. And the numerous sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church destroyed the faith of many and caused thousands of people to query or quit their life-long religious practices.

In the wake of these upheavals, the dominant forms of sacred expression that had been the staples of Irish life since Independence are in tatters. For example, until the mid-1990s, 85% of the population went to Mass every weekend; recent figures suggest it is now nearer to 30%. Few people, in the arts community at least, are grieving these losses. The corruptions of power endemic to the Irish church, and its facility to harm the vulnerable and the non-conforming, were too great. However, the pathos of this situation is that so many Irish people were separated from their native understandings of sacredness first by colonial rule and then by the churches of the nation-state that, with those institutions waning, few people nowadays have ways of thinking about where they encounter the sacred in their lives, never mind techniques for honouring it. As Daniel O’Leary has put it, “It is much easier to build a religion and keep God within it. We can live our lives then without touching the sacred at every hand’s turn.”

Of course, some people do have loving and dynamic church communities and Sunday or weekday Mass, as well as clootie trees for praying, holy wells for healing, graveyard rituals in summer and the wren on Stephen’s Day. But these people now constitute a relative minority. For most of us, if the baby is not to drain out with the bath water, the sacred must be noticed anew at every hand’s turn. As human beings, we have all the equipment we need for this in our bodies, particularly through our senses (touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing, and intuition). We also have one another, and by listening to other people’s stories about encounter with the sacred we gain a compass to help us navigate our own. Our own individual bodies, and the body that we make as a group, create and keep alive a sense of the sacred and its honouring.

Aileen Lambert’s sound piece, “Soundings”, draws our attention to our breath: our individual breath, and our breathing-together. Breath has long been understood in many religious traditions to hold and/or convey the sacred. The ancient Hebrew word for breath or wind (“ruah”) is the same word from which we get our concept “divine spirit” (or, for Christians, Holy Spirit). Breath has enormous consistency across cultures as being seen as the thing that connects us — to ourselves, to one another, and to the source of all life. Some people have had personal experiences of the sacredness of breathing through prayer or meditation, from hearing stories of winds whipping up (as at the burning bush or Pentecost), or from bodily practices such as yoga; but for many, their chief experience of this has come from singing, alone or with others. Lambert’s work is even more compelling, therefore, given that the voices she conducted to make the sound-recording are those of a dozen children from 3^rd to 6^th class in her local school in Co. Wexford. The work invites us to know the sacred by hearing, and to experience hearing as sacred. Listen!

Djeribi’s food for the opening event invites us to know the sacred by eating. Smell! Taste!  Touch! To sit at a table with eleven others and to be served soup and bread is to participate in a story that has resonances across time and space, from the bounty and thanksgiving of Passover meals, to the last supper in Palestine, to the soup kitchens of our cities’ shelters, to our family dinner tables. To eat this way is to be invited to know the hearing of stories as well as simply smelling and tasting and touching as sacred.

In this show we have the rare and beautiful experience of being able to touch artwork, not just in the food at the opening, but also in specific selections from the work of Katharine West. On the plinths (Gallery 2) sits work that we are allowed, even encouraged, to touch. Much of what we know of the sacred in our lives comes from touch, be it the embrace of a parent, the caresses of a lover, the nudge of a friend, or the healing of a massage therapist’s manipulations, to name but a few ways. The common phrase “to touch the sacred”, even as it usually refers to something that is not literally a matter of touch, points to how important tangibility is to our understanding of what it means to relate to sacredness in our lives. And so, we are invited to explore this art with our hands — gently — to feel it and to allow ourselves to follow those sensations. Touch!

West also offers work for just looking-at in this exhibition (in Gallery 2), as does Bernadette Kiely (Gallery 2) and David Michalek (Gallery 1). Sight being so closely linked to how human beings conceive (we speak of “the mind’s eye”, for example), and also strongly linked to metaphors of insight, it is thrilling to have works in three different media (paint, sculpture and film) to contemplate by looking. They invite us to know the sacred by seeing, and to know looking and seeing as sacred. See!

Bernadette Kiely’s paintings from her river and flood series present images that do not shy away from the cycle of life itself, connoting destruction as well as creation, ebb as well as flow, death as well as life. Their colours and textures and images all invite us to look and to enjoy what we see. However, in our context, they also tap deeply-held knowledge of the land as sacred — a theme greatly complicated in our Irish context because, while being known as sacred, the land also so often has been the turning-point for human conflict, competition and violence: things that turn us away from the sacred in our midst. Kiely’s images of the natural processes of water moving or lichen growing, each doing their natural thing in all its mutation and glory, turn our minds back to the organism of the land as land, free of human competition over it, and as therefore witnessing something of the sacred in its very generation.

Katharine West’s ceramic artworks also invite viewers to explore the ways in which their lives, and the places they inhabit, are sacred. Suggesting organic forms and processes in the natural world, her sculptures, through their shapes and their materiality (made as they are of porcelain), conjure awareness of the border between nature and culture, a border that is particularly adept at opening-up ever-new perception of the sacred. For me, these pieces evoke sheer delight in the shapes of this world and the ways they allow encounter of sacredness, but also utter grief at the environment’s undoing in our hands.

David Michalek’s “Slow Dancing” shows the human body as an organic form, as if it were a part of nature — which, of course, it is, although we can forget that in our contemporary ways of life. The films show the body moving and, through the attentiveness to that movement created by its slowed-down-ness, we feel we can almost see the skin itself breathing, its pores and tiny hairs revealed as moving.

The sense of our own human bodies as being the things that connect us to the sacred in this world is complicated. For those in pain or suffering great disability, the body can seem a prison. Furthermore, there is a long and sad tradition of the body as a problem, due to western philosophical traditions that separate the mind from the body and prize only the former. Such traditions have done great harm, perhaps especially to women, who were associated more with “nature” and the calling of the physical world, while men were associated more with the life of the mind and the calling of “higher” things. That said, realising the body as the thing that connects us to the sacred also has a long, positive tradition — perhaps one we would do well to rediscover in these times — and it is this philosophical lineage to which Michalek connects us.

“Slow Dancing” reminds us that our bodies do not merely point to the sacred, but are part of the sacred, with all their flaws, in all their pain and stages of growth and decay, through all their movements, in all that they have to navigate, and with all the different bodies with whom they are required to dance at any given movement. To borrow from Christian thinking, “Slow Dancing” makes apparent that our bodies are God’s bodies, the only ones God has in this world to do God’s human work. Of course, there are also all the sacred bodies of nature and creation, but the specifically human-sacred work of making justice and enjoying beauty, happens nowhere else except in and through our bodies.

To know the sacred in our lives these days we need to tune in to it with our bodies: looking, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling can all be sacred acts.

May each breath fill us.

Siobhán Garrigan

Curator

Siobhán Garrigan is a community theologian, currently serving as a professor at the Institute of Sacred Music, Worship and the Arts at Yale University, where she directs the ecumenical worship program at the multi-denominational Divinity School. Her long-standing interests are in ecumenism, feminism and, particularly, the relationship between religious ritual and social justice. Her new book, The Real Peace Process: Worship, Politics and the End of Sectarianism will come out in Spring 2010.

iMurders 2008

Director: Robbie Bryan

Writers: Robbie Bryan and Ken Del Vecchio

Starring Gabrielle Anwar, William Forsythe, Tony Todd, Frank Grillo, Terri Colombino, Wilson Jermaine Hereida, Charles Durning, Billy Dee Williams, Margaret Colin, Justin Deas, Joanne Baron, Brooke Lewis, Miranda Kwok and Christie Botelho

    There are so many different slasher movies that come down the pipeline, so it is very hard to come up with a original and fresh take on the genre.  There have been a few different takes on the internet as a modus operandi for a slasher film, the most obvious being Feardotcom, and also the most forgettable.  iMurders is the latest in this subgenre and by far the most well executed and the most memorable.  It uses the plot device of a internet chat room as the locale of the murders and works this scene very well.  IT also combines the slasher with a police procedural very well.  Another thing that works well for the film is the great genre cast it entails.  With great genre stalwarts like Forsythe and Todd it guarantees that horror fans will definitely check the film out and hopefully word of mouth will ensure that the film will get the most encompassing audience it deserves.  Also, unlike most recent slasher films, it throws you many curve balls on who the killer is until the final reveal at the end.  It is very rare that I am surprised by who the killer is, but this film succeeds and it really deserves accolades for succeeding with that.

    The plot basics are this, Sandra (Colombino) has just moved into town for her job as a party planner and has just moved into a new apartment.  She along with a group of other people are involved with a chat room mystery game.  It always varies from month to month and this month it involves a murder mystery, but unbeknownst to the players the mystery is real.  It seems as if the players are being picked off one by one.  Sandra soon becomes romantically involved with one of her neighbors in her new apartment building, Joe Romano (Grillo), who is an ex cop who’s past is mysterious and he does not divulge.  Soon, 2 FBI agents (Todd and Lewis) begin to investigate and it seems as if Sandra may be the culprit behind the chat room killings.  This causes Joe to investigate and it seems as if he is being led down a path that he may not like what he discovers.  How it will end will be a surprise to Joe and my end badly for everyone else.

    This is a good film.  The direction by Bryan is very good.  He hides the identity of the killer effortlessly, so the viewer really never has a idea of who it may be.  There are many red herrings sprinkled throughout the film, and it always keeps you guessing.  He also sets the stages for the murders well and they are shot expertly.  The script is great too.  It balances a huge cast of characters, but they all get their fairs hare of screen time and all seem to be fully realized.  From Billy Dee Williams shady lawyer to William Forsythe’s sleazy and opportunistic college professor.  The cast is excellent, they all work well off of each other.  IT is interesting how you see one person as the lead and it just jumps to another actor with the next scene, so as you become more drawn into the film the viewer has no idea who to really root for.  Forsythe and Williams are the shining stars of performances in the film though.   Forsythe is very sleazy and perverted and is a delight to watch.  While Williams at first seems like a genuine good lawyer, but as the plot twists you see how his character really is.  The SFX and effects in the film are great too and very bloody.  My personal favorite is when the stay at home mom is killed, that was brutal and unnecessary, but still fun nonetheless.  This is a definite breath of fresh air in the slasher genre and well worth seeking out.

This one gets 4 out of 5

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I haven’t updated as recently as I would have liked. There is so much going on here at the end of the quarter, but I feel that there are several points that I want to quickly share. I confess, there is very little overt connective tissue between these various ideas, but the common denominator is that they are occupying my attention right now, and as I hope is clear through the overall journey of this blog, that which occupies my attention inevitably finds its way into influencing “the work” (i.e. my creative practice, the dances I make, the papers I write etc.)

So there’s Lady Gaga. There’s her new album Fame Monster that is blowing up my world.

And there’s its connection to ballet. On November 14th, Lady Gaga premiered her new song “Speechless” at MOCA’s 30th Anniversary Gala in Francesco Vezzoli’s “Ballets Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again).” She played a piano customized by Damien Hirst, wore a hat designed by Frank Gehry, was accompanied by dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet, who were attired in costumes designed by Miuccia Prada. That alone should be enough said. But you can read more about it here. And see a clip of it below. And an image.

So for my last week of teaching ballet this quarter (to beginner non-majors), I set all of my barre combinations to Lady Gaga, predominantly the new album, as an homage to this contemporary intersection of high Russian ballet and contemporary pop culture, it in itself an homage to the Ballets Russes and the work of Serge Diaghilev. After having taught Vaganova Technique all quarter, it felt appropriate.

I had an amazing opportunity to take a class with Jill Johnson, former dancer with William Forsythe and the Frankfurt Ballet (among a list of other credentials). I relished the opportunity to revisit a way of moving that became familiar last winter working with Nik Haffner and Forsythe’s “Improvisational Technologies.” Today Jill emphasized the relationship between these ideas and classical ballet technique, epaulement as rotations in the body, and working rigorously in abstracting these various rotations and counter-rotations. It was not the same way of moving that I explore last year, but there was significant overlap, and moments of realizing how that experience last year changed the way that I move “naturally.” You can see me exploring some of those ideas in a piece I performed in October here.

I am also working on authoring a new paper, the working of title of which is “Body of Knowledge/Knowledge of the Body: An Analysis of the Presence of Embodiment in Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced.” I am working to construct a working theoretical definition of what is meant by “embodiment” from synthesizing writings by Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, Judith Butler, Amelia Jones, Heidegger, and Henry Sayre, among others, and then looking for the presence of embodiment in Synchronous Objects. I have found that there is a fairly widespread uncomfortability amongst dancers engaging with this dance-based research project. I think it has something to do with a sense that the knowledge that we know as our moving bodies has been extracted, transformed into date, and re-presented in forms/objects other than the moving body. My interest in the implication of embodiment throughout the project, in the site of origin (the dance), the collection and translation of the choreographic systems into data, the transformation of the data into alternative re-presentations, and ultimately (and perhaps most viscerally) in the viewer of the project himself or herself. While the paper is still in the works, I feel that there are implications of embodiment throughout the project; this is most acute in the viewing of the project. The project is an object to be viewed, to be understood by a viewer. It is a request for the re-embodiment of the knowledge being re-presented. I am attempting to describe that not only does the site itself necessitate the (embodied) presence of the viewer, but that the way in which the objects themselves are understood are through conceptualizations of time, space, density, movement, etc. that emerge from an embodied experience of the world in which we live. This is supported primarily by Johnson and Lakoff’s writings in Philosophy in the Flesh and The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. I’ll keep you posted on the paper. In the mean time, I hope you go and explore the site.

In the reading I’ve done in preparation for writing this paper, a gem of a resource was a book I came across by Henry M. Sayre entitled The Object of Performance: the American Avant-Garde since 1970. Sayre writes about the shift of importance in the visual art world from the art object to the performative act, and in doing so the shift of “presence” from the artist/object to the viewer of the object. He writes beautifully about the photograph emerging as a respected medium, a signifier of both presence (the viewer of the photograph, and even the photograph as an object itself) and absence (that which the photograph depicts). He also wrote about the action painting (re: Pollock, Krasner, others) as a significant shift, in which the paintings that were bought by museums and collectors were not the action painting itself. It was a thing concerned with the immediacy of the action; the painting acted as a trace, a document of the action, and yet an object itself. Like the photograph. Like Synchronous Objects. It has sparked some fascinating notions as I have engaged with visual art after this reading. Last weekend I saw a series of works by Dale Chihuly, mostly large glass sculptures. It was fascinating and exciting to engage this work as “movement traces,” the documentation of the actions of the glass artists (which, in Chihuly’s work, art already mostly interpretations of Chihuly’s “action painting” designs for the pieces), and even farther as potential “movement scores.” Visual art as movement score. Reading visual art as movement scores as a method for engagement. There is something there.

Speaking of art object as documentation of action, I just ordered a “Tit Print” by Annie Sprinkle. She posted on her facebook today that she just made another batch of them, and had them on sale today. They consist of large ink or paint prints using her breasts as her instrument. I think they’re lovely, a kind of Yves Klein way of revealing the body. And the fact that I am going to San Francisco later this month to interview Annie and Beth and see their upcoming show “Sexecology: Making Love with Earth, Sky and Sea” at Femina Potens Gallery.

One of Annie's Tit Prints

Finally, a little rant: I am exhausted about hearing about making art or dance “accessible.” I take issue with this word. Because it rarely refers to making art experiences available to the population. It most often implies that the art be constructed in such a way that the viewer can “get something out of it.” It is not about making the art itself accessible as it is about making a specific experience (or kind of experience) of the work accessible. I think it has emerged from the collective anxiety of audience and artist worrying that they have somehow misunderstood the art experience. And my issue is this: “accessible” implies that there is something to be “accessed,” something encoded that must be (able to be) decoded. It assumes that art is essentially communicable, that its purpose or intention is that the viewer understand or “access” the experience that the artist has of her or his own work. And I think that is simply not the purpose of art. My theory is also that we live in such a visually complex, communication driven culture that we spend our lives trying to “figure out” what we’re supposed to understand from images, advertising, commercials, etc. etc. etc., that we come to the art experience with that same pressure. It is my opinion that the art experience is perhaps the opportunity for reprieve from this way of engaging and understanding. The purpose is not to access the encoded meaning, but instead to engage with that with which you are presented and make it meaningful for yourself. Construct meaning rather than access meaning, using your experience of the dance or sculpture or literature or music, etc., as the materials by which you construct your meaning. In this sense, I am opposed to making art “accessible.” I am in favor of making art available. But I would like to do away with this language/concept that there is anything to “access” in art. It is there. You experience it. You make that experience meaningful for yourself using the materials before your as the materials of your meaning.

There. That’s my little rant for today.

Back to reading/writing about Synchronous Objects.

I have to admit I am slightly suspicious about the push in dance studies to proclaim the territory of knowledge specific to dance.  How is this not just a way to justify dance as an academic specialization, thereby proclaiming the need for more Departments of Dance, more Administrators of Dance, and more lines of funding for Dance?  I am questioning whether this push to demarcate dance serves knowledge –or power structures.

I am really crossing over to the dark side today.

Asking this question has the effect of shooting my own self in the foot.  As a scholar in dance, I am supposed to want funding to justify academic activity in dance.  Plus I would like to have money for groceries.  I would like to have a job.  The practical side of me says, yes, you need to be clear about what dance does and what dance knows so that someone will pay you to work in, and write about, dance.

Another side says, “what is it all for?” This side of me would rather exit stage left and grow my own radishes while dancing naked in the moonlight in my garden than to participate in this circling of the wagons.

I should give some context–several events have brought me to this state.  First of all, I am taking a Ph.D. level class at the moment.  It is the most idea-heavy dance class I have taken thus far and has involved discussion of extensive readings on the history of analysis of movement.  I’ve never been one to argue that we need to just stop thinking about what it means and just dance, but this class is threatening to push me over the edge.  I am suddenly remembering my experience with the  Forsythe Symposium last year – that of being overwhelmed with conceptual thinking, feeling unable to keep up and synthesize, and starved for sensory experience and information, which feels so much more real to me personally.

There is also the fact that I personally miss performing, and creative activity in general.  I have whined enough about this and will leave it at that for now, and add that this is getting better.  I’ve got some things in the cooker.

Then there was something Norah Zuniga-Shaw mentioned in her presentation of Synchronous Objects to my PhD class the other day.  She told an anecdote of a presentation of her research to a group of musicologists, whose initial reaction was to wonder why the dancers in “One Flat Thing Reproduced” were not dancing to the music.  To me, this, and other exposure I have to the field of musicology, causes me to think of that field as a closed, antiquated, self-referential academic dinosaur.  Is this really the direction that dance wants to go?

I also had a talk this morning with someone who attended the discussion at the Wexner last night between painter Luc Tuymans and curator TJ Clark.  The discussion apparently turned to the idea of painting as a site of knowledge in itself.  From the sounds of it Clark credited Tuymans with reinvigorating painting after the postmodern breakdown of the form.  I am fine with the idea of using and reusing a form for the layers of information it can then convey.  I do not hold with any evolutionary ideas that say we must always push to the next form, new forms, and thus discard painting.  But something about the story makes me wonder if these two had other motivations to justify painting as a valid and living art form?

I am suspicious of the academic need to maintain existing forms for the sake of power structures.  I would rather see dance as a tradition die off than to have it be preserved in formaldehyde.

In my flair for the dramatic, I may be setting up an unecessary dialectic again.  Is it really vitality and creativity vs. academic specificity, or can I reframe this as a both/and situation?

The curtain rose for the first work of the night, a revival of George Balanchine’s 1967 opus Rubies, set to music by Igor Stravinsky. Before even one step was danced, there was a spontaneous round of applause for the costumes, based on the original designs by Mme Karinska who, like Balanchine and Stravinsky, was a Russian emigre who ended up in New York.
Scottish Ballet, however, is not just about beautiful, luxurious costumes, athough they are rightly renowned for them; the focus is always on the dance, and Ashley Page had devised a thoughtful and thought-provoking programme to celebrate the company’s 40th birthday and look back at its progress.

Rubies is a vivacious work celebrating the playground where classical ballet collides with Broadway and Hollywood. Prancing, skipping, forming chorus lines straight out of Busby Berkeley, the dancers exuded joyful sexiness, none more than Soon Ja Lee, whose effervescent flirtatiousness cranked the dial all the way up to 11.
The principals, Claire Robertson and Tama Barry, danced equally well, without projecting quite the same joie de vivre, but Lee was a hard act to follow. If there was a quibble it was that the proportion of ballet to dance in Balanchine comes down heavily on the former, demanding rigorous technique that was in some cases still lacking, despite the Eden Court shows being the end of the tour.

The filling in the evening’s sandwich was a 1998 work by William Forsythe, workwithinwork, set to an aurally challenging duet for violins by Luciano Berio. Like Balanchine, Forsythe’s style is still based strongly in classical technique, but adds a challenging athleticism and more randomly fluid structure, using classical forms such as duets which typically dissolve and change abruptly. It was, as always, a treat to see Paul Liburd and Diana Loosmore, two dancers who have in common an enviable strength, grace and precision. The company had been lucky enough to develop this piece with two long-term Forsythe collaborators, Jill Johnson and Noah Gelber, and their enthusiasm shone through and translated into something very satisfying indeed.

The final work was a revival of the company’s 2006 production of In Light and Shadow by Krzysztof Pastor, to Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Suite No 3 in D. Tatyana van Walsum’s costumes featured shorts, sarongs, and corsets, chiffon and shantungs, French pleats for the female dancers, and with the exception of a red dress for Loosmore, blurred the gender boundaries. William Smith partnered Claire Robertson beautifully while all sixteen dancers appeared to be enjoying themselves running and jumping across the stage in what proved to be an agreeably cheerful closer.

Minimal sets, sensitive lighting, and the orchestra of Scottish Ballet, conducted by Richard Honner, collectively provided the perfect setting for this little jewel of a programme, a harbinger of even greater things to come.

Finally I am posting video footage from the 3 October event 60×60 Dance held at Wall Street Night Club. Enjoy:

Peter Welz, William Forsythe alla GNAM, Roma

Non vuole essere definito un video artista, Peter Welz; immagino che trovi l’etichetta restrittiva, come se tutti gli artisti siano identificabili a partire solo dal medium che utilizzano o privilegiano. In realtà per secoli è andata così: chi dipinge è stato sempre chiamato pittore, chi scrive scrittore, chi danza danzatore, e così via…  solo che ora i ruoli sono molto slabbrati, siamo avvezzi a sperimentazioni continue di materie e metodi da parte di creativi provenienti da ogni settore dell’arte, e a volte, anche da mondi che, fino all’altro ieri, sembravano estranei all’arte.
Se non è un video artista o un film maker, allora direi che Welz è un attento osservatore e utilizzatore dei punti di vista; le infinite possibilità dello sguardo sembrano essere la ricerca alla base di questo suo bel lavoro con il coreografo e danzatore (ancora le etichette!) William Forsythe. Lavoro nato nel 2006 per il Museo del Louvre, che rivisto e adattato, è approdato, per un periodo purtroppo troppo breve, a Roma nello spazio della Galleria nazionale di arte moderna, in seno al Romaeuropa Festival2009.
Su tre grandi schermi lattiginosi e spogli,  angolati in modo da affettare porzioni disuguali di spazio, anche noi possiamo guardare Forsythe che danza, così come lo ha filmato Welz: da davanti, da dietro, da sopra, avvicinando la telecamera o restando discretamente lontano con l’occhio elettronico. Possiamo girare intorno ai pannelli sui quali l’azione si svolge priva di musica, con solo il sottofondo lieve del rumore della danza, simile a quello dei passi sulla neve fresca. E scoprire come il  grande coreografo si sia qui dedicato a una straordinaria operazione di trascrizione di un dipinto di Francis Bacon: Unfinished portrait. La trascrizione è bagaglio riconosciuto della cultura musicale;  compositori e musicisti si sono applicati spesso a tradurre partiture scritte pensando a uno strumento o formazione, per un altro strumento dal colore e timbro diversi, per esempio. Ma rimanendo comunque nell’ambito di uno stesso linguaggio.
Qui con Bacon/Forsythe/ Welz i linguaggi sono tre, senza contare il ruolo indispensabile dello spettatore, libero di scegliere a sua volta altri punti di vista, tempi e modi di fruizione. Sappiamo che anche Bacon lavorava sulle inquadrature e questo crea di partenza una grande affinità con Welz.
Ma come riesce il coreografo nel miracolo di traduzione? Credo che una buona spiegazione si possa trovare in Milan Kundera, nel suo saggio su Bacon, dove scrive: “ … Nella ricerca di Bacon le forme che subiscono “una totale distorsione” non perdono mai il loro carattere di organismi viventi, evocano la loro esistenza corporea, la loro carne, mantengono sempre la loro apparenza tridimensionale. E in più somigliano ai loro modelli! Ma come può un ritratto somigliare a un modello di cui è consapevolmente una distorsione? …”
Osservando da molte angolazioni Forsythe danzare in tutto quel nitore, per accumulazione apparentemente disordinata di movimenti minimi e fuori-centro, accurati ma distorti e deformanti, l’autoritratto si costruisce, si delinea nello spazio bidimensionale degli schermi, in modo sorprendentemente tridimensionale e carnale. Alla fine, quando l’interprete giace esausto, noi vediamo proprio pulsare l’opera incompiuta di Bacon. Ma potremmo dire con uguale esattezza che non vediamo già più niente; eppure, durante il tempo della danza abbiamo osservato ricomporsi il ritratto nella nostra retina e abbiamo percepito che Welz e Forsythe insieme, hanno raggiunto l’obiettivo che si erano dati e, indirettamente, anche risposto alla domanda di Kundera.

(Grazie a Milan Kundera per il“Il gesto brutale del pittore. Su Francis Bacon” in  Un incontro, Adelphi 2009)

In today’s Guardian, Nicky Woolf has written a wonderful article about the birth of world tourism.  Here are some of the highlights:

William Henry Fox Talbot

In 1833, William Henry Fox Talbot conceived the photographic process, after becoming frustrated with his inability to draw.

Egypt 1858

Photographs of exotic far-off places first came available in the 1850’s.  Demand for these sorts of photographs exploded during subsequent decades.  Thomas Cook put together the first European tours in the 1850’s, and black and white photographs of various locales began becoming popular tourist mementos.

Thomas Cook

Also in the 1850’s, photography began to record the monuments of ancient Egypt.  By the 1860’s middle-class tourists began to appear.  In the 1860’s, photographs of European landscapes became popular.

Switzerland 1860's

Photography continued to expand at the same time as European colonial expansion, spearheaded by railway and steamship penetration, producing ever-more photographs of exotic locales and peoples.

The top ten Victorian travel destinations, in order, were:

1.)    Nile River cruises from Cairo to Aswan, pioneered by Thomas Cook, on opulent steamships  in the 1880’s.

2.)   Paris, Brussels, and the Rhine, also by Thomas Cook.  Rhine cruises, then from Frankfurt to Paris by rail.

3.)   Davos, Switzerland, a health resort which grew into one of the first ski resorts as skiing began to become a popular sport in the 1890’s.

Davos, Switzerland, 1870

4.)   Camping in the Holy Land.  Thomas Cook conducted the camping in luxurious tents, fully furnished and carpeted, with guests waited upon by legions of servants, guides, and porters.

5.)   Niagara Falls became popular after 1827 when William Forsythe began performing dramatic stunts there with animals.

6.)   Nice, France, became famous after new resorts were built there in the 1860’s and European royal families began vacationing there.

7.)  Renaissance Italy became popular with middle-class travelers, especially the cities of Rome, Venice, and Florence.

8.)  Scandanavian fjord cruises became popular in the 1870’s, as Thomas Cook popularized “the midnight sun.”

9.)   The Roman town of Bath, England was popularized as a place to stay six weeks in the Empire Hotel during the 1880’s.

10.)  Shanghai, China, became popular after the end of the First Opium War in 1842.  The Astor House Hotel was the first western hotel on Chinese soil.

–Posted by Madame Monet

Por tercera vez Michael Bay viene a engrosar esta sección (tras la infumable Pearl Harbor y la estrepitosamente fallida La isla) con un nuevo despropósito orgiástico de chapa, cristal y pintura hechos añicos para disfrute del personal, puro escaparatismo pirotécnico que envuelve una historia tan gratuita como absurda a la medida del más rancio y conservador patrioterismo de una sociedad esquizofrénica como la norteamericana y con los consabidos “héroes” de cartón piedra que son tan de gusto de Bay como protagonistas absolutos de un pestiño que los seguidores del cine de acción no vacilan en calificar de “obra maestra” (no reírse, que lo dicen en serio).

Revestida, una vez más, de la épica de andar por casa que imprimen Bay y el productor Jerry Bruckheimer a todas sus historias, nos encontramos con una narración sonrojante, no sólo por la, una vez más, histriónica, histérica, autoparódica, ridícula y peripatética interpretación de Nicolas Cage, sino por las incongruencias y tonterías que el guión va soltando aquí y allá sin orden ni concierto y sin que se moleste en ocultar el plagio argumental de Harry, el ejecutor (The enforcer, 1976), película de James Fargo en la que Clint Eastwood y su compañera se enfrentan a un grupo terrorista que amenaza a la ciudad de San Francisco. Nos encontramos con un prólogo típico “de soldaditos”: el coronel Hummel (Ed Harris, probablemente el mejor actor norteamericano vivo en su personaje más incomprensible, más lamentable, más horripilante, pero Dios, ¿cómo es posible que cayera aquí?) es un veterano de los Marines, múltiples veces condecorado, Estrella de Plata, Medalla del Congreso, etiqueta de anís del Mono…, que, no obstante, se encuentra resentido con el maltrato que los politicos y burócratas infligen a los veteranos de guerra que no disfrutan de su grado militar y, sobre todo, hacia la memoria, el recuerdo y las compensaciones económicas a los familiares de quienes perdieron la vida en misiones militares, muchas de ellas ilegales, al servicio del imperialismo norteamericano derrocando gobiernos o apoyando golpes de Estado. Así que al bueno de Hummel y otros patriotas de su mismo cuerpo se les ocurre una genial idea para protestar y hacer que el Gobierno tome conciencia de tan tremenda injusticia: ¿una huelga de hambre? ¿Una manifestación? ¿La denuncia en los medios de comunicación? ¿Un calendario todos en bolas? Nooorl. Nada menos que el robo, el secuestro y el chantaje.

Así las cosas, un grupito de marines mentalizados todos, oficiales y soldados, de la necesidad de hacer justicia a sus camaradas desaparecidos, asaltan una base militar americana (vigilada por lo que parece ser un grupo de boy-scouts incompetentes y torpes, hay que ver cómo vigilan las bases en América, para echarse a temblar) y roban dieciséis (no uno ni dos) misiles cuyas cabezas están dotadas de un gas letal, venenosísimo y fosforescente que viaja en pelotas de cristal hiperfrágil. Pero ojo, como son soldaditos leales a sus camaradas, sólo hieren a los guardias, dejándoles dormidos con dardos cargados de un potente somnífero. Eso sí, la vida de los civiles se la trae floja, porque amenazan al Gobierno con disparar los misiles sobre la ciudad de San Francisco si no aceptan sus demandas una vez que se establecen en la antigua prisión de Alcatraz y secuestran al grupo de visitantes que a esa hora hace el recorrido guiado por esa antigua prisión española. Eso es el prólogo, y de él pueden sacarse dos conclusiones que rayan el absurdo: en primer lugar, el hecho de que no elminen a los guardias en el asalto pero que no les importe intoxicar y matar a toda la ciudad de San Francisco, militares incluidos, algunos de ellos los mismos a los que acaban de salvar, y en segundo, el detallito consistente en que los militares no utilizan sus uniformes reglamentarios, sino que los sustituyen por un sucedáneo de centro comercial; la importancia de esta nimiedad es extrema, dado que responde al tacto de cierto cine de Hollywood (y de ciertos Gobiernos) a la hora de hacer ficción con las sediciones, golpes de Estado ficticios y demás, sobre todo si los asesinos y terroristas visten uniforme americano. Las películas que recogen este tipo de historias han de pasar controles muy férreos de guión y producción para ser vistas con buenos ojos, y de ahí que la trama tome las derivas que toma.

El caso es que a las autoridades no se les ocurre otra cosa que asaltar la prisión para rescatar a los rehenes y eliminar la amenaza de los misiles. Para ello, escogen un grupo de comandos de lo más experto (exterminado a la primera ocasión, no es de extrañar que las cosas vayan como van en Iraq o Afganistán) y a dos asesores cuyo concurso es imprescindible para el éxito de la misión: un especialista en armamento biológico (Cage) que pueda desactivar los chismes, y el único (que insulto a la desmemoria del cinéfilo, que sabe perfectamente que han sido varios los fugados de Alcatraz, cinematográficamente hablando) fugado de la prisión que (nuevo absurdo), a pesar de haber vivido allí recluido en su celda y de haber transitado una única vez por los lugares que atravesó para salir de ella al mar, se conoce la edificación como si la hubiera diseñado él mismo. Quiere la cosa que el preso sea un antiguo agente secreto británico (Sean Connery) enemistado con el director del F.B.I. y que accede a ayudar porque su hija vive, mira tú qué casualidad, en San Francisco y es una víctima potencial de la amenaza.

Y a partir de ahí, ¿qué? Pues eso, incongruencias argumentales de primera clase, testosterona a chorros, acción, persecuciones (muy bien rodadas, eso sí), tiros, diálogos fatuos y grandilocuentes, música apabullante, militarismo de cartón, épica de baratillo, una ironía de parvulario en ciertos diálogos y mujeres reducidas al papel de florero (la novia de Cage, que se plantifica también en San Francisco, embarazada y deseando que su chico la pida en matrimonio) o de tópico (la hija desasistida de Connery, el cual espera recuperar el tiempo perdido junto a ella). Es decir, más espectacularidad vacía en la que la deriva de la trama tiene que reconduciirse hacia el patrioterismo chufletero y por lo tanto el papel de villano termina recayendo sobre dos subalternos, dos cabezas de turco indignos de llamarse Marines, rescatándose en última instancia la memoria de los héroes para el honor y la patria, haciendo inútil, absurdo, estúpido, todo lo anterior que hemos visto y convirtiendo al delincuente y asesino potencial en honorable víctima de la corrupción política. Un asco aderezado con los habituales tics de Bay, sobre todo esas escenas ridículas de ese héroe incorporándose a cámara lenta mirando hacia el horizonte mientras a sus espaldas encontramos un paisaje de desolación… Estupidez supina ante la que hay que dejarse llevar sin hacerse preguntas. Lo contrario nos expone al riesgo de un cortocircuito cerebral severo.

Acusados: todos
Agravantes: Cage, beattlemaníaco en la cinta, para más señas, está más odioso que nunca
Atenuantes: la escena de persecución está bien, entretenida y ocurrente; sólo tiene una pega: que argumentalmente es absurda
Sentencia: culpables
Condena: sin excepción, encierro en Alcatraz a pan y agua a perpetuidad, excepto Harris, con condena revisable; Cage, Bay y Bruckheimer, sin celda, encerrados directamente en las duchas con el jabón clavado al suelo

Originally published in Rip-in Magazine Issue 046, 2007.

Genre: Horror

Actors: Malcolm McDowell, Brad Dourif, Tyler Mane, Daeg Faerch, Sherie Moon Zombie, William Forsythe

Director: Rob Zombie

Children are a delicatessen of horror films. Big, hulking and gargantuan blokes with a cleaver are still in the menu but it is an old recipe that is both passé and outdated. Children, however, add that something-special to the plate and wet the palate of tired consumers of slasher movies. After all, it’s not every season that we get to watch a ten-year-old boy slice the throat of his step-father, (literally) backstab his sister and clobber the skull of his sister’s boyfriend with a shiny baseball bat. In Rob Zombie’s Halloween, Michael Myers (Faerch) has infantilised to four feet of pure innocence and evil.

Based on John Carpenter’s original screenplay in 1978, Halloween has attracted cult-status. With an unforgettable soundtrack that is the ringtone of hardcore fans, the film has gathered itself a following of mask-wearing, plastic knife wielding devotees.

Unlike its predecessors, Zombie’s Halloween goes back in time to the awakening of Myer’s bloodlust. Slasher films do not normally bother with storyline or plot. The point is to hack and hack and hack. But the director has taken steps to introduce a rare ideology, which is ‘intrigue’, and this is evident through 45 minutes of intricate storytelling.

The audience is siphoned into the world of young Michael Myers who suffers from a severe split-personality disorder. On good days, the boy is all smiles, hugs and feminine innocence. On bad days, a Cruela Deville look-a-like nurse gets stabbed with a fork. Dr. Samuel Loomis (McDowell) is introduced as the specialised psychologist that could possibly cure Myer’s deranged personality disorder. Of course, his success rate is as slim as an anorexic drinking full cream milk.

Seventeen years passed and, to the surprise of no one, Myers manages to break out from prison. And from here onwards, it is 45 minutes of unadulterated slasher idiocy. The Incredible Oaf (adult Myers played by Tyler Mane) roams the streets of Haddonfield, unobtrusively picking up and cutting down the residents that no one seems to miss. Later on we realise that Myers plans to kidnap his baby-sister (Sheri Zombie) but for what reason, only hell knows.

You know a slasher movie as a slasher movie when more than five bullets enters the body of a nutcase and he still gets up with an insouciant gait to kill the victim. At the very end, even I doubted a bullet to the head would keep the mute monster down. But like all good horror movies, you could smell a sequel before the audience breathes out their first stale breath.

All in all, you would only watch Halloween because it is rated R and you wanted cheap thrills. If you’re hell bent on going and paying to see this flick then bring a pen to the movies. You might get an itch to draw your neighbour’s arm after the first 45 minutes.

Meghann Wilkinson, Hogan McLaughlin and Jeremy Blair in Punk Yankees. Photo by William Frederking.

Julia Rhoads‘ latest evening-length work bucks trends by embracing them. Before and after Punk Yankees — and during a brief intermission packed with enough stimuli to make me regret needing to use the restroom — a live feed of at-replies to Lucky Plush’s Twitter handle were met with instantaneous responses from the account as well as those of the piece’s eight performers. The transition from pre-show music by Girl Talk into a score only slightly less mashed-up similarly showed no fear toward new forms and boundary-testing of copyright law. What sticks about Yankees is how it turns a spotlight on aging notions about choreographic originality gone translucent from living in shadow.

A surprising and very funny opening scene gives way to a deluge of information recognizable to avid dancegoers (less-so to casual or novice audiences — more on that in a bit). Samplings of Ohad Naharin, Bob Fosse and Trisha Brown are fed to Lucky Plush’s ravenous grinder and made into sausages of new and old, classical and modern, obscure and iconic. Rhoads’ own repertoire is a primary ingredient throughout, satisfying to longtime followers of her company. For those that aren’t, it probably works just as well as a visual bonding agent.

The mood stays light throughout Punk Yankees but, huddled around each other murmuring and humming, the dancers suggest a séance, conjuring the spirits of dancemaking past. All the longer dance sections take on the quality of a primordial soup; although every movement has a distinct source, the broader statement is that, on a basic level, it’s all just a bunch of steps — it’s the individuals that give them life that should be treated as sacred. Surely, an uptight purist will never stand for the sunburst from Apollo being bookended by the macarena and a phrase from “Thriller,” but I found it much less questionable than, say, Tony Powell hollowly aping Forsythe or Ma Cong hawking his Duato knockoffs like fake Fendi handbags on Canal Street (somebody stop them, please).

Kim Larimore Goldman, Meghann Wilkinson, Jeremy Blair, Julia Rhoads, David Gerber and Lia Bonfilio in Punk Yankees. Photo by William Frederking.

Punk Yankees‘ referential layering is unabashedly optimized for dance-savvy audiences. And I found that refreshing — there’s a pride in how deeply Lucky Plush has dived into the hall of mirrors that is the last fifty-odd years of choreography. Desks with laptops come in and out of view along both sides of the stage, the company’s eight faces on webcam projected onto the upstage scrim in a Brady Bunch/Hollywood Squares grid. The computer screen is treated both as reflector and long-awaited steady stream of fuel for their appropriative jones; when Lia Bonfilio finds a choice YouTube link, Rhoads is instantly over her shoulder like a junkie saying, “Ooh, can you send me that? Send me that link.” Dancers not sucked into duets and trios of borrowed material pace restlessly in wait for their next fix.

Text in general, which is included in nearly every scene, is occasionally too obvious but often pleasingly open-ended. Lighting Designer and Technical Director Kevin Rechner walks nonchalantly onstage at the close of the first act, announcing “Screen coming in!” in a way that makes it as figurative as literal. Other times it’s succinct in framing what’s happening vocabularily: Rhoads and Kim Larimore Goldman clue us in to how a phrase was developed, similar to a game of telephone, making it logical and rewarding to watch the following section for subtle transpositions.

The best result of a show like this is the work it does in coaxing acknowledgment of influences out of the closet. Dance has a lot of catching up to do in this regard — the myth of the choreographer-as-singular-generative-force sits on a carpet of eggshells and conspires to keep the field woefully slow to adapt. Punk Yankees is a work of dance theater but, more importantly, it’s an invitation to a conversation.

Lucky Plush Productions’ Punk Yankees continues through October 31 at the Dance Center of Columbia College.

]]> http://cinedirecto.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/condenado/ Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:01:03 +0000 mickymousse http://cinedirecto.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/condenado/ http://100enrolacao.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/halloween-o-inicio-halloween-eua-2007/ Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:28:56 +0000 Eric http://100enrolacao.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/halloween-o-inicio-halloween-eua-2007/

Sinopse:

Aos 10 anos, Michael Myers é um garoto problemático, excluído por todos. Sua mãe é uma stripper  e vive brigando com o namorado. Para descontar sua raiva do mundo, Michael tem o hábito de maltratar animais, até que um dia o diretor da escola descobre e informa à sua mãe que o garoto possuem tendências psicopatas. Numa noite de Halloween, fantasiado com uma de suas máscaras preferidas, ele perde totalmente o controle, assassina todos na casa e vai parar num reformatório. Depois de ficar recluso por 17 anos, ele foge da instituição e retorna à cidade em busca de vingança.

- Vi muito comentário de que o filme era uma merda e tal. Eu gostei! Curto os filmes do Rob Zombie.

- Assistido em 16/10/2009

I just read a review of William Forsythe’s “Decreation,” a piece choreographed in 2003 with connections to Anne Caron’s book by the same name. Anne Carson is my favorite author, unquestionable. Autobiography of Red, Eros: The Bittersweet, Plainwater, Glass, Irony, and God, etc. I love these books. This is not the first time that I have discovered connections between Forsythe and Carson. But I ache to witness this connection:

“The Forsythe Company performs through Saturday at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn; (718) 636-4100, bam.org.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/arts/dance/09forsythe.html?_r=1&ref=dance

I found a short video clip of the piece:

Later this month, Meredith Monk  will also be performing at BAM. October 21-25, she will be presenting Ascension Variations, another piece created in collaboration with Ann Hamilton. I don’t think there is any way that I will be able to see that show, but it feels destined that one day I will be able to see Monk’s work. She, along with Hamilton, is one of the most important artists to my work and I have yet to see her work live.

Again, I found a little video:

One day . . .

William Forsythe’s Decreation, photo by Dominik Mentzos

William Forsythe’s 2003 piece Decreation, which opened last night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is a meditation on the messiness of life.  The work takes its title from an essay by Anne Carson, and as the title suggests, the eighteen dancers dissolved into nothingness while in states of rage, tenderness, love, and jealousy.  For sixty-five minutes, dialogue, movement, live video, and jarring sounds joined forces to create a chilling, frustrating commentary on the emotional self.

A heated dialogue occurred between a man and woman questioning their love for one another as they tugged at their own clothing and jerked at each other’s limbs.  Their argument was re-contextualized and distorted as other dancers repeated their words elsewhere in the piece.  A man matter-of-factly presented his own needs to a moaning woman (“This is the deal.  You give me everything and I give you nothing.”), a lonely, lustful woman pressed herself between two stoic men, and a raging man ripped at his own skin while shouting in German.  Contributing to the dense, claustrophobic atmosphere was the sound design, which amplified or changed the pitch of the dancers’ voices, or drowned them out with electronics.  In addition to suggesting that the speaker and listener have different perceptions of what they hear, the dizzying sounds also reflected the chaos of conflicting internal voices.

However distressing the on-stage communication was for the audience, it was surely more challenging for the dancers of The Forsythe Company as they courageously, meticulously navigated through the performance.  With remarkable commitment, they conveyed a range of emotional states through dialogue and movement – which shifted among convulsions, fluid softness, and combative, tangled duets and solos – while also working with a video camera and sound equipment that depicted and altered their own images and voices.  Besides battling with each other, the dancers were forced to face their own projected images, illustrating the hidden interactions that occur within an individual.

“This is irritating”, said one of the dancers to the audience, and as this line was repeated throughout Decreation, those words felt increasingly true of the piece itself.  Perhaps this was Forsythe’s intention – to show how vicious, loud, insincere, confusing, and tender our communication with one another can be.  And to make us realize what the same dancer asked aloud, upon removing herself from an argument: “Is this it?  This is our life?”  If there was a spiritual component in the piece, or an attempt at a journey of the soul, it was buried beneath the dancers’ extreme states and the forces that shaped them.

Decreation continues at BAM through October 10^th, and there will be a free post-performance talk with Forsythe on October 8^th.  Tickets can be ordered online or by calling BAM ticket services at 718.636.4100.

60×60 is now over. I hope you were able to make it. It was an amazing show full of diverse talent and good energy. I felt that both of my pieces were successful in executing their intentions. The first was an improvisation intending to utilize Forsythian Improvisational technologies to which I was introduced last year, as well as ways of moving that I associate with those technologies. It was one minute long and explored material both standing and on the floor.

The second was dual purposed and highly conceptual. It was an homage to “The Strip” section of David Gordon and Valda Setterfield’s Random Breakfast. It was also intended to deconstruct the relationship between the socially presentable body and the actual body (or corporeal morphology) of the individual. It was something of a temporal palindrome, starting upstage, walking directly downstage while undressing, then moving back upstage while re-dressing. All in one minute. A friend said to me afterwards that the piece could have gone on for much, much longer. I agree. I have a sense that I will re-stage the piece at some point. I am interested in how the fully clothed body that is viewed at the end of the piece is different from the fully clothed body at the beginning because of what has transpired in-between. It is always all about the in-between. The piece also commented a bit on gender and sexuality: I wore heels, women’s slacks, and a large black lambs wool coat. During the performance (the images below are from the dress rehearsal) I wore a t-shirt that says “Legalize Gay: repeal prop. 8 now!” It also had an oddly intimate feeling beyond just the exposed body; there was something about the action of undressing and re-dressing, the clumsiness, the un-sexy-ness.

CoCo Loupe graciously photographed the dress rehearsal. I share those photos now with you as documentation of the piece. Video footage may be posted in the next few weeks or so. Additional footage/images/commentary may appear at http://60×60.blogspot.com/ in the weeks to come so stay tuned there.

Also, I just received this by email today from the directors of 60×60:
“Mark your calendars now. We will be coming back to Columbus to
do this again during the first weekend in October, 2010. Tell your
friends and colleagues. Let’s make the next one bigger and better. More
details will come as things are confirmed…. stay tuned.” Very exciting.

Here are the images from the two pieces:

Georg Reischl and Allison Brown in William Forsythe’s Decreation, photo by Dominik Mentzos

Next week, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival will present the innovative choreographer William Forsythe and his Frankfurt-based company in the US premiere of Forsythe’s Decreation.  Inspired by an essay by poet Anne Carson, Forsythe used Carson’s writing as a starting point to explore, in choreographic terms, the poet’s thesis of the dissolution of the self in order to create space for something new.  According to The Forsythe Company’s website, “Sound is transformed, weeps and soars through the throats, the bodies, which move in a constant, oblique tension.”  In Decreation, the dancers interact with onstage cameras, their own projected images, and one another as they explore the progression of the soul.

In addition to seeing The Forsythe Company at BAM, the public has a chance to see William Forsythe in conversation at the New York Public Library on Friday, October 9^th at 1 PM.  Forsythe and the cognitive scientist Alva Noë will discuss consciousness as a kind of dance, as something that we engage in as opposed to something that occurs inside our brain.  Tickets can be purchased online or at the NYPL box office two hours before the event.

In the mood Theater Dortmund Premiere

“In the mood”-ein Ballettabend der den reinen Tanz beinhaltet,Ausdruck auf klare direkte Weise ohne viel drumherum,leicht kühl.
Drei Choreografen, die sich jeweils in ihrem eigen Stück auf ganz unterschiedliche Weise an der Pallette der modernen Bewegungssprache bedienen und auf eigene Art ausdrücken.
Wer “Stars&Steps” gesehen hat,kann sich vorstellen dass das Dortmunder Ballett mit diesen drei Stücken auf gleicher Schiene weiterbewegt hat.

Zu Anfang tanzen Monika-Fotescu-Uta und Mark Radjapov eine “Hommage an die Liebe” ( closer ).Die ganzen Farben einer Beziehung spiegeln sich im Tanz:ein hin und her miteinander,nebeneinander,zueinander,ganz nah.Mal zärtlich,mal konfliktreich und ein aneinander ziehen,auffangen,tragen.
Nichts anderes ist auf der Bühne als die Tänzer(und der Flügel),einzig alleine der Tanz geschieht,untermauert von dezenten Lichtänderungen die kurzzeitig eine andere Athmosphäre zaubern.
Begleitet zu der minimalistischen Musik von Phillip Glass (Mad Rush-Live Klavierbegleitung durch Alexandra Goloubitskaia) bekommt das ganze einen Eindruck von etwas sehr zerbrechlichem,vorsichtigem;wie ein Spiel.Tänzerisch sehr fließend,weich,natürlich in klassicher Technick die jedoch von choreograf Benjamin Millepied so genutzt wurde,dass sie durchaus an die Ausdruckmöglichkeit moderner gestalteten Ballett gleichzusetzen ist.

Es folgt M/C (für Marylin Monroe und schriftsteller Truman Capote).
Dieses Stück ist basiert auf die besondere Freundschaft zwischen Marylin Monroe und Truman Capote.
Cayetano Soto [/B] hat Momente zwischen den beiden neu erufunden und stellt die Vielfältigkeit der beiden Charactere durch versechsfachung der Monroe und Capotes dar.
In musikalischer Athmosphäre der 50er Jahre,Kronleuchter und black&white Filmvorspann wird sehr sehr Gestenreich getanzt.Alles wirkt sehr schnell, energiegeladen,wild,überzogen,überdreht,verwitzt,parodiert(Kronleuchter fällt runter,Hose wird runtergezogen…)Sexuelle anspielungen auf “affige” Art fehlen auch nicht.Wie ein überzogenes Spiel in der High Society.

Zum Schluss the second detail von William Forsythe (Einstudierung Noah Gelber)
Dieses Stück das Genauigkeit,Tempo und Orientierung voraussetzt,denn Forsythes Choreografien basieren lediglich auf Energie,Bewegung in Raum und Zeit-sie sind pur ein Ausdruck zur Musik!
Der Hintergrundgedanke von Forsythe ist das Verhalten zu irgendeiner mathematischen geometrischen Figur,dazu kommt dass er die klassische Technick erweitert durch durchbrechen,fragmentieren und überziehen der Schritte,dazu kommt dass der Fokus vom Tänzer nicht mehr das Publikum ist,sondern ganz woanders sein kann.
So erlebt der Zuschauer den Tanz auch aus einer ganz anderen Perspektieve.
In “the second detail” ist alles ständig in Bewegung,nahezu torpediert wird man mit verschiedenen Abfolgen und Gruppierungen auf der Bühne,alles fließt,dennoch auf eine kantige,gebrochene Art.Die elektroniesche Musik von Thom Willems passt auf sehr harmonische geniale Art zu dem getanztet und spiegelt den Character vom getanzten.

Tickle, tickle, tickle.

Rating: ****

Review by Justin Smith

September 15, 2009

Much like Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) didn’t need a remake, however, now that we have remakes of both, I’d say it wasn’t such a bad idea.

A victim of a dysfunctional family, complete with a stripper mom, crippled, drunken, abusive step-father, and two sisters, Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) is a disturbed youth who dawns a clown mask as he kills pets and small animals. After dealing a round of death to a school bully, and select members of his own family, young Myers ends up in a sanitarium under the care of Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). Years later, the adult Michael Myers (Tyler Mane), still unreachable by Loomis, escapes and heads back to his hometown to take care of unfinished business.

Although Zombie’s remake of Halloween could never take the place of the original, it doesn’t have to, it serves more as a companion to John Carpenter’s 1978 classic than a remake. Zombie has taken the legacy of Myers and attempted to make it his own. This being only his third time behind the camera (for a feature film), Zombie has already developed a style all his own. Camera angles, choices of score and soundtrack music, along with a dirty gritty look and feel that comes straight out of the 1970s, all add up to a trademark Zombie film. We also get the usual horror film staples including, close calls, unnoticed deaths in other rooms, and of course, teens having sex.

The standout performance by Zombie’s cast of regulars is by Sheri Moon Zombie, who shows she can play more than a slutty psychopath, she can also play a slutty housewife who takes abuse instead of dishing it out. Along with Zombie’s regular cast members, all of which perform well in there roles, we get a few newcomers to the Zombie fold. Malcolm McDowell makes a good Dr. Loomis, as he uses his wit, and insight into Myers dysfunction, to track him down. Daeg Fearch nails the innocent yet creepy and disturbed young Myers, although his face is often covered. It’s especially interesting when he dawns the ‘Michael Myers’ mask for the first time.

Zombie has also come a long way in his writing of teenagers. The teen girls are annoying, as most teen girls are, but I was not rooting for them to die (like I was in House of 1000 Corpses (2003)). Scout Taylor-Compton, whose appearance and movements are reminiscent of Kate Hudson, is a good choice for Laurie Strode. She’s able to pull off the ‘good girl’ but also has a set of pipes that give Jamie Lee Curtis a run for her money. It’s also worth mentioning Laurie’s friend Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris) who is both sexy and an up-and-coming scream queen who has been with the franchise since her role as Jamie Loyd in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988).

Zombie spends more time with the genesis of Michael Myers than Carpenter did in the original, as we see him develop we feel closer to him, and his dysfunction. Zombie paints Myers as a psycho killer who may have a heart, although we’re never sure if that heart pumps blood, or ice. The question to ask when comparing Zombie’s vision to the original is which do you prefer, knowing the psychopath, so we identify with him, or knowing little about him so we are terrified by the mystery of his evil instead of the level of his dysfunction. Both are appropriate and that’s why both versions of the film work.

Director: Rob Zombie

Writer: Rob Zombie

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, Daeg Faerch, Sheri Moon Zombie, William Forsythe, Danielle Harris, Brad Dourif

MPAA Rating: Rated R for strong brutal bloody violence and terror throughout, sexual content, graphic nudity and language.

Runtime: 109 minutes (theatrical release), 121 minutes (unrated version)

Year: 2007

Copyright © 2009 criticplanet.org

H2

Atención: Si usted ha llegado a este articulo, debe saber que es una entrada antigua y que en este enlace podrá disfrutar de un articulo completo y detallado sobre la película.

———–

Desde siempre, he sido un gran fan de esta maravillosa saga cinematográfica creada por John Carpenter allá por los años setenta y Michael Myers fue el asesino en serie que más miedo me dio cuando era pequeño y hoy por hoy, lo sige siendo.

Este verano mi buen amigo Manu y yo, nos hicimos una maratón Halloweeniana y nos tragamos de seguido todas las películas incluyendo el remake de Rob Zombie que se estrenára en el año 2007 el cual fue un éxito rotundo de taquilla.

En una epoca en la que estamos inundados de secuelas, precuelas, remakes, secuelas de remakes, remakes de secuelas, remakes de precuelas, etcétera, era de muy esperar que a esta fabulosa saga de terror le siguiera por desgracia para muchos  y por suerte para otros, otra entrega más.

Y así, a finales de 2009, Rob Zombie nos presentará la continuación del Origen.

Si me lo permiten, dire que quedé maravillado con el trabajo de Rob Zombie en Halloween: El Origen. Se que para muchos, es un remake innecesario, aunque yo no lo vea así. No en todas las películas de Halloween senti el miedo que invadió mi cuerpo cuando vi El Origen de Rob Zombie. Tensión, adrenalina y las puñaladas de rigor. El papel de Daeg Faerch es estupendo, soberbio, de las cosas que más destaco de la película. Puede que mi opinión no sea muy objetiva, puesto que al ser un incondicional adepto del señor Myers, siempre me siento muy gratificado cuando se estrenan películas de Halloween. Aunque por mucho que sea un adepto incondicional, no quiere decir que sea un incondicional adepto gilipollas, con perdón de la expresión. Reconozco cuando una película es un truño, como es el caso de Halloween III: El día de la bruja, que semejante mierda no había quien se lo tragara y por ello tubieron que repesacar al asesino de asesionos  en su siguiente secuela, Halloween IV: El regreso de Michael Myers.

Sin enrollarme más, voy a centrarme en esta nueva entrega:

¿Qué nos presentará Rob Zombie en Halloween II? Según sus propias palabras, el único fallo que se le puede sacar a su Origen de Halloween, es su enorme respeto por la cinta original. Hecho que no ocurrirá en esta nueva secuela.

Me di cuenta de que lo mejor de hacer esto [Halloween 2] era que, con la última hubo cierto sentido de la obligación de retener el espíritu Carpenter en general. Y ahora eso no va a ocurrir. Esta película es 100% lo que yo quiero hacer. Y en ningún momento hemos discutido sobre Halloween o Michael Myers. De hecho, cada vez que hacemos algo es como “esto no parece Halloween”. Podemos hacer lo que queramos y eso es muy liberador. Y creo que será una película mucho mejor porque no estamos intentando cumplir la expectativas de nadie. Esta vez he querido reinventar al personaje porque, ¿cuál es ésta? ¿la película número 2.000 de la saga entre secuelas y tal? Pues eso.

Otro detalle importante y a la vez curioso, es que en Halloween II, reaparecerá de nuevo la que en películas anteriores fue la pequeña y dulce sobrinísima de Michael Myers, Danielle Harris, que esta vez, se presupone, tendrá un papel más importante que en Halloween: El Origen.

Sin más que añadir, decir que tengo muchas ganas de ver esta nueva película y recomendar esta fantastica saga de terror a aquellos que quieran pasar unas espantosas y horrorosas noches de cine.

Un abrazo.

Álvaro Rojas.

Halloween 2 (H2) – Official Trailer [HD]:

A cop who enforces his own brand of justice.

Brian Bosworth, Lance Henriksen, William Forsythe. Que trio. Só faltava o Sven e que poker de Hot Shots não teríamos. Utilizando as técnicas e os argumentos dos filmes dos 80´s, Craig R. Baxley que já nos tinha brindado com alguns episódios de The A-Team, com Action Jackson e com Dark Angel aka I Come in Peace, lança um filme que prima pela acção em doses extra-large. Tentou lançar para a ribalta o actor Brian Bosworth, com o intuito de capturar um lugar no panteão do cinema musculado. Brian é John Stone, um cop duro como o aço, que por virtude dos problemas que cria ao resolver os seus casos, tem de ajudar o F.B.I. a capturar os cabecilhas de uma poderosa organização que trafica armas do Exército Americano. Sendo que esta organização funciona dentro de um gangue motard, Stone é obrigado a disfarçar-se. Depois simplesmente explode no ecrã acção até mais não. Este filme é obrigatório para aqueles que adoram adrenalina. De Craig R. Baxley, com Brian Bosworth, Lance Henriksen, William Forsythe, Arabella Holzbob, Sam McMurray, Richard Gant, Paulo Tocha, David Tress, Evan James, Tony Pierce, Billy Million, Robert Winley, Gregory Scott Cummins, Demetre Phillips e Magic Schwarz. (Se por acaso se estão a perguntar se Paulo Tocha é tuga, por acaso até é. Iremos fazer um post sobre o bicho)

Era um copo de leite, ups, uma bud aqui para o pai. Se faz favor...

Arranje um emprego como vendedor de pipocas para ver o filme no cinema