Happy New Year with Free Art.
Enter a comment on the YouTube page comment section and be entered to win a free hand drawn print by Monchito. Applies only for US residents. Winner will be announced 2/2/2012
b
Still here
Hey Wingnuts!
Right now it is 5:12pm pst and we are still here so enjoy the video that I made for the Rapture.
A little challenge for anyone who lives in San Francisco and is able to guess the special guest artist that is not me and I will buy you dinner. Make your predictions in the comment box.
For all of you who enjoy my post you can follow my blog No Expectations
peace
b
Live Interview Tonight!
Hi all! As usual - long time no blog!
So so so much has been happening here in NYC since recovering from my surgery back in September…and tonight I’m being interviewed live on The Kiner Hour - Let’s Talk Dance with Ashani Mfuko! Tune in for this broadcast tonight, 7-8 pm EST, on http://talkingalternative.com, or watch here on Ustream.tv! Call in live at 877-480-4120. (It won’t let me embed the video here…sorry 
)
More updates to come soon 
3/30 UPDATED: Unfortunately the interview was canceled last minute To be rescheduled soon!
Live Stream of W & P Monday Night on The Winger
Once again, Works and Process at the Guggenheim Museum has sold out and they are offering a live stream of the show. Tune in to The Winger or DIYdancer tomorrow night, February 28th at 7:30pm, to see John Zorn’s Music Interpreted – New Choreography by Donald Byrd and Pam Tanowitz.
Each choreographer was commissioned by W & P to create new works to the music of composer John Zorn. Below, is an interview with John Zorn and Pam Tanowitz to get you warmed up for the show:
I will be moderating an online discussion in real time via Ustream and Twitter. Hope you will join me!
P.S. You can view the video from the last live stream of PNB: Giselle Revisited here.
The King of Limbs
Hey everyone!
I hope that everyone on the interweb and beyond are having a great start to the new year.
I want to share with you all a new video that i made and share some insight into the making of the video. Remember that show on MTV, Making the Video? Remember back when MTV played music videos?!?! Any who………Recently my favorite band Radiohead released a new album called The King of Limbs with a new music video with Thom Yorke dancing titled Lotus Flower. Not only is he dancing in it but he employed the services of the Royal Ballets resident choreographer Wayne McGregor to set the movement which is a very fascinating yet a perfect collaboration. I have always enjoyed McGregors work and have had the pleasure of speaking with him after one of his shows with the San Francisco Ballet and he is a very smart down to earth man with some great insight. Me being a huge Radiohead fan and currently developing new material the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, my new artistic home(YESS!!!) and working on my own projects and other collaborations I have been listening to all kinds of different music most recently Flying Lotus which reminds me a lot of Radiohead’s new album The King of Limbs. Both having jazz, dubstep, hip-hop, world, scatter, and electronic music all mixed with a human element have led me expanding my own personal dance vocab over the past couple years because i naturally listen to all different sorts of music which of course influences my work.
Video below of Lotus Flower.
Now lets take a walk down memory lane to see how my work came to be…. Twas a dark stormy night. SCRATCH THAT!!!
Last Saturday i was leaving a teachers meeting at a local studio that i will be teaching Contemp partnering/rep and me being the last one to leave because i was working out new moves during the entire meeting on the floor, the director of the studio said that i could stay behind as long as i wanted to. Little does she know that I always travel with a some sort of hand-held recording device because you just never know when lighting is going to strike and decided to do some filming in the space. First I set up the composition for the shot and then loaded my ipod into the dock with surround sound and went to town. I just danced, Lady Ga Ga styles with no rhyme or reason except the fact that i knew that i owed someone a video for valentines day. After i did about 3 takes while reviewing each one i noticed that my entire upper body was cut out of frame and my legs and feet appear to be acting as a drum kit which sparked the idea for me to create this video below. Plus how self absorbed would i be if sent a valentines video just of me dancing? I thought to myself having my upper body cut off is not as bad(is it?). Once i got home and to the editing business i had no big plans or ideas for what i wanted aside the fact that it needs to be musical along with not having too many effects to muffle up the movement which is already muffled. Note that i did not make any specific choreography. It was all improv. The most important thing in the video is the movement which is the only constant with my legs turning into drum machines so i wanted to keep that element in tact as much as possible so i did a lot of splicing. I know that I’m not a film director or anything but i do have a high expectations for myself and editing a video was a good way for me to learn more about Final Cut Pro which i love but also freak out about because I’m not a director.
Thankfully my friend liked the video after i posted it on her wall. I still don’t know what to think about the video because i made it with no supervision whatsoever so i hope that you enjoy and will also appreciate any feedback.
take care everyone.
b
Works and Process and PNB live on The Winger!
A special event via The Winger: This Sunday night, January 9th at 7:30pm, Works and Process at the Guggenheim Museum will be live streaming one of their shows for the first time! You can catch the show and online discussion live on the The Winger and DIYdancer.
The show, Pacific Northwest–Ballet Giselle Revisited, will preview excerpts of Peter Boal’s new staging of Giselle, featuring reconstructed choreography utilizing Stepanov notation circa 1899-1903 and French sources from the 1840s and 1860s. There will be discussion among dance scholars Doug Fullington and Marian Smith and artistic director Peter Boal as well as performances by PNB dancers Carrie Imler, Carla Körbes, James Moore, and Seth Orza.
Not only am I looking forward to being enlightened by all of this history and retelling of my favorite classical ballet, I can’t wait to moderate the live chat accompanying the streaming! The show is sold out but you can be a part of it by coming back to The Winger at the above date and time, enjoy the show and be a part of the discussion online!
In all ways, this is going to an historic event, so don’t miss out!
{Photos courtesy of Works and Process at the Guggenheim. Amanda Clark in PNB’s new version and Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky in Ballet Russes’ Act 2.}
Otis Houston Jr Has A Posse
Otis Houston Jr aka Black Cherokee has a posse and we are assembling. People are in play, talking to each other and working together. Case in point, member Chelsea Spengemann is curating FLOAT, the biennial series of performance and temporary sculpture at Socrates Sculpture Park, August 29 – 30, in Long Island City. For this show, Otis is crossing the river to install sculpture and manifest his concentrated human presence.
This social assembly requires consideration by promoters of online dance communications. It is another great example of how networking technologies can connect artists, viewers, producers and critics. The use of mobile video blogging (iphone 3gs) is new however there is something novel going on here beyond a mere technological advance, that is the treatment of the artist as the subject itself. Through the collective presentation and documentation of Otis’ life and work we build a group narrative around what we see in the artist, not only what he does but who he is.
The talk on Great Dance and DTW misses something else too. The grand narrative that surrounds the production and performance of “great dance” should not one of marketing or branding. Using the language of business is not the best way to conceive and develop relationships between artist and audience. A broader, more effective, grand narrative is that of social interactions rather than financial interactions.
The language of business is limited because it cannot properly conceive of itself. Otis’ support will never come from a bank or a tobacco company because he is their critic . Otis’ support comes from the people and the power they manifest developing social credit outside the logic of the marketplace.
Otis Houston Jr has a posse and we are assembling a story together.
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s new website
Just got news yesterday of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s new, sleek website. It’s very pretty! Here is the link - www.pnb.org
The Black Cherokee Project
Its been a while since I have written. Have been working on projects underground and coming to appreciate the value of a secret. Here is one I am ready to reveal.
Many of you may already know about my interaction with famed unknown nyc performance artist Otis Houston Jr aka Black Cherokee. A record of our correspondence through the winger is archived here. Last I wrote Otis was posting advertising for the winger uptown and I was trying to figure out a way to archive his work. Soon I realized that the Black Cherokee project was not something Otis or I could not do alone. We need help from the people. So this weekend Otis and I setup a social network for this purpose. Everything is there: poetry, short writings, papers, music, photographs, video, documentation from magazines and newspapers, Otis and also you!
All the responses I got from these little blog posts indicated that Otis’ work is meaningful to many people and fills their hearts with joy. Also because of the space-time vortex Otis inhabits viewers can only see the work for a few seconds as they pass on their commute, maybe enough time to wave and snap a picture. In order to fill out the whole story, in order to see the entire performance, the people (as Otis calls us), have to communicate with each other.
This week end……….Live sneak peak
hello everyone.
Live Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
Remember when i posted the list of 27 words directly from my journal and had all of you vote on the top 3? I said that the top 3 words chosen by you will be part of the inspiration in my work process. Well the time is quickly coming upon us.
Im proud to announce that I will be giving you all a live feed of MPH the new project that we are currently working on. We will be presenting only one section of brand new material as a little summer fun for everyone.
The live feed will start at 6pm pacific time/8pm central/9pm eastern…………Tune into this channel to watch TAGsf new production of MPH. Doing a live webcast is a new venture/experiment for us so if the lights go out or your machine blows up or something well try and troubleshoot those problems later.
here is a link to the page where the showing will be posted and of course ill post it on The Winger too.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/TAGsf
hope to see ya there.
B
