Dance that will engage the visual arts community and the new music community.

There is someone we have not had the pleasure of seeing here in NEO, but her work has been seen on film here, and with the spring upon us, I happened on these excerpts...

Grosse Fuge excerpt from Kinok

Beethoven's  Grosse Fugue  will never be the same for me after I saw this entire work perfomed live at Mershon Auditorium back in the 1990s.

This woman gets the architecture of music and dance. Her dancers get it, too. The stage at Mershon was raked. This is an old theatrical architecture. Now audience's sit in a raked auditorium rather than having the dancers and actors work on a slanted surface. This, by the way, is the explanation for upstage and downstage - they literally were up and down.  So in this bit in the film, when you see the dancers roll downstage, they were literaly rolling downstage toward the audience.

Rosas: choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker

more work by de Keersmaeker

Amy Miller and Damien Highfield foolin' around

the company: New Art Club  the video: 'The Visible Men'

Article 19 just sent me a wallop of good dance video. Thanks Neil!

Let's begin here with Hofesh Schecter

Hofesh Shechter 'Uprising'

Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance from Buenos Aires.

From Article 19 and Neil Nisbet on camera: The Self and Bitter Ripples

Sense 8 is another beautiful film by Katrina McPherson and Simon Fildes.

I've wanted to be a professional skater for the longest time.

Too much violence in the standard hockey and too many jumps in figure skating.

So my consulation has been to clown about the city on skates. As people ask about why I busy myself with picking up trash while skating I develope new spectators for Karmic Hockey. I make it semi-professional by picking up aluminum cans. The greatest concentration of cans is a Brown's Tailgating Party. With all the snow i believe I turn in the skates for a Santa suit.

As part of the Star Neighborhood Development planning for the Star Complex and surrounding one mile radius, I have been planning the redevelopment of the current Cleveland Institute of Art Gund Building and land, on East Boulevard in Cleveland, shown below (full size image here).

The Women's Council Speaker Series Committee is pleased to welcome Dr. Landau, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. She has taught in the Cleveland Museum of Art/CWRU Joint Program in Art History since 1982, with courses specializing in 20th-century American and European art and theory, particularly Abstract Expressionism. Considered the leading expert on Jackson Pollock, she is the author of the definitive book on the artist (1989).

I  have been following a thread on BrewedFreshDaily concerning Michael Polensek’s radical letter – and whether recreation centers might make a difference to our kids  Mr. Polensek’s ward has been promising to build a youth rec center for about 17 years but can’t seem to get it done.

My friend Katrina will be guest bartending with Thomas Barbric' the regular bartender at Light Bistro (formerly Parker's) on Thursday, June 26th from 4:30 - 8:00 (Happy Hour) all tips will go to the Cleveland Animal Protective League.  There will be complimentary Tapas as well as a few other appetizers for $5. 

In geologic cadence Troika Ranch developed their dark on-stage anthropology.   Could also be a display of schizoid spousal personality disorder  - views in a mad house.  Womens' forearms definitely became homo erections;  stiletto pumps – maturing desire or just vertical ambulatory evolutionary expression?

All Play are a dance theatre company who perform in any setting, teach workshops to a large range of participants and choreograph original work on any group.

Wednesday evening Cleveland State University’s Dance Program brought “Words Alive” to the Drinko Recital Hall at CSU.  Performers combined movement with music, or with dialogue.

2007 Midtown Brews Series: Midtown Brews connects innovative thinkers with global perspectives on our regional economy. Join us for our next conversation...Thursday, July 5

Maybe you were there at Gray's Auctioneers Inaugural Auction on Sunday June 17th? Doors opened at 10:30 am for one last opportunity to preview the over 200 lots of fine art, furniture and decorative items, and by noon, auction time, the room was packed with excited bidders.  Some of the people in the audience were old pros and others were new to the auction world.  This first auction had something to suit  everyone's taste and price range. Those who attended were glad they did!

Kathy Rose on You Tube

Check out these three short excepts to warm up for Ingenuity 2007.
Kathy Rose also came to Cleveland on the Dancecleveland (or was it when it was still the Cleveland Modern Dance Association?) series way back in the 1980s 1984 I think. She was stellar!

Ingenuity's Premiere events bring world-class performers to the Cleveland stage
Die Audio Gruppe creates site-specific audio costumes known as "Audio Uniforms" or "Sonic Costumes" that reflect local customs, themes or traditions. These electro-acoustic clothes and dresses make sounds by interacting with their environment. Audio Ballerinas and Audio Geishas will be featured during the festival and brought to life by members of Inlet Dance Theatre.
Audio Gruppe
Baitz, Germany
In 1992, my company, The Repertory Project worked with Benoit Maubrey as part of the Cleveland Performance Art Festival. It was a blast. The dancers wore the audio tutus in CPT, at Tower City (where the dancers also dragged garden rakes equipped with pickup mics producing a loud screeching sound that echoed throughout the atrium), in the Halle Building Food Court during lunchtime and at a club in the Flats called Aquilon. There are great black and white photos of the events, but they are tucked away in the archives at the Western Reserve Historical Society (home to the history of the Repertory Project) and the CSU Library (home to the history of the Performance Art Festival). The events took place in March, so the dancers had to rely on batteries more than solar power, but inside Aquilon they stood on the bar and the frequency of the recorded tape loops was controlled by the bartender as he raised and lowered the levels of the lights that hung over the bar. Even in this hip-hop and techno blasting bar scene in 1992, attendees covered their ears and winced as the dancers played the very loud techno recording and screeched in from the freight elevator with the rakes in tow.

I encourage everyone to see the return of Maubrey's audio clothing to Cleveland. Back in the day, the Performance Art Fest and Rep Project were hot topics. Now long in the past, it is good to see Ingenuity hauling out some art and technology collaborations that are still interesting 15 years later. By the way, these were the only tutus Rep Project ever wore. The toe shoes, you might be wondering? We torched them in 1989, like so many bras burned in the 1960s, we had no use for them. The event took place on what is now a parking area just west of SPACES Gallery. Yep, we were a scrappy lot dedicated to new horizons for dance in Northeast Ohio. I still see glimpses of hope for the postmoderns here in NEO, but only glimpses. The majority of the audience seems mired in Taylorism, insipid as it is.  Ingenuity offers a chance to revisit, check out and get tuned into what has been going on in dance for the last uh... 40 years. Get with it NEO, the dance world has passed by here skipping over Cleveland like so many bits of detritus between NYC, Oberlin, Cincinnati, Columbus and Chicago.

Here's more: Sound Junctions

Also see Troika Ranch -- who despite rumor made their Northeast Ohio debut at Oberlin College (go figure) years ago. Thank you, Carter McAdams.

Here's a spot of dance to get your week in motion. Motionhouse The work is called "Driven".

If you enjoyed Wired Aerial, you will be interested to stay with this one for a bit till they get hooked up. It reminds me of a story my husband told about parasailing in the Bahamas. Once in the harness attached to the chute he asked what happened next and the guy beside him on the platform said, "Take two steps and fly, mon!"

This fabulous biennial extravaganza returns Thursday, May 24 - Monday, May 28 in all its splendor. Tour the designer gardens and fill your mind with dreams and practical ideas of what your own garden could be. Learn about the latest trends in horticulture and flower arranging and take the opportunity to buy live plants, and horticulture related products and gifts from around the world.

How many times in the last 10 -15 years I have gotten off the highway at the East 72nd Street exit of the Shoreway and winced at how depressing this mostly post industrial, impoverished landscape looks.

  Opening Reception - Saturday, May 19, 5-8 pm, and Sunday, May 20, 2-5 pm.    You are invited to celebrate the artistic life of Honoré Guilbeau Cooke with a retrospective of her work in a variety of media.  If you are not already familiar with Honoré’s art, do visit the murals on the exterior and the interior of the Peninsula Library. http://www.peninsulalibrary.org/mural.php  A beloved and respected member of the Peninsula community, Honoré was a well-known artist and person extraordinaire. She was also one of the founders of the Peninsula Library & Historical Society and a trustee for 27 years. Show runs thru the end of June 2007.  

Friday night I attended a reception and lecture at SPACES Gallery for select Cleveland organizations with interest in urban planning and sustainability. The current exhibition at Spaces, Shrinking Cities, explores strategies for post-industrial urban areas and should be of great interest to anyone interested in urban planning and sustainability. Terry Schwarz, Senior Planner at the Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio, was to give a tour of the exhibition. My affiliation? I am an energy ambassador at Case. I am also an art historian, and although there are some witty, beautiful and innovative works represented in the exhibition the theme and the messages of the show truly over power the aesthetics. One could easily forget they are in an art exhibition.

Wednesday night's lecture at the Cleveland Clinic with Peter B. Lewis and Frank Gehry was everything I had expected and more. I doubt an audience member left without a new appreciation for the  positive,  transformative power of architecture, friendship and collaboration. It was inspiring just to be in the same room with two people who had made such great contributions to architecture. It was also inspiring to see two people, two friends, who worked so well together as client and architect. A testament to Gehry's fame, the lecture had very few visuals – only a few slides of his most famous buildings such as the Disney Concert Hall in LA, The Experience Museum Project in Seattle, the Guggenheim Bilboa and the unbuilt Peter B. Lewis residence were shown.  Peter Lewis and Frank Gehry each spent 15 minutes discussing some of the highlights of their lives and careers and then they took questions from the audience.

We live in "Forest City" so Arbor Day should be an important holiday in Cleveland. Here is one idea how you might celebrate ...

Cleveland Clinic, Ideas for Tomorrow - a speaker series, Free event featuring: Peter B. Lewis,Chairman of Progressive Corporation & Frank Gehry, world-renowned architect