What an Earth-Mover!
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Performance art produces in me a sinking feeling, often laced with guilt, as I know I'm going to have to try to think of something nice to say about some predictable repetitive muscle-flexing laced with generous lashings of melodrama. The only performance which has ever impressed me was the Jim Rose Circuis, in which a guy swallowed meters of plastic tubing and then pulled it all up again, dripping with gloop from his intentines. Maybe, for once, this was something I could actually identify with. Existential nausea, I think it's called.
Today's performance, of a man dancing with a 'giant earth-moving vehicle' was, despite the originality of the idea, pretty typical of the genre. The thing that made it hilarious was that it happened on the Grand Parade at lunch time, and drew a motley crowd of people scratching their heads and wondering what the hell those obscure beings from the middle classes were going to come up with next.
The show was pervaded with the kind of romantic art-for-art's-sake sentiment that makes French culture (for the performers were from France) the naffest on earth. The dancer expressed passionate interest in this mantis-like gleaming beast, and a relationship began which I suppose you would call sexual if you were an acrobat. Some way through, I guess they got to the seven-year itch, cos they had a bit of a tiff. Or maybe the earth-mover was a woman, and thus necessarily highly strung. She tried to swipe him a few times, and his shirt got pretty roughed up. Then, nurturingly, she picked him up in her cradle and swung him around, only to drop him from rather a dizzy height. But she returned to fetch him after all. I suppose she really did love him, despite the fact that she was clearly tempted trample him underfoot like an insect. Ah, love! It is so complex, n'est-ce pas?
The great bits were the bergie lady dancing with very French sentimentality to the soaring opera that accompanied the dance, and the fact that when the dancer was taking his final bow he fell through the roof of the cockpit onto the driver, who stumbled out with spectacles askew. The base humour of Capetonians was truly appealed to at this point.
See this show on the Grand Parade on Wed and Thurs at 12.30pm and 4pm. It is part of the Spier Performing Arts Festival, and is called Transports Exceptionnels. Interpret that any way you like.
Labels: Beau Geste, Grand Parade, Spier Performing Arts Festival, Transports Exceptionnnels
posted by Vince Condesini at 3:20 PM
9 Comments:
dont you sometimes wish these spier people would just fuck off back to making wine and leave the rest of us to carry on with our amazingly unique lives? PapsakKe! broekwinkels! Shnitternmutter!
Well Spier certainly helps understand where our art fits into the global picture... as a possible recipient of the crumbs which may or may not fall from the tables of ugly red tourists coming here to get pissed to the music of our crap exchange rate
Rumour is that Spier or n B n .B. (not Barnum 'n Bailey) censured the ERF 81 proposal: a slap up dinner catered by the Mount Nelson, with white table cloths and silver cutlery, grand bottles of wine etc in the shadow of Cecil Rhodes's "see you in Cairo' statue, next to the Gardens Tearoom. It is unclear if it was the WINE that was deemed objectionable or the proposed guests - a round up by invitation of Cape Towns street dwellers. Dear, there are some ideas which just don't respond to mentoring...
I'd like to believe there was any company anywhere who would sponsor that, but I'd be dreaming.
As I understand it they weren't asked to sponsor it, merely to release the money which ERF 81 had won as their prize at Spier Contemporary, a prize which had to be spent specifically in the commission of new work, or related ACTIVITY. TOO MANY GATEKEEPERS.
ANON 10.00pm are u insane? Who the hell gave you permission to place your dreams off-limit?
were they 'censured' or was it simply another kak idea by a group of alcoholic sado-masochists wallowing in their own thinly veiled self-pity? another attempt at 'reconciliation' perptrated on behalf of voiceless and marginalised people?
and sure, you do not get many takers for 'mentoring' such ideas - if erf 81 succeeds in turning homeless people into an art spectacle, then god forbid. its in the same continuum as an 'inlywings' video from a small town whites only mens residence.
its a fucking disgrace.
Anon 11.25, you're a hottie. I think I love you
thanks dear, even if i'm miss thandi?
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