Thanks, Karen Jaffe, for the above photos of the landscape at Breitenbush, at the 2009 Contact Improvisation Spring Jam.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Oh, Oregon! Oh, Breitenbush!
Thanks, Karen Jaffe, for the above photos of the landscape at Breitenbush, at the 2009 Contact Improvisation Spring Jam.
JAM - Jazz After Midnight; Breitenbush Hot Springs
Guto, a reader from Brazil recently commented on my 9/27/08 blog posting on the words JAM and Jamming. 'JAM was an acronym musicians used to mean Jazz After Midnight,' Guto said. Yet another cool definition. There's magic after midnight, don't you think? Closer access to our dreams. A rawness of emotion. Thanks for sharing, Guto!I just got back from the contact improvisation dance event at Breitenbush Hot Springs. (Friends dancing--before midnight--in the picture to the right.) (If you don't know what 'contact improvisation' is, Google it! It is very cool and can be life-transforming.)
Breitenbush is a beautiful hot springs retreat center in the mountains of Oregon. The 28-year old spring contact improv jam is the oldest multi-day contact jam in the world!
One of the traditions is to have an "ALL-NIGHTER," where people try to stay up the whole night and then finish with a hot soak at dawn, in the rock-lined pool overlooking the snowy mountains and the rushing river. Though I only lasted until 2:30 am this year, in past years I've made it through the whole night. Intense stuff always happens after midnight. Confessions, revelations, revealings (of skin, of feelings, of conflicts).
Try hosting a party or get-together some time with the intention of staying awake all night. You will not be bored by the results!
(In the picture: Elio Scudieri of Santa Cruz, California, wearing pink and orange, and Laurie E. of San Rafael, California in grey pants. By the way, Elio makes amazing dance-pants and citywear--www.tdama.com)
(Breitenbush details: Contact Improv Jam Producer is Joint Forces Dance Company, www.jointforcesdance.com. Breitenbush Retreat Center is at www.breitenbush.com)
Sunday, November 9, 2008
4. From "steampunks" to Activism, Art and Change
Word-watching:
I saw the word "steampunk" twice in the past couple days. I never heard it before that. First, I saw it on Vagabond Opera's website. This great Portland band is looking for a female singer: "Be willing to dress up in cabaret/vintage/steampunk costumes."
In Eugene Weekly's annual "Best Of" guide, the "Best Crafter" of 2008, Mitra Chester, says that lately she's making "steampunk-themed stuff, including aviator hats made from recycled sweaters and leather jackets, rings made out of watch parts and aviator goggles made from old plumbing pieces." (EW is my town's free entertainment weekly, and "Best Of" is decided by city-wide balloting. Mitra also owns "Deluxe," which won in the "Best Boutique/Clothing" category. It says something about Eugene that Deluxe Boutique—which carries mostly second-hand clothes—won. This city even recycles when it comes to fashion.)
Steampunk. It must be a play off "steamer trunks," used to cross the seas 100 years ago.
When I look around a Eugene bar in the up-and-coming Whiteaker neighborhood, I'm struck by how many people are drawing fashion inspiration not from just one past decade, but from many. Since early high-school (1990 or so), when I started noticing how people dress, hippie-wear, jeans, flower power and bell-bottoms have all been around, adding dimension to more mainstream and preppy looks. But these days many people draw inspiration from further back. Vintage, cabaret, lace, garters and art-deco represent the late 1800's into the 1940's. Short Jackie O-style jackets with over-size buttons are worn by women, and purposefully nerdy black glasses by men, representing the 50's. (It seems in mainstream culture, the 80's are hot, with American Apparel leading the charge back to spandex and "Flashdance" style legwarmers and dance clothes. But at the Whiteaker bar Sam Bond's Garage, most people are not conforming to the mainstream look.) Around Burning Man time and on cold winter nights, creative types are reaching way back in time and across cultures. The caveman/tribal look is hot: fur collars, fur boots, brown suede and leather. (Photo: Steampunk on Stilts at Oregon Country Fair, 2008. Photo by me, SZ.)
On TV last night I came across Road Warrior, the second "Mad Max" movie with Mel Gibson. This 1981 movie looks just like images from Burning Man, 2008. (Not that I've been yet, but many friends have.) I'm curious how movies and books—especially sci-fi books--shape our aesthetics and society in general. Artistic prophecies of the far future are often self-fulfilling. The multi-cultural world of Star Trek was a great example.
Did you know the musical "Rent" drew largely on themes from 1896's "La Bohème"? Two nights ago I went to a nearby high school's production of Rent. There's a high school version that's tamer than the movie and Broadway musical. Of the three couples in love, one is a gay male couple, one couple is lesbian, and only one is heterosexual. The majority of Californians just passed Proposition 8, banning gay marriage. But there is no doubt that just as the generation who watched Star Trek and the Cosby Show helped elect Barack Obama, future generations are going to accept gay marriage. It is inevitable that people who watch compassionate depictions of gay people in Rent, Angels in America, the Laramie Project, and so on are going to turn the tide against discrimination. It's no wonder it's sometimes called the "Culture Wars." Art matters. Art changes the world.
Of course artists needs brave truth-tellers like Martin Luther King and yes, I'll even pay her a huge compliment by putting her in the same sentence as MLK, Ellen DeGeneres to inspire us. (Madonna and Britney Spears can have a separate sentence next to the previous one!)
Activism, Art: Change.
Hallelujah!
Friday, October 10, 2008
3. Popcorn and Torture: Holy Human Decency, Batman!
Heroes and villains ain't what they used to be in the good old days. But in the good old days American soldiers didn't torture terror suspects, and actors didn't die of overdoses shortly after looking into the darkness of our souls.
(Public service announcement: This posting is longer than most--scroll down to earlier entries if you want a smaller bite.)
A couple months ago there was a lot of media coverage about Heath Ledger’s performance in the latest Batman movie, speculations about whether he could win a post-humous Oscar. Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs was one of the only bad guys to ever win one. Intrigued by the hype, and having loved his acting in Brokeback Mountain, I went to see The Dark Knight.
I see truth reflected in fiction everywhere I turn these days. One scene recalled American soldiers' abuse of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib. The Joker releases home-made grainy video footage, which the media plays on TV. The black-and-white video appears to be shot in a meat locker. A hostage grovels naked, next to a skinned cow hanging from the ceiling. The references to the home-made videos we saw about Abu Ghraib seemed obvious and intentional to me, but maybe I was just making connections that the director didn't intend. Does the media play such footage to inspire moral outrage? Or is the media an accomplice in spreading evil by giving it such a wide audience? Violence sells; it makes compelling news.
In this era of waterboarding sanctioned by the President, there is little room in the movies for a simply good good guy. The Joker tries to pervert goodness again and again. In one scene, he is in a cell being interrogated by Batman and the police chief. He is sado-masochistically withholding information about a bomb. If he would only reveal what he knows, many innocent lives could be saved. It's win-win for him: he gleefully takes pleasure in driving the “good guys” to torture him for information about the bomb. If they don’t find a way to make him talk, others will die. He succeeds in forcing Batman into his dark side: Batman chooses to beat him up.
Do we take any pleasure in seeing the the Joker, beat up? I could not. It was more painful to see the hero driven to violence than it was satisfying to see the bad guy get what he deserved. The scene seems to justify violent means to a nobler end. Is director Christopher Nolan being an apologist for violent interrogation tactics? Or is he merely reflecting the prevailing cultural despair that there can be no pure goodness, no way to take the high road, no such thing as uncorruptible principles when reacting to terrorism?
What qualities make up a hero who performs grand acts of saving people? What qualities make up a bad guy capable of grand acts of terrorism? It may be the very same qualities either way. A third major character in the movie is Harvey Dent, who through most of the movie is a "heroic" district attorney on a crusade to reduce crime. But pushed into bitterness through the Joker’s schemes, he transforms into a revenge-seeking sadist: "Two Face." As the D.A., he had a strong ego, a belief in his charismatic abilities to influence people around him and make an impact on the world, which helped him be an effective and heroic crime-fighter. But he had a sense of godliness, of being better than other people. When pushed towards his dark side, this same drive made Two Face a relentless murderer, passing ultimate judgment on people.
Batman says that he dreams of quitting his job protecting Gotham, that he longs for the citizens to show they can handle crime without him, that he would like more than anything to never put on his Bat gear again. There was one scene that held out promise that we need not have super-powers to be heroic, that “normal” human decency can save the day. The Joker set up a plan where the passengers of two ferries were pitted against one another. On each boat he put detonators that could explode bombs on the opposite ferry. He told the passengers that the only way they could save themselves was by choosing to blow up the other boat. If neither blew the other boat up by midnight, he promised to blow them both up himself. He was foiled in his plan by the fact that both sets of passengers, after tense arguments amongst themselves, were willing to sacrifice themselves to avoid being murderers of the others. More than any ass-kicking that Batman doled out to various bad guys, this was the most uplifting moment of the movie.
The Joker’s “gift” was to bring out the evil in others. Perhaps the best gift that all superheroes could give to humanity would be to retire once and for all. That would be a gift of responsibility to bring out the best in ourselves in order to overcome evil. No Bat-Mobile, no Bat gear. Just plain human decency. Holy Human Decency, Batman!
copyright Sara Zolbrod 2008
(Public service announcement: This posting is longer than most--scroll down to earlier entries if you want a smaller bite.)
A couple months ago there was a lot of media coverage about Heath Ledger’s performance in the latest Batman movie, speculations about whether he could win a post-humous Oscar. Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs was one of the only bad guys to ever win one. Intrigued by the hype, and having loved his acting in Brokeback Mountain, I went to see The Dark Knight.
I see truth reflected in fiction everywhere I turn these days. One scene recalled American soldiers' abuse of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib. The Joker releases home-made grainy video footage, which the media plays on TV. The black-and-white video appears to be shot in a meat locker. A hostage grovels naked, next to a skinned cow hanging from the ceiling. The references to the home-made videos we saw about Abu Ghraib seemed obvious and intentional to me, but maybe I was just making connections that the director didn't intend. Does the media play such footage to inspire moral outrage? Or is the media an accomplice in spreading evil by giving it such a wide audience? Violence sells; it makes compelling news.
In this era of waterboarding sanctioned by the President, there is little room in the movies for a simply good good guy. The Joker tries to pervert goodness again and again. In one scene, he is in a cell being interrogated by Batman and the police chief. He is sado-masochistically withholding information about a bomb. If he would only reveal what he knows, many innocent lives could be saved. It's win-win for him: he gleefully takes pleasure in driving the “good guys” to torture him for information about the bomb. If they don’t find a way to make him talk, others will die. He succeeds in forcing Batman into his dark side: Batman chooses to beat him up.
Do we take any pleasure in seeing the the Joker, beat up? I could not. It was more painful to see the hero driven to violence than it was satisfying to see the bad guy get what he deserved. The scene seems to justify violent means to a nobler end. Is director Christopher Nolan being an apologist for violent interrogation tactics? Or is he merely reflecting the prevailing cultural despair that there can be no pure goodness, no way to take the high road, no such thing as uncorruptible principles when reacting to terrorism?
What qualities make up a hero who performs grand acts of saving people? What qualities make up a bad guy capable of grand acts of terrorism? It may be the very same qualities either way. A third major character in the movie is Harvey Dent, who through most of the movie is a "heroic" district attorney on a crusade to reduce crime. But pushed into bitterness through the Joker’s schemes, he transforms into a revenge-seeking sadist: "Two Face." As the D.A., he had a strong ego, a belief in his charismatic abilities to influence people around him and make an impact on the world, which helped him be an effective and heroic crime-fighter. But he had a sense of godliness, of being better than other people. When pushed towards his dark side, this same drive made Two Face a relentless murderer, passing ultimate judgment on people.
Batman says that he dreams of quitting his job protecting Gotham, that he longs for the citizens to show they can handle crime without him, that he would like more than anything to never put on his Bat gear again. There was one scene that held out promise that we need not have super-powers to be heroic, that “normal” human decency can save the day. The Joker set up a plan where the passengers of two ferries were pitted against one another. On each boat he put detonators that could explode bombs on the opposite ferry. He told the passengers that the only way they could save themselves was by choosing to blow up the other boat. If neither blew the other boat up by midnight, he promised to blow them both up himself. He was foiled in his plan by the fact that both sets of passengers, after tense arguments amongst themselves, were willing to sacrifice themselves to avoid being murderers of the others. More than any ass-kicking that Batman doled out to various bad guys, this was the most uplifting moment of the movie.
The Joker’s “gift” was to bring out the evil in others. Perhaps the best gift that all superheroes could give to humanity would be to retire once and for all. That would be a gift of responsibility to bring out the best in ourselves in order to overcome evil. No Bat-Mobile, no Bat gear. Just plain human decency. Holy Human Decency, Batman!
copyright Sara Zolbrod 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
2. Why "Jamming on Culture"? What is Jamming?
JAM a lot of fruit into a jar, add something sweet, and it comes out delicious.
JAM makes toast taste better. It can be sweet or spicy (maybe you have heard of jalapeño jam?). JAM lets you taste the bounty of summer in the cold of winter.
Musicians and dance improvisers talk about JAMMING. It's riffing, co-creating, following this present instant into the next unknown moment.
"JAMMING something into a tight spot," "jam the radiowaves:" ways of finding or making room in unexpected places, of interfering.
I looked up "JAMBOREE" on the internet. Wow! Word-ologists say its origins may be from Hindi, Swahili, Native American, or Australian Aborigine (AA). It may be related to "corroboree," an AA term for any noisy, late-night gathering or disturbance. The AA Pitjanjarra tribe uses jamboree to mean a "feast of tree grubs." Lord Baden-Powell made the word famous at the "first world jamboree" in 1920. He was the dude who started the Boy Scouts. He spent a lot of time in Africa, where he learned that "jambo" is "hello" in a Swahili dialect. At the 1920 jamboree, he said "People give different meanings for this word, but from this year on… it will be associated to the largest gathering of youth that ever took place."
I want to feast and party on the grubs of culture, I want to spread sweet and spicy jam on the toast that is culture, I want to riff on culture, perhaps interfere with it or mash unexpected flavours together. (I was born in Canada, so I usually spell flavour with a "u." You say flavor, I say flavour, Public Enemy says "Flava." Remember the rap group Public Enemy? They rocked. Anyway--) Let's jam on.
Leave me a comment about ways you've "jammed" culture or memorable "jam" experiences.
copyright Sara Zolbrod 2008
JAM makes toast taste better. It can be sweet or spicy (maybe you have heard of jalapeño jam?). JAM lets you taste the bounty of summer in the cold of winter.
Musicians and dance improvisers talk about JAMMING. It's riffing, co-creating, following this present instant into the next unknown moment.
"JAMMING something into a tight spot," "jam the radiowaves:" ways of finding or making room in unexpected places, of interfering.
I looked up "JAMBOREE" on the internet. Wow! Word-ologists say its origins may be from Hindi, Swahili, Native American, or Australian Aborigine (AA). It may be related to "corroboree," an AA term for any noisy, late-night gathering or disturbance. The AA Pitjanjarra tribe uses jamboree to mean a "feast of tree grubs." Lord Baden-Powell made the word famous at the "first world jamboree" in 1920. He was the dude who started the Boy Scouts. He spent a lot of time in Africa, where he learned that "jambo" is "hello" in a Swahili dialect. At the 1920 jamboree, he said "People give different meanings for this word, but from this year on… it will be associated to the largest gathering of youth that ever took place."
I want to feast and party on the grubs of culture, I want to spread sweet and spicy jam on the toast that is culture, I want to riff on culture, perhaps interfere with it or mash unexpected flavours together. (I was born in Canada, so I usually spell flavour with a "u." You say flavor, I say flavour, Public Enemy says "Flava." Remember the rap group Public Enemy? They rocked. Anyway--) Let's jam on.
Leave me a comment about ways you've "jammed" culture or memorable "jam" experiences.
copyright Sara Zolbrod 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
1. Mission of this Blog
I'm fascinated by culture. Art, dance, music, performance, language, communication. How people entertain each other and themselves. How we inspire. Humans as social, physical, thinking, dreaming animals. I want to share my observations about media, performance art, movies, stuff I hear and see that gets me feeling and thinking. My entries may often be about dance and contact improvisation more than other stuff. I'll pass on great quotes that I hear. Cool things to look at on YouTube. Sometimes I believe culture is evolving and humans can get wiser and more respectful and smoother and more joyous in interacting with each other. Sometimes thinking about our long history of violence and bloodshed makes me think it is just another aspect of humanity that we need to learn how to dance with.
Next Entry: Musings about the words "jam," "jamming," "jamboree!"
copyright Sara Zolbrod 2008
Next Entry: Musings about the words "jam," "jamming," "jamboree!"
copyright Sara Zolbrod 2008
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