The second annual Jim Thorpe Burlesque Festival kicks off tonight with a Gala Fundraiser at the Mauch Chunk Opera House. Here’s what we saw back in October.
-ag
It looks to be a steampunk epic with a spunky girl reporter. rampaging pterodactyls, gun fights, adventures from Egypt to Paris, and tea drinking mummies.
via Luc Besson’s New Steampunk Epic ‘The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adèle Blanc-Sec’ – Nerd Reactor.
Sounds like fun to me. Another movie that we’re mostly likely not to see open in the 570.
-ag
LOVE this description. I think it might fits the form of my new play AVENGING ARACHNE very well. Would love to hear the thought of those few of you who are now reading the first draft. -ag
Better, I think, to leave the strings showing: to keep sets simple, revealing the mechanisms that underpin them; to write plays that don’t quite fit together, rather than adhering to conventions of plot and narrative; to under-act, adopting as much as possible the rhythms of natural speech. This “Theater of Empiricism” would treat each performance like an experiment;
via Theater of Empiricism | Gwydion Suilebhan.
(thanks to @Papatola for the essay recommedation via twitter.)
What’s the most important talent to have as a burlesque dancer? Just look like you’re having fun. You don’t want to have to try so hard to convince the audience “oh, I love what I do.” You honestly want to be loving what you’re doing. Eye contact and facial expressions, that really helps. Tell a story, in addition to your body movement on stage. But I don’t think you need to have one talent, like being an actor or an aerialist, to justify being on stage. You can be, and bring those elements to your performance and I’m sure it would add to it, but you don’t have to have any training at all. I didn’t take any classes, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Plaque at Rockafeller Center from 1932 by Rene Paul Chambelian.
Nonsense covers the stuff that has no name, or a name that you feel really awkward and self-conscious saying out loud, like “underground.”
e.g. Street events, loft parties, puppet shows, bike rallys, costume balls, interactive art shows, movies in unusual places, parades, outlaw dancing, guerilla theater, burlesque and variety shows, loser open mikes, cirkuses, and absurdist pranks.
-via Nonsense NYC.
And thanks to Sxip Shirey for the recommendation of this article @ Brooklyn Based:
http://brooklynbased.net/blog/indie-publishers-jeff-stark-of-nonsense-nyc/
I think working mothers of all walks of life can relate to this. The fact that she dances Burlesque just ups the importance of her staying fit, but we all need help finding time in the day to exercise and making it fun as well as practical.
I especially like how this commercial normalizes burlesque dancing. The delination is clear — this commercial never would have been made about a “gentlemen’s club” stripper.
source: The Escapist : News : British Burlesque Dancer Likes Her Wii.
In a search for music to listen to while writing Avenging Arachne I went from an inquiry into contemporary experimental Greek composers to the discovery of a fascinating electronic artist named Etten to her band Film, its record label Inner Ear, and another artist on that label, 2L8.
2L8 a project of K the Clown and a team of mucisians and partners based in Thessaloniki.
Astonishingly, they share the same “neovaudeville” aesthetic I outlined in my project in 2009. From the cabaret makeup, to the black and white stripes in their costumes, to the theatricality to their politics.
Under “Media” at the band’s official website you can download their Music for free. The text reads:
“Music is and must be Free! Enough with the tyranny of the industry already that made us hollow and sad!”
You can download all 2L8 releases for free!
Then why bother having an e-shop, you may wonder? Some people, like ourselves, still love packages and booklets.
Also you might as well consider that when you actually buy something you support our next project… “
Go check it out: http://www.2-l8.gr
-ag
Writing about the perhaps desperately over the top attempts of Broadway theaters to transport its audience to a world more in line with the subject at hand than the privileged bland Americana in which they live their daily lives, Isherwood writes: The drawback to this kind of immersive décor is that it can border on the theme park-ish, turning the specific into the ersatz and treading dangerously close to kitsch. We may be on Broadway, but we are still hip, the furnishings all but scream.
via Theater Talkback: The Exploding Art of Set Design – NYTimes.com.
I think the trend is less alarming for its potential aesthetic abuse than it is, well… hilarious. People are paying big bucks to be transported into a safe simulation … supposedly authentic (but not) of the world as others know it. Or knew it. This is an essential function of art. To improve upon reality. To take the foreign that we fear and make it easier to digest.
Broadway is lactose free skim milk? Whatever that is.
-ag
Gregarious Expressions 