Yesterday, me and meka did a collaboration with the band Floating Room at the Culture festival in Takatsuki city`s shiroato park. It was the most fun dancing ever for me and the music was super rad. Imagine- a trumpet that sounds like a provocative call for emotion, feeling, image, story, and then a steady beat that is egging you on saying go go, you know you want to. On top of this was meka`s voice, free, expressing things human and transgressing places that instruments can`t go, and I got to ride on top of this steadily on a sunny day in white make-up and a dress i made myself the night before. Top-class fun for me.
Highlights of the performance.
Before, I painted with the white kabuki make-up in the small, dirty park toilet. There were three sinks, and I took up one of them. The festival go-ers came in and out, surprised by the white white girl. I`d say "hi" or "excuse me" and they would start a conversation with me. To about three or four of these people who were curious about me and the make up, I asked them to paint a part of my body that i couldn`t reach - like the back of my neck or back. These interactions were really satisfying, and felt like a sharing of something.
During the performance, the ground was gravel and rolled and leaped, tearing the skin on my legs and feet. After this, The music was really great and it was a beautiful scene, so I was trying my best to keep my energy turning very quickly on the inside - an intense, slow, small dance- so that there weren`t too many different things going on, and i could keep a good sense of the people watching and the people doing the piece with me. So, all of this contained energy... but then these little girls walked by with their mother, and they seemed a little curious and a little scared. I was in the middle of a painfully slow seagull dance, and i jumped up with my wings in flight and ran after the little girls. They ran and screamed and everyone laughed. I was quite far away now, and I came across a group of teenage girls who were alarmed. I chased them too, more running and screaming, I continued running and landed in my original spot and continued the painfully slow dance. This was all very satisfying for me.
In the end, I feel very ... satisfied. I feel like it was a successful dance, that I have a good command of my body and a good concept of imagery and completion of movement as well as betrayal and surprise, that I am ready to begin to learn how to be a good dancer. However, I have yet to get to the starting point of the big "P" of performance, which is all it is really about.
Performance is "a specific event with its liminoid nature foregrounded, almost invariably, clearly separated from the rest of life, presented by performers and attended by audiences both of whom regard the experience as made up of material to be interpreted, to be reflected upon, to be engaged in- emotionally, mentally, perhaps even physically. This particular sense of occasion and focus as well as the overarching social envelope combine with the physicality of theatrical performance to make it one of the most powerful and efficacious procedures that human society has developed for the endlessly fascinating process of cultural end personal self-reflexion and experimentation." (from Carlson`s 1996 essay about performance studies)
Wow. I read this and I think that this is what I like in life, and this is what I want to do in life.
I didn`t know what "liminoid" meant, so I looked it up, and it means the threshold, the space in between that is blurry. In anthropology, liminality is a "transitional period or a rite of passage during which the participant lacks social status or rank and is anonymous and shows obedience and humility" (ripped off of good old dictionary.com, achem). Wow- a transformative time that is a crucial part of everyday life but is not bound by the same constrictions as everyday life. A space in between. YES.
I do not know how to make this yet. Akogareteiruuuuuu.
Here`s a picture of my golden butt.
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