6/2

The Saturday evening performance is already underway when I get there. I head up the darkened stairs to the 4th floor gym where Brussels based  Palestinian-American,Tarek Halaby, is slowly undergoing a transformation that begins with him as he is and ends with him channelling Stevie Nicks a capella with an extended blues number along the way including letters to his grandmother that help create his narrative.

Adrienne Truscott who brings together the worlds of dance, circus and burlesque both as a solo performer and in her Wau-Wau Sisters duo, brings a comedic critique to sexism and sexual violence including an intelligent and creative use of her own body.  Including the famous Robert Di Niro you talkin to me scene from Taxi Driver. 

Closing out the first set is  Dynasty Handbag, the performance persona created by JIbz Cameron. She sends up and explores activities like waking  up in the morning while providing commentary on even the festival itself. She is both completely in the moment and outside of it at same time. 

Downstairs in McAlpin, I’m enjoying the transformation of the space through the timeline project, the post it notes covering the walls and the newly created festival t-shirt done on Occupy Wall Street’s silk screen set up. 

I make a point to speak with each of the curators, Eleanor Hullihan, Enrico Wey , Marissa Perel and Neal Medlyn.  I’m intrigued by the collapsing boundaries between performance art, dance, circus...not always easy to see where one begins and the other stops. Also the body itself  its rawest form, as a vehicle for performance expressing vulnerability and courage. 

Leila, a visual artist, has been attending these performances. Tonight, Steve was able to live stream the event through the #OWS network. Chriistopher has especially enjoyed the installations.  

Outside, Jamie has come by with her dog Toto. We finish the walk, go off for conversation. When we get back, the concert is ver. Teddy has returned. He’ outside talking with performers. There’s been a great relationship beween MR and the church. They’ve welcomed Bobby as part of the house, treated everyone with respect and cleaned up well. we have an especially good conversation with Adrienne. The curators will will be sticking around to clean up. 

The Movement Research festival had lived up to its title, Push it. Real. Good.  

Sunday morning will be here all to soon. 

And sex too

6/1

Back from a meeting with City Council staff on this year’s budget and our concern the city take seriously issues around housing and homelessness. And then a press conference on the City Hall steps calling for a reversal of the end of the Advantage Program putting over 8000 people in jeopardy of becoming homeless and the use of one in three vacant city owned property for affordable housing. It’s crazy to be creating more homelessness when it now takes a year in the shelter system before housing is possible.

Back at the church, RL wants to talk about his plans for a permanent solution for the grate problem that has nagged us for so long, He also admires the welding based emergency solution that Teddy managed. And RL still wants a place to practice. 

Paula is in to put the last pieces in place for her benefit productions next Saturday. We take her down to Marc's workshop to introduce them. I prefer not to be part of negotiations. As Paula leaves  Marc wants me to hear the power of the amp he’s been fixing. Paul Mc Cartney soon fills the basement. 

Leila has dropped by to see what’s going on and Berik wants to make plnsto get his painting s back up.

The early evening part of the Movement Research Festival is devoted to sex. As I listen, I begin to get the connection between bodies in motion, how eros and sensuality are inescapably part of movement based performance.  There is a long, I’ll say practical with some humor, clinical discussion. And of course performances. I’m especially impressed by performance artist and magazine editor Lucy Sexton (married to film director Stephen Daldry) and her creative response to the increasing effort by the US government to invade and control women’s bodies. Famed choreographer, performer  and pioneer in exploring the boundaries of black dance, Ishmael Houston-Jones did a moving piece covering his memories of the entire list, in alphabetical order, of all the male strippers who ever performed at the storied and now gone Stella’s. What really came through was his capacity to humanize performers who made their living by fulfilling other people’s fantasies. 

As their show ends, Sarah walks in and we head to the B for good conversation catching up with everything that’s been happening at the center and getting her perspective on a numbrer of issues.  She says that getting Movement Research was a major coup. (Thank you, Ted.)

When I get back, the 8 p show has just ended. There’s one more short set left. I text Steven to make sure that Chirstopher is seeing this. It’s out there, like his own creativity. Kindred spirits for him.

Back in Mc Alpin, I talk iwth Stee and Chirs. It’s time to head home.

And now for dance....

5/31

Sal from Church Mutual has come for the final walk through. It feels like we’ve got a good shot at getting a comprehensive policy through without breaking the bank. He seems seriously appreciative of what church  means in its fullest sense.

Ted drops in just to check up on how things are going.  And then Raven comes in. Wants to pick up some of the stuff he’s left here. I am very depressed to hear that he’s currently with a group camping  out at Pier 72. Including Jeanie. . It hurts me more than I can say that people who used to be part of a cooperative at West-Park are now living on the docks. The fact that their own choices contribute to this doesn’t help in the least. He is a good  man at heart. No way he should be homeless. He offers to help with graphic design. When he leaves, Danielle and I both are feeling depressed.

Dance people are coming in, getting ready for tonight’ s performances. Marc has found an old amp and  wants us to see it and understand what he wants to do with it. 

I’ve got to go to  a critical Presbytery meeting I really don't want to go to. What I really wan to do is go to the annual Dos Pueblos garden party and art auction to support work in Nicaragua.  And I have to go directly from there to St.Peter’s church, the oldest Catholic Church in the city, to speak at the 27th Annual Interfaith Assembly Convocation and Overnight Vigil in support of the homeless.

I leave and get back to the church in time for the late night performance of Movement Research. Steve is working it for us because we haven’t heard from Teddy in almost 40 hours. Yet another burden on my heart. In the sanctuary, final performance In the music concert is taking place. Soemone playing a Japanese instrument an din the balcony a drummer. Twenty minutes of unplanned improvisation seeking  synchronicity.

Up in the gym, the late dance performance is taking place. We have in the past several months hosted events that have stretched the boundaries of theatre and music. Now we have done the same with dance. Postmodern diesn’t really describe it. Though that's part of it. Boundaries of genre are pushed. Boudaries of gender, of sexual orientation are crossed with intention and also as if they don’t even exist. Power pop music ( I got the power...) provides the background for a solo performance expressing  alienation and the search for identity. Two muscular and androgynous Latinos do an amazing piece to reggaeton. Two dancers bring down the lights an pass out candles for people to light and pass one to the other. I’m aware that we did this exact same ritual at St. Peters a few hours ago as the participants left for an overnight vigil in City Hall Park. Its an evocation of every Christmas Eve service. And again, the mixing of genres and structures takes me back to Bill from Portland who helped us reopen this space and redefine what ritual space means.  The visceral connections are always intuitively clear to me, even if not to everyone else.

Afterwards, I go to Mc Alpin where the bar has been set up. They’ve arranged the  tables in a zig zag format for creation of a timeline  of dance history that has also been inscribed with moments like the Port Huron  Statement and assassinations of Jack Kennedy and  Robert and MLK. How can you record art hisotry of any kind without the social context in which it was created? I’m approached nervously by those who haven’t met me before. It’s my first night here. It’s that minister thing. That reality makes them anxious, expecting judgment. Apologies  for one of our rawer nights. The next performances will be more traditonal. I explain that this is why we're here..to provide a space where you can, as the sign says,  Dream. Real. Hard...push the boundaries, make it real. Take us some place unexpeted. One of the coordinators tells me she was raised  Presbyterian and her mom was big in Presbyterian Women, back in the day. Bobby has come in and is being well taken care of. Steve tells me that Teddy has checked in. I breathe a sigh of relief.