Shopping Malloompahloompics
As we eager and bright eyed audiences wait for the world-shattering edutainment served up in lieu of a measured and globally-inclusive Opening of the Games Ceremony, there seems a marked and growing inability to separate genuine in–depth theatrical skills from St Vitus Dance attention-seeking steeped in stadium-sized dollops of unearned emotion.
This is further exacerbated by the new dance/alternate circus “sector’ whose undoubted presence weighing in as they will with inconsequential, backwards justified and solipsistic philoso-lite explorations of just about any theme from mother-rape to hairy-eyeball Haiku. Much of this quaint hybrid of artertainment often accompanied by fun-fur clad frenzies bellowing what sounds like backwards Latin atop swaying poles to extraordinarily banal, derivative and highly synthesised rrrrrrrock muzik.
While this is all very diverting and occasionally rent-paying for said swayers, decibel peddlars and their billionaire Cirque promoters in Montreal, a group of quaintly bespectacled and other Magnificent Pretenders are about to be paid millions by us grateful UK debt-slaves to find eye-wateringly banal and expensively costumed ways to shoe-horn this dross, dressed as Avatars For Britain, into many of the upcoming Olympic Games opening conceits,
This does very little for the development either of genuine and evolutionarily creative theatrical notions or the ability to distinguish between the talented and the noisesome.
The gradual and necessary development of an aesthetic, informed by skill, taste, depth, the evolution of vocabularies of choreographic movement-design, the great arts and myths of circus and commedia, fall increasingly in thrall to the perilously ill-informed and under-experienced as they hurl themselves, with quantities of jejune optimism, headlong into the role of taste-makers and creatives for the art and performance departments at UK plc Towers.
It is now a recognised career-choice development process to be splurged out of one of the contemporary dance/Theatre schools with a requisite Ology in Whatever, struggle around in the shallows of the Dependent Dancin'N'That sector until the money, the ideas and relief yoga/pilates teaching opportunities dry-up, then schlepp off to one of the Netheroutlandish Opera companies. Here we discover a disheartening prevalence of Euro-subsidised cavorting in twelve nippled fat-suits and bald-wigs to conceptual-Mozart in bad lighting, much of which I fear we might get at The Games opening, with Kylie, Take Drugs and sundry other boilerplated cuties filling in on the fags, ads and pee breaks.
Not only will the Emperor be butt-naked face down in the long-jump pit, but crows will be pecking at his eyes.
Across all creative disciplines and now "Inter-disciplines", a growing coterie of Sunday supplement creatives are half new-minting the old as their own genuine novel discoveries.
A cursory glance at any Arena Event, guarantees more and more whizzing and blinding to less and less effect. In the kingdom of those with CCTV lights in their eyes, the Personality Spekkie prevails.
This person has identified that the 21st century appetite for Fries, Circuses and Disco-pulp is morphing into a voracious and indiscriminate consumption of Crativeprojex, Events and Spectaculars running the gamut from Britney Spears Laundry Basket - The Opera to Olympic Opening ceremonies, accompanied as they often are, by yards of windy academically self-referential theoro-technocratic guff in our mainstream media and supported up the whazoo by Sponsors and advertising industry panderers.
This betrays a worrying inability to tell the difference between creativity and increasingly high-profile valueless Kulcha dominated by those who have Government and Culture-media mandates to grow up on our time.
The great choreographer Mark Morris on being invited to yet another massively hyped navel-gazing “Works In Progress” exercise masquerading as culture in New York was overheard to say, “let me know when its finished and I’ll decide if I want to buy a ticket”.
What is perhaps more alarming is that this extraordinarily unfocused curate’s egg of what is ever more loosely termed, Entertainment, is increasingly being employed at the highest level of the theatrical Global-event world. This strikes me as a very badly missed opportunity.
Most of this rant is driven by the increasing doubt that anyone has carefully considered exactly what it is that we wish to present to the world in July 2012, outside the main focus of The London Olympic games.
There is every chance as WhateverItIs prances out into the Stadium limelight in all its bouncing, toothsome and experiential marketing eagerness, its actually not going to have a scooby-doo what it is doing there. Nor when the shouting has died down, will we.
BANG! the fireworks will go off, Graham Norton and Elton John as the Ugly Sisters will have a Shakespeare themed mock-joust in Tracy Emin branded golf-buggies to a deafening reprise of Pinball Wizard played live by The Who the F.. Cares, bounced all over by Diversity and Half Of The Yoof of Tower Hamlets, and as any old jolly plumber might say, job done.
Pierre de Coubertain and his well meaning motivation in re-founding The Games, is to a large extent still alive and well in the Olympic Spirit. I fervently hope and have to assume his philosophy as far as it stretches to The Cultural Olympiad, is artfully graffitied on the polished brick walls in the doubtlessly well-appointed Olympic Party Events and Entertainment committees offices.
If we get the kind of stadium show we have been getting recently, then we cannot say we were not warned.
6 Mar 2012
24 May 2011
On why Museum Directors are a problem
Tomorrow is made up of the potential created today, with some unexpected tangential and entirely unexpected evolutionary events which might or might not occur in the overnight betwixt the two.
Speaking of fearless, it is probably about time real artists started being a little less fearful of the elephant in the room – curators, exhibitors, museum directors and the whole panoply of the Show and Tell Machinery who are fundamentally superfluous without some decent art to show.
We have far too much audience pleasing and entirely too much entertainment dressed-up as art for anyone’s good.
Enjoy your conferences, think tanks and expensive get-togethers by all means, celebrate the wonderfulness of your solipsistic academo-bolloquialisms but please, remain sufficiently and ever constantly mindful of that which is tail and that which is dog.
Museum commissions do nothing to help make important and world-changing art except for the kind of art-ertainment that those very museums and their rarified directorates think that audiences are likely to respond to – the sound of one hand missing itself is quite, quite deafening……….
Speaking of fearless, it is probably about time real artists started being a little less fearful of the elephant in the room – curators, exhibitors, museum directors and the whole panoply of the Show and Tell Machinery who are fundamentally superfluous without some decent art to show.
We have far too much audience pleasing and entirely too much entertainment dressed-up as art for anyone’s good.
Enjoy your conferences, think tanks and expensive get-togethers by all means, celebrate the wonderfulness of your solipsistic academo-bolloquialisms but please, remain sufficiently and ever constantly mindful of that which is tail and that which is dog.
Museum commissions do nothing to help make important and world-changing art except for the kind of art-ertainment that those very museums and their rarified directorates think that audiences are likely to respond to – the sound of one hand missing itself is quite, quite deafening……….
9 May 2010
FIRST POST THE PARTS
I know the contents of this ranting organ is ostensibly about Dance and Film, however, given the fact that we ae entirely reliant for funding on whoever is currently Milk Monitor, I felt it incumbent to pen a line or two about last week's political pig fuck.
First Post the Parts
Finally, now that its all over bar the shouting, I think my sense of outrage comes more from the fact that despite literally 24hr wall to wall coverage from the journalists who felt it an absolute right to ensure the politically illiterate majority of us peasantry outside the fortified ghetto walls of Mediacritiville are forced to be part of the appalling spectacle of venality, kant, spin and Napoleonic self-interest that is the process of our horrid little politicians forcing their feet into the trough under the top table - any vestige of the ethical implications were assigned a very lowly place in the order of priorities.
When it came to the insignificant matter of actually disallowing legitimate citizenry to exercise a right for which their not too far distant nearest and dearest fought and died, they really couldn't care less for the democratic issue.
In fact the whole debacle of shutting up the polling stations to catch last orders at the Dog and Duck became merely about finding someone upon whom they could unleash one of their Journattack dogs for the amusement of the increasingly prurient and insomniac telly watching public.
I felt as if we had been forced to walk around and look in at all the bedroom doors of a particularly dirty and low rent brothel on a singularly busy night, populated only by prostitutes of staggeringly low levels of interest in their job.
Does anyone really have the slightest idea how low in importance the scale of values of the sovereign individual has sunk and just what effect this is having on the general well-being of society?
This is not a moral position, it is one of a pastry chef at a clinic for the terminally anorexic - frankly it is rapidly becoming apparent to most members of society that there are better things to do than worry about it and anyway, what's the point, they'll send us home if we get restive, and on the way home its sauvez qui peut, as we dodge large groups of morbidly angry feral hoodies with chips on their shoulders, knives in their pockets and a complete absence of any kind of positive role models or existential compass.
The Greek Government is tear gassing their population rather than allow them the legitimate right to register their literally unutterable confusion and fear that their elected officials have bankcrupted their country which as far as they knew, they had signed up for sovereign and protected membership of the biggest trading bloc in the world.
The British police have been ordered to prevent groups of citizens taking their grievances directly to their elected officials in Parliament Square and are allowed to film them and keep their details on file if they have the temerity so to do and the USA Homeland Insecurity are gradually releasing the unknown number of perfectly innocent detainees of their Waaarrrrontorrrra, now that their toenails have grown back.
Gil Scott-Heron was so right when he opined in 1967 - "The revolution will not be televised" - however, we can now add, "at least, not on any of the free tv channels..."
Now we have the even more edifying process of watching hundreds of our elected officials all going back on the mandates we have just given them, based on promises they have solemnly made to us approximately only 2 days ago.
Recanting their previous heartfelt pledges and generally committing all seven of the deadly sins simultaneously, in order to find the means by which they can continue to slither around in the bottom of the snake pit without biting each other to death too quickly - or at least not before they have had had the chance to shoehorn the word Minister onto their CV, by whatever means necessary
Watching Bremner , Bird and Fortune last week, made me even more aware that the level of satirical defense to this craziness and moral turpitude into which we have all slunk has also chronically deteriorated and in fact I am increasingly annoyed at myself that i initially found funny Jimmy Carr's joke - "The general election - like the Eurovision Song Contest....only more boring and for straight people ..." - which now leaves a far more sinister hanging chad floating in the air, like the smell in the lift of an inner city housing project.
"In order for evil to prevail it merely requires good people to do nothing" - has never been more apt just at this juncture of the world.
If so, could this perhaps be a contributing factor to the slow death of democracy through disinterest? Let's face it, if the only guardians and self-appointed saviours of the nation amount to the British National Party and English Skinheads League, I think Robespierre and The Terror would probably be a more palatable alternative.
Certainly its nothing less than we deserve.
For our significant and uncounted numbers of semi-permanent politicial/economic refugee visitors, this jewel set in a silver sea, is still Albion!
The disconnect with the incumbent population's take on their democratic priveleges is now virtually complete.
It is now terribly important that we acknowledge we clearly have a disproportionate number of people living in what used to be Great Britain, for whom the best they could hope for previously in terms of citizens rights, was that the secret police will not turn up, rape their daughters and kidnap their sons for child soldier duties every night.
Not because they are not welcome, of course they are, no-one "owns" any country and the notion of nationhood is ludicrous - but simply because, caring for our crucial freedoms to behave decently towards eachother and mutually acknowledge the commonwealth of government by the people for the people, can only properly function when we can properly rise above the dysfunctional levels of attention we give the Burkha, the Bovver Boot, the Breast Enhancement and the Bond Trader.
We gave Rupert Murdoch and the BBC our country to run in return for the ability to watch football matches without getting wet, having to stop eating or scratching our privates from the comfort of our sofas, while we sat on what is left of our spines and watched the eerie spectacle of Andrew Lloyds Bank and Simon Howl recast Auschwitz - The Musical.
I'm beginning to wonder if this was a fair trade.
If Murdoch's body parts start suddenly appearing in small padded envelopes, mailed to the Today In Parliament offices at the BBC, check my freezer for the rest - I will be writing bucolic novels beneath vine-chinky shade on my terrace somewhere in Italy - I gather they take democracy a little more seriously there.
First Post the Parts
Finally, now that its all over bar the shouting, I think my sense of outrage comes more from the fact that despite literally 24hr wall to wall coverage from the journalists who felt it an absolute right to ensure the politically illiterate majority of us peasantry outside the fortified ghetto walls of Mediacritiville are forced to be part of the appalling spectacle of venality, kant, spin and Napoleonic self-interest that is the process of our horrid little politicians forcing their feet into the trough under the top table - any vestige of the ethical implications were assigned a very lowly place in the order of priorities.
When it came to the insignificant matter of actually disallowing legitimate citizenry to exercise a right for which their not too far distant nearest and dearest fought and died, they really couldn't care less for the democratic issue.
In fact the whole debacle of shutting up the polling stations to catch last orders at the Dog and Duck became merely about finding someone upon whom they could unleash one of their Journattack dogs for the amusement of the increasingly prurient and insomniac telly watching public.
I felt as if we had been forced to walk around and look in at all the bedroom doors of a particularly dirty and low rent brothel on a singularly busy night, populated only by prostitutes of staggeringly low levels of interest in their job.
Does anyone really have the slightest idea how low in importance the scale of values of the sovereign individual has sunk and just what effect this is having on the general well-being of society?
This is not a moral position, it is one of a pastry chef at a clinic for the terminally anorexic - frankly it is rapidly becoming apparent to most members of society that there are better things to do than worry about it and anyway, what's the point, they'll send us home if we get restive, and on the way home its sauvez qui peut, as we dodge large groups of morbidly angry feral hoodies with chips on their shoulders, knives in their pockets and a complete absence of any kind of positive role models or existential compass.
The Greek Government is tear gassing their population rather than allow them the legitimate right to register their literally unutterable confusion and fear that their elected officials have bankcrupted their country which as far as they knew, they had signed up for sovereign and protected membership of the biggest trading bloc in the world.
The British police have been ordered to prevent groups of citizens taking their grievances directly to their elected officials in Parliament Square and are allowed to film them and keep their details on file if they have the temerity so to do and the USA Homeland Insecurity are gradually releasing the unknown number of perfectly innocent detainees of their Waaarrrrontorrrra, now that their toenails have grown back.
Gil Scott-Heron was so right when he opined in 1967 - "The revolution will not be televised" - however, we can now add, "at least, not on any of the free tv channels..."
Now we have the even more edifying process of watching hundreds of our elected officials all going back on the mandates we have just given them, based on promises they have solemnly made to us approximately only 2 days ago.
Recanting their previous heartfelt pledges and generally committing all seven of the deadly sins simultaneously, in order to find the means by which they can continue to slither around in the bottom of the snake pit without biting each other to death too quickly - or at least not before they have had had the chance to shoehorn the word Minister onto their CV, by whatever means necessary
Watching Bremner , Bird and Fortune last week, made me even more aware that the level of satirical defense to this craziness and moral turpitude into which we have all slunk has also chronically deteriorated and in fact I am increasingly annoyed at myself that i initially found funny Jimmy Carr's joke - "The general election - like the Eurovision Song Contest....only more boring and for straight people ..." - which now leaves a far more sinister hanging chad floating in the air, like the smell in the lift of an inner city housing project.
"In order for evil to prevail it merely requires good people to do nothing" - has never been more apt just at this juncture of the world.
If so, could this perhaps be a contributing factor to the slow death of democracy through disinterest? Let's face it, if the only guardians and self-appointed saviours of the nation amount to the British National Party and English Skinheads League, I think Robespierre and The Terror would probably be a more palatable alternative.
Certainly its nothing less than we deserve.
For our significant and uncounted numbers of semi-permanent politicial/economic refugee visitors, this jewel set in a silver sea, is still Albion!
The disconnect with the incumbent population's take on their democratic priveleges is now virtually complete.
It is now terribly important that we acknowledge we clearly have a disproportionate number of people living in what used to be Great Britain, for whom the best they could hope for previously in terms of citizens rights, was that the secret police will not turn up, rape their daughters and kidnap their sons for child soldier duties every night.
Not because they are not welcome, of course they are, no-one "owns" any country and the notion of nationhood is ludicrous - but simply because, caring for our crucial freedoms to behave decently towards eachother and mutually acknowledge the commonwealth of government by the people for the people, can only properly function when we can properly rise above the dysfunctional levels of attention we give the Burkha, the Bovver Boot, the Breast Enhancement and the Bond Trader.
We gave Rupert Murdoch and the BBC our country to run in return for the ability to watch football matches without getting wet, having to stop eating or scratching our privates from the comfort of our sofas, while we sat on what is left of our spines and watched the eerie spectacle of Andrew Lloyds Bank and Simon Howl recast Auschwitz - The Musical.
I'm beginning to wonder if this was a fair trade.
If Murdoch's body parts start suddenly appearing in small padded envelopes, mailed to the Today In Parliament offices at the BBC, check my freezer for the rest - I will be writing bucolic novels beneath vine-chinky shade on my terrace somewhere in Italy - I gather they take democracy a little more seriously there.
15 Sept 2009
Shooting on film issue
Quality in - quality out.
Catch the latest thinking on HD capture -
Given the relative brevity of most Moving Image work, it evades all of the capture and storage issues longer format film makers are experiencing when migrating from video to proxy-film
Catch the latest thinking on HD capture -
Given the relative brevity of most Moving Image work, it evades all of the capture and storage issues longer format film makers are experiencing when migrating from video to proxy-film
9 Sept 2009
A Sentimental Education?
A Sentimental Education?
I have witnessed first hand and been deeply disturbed by the narrowness and superficiality in focus, of the vast majority of the UK's current creative theatre student curriculae.
Having taught everything from dance to Care and feeding of An Agent at all of the above, indeed most of the major graduate schools over 25 years, I remain aghast at the Graduate Theatre Courses' almost fetishistic focus on West End, drivelling MacMusicals, the insane and single minded need to ingratiate themselves with casting directors and the bland, paranoid competitiveness, the sad limits of their material and dramatic choices and paper-thin skills, with which an uncomfortable majority of the graduates turn up at auditions.
I find myself working with increasing numbers of producers and directors who when casting, simply bypass the MT and Acting schools no matter how reputable, because they simply despair of ever finding people who do not feel the constant and desperate need to perform for them, thereby obscuring who they really are, if indeed they have any idea once the Stage School veneer has hardened to its uniformly chromium finish.
Conversely, the academically focused private schools reliably acknowledge that they know very little about "professional" theatre and therefore go out of their way to work a great deal harder on behalf of their customers.
They tend to ensure that a far wider spectrum of theatre knowledge is taught and with all the depth and breadth that true education rather than "up-skilling" is all about.
It is a great irony that the "specialist" schools, with purportedly far more specialist teaching resources are actually far more limited and constrained in what they manage to impart to their students than is generally undrstood either by confused and worried parents or indeed a large number of professional employers.
Increasingly these poor angst ridden creatures merely get splurged out at graduation, like so many sausages, brainwashed into believing that unless they get an agent at their graduation show, preferably at least three auditions for musicals but mailnly I want to be seen by David or Pippa or Debbie or Anne or ...or..., 4 commercials or a Soap on A Rope, per month, then they are probably already headed for the scrap heap.
Theatrically, also described as creatively, at 20 to 25 years old, a person should merely display an interested, enquiring, open and humble mind.
Instead the stage schools provide us with ever increasing numbers of indefatigably smiling, bright and shiny, dyed-in-the-wool, kick-ball-change merchants, most of whom clearly ducked drama classes in favour of a lie-in on Thursdays for the last three years.
Unless they are incredibly well connected and/or powerfully aware of all of the other opportunities which their "training" frankly militates against, they might juuuuuust get lucky enough to build a bit of a career. I've bred and co-launched four of these, trust me on this one, I know.
By the way, I do wonder at what point theatre producers understand that part of their wealth if they are successful, is directly attributable to the well-being of their human resources.
I wonder how much more creativity could be channelled into helping develop talented young performers? Opening up instant stardom opportunities is not developing your talent bank, it is merely skewing the pitch. Nor is investing more in the schools merely to lubricate the sausage machinery.
The vast majority will get out of the business prematurely when confronted with the law of diminishing returns which is the inevitable legacy of the under-educated and thereby disempowered, no matter how "talented" they are. They wont reeeally believe it, because all the actors at every read through will mostly make them feel intellectually impoverished. The actors do it on purpose and er...its an act, to get their own back for knowing that they are going to have to ask the "trained" dancers to help them out of some tight spots when comes to the dance calls - but still, too many people are being turned out of too many courses with beautifully polished chips on their shoulders which are mostly the only things keeping their ears apart.
By the way, under-education and empty heads have been, still are and always will be entirely the fault of the educators - if the cap fits wear it.
I worked for one of the most successful Musical theatre agencies for six years. Of the 50 or so Graduates we took on from the start of their careers, only about 10 are still working with any regularity a few years later, and our agency used to get the pick of the litters.
All of them, premier league bright and well "trained", but resolutely ignorant of their true potential through creative under-development, by those responsible for the strategic development of their curriculae.
Real world basic career management strategies for real world people with aspirations and the education to enter and explore fully the vast and magical world of the theatre in its broadest sense, is probably the only set of skills upon which we should focus as educators. Once you know where to put it, your talent will take care of the rest.
I feel it essential to get through to the Stage Schools and Graduate Theatre Courses that a complete rethink of their curricula focus across the board, is desperately overdue. The ability to do 3 or even 8 pirouettes and a walk-over into splits in tune, is far less likely to pay the rent long-term than a true understanding of what it is and how to create eclat, a real awareness of the crucial importance of properly integrated choreographic design, a detailed understanding through study of theatre micro-economics and a firm grasp of the mechanics of how professional theatrical projects are budgeted, capitalised and production scheduled. Every single one of them needs this knowledge in its entirely if they stand a hope and they do not, repeat do not , qualify to further crowd this industrial endeavour until they can demonstrate they have.
Really, not a hard set of measurable criteria - tea..anyone?
Until this occurs, I'd far rather work with catholically well-educated and enlightened young people whose minds and aspirations have not yet been closed by the limited dreams and blandishments of West -End stardom or how to impress a theme-park choreographer.
More importantly for their own peace of mind, it is crucial to teach the simple ability to compute the relentless maths urgently pointing out that 4500 formal Musical theatre graduates a year, every year, year after year - you get my point - chasing approximately 476 annual job opportunities, makes absolutely no sense as any kind of choice, let alone that of a "career" unless you really have your mojo running..
And these numbers do not X -factor-in the Wannabees who get a free pass to knee-slide in ahead of all of them at the whim of a reality TV show text vote and the clenching of a buttock muscle.
However these last as ever fall by the wayside for even more of the reasons above and anyway, will present less and less of a threat as professional standards rise.
As far as Stage Schools are concerned, these are still truths which dare not think, let alone speak their name.
I have witnessed first hand and been deeply disturbed by the narrowness and superficiality in focus, of the vast majority of the UK's current creative theatre student curriculae.
Having taught everything from dance to Care and feeding of An Agent at all of the above, indeed most of the major graduate schools over 25 years, I remain aghast at the Graduate Theatre Courses' almost fetishistic focus on West End, drivelling MacMusicals, the insane and single minded need to ingratiate themselves with casting directors and the bland, paranoid competitiveness, the sad limits of their material and dramatic choices and paper-thin skills, with which an uncomfortable majority of the graduates turn up at auditions.
I find myself working with increasing numbers of producers and directors who when casting, simply bypass the MT and Acting schools no matter how reputable, because they simply despair of ever finding people who do not feel the constant and desperate need to perform for them, thereby obscuring who they really are, if indeed they have any idea once the Stage School veneer has hardened to its uniformly chromium finish.
Conversely, the academically focused private schools reliably acknowledge that they know very little about "professional" theatre and therefore go out of their way to work a great deal harder on behalf of their customers.
They tend to ensure that a far wider spectrum of theatre knowledge is taught and with all the depth and breadth that true education rather than "up-skilling" is all about.
It is a great irony that the "specialist" schools, with purportedly far more specialist teaching resources are actually far more limited and constrained in what they manage to impart to their students than is generally undrstood either by confused and worried parents or indeed a large number of professional employers.
Increasingly these poor angst ridden creatures merely get splurged out at graduation, like so many sausages, brainwashed into believing that unless they get an agent at their graduation show, preferably at least three auditions for musicals but mailnly I want to be seen by David or Pippa or Debbie or Anne or ...or..., 4 commercials or a Soap on A Rope, per month, then they are probably already headed for the scrap heap.
Theatrically, also described as creatively, at 20 to 25 years old, a person should merely display an interested, enquiring, open and humble mind.
Instead the stage schools provide us with ever increasing numbers of indefatigably smiling, bright and shiny, dyed-in-the-wool, kick-ball-change merchants, most of whom clearly ducked drama classes in favour of a lie-in on Thursdays for the last three years.
Unless they are incredibly well connected and/or powerfully aware of all of the other opportunities which their "training" frankly militates against, they might juuuuuust get lucky enough to build a bit of a career. I've bred and co-launched four of these, trust me on this one, I know.
By the way, I do wonder at what point theatre producers understand that part of their wealth if they are successful, is directly attributable to the well-being of their human resources.
I wonder how much more creativity could be channelled into helping develop talented young performers? Opening up instant stardom opportunities is not developing your talent bank, it is merely skewing the pitch. Nor is investing more in the schools merely to lubricate the sausage machinery.
The vast majority will get out of the business prematurely when confronted with the law of diminishing returns which is the inevitable legacy of the under-educated and thereby disempowered, no matter how "talented" they are. They wont reeeally believe it, because all the actors at every read through will mostly make them feel intellectually impoverished. The actors do it on purpose and er...its an act, to get their own back for knowing that they are going to have to ask the "trained" dancers to help them out of some tight spots when comes to the dance calls - but still, too many people are being turned out of too many courses with beautifully polished chips on their shoulders which are mostly the only things keeping their ears apart.
By the way, under-education and empty heads have been, still are and always will be entirely the fault of the educators - if the cap fits wear it.
I worked for one of the most successful Musical theatre agencies for six years. Of the 50 or so Graduates we took on from the start of their careers, only about 10 are still working with any regularity a few years later, and our agency used to get the pick of the litters.
All of them, premier league bright and well "trained", but resolutely ignorant of their true potential through creative under-development, by those responsible for the strategic development of their curriculae.
Real world basic career management strategies for real world people with aspirations and the education to enter and explore fully the vast and magical world of the theatre in its broadest sense, is probably the only set of skills upon which we should focus as educators. Once you know where to put it, your talent will take care of the rest.
I feel it essential to get through to the Stage Schools and Graduate Theatre Courses that a complete rethink of their curricula focus across the board, is desperately overdue. The ability to do 3 or even 8 pirouettes and a walk-over into splits in tune, is far less likely to pay the rent long-term than a true understanding of what it is and how to create eclat, a real awareness of the crucial importance of properly integrated choreographic design, a detailed understanding through study of theatre micro-economics and a firm grasp of the mechanics of how professional theatrical projects are budgeted, capitalised and production scheduled. Every single one of them needs this knowledge in its entirely if they stand a hope and they do not, repeat do not , qualify to further crowd this industrial endeavour until they can demonstrate they have.
Really, not a hard set of measurable criteria - tea..anyone?
Until this occurs, I'd far rather work with catholically well-educated and enlightened young people whose minds and aspirations have not yet been closed by the limited dreams and blandishments of West -End stardom or how to impress a theme-park choreographer.
More importantly for their own peace of mind, it is crucial to teach the simple ability to compute the relentless maths urgently pointing out that 4500 formal Musical theatre graduates a year, every year, year after year - you get my point - chasing approximately 476 annual job opportunities, makes absolutely no sense as any kind of choice, let alone that of a "career" unless you really have your mojo running..
And these numbers do not X -factor-in the Wannabees who get a free pass to knee-slide in ahead of all of them at the whim of a reality TV show text vote and the clenching of a buttock muscle.
However these last as ever fall by the wayside for even more of the reasons above and anyway, will present less and less of a threat as professional standards rise.
As far as Stage Schools are concerned, these are still truths which dare not think, let alone speak their name.
8 Jul 2009
Careering from career to career
It’s all one long Opening Ceremony
There seems a marked and growing disinclination to separate genuine in–depth theatrical skills and the results therefrom, from attention-seeking theatricality.
As a result we have more and more bad theatre masquerading as meaningful.
This amplification is further exacerbated by the new dance/alternate circus “sector’ weighing in with their inconsequential, backwards justified and solipsistic philoso-lite explorations of just about any theme from mother-rape to hairy-eyeball syndrome with all stops between.
Much of which, unless accompanying Mozart, Bartók or Janácek in a bewildering aray of anachronistic absurdist vignettes which more often than not, damage the composers' original and carefully wrought themes beyond repair and certainly the audience’s comprehension - is defined by extraordinarily banal, derivative and poorly performed rrrrrrrock muzik, accompanied by fun-fur clad frenzies bellowing backwards-Latin atop swaying poles.
While this is all very diverting and occasionally rent-paying for said swayers and decibel peddlars, a passing Lepage, Sellers or sundry other Magnificent Pretender who can then find expensively costumed ways to shoe-horn this dross into many of their conceits, it does very little for the development either of genuine and evolutionarily creative theatrical notions or the ability to distinguish between the talented and the noisesome.
The gradual and necessary development of an aesthetic, informed by skill, taste, experience and depth, the evolution of vocabularies of choreographic movement-design, the great arts and myths of circus and commedia and the important archaic truths buried beneath the behemoth of Operatic structures, fall increasingly into the thrall of the perilous, the untalented and the ill-informed as they continue to hurl themselves, with quantities of jejune abandon, artlessness and tendentious posturing, headlong into the Yarts via a loose grounding and the occasional Awayday Course in Capoeira Klowning.
It is now a recognised career-choice development process to be splurged out of one of the contemporary dance schools with a requisite Ology in Whatever, struggle around in the shallows of the Dependent Dance sector until the money, the ideas, the relief yoga/pilates teaching and/or sofa-surfing opportunities dry-up, then schlepp off to one of the Walloonian and Nether-outlandish Opera companies where much subsidised cavorting in twelve nippled fat-suits and bald-wigs to conceptual-Mozart in bad lighting will prevail.
This is to be followed by the development of a couple of sidelines in Yoga and the Poetics of Circo-Alternativo, breathlessly absorbed at the knee of some gnomish juggling academics in personality specs who have spent a winter Existentialist-Kino Lab with Derevo and have testimonials from Slava Polunin on the wall of tastefully furnished and well-funded Circus Spaces from Turin to Alma-Ata.
What is perhaps more alarming is that this extraordinarily unfocused curate’s-egg of what is ever more loosely termed, “skills”, is increasingly being employed at the highest level of the theatrical world.
Not only is the Emperor butt-naked, but the crows have begun to peck at his eyes.
In the absence of well-read and clearly assimilated classical sources and precedents, a growing coterie of Sunday supplement creatives are half new-minting the old as their own genuine novel discoveries.
This simulateneously impoverishes tradition, historical perspective, precedent, evolution and their own credibility as anything more than pretentious, ignorant arrivistes - in the kingdom of the increasingly myopic, the one-eyed will prevail - for a time.
However, this seems to be “where its at” for the theatrical career strategist.
One whose entire research background extends to a couple of afternoons on Youtube and a Uni-lite reading list.
This person has identified that the 21st century Prole appetite for Fries and Circuses is morphing into a voracious and indiscriminate consumption of creative projects, Events and Spectaculars running the gamut from Britney Spears The Opera to Olympic Opening ceremonies, accompanied as they often are, by yards of windy academically self-referential theoro-technocratic guff and supported by Sponsors or their advertising –industry panderers.
Dance in particular, opera in general and theatre in its broadest sense, are all the more impoverished for this appallingly prevalent, arriviste, lightweight and erroneous view of both the form and function of theatre. Accompanied as it is, by a conspiracy for the studied downplaying of discreet expertise, depth or learning, accompanied by a worrying inability to tell the difference between creativity and increasingly high-profile valueless activities which merely look like they ought to be creative, owing to a lethal cocktail of ignorance, arrogance, ill-education and commercial interest.
There seems a marked and growing disinclination to separate genuine in–depth theatrical skills and the results therefrom, from attention-seeking theatricality.
As a result we have more and more bad theatre masquerading as meaningful.
This amplification is further exacerbated by the new dance/alternate circus “sector’ weighing in with their inconsequential, backwards justified and solipsistic philoso-lite explorations of just about any theme from mother-rape to hairy-eyeball syndrome with all stops between.
Much of which, unless accompanying Mozart, Bartók or Janácek in a bewildering aray of anachronistic absurdist vignettes which more often than not, damage the composers' original and carefully wrought themes beyond repair and certainly the audience’s comprehension - is defined by extraordinarily banal, derivative and poorly performed rrrrrrrock muzik, accompanied by fun-fur clad frenzies bellowing backwards-Latin atop swaying poles.
While this is all very diverting and occasionally rent-paying for said swayers and decibel peddlars, a passing Lepage, Sellers or sundry other Magnificent Pretender who can then find expensively costumed ways to shoe-horn this dross into many of their conceits, it does very little for the development either of genuine and evolutionarily creative theatrical notions or the ability to distinguish between the talented and the noisesome.
The gradual and necessary development of an aesthetic, informed by skill, taste, experience and depth, the evolution of vocabularies of choreographic movement-design, the great arts and myths of circus and commedia and the important archaic truths buried beneath the behemoth of Operatic structures, fall increasingly into the thrall of the perilous, the untalented and the ill-informed as they continue to hurl themselves, with quantities of jejune abandon, artlessness and tendentious posturing, headlong into the Yarts via a loose grounding and the occasional Awayday Course in Capoeira Klowning.
It is now a recognised career-choice development process to be splurged out of one of the contemporary dance schools with a requisite Ology in Whatever, struggle around in the shallows of the Dependent Dance sector until the money, the ideas, the relief yoga/pilates teaching and/or sofa-surfing opportunities dry-up, then schlepp off to one of the Walloonian and Nether-outlandish Opera companies where much subsidised cavorting in twelve nippled fat-suits and bald-wigs to conceptual-Mozart in bad lighting will prevail.
This is to be followed by the development of a couple of sidelines in Yoga and the Poetics of Circo-Alternativo, breathlessly absorbed at the knee of some gnomish juggling academics in personality specs who have spent a winter Existentialist-Kino Lab with Derevo and have testimonials from Slava Polunin on the wall of tastefully furnished and well-funded Circus Spaces from Turin to Alma-Ata.
What is perhaps more alarming is that this extraordinarily unfocused curate’s-egg of what is ever more loosely termed, “skills”, is increasingly being employed at the highest level of the theatrical world.
Not only is the Emperor butt-naked, but the crows have begun to peck at his eyes.
In the absence of well-read and clearly assimilated classical sources and precedents, a growing coterie of Sunday supplement creatives are half new-minting the old as their own genuine novel discoveries.
This simulateneously impoverishes tradition, historical perspective, precedent, evolution and their own credibility as anything more than pretentious, ignorant arrivistes - in the kingdom of the increasingly myopic, the one-eyed will prevail - for a time.
However, this seems to be “where its at” for the theatrical career strategist.
One whose entire research background extends to a couple of afternoons on Youtube and a Uni-lite reading list.
This person has identified that the 21st century Prole appetite for Fries and Circuses is morphing into a voracious and indiscriminate consumption of creative projects, Events and Spectaculars running the gamut from Britney Spears The Opera to Olympic Opening ceremonies, accompanied as they often are, by yards of windy academically self-referential theoro-technocratic guff and supported by Sponsors or their advertising –industry panderers.
Dance in particular, opera in general and theatre in its broadest sense, are all the more impoverished for this appallingly prevalent, arriviste, lightweight and erroneous view of both the form and function of theatre. Accompanied as it is, by a conspiracy for the studied downplaying of discreet expertise, depth or learning, accompanied by a worrying inability to tell the difference between creativity and increasingly high-profile valueless activities which merely look like they ought to be creative, owing to a lethal cocktail of ignorance, arrogance, ill-education and commercial interest.
7 Jul 2009
Effete, effort and rose flavoured windiness
One of things which attracted me to becoming a dancer, apart from the fact that I would get to physically interact with lithe, dangerous and sexy human beings waaaaay bfore I was qualified or had earned the chops - was its unique combintion of muscularily, controlled power and sculptural formation. I saw in this combination of means, extra opportunity to go to places psychologically and emotionally in a way far more direct and unequivocal than words and symbols could never reach
1 Jul 2009
PINA BAUSCH - A tribute
PINA BAUSCH dies suddenly -
One of the few, true 20th Century Choreographic greats dies of cancer June 28th 2009.
I was personally completely heartbroken to hear the news of Pina Bausch's premature and sudden death at 68.
The small clip from her Sacre de Printemps has been visited 400,000+ times at Youtube alone, providing an insight into just how important she was to the dance world and the wider world of the arts.
She was unique and her passing leaves a yawning gap in the modern dance landscape.
So much of what she pioneered has gone on to be pastiched, reheated and drearily re-rolled in ever less vibrant and innovative ways by countless pale-imitators.
Too many of these have confused Ms Bausch's incisive musical and physical statements about the human condition with the un-dressing of tortured looking men and women in torn underwear and hedge-backwards hair.
This has managed to make an alarmingly large section of modern dance making, one of the few truly original 20th century artforms, look more and more like under-rehearsed concerts by Tourettes Formation Ballroom teams, by mistaking Bausch's forms for her content, and leaving the all too important audiences trailing in the wake with increasingly bemused indifference.
Who, in our current crop of physical-dance theatre creatives will have the chops to step-up, assume her mantle and take things forward again with the same quality and level of innovation?
Perhaps you have a view? Let me know your thoughts.
One of the few, true 20th Century Choreographic greats dies of cancer June 28th 2009.
I was personally completely heartbroken to hear the news of Pina Bausch's premature and sudden death at 68.
The small clip from her Sacre de Printemps has been visited 400,000+ times at Youtube alone, providing an insight into just how important she was to the dance world and the wider world of the arts.
She was unique and her passing leaves a yawning gap in the modern dance landscape.
So much of what she pioneered has gone on to be pastiched, reheated and drearily re-rolled in ever less vibrant and innovative ways by countless pale-imitators.
Too many of these have confused Ms Bausch's incisive musical and physical statements about the human condition with the un-dressing of tortured looking men and women in torn underwear and hedge-backwards hair.
This has managed to make an alarmingly large section of modern dance making, one of the few truly original 20th century artforms, look more and more like under-rehearsed concerts by Tourettes Formation Ballroom teams, by mistaking Bausch's forms for her content, and leaving the all too important audiences trailing in the wake with increasingly bemused indifference.
Who, in our current crop of physical-dance theatre creatives will have the chops to step-up, assume her mantle and take things forward again with the same quality and level of innovation?
Perhaps you have a view? Let me know your thoughts.
8 May 2009
The Raft of the Medua
HD, slo-mo, lit well, bags of committment.
Not entirely sure whether this is an exercise in vanity and somewhat under-choreographed soft-core porn or a genuine attempt to bring something new to the original idea.
In essence the original painting was groundbreaking as a result of its subject matter, the fact that it documented the back story to something over which which the "authorities" would rather have drawn a clouded veil and the emergence of a growing trend towards "art" as politics rather than merely decorative.
In construction the painter of the original "The Raft of the Medusa", Théodore Géricault worked with a number of geometric patterns and design motifs brilliantly drawing the viewer's eye into, across and around his painting in a way which both told the story and allowed the imaginative processes to enter into the individual agonies of the victims of this catastrophic episode in French maritime history.
As far as I can see, Lutz Gregor, has found a suitable title, a strong and ready reference point and then abstracted the "idea" whilst providing none of the narrative nor design strengths which so brilliantly and innovatively invest the original.
Instead what we are delivered is a hi-def video version of the opening moments of the Harrods Sale performed in extreme close-up by cellulite-free luvvies in varying stages of orgiastic undress.
I think we have to be very wary of the tendency for examples of overblown dancefilm such as this, to say more and more about less and less.
Mind you, more power to you if you can get some star-struck Arts-Funt Poobahs to stump up the cash. Inviting some hot-looking mates around to your place to bend themselves out of shape in their pants is not a bad alternative to truly innovative choreo-kino creativity.
Go here to see the Wikepedia article on the original work for contrast, comparison and a little critical clarity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_of_the_Medusa
Experimental - Dance theatre
Not entirely sure whether this is an exercise in vanity and somewhat under-choreographed soft-core porn or a genuine attempt to bring something new to the original idea.
In essence the original painting was groundbreaking as a result of its subject matter, the fact that it documented the back story to something over which which the "authorities" would rather have drawn a clouded veil and the emergence of a growing trend towards "art" as politics rather than merely decorative.
In construction the painter of the original "The Raft of the Medusa", Théodore Géricault worked with a number of geometric patterns and design motifs brilliantly drawing the viewer's eye into, across and around his painting in a way which both told the story and allowed the imaginative processes to enter into the individual agonies of the victims of this catastrophic episode in French maritime history.
As far as I can see, Lutz Gregor, has found a suitable title, a strong and ready reference point and then abstracted the "idea" whilst providing none of the narrative nor design strengths which so brilliantly and innovatively invest the original.
Instead what we are delivered is a hi-def video version of the opening moments of the Harrods Sale performed in extreme close-up by cellulite-free luvvies in varying stages of orgiastic undress.
I think we have to be very wary of the tendency for examples of overblown dancefilm such as this, to say more and more about less and less.
Mind you, more power to you if you can get some star-struck Arts-Funt Poobahs to stump up the cash. Inviting some hot-looking mates around to your place to bend themselves out of shape in their pants is not a bad alternative to truly innovative choreo-kino creativity.
Go here to see the Wikepedia article on the original work for contrast, comparison and a little critical clarity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_of_the_Medusa
Experimental - Dance theatre
Raft of Medusa from Lutz Gregor on Vimeo.
5 May 2009
Dziga Vertov's Man With A Movie Camera
Dziga Vertov's Man With A Movie Camera - Soviet Union 1929. Production Company: Vufku. Director: Dziga Vertov. Photography: Mihail Kaufman.
His given name was David Abelevich Kaufman, although he adopted the Ukranian Dziga Vertov (lit.trans. Spinning Top)during his early years after the Bolshevik revolution whilst working for Kino-Nedelya (Кино-Неделя, the Moscow Cinema Committee's weekly film series, and the first newsreel series in Russia.
Considered to be one of the most innovative and influential films of the silent era "Man With A Movie Camera" was made 10 years into a very focused film making career. It owed no small debt to a strict and thorough grounding in all of the cinematic techniques available at the time.
Dissolves, split screen, slow motion, freeze frames, whip-panning and Dutch tilts to out-Orson the Welles himself, the film further displays a fundamental grasp of the uses and forms in which cinematic *meta-text* can be exercised.
During the honeymoon early post revolutionary period, gradually freeing itself from the yoke of generations of stifling Russian Imperial bourgeoisism, the nascent thought police of the Soviet State could not prevent a measure of liberalism in artistic circles.
This allowed many of the Russian film makers to get regular access to much of the new cinema techniques being similarly pioneered under the sunny and pollution free skies of California.
Startlingly modern, this film utilizes a groundbreaking style of rapid editing and innumerable new-minted cine-effects to create a work of amazing power, energy and timelessness.
Broad in its cinematic eye, breathtaking in its apparent simplicity, masking a huge scope of urban, industrialised human life in the early 20th century, even prescient about the realities of early 21st Century urban life, MWAMC is entirely unique in its fly-on-the-wall record of life in Soviet Russia in the 1920's.
Subversive by any standards, in the increasingly febrile and propoganda driven atmosphere of officially sanctioned film making of the 1920's Soviet era, Man With A Movie Camera was an object lesson in how the camera or at least, what it sees, can be persuaded to circumvent many of the accepted "truths" of presentation.
This was at a particular time and within a peculiarly constituted political system in which "truth" in its broadest sense whilst becoming less and less evident, was nonetheless valued - particularly among those who understood its value and fragility.
For many commentators and learned cine-critics, it is fair to point out that in many ways Vertov's use of this plethora of techniques served to run counter to his creative view:
"It is far from simple to show the truth, yet the truth is simple."
However, on the basis that despite the use of advanced technologies to prove the moon is not entirely made of cheese, nothing can ever run counter to the actual truth, terrible beauty or sheer poetry of outer space, he comfortably argued against his own proto-Keatsianism with:
"Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the telescope...now they have perfected the cine-camera to penetrate more deeply into the visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten."
In my view, far from being antagonistic, this perceived ambivalence to cinematic artifice allowed Vertov both to explore a far more interesting set of realities beneath surface veneer and still make films which appear to stay "on message".
He succeeds in making to order an "...'aint life fun, fun, FUN here in Moscow amid progroms, secret police surveillance, acute shortages and civil repression..." film, all the while simple yet sophisticated cinematic choices quietly and powerfully imprinting graphic insights into the human condition by what appear to be stock framing decisions, deliberate cinematic cliche and occasional glimpses of stocking-top. A neat trick.
After the fact, Vertov seems to be attempting to find within a formal and quite traditionalist cinematic eye, a whole new set of communicative possibilities to encode a notion of time and linear narrative, but which are nuanced and distinct from the techniques and artefacts still strongly associated with literature and theatrical artifice.
We are fortunate that the movie camera brought in the wake of its invention and early development, one of the few true early examples of Cinema as the first (some might argue, only) self-contained and genuinely novel 20th Century artform.
Complete with all of the distinctions and creative possibilities which result from new ways of "seeing" the world, cinematographers of the time were the doing the equivalent of what this generation of Information Superhighway pioneers and digital film makers are trying to do now - plus ça change....
Whilst not original - Vertov's mentors and direct influences included Eisenstein and DW Griffiths among many - it could be argued that his work was consequent with the rapid commercialisation of "the movies".
Fuelled then, as is still is in the USA, by a voracious capitalist investment and return machine, the advent of talkies further drove cinematography as a catholic art-form for its own sake, towards the commercialisation of an emergent Hollywood aesthetic and its global ilk,
This with all of the imperatives and preoccupations of making fairystory-driven mass-entertainment to get bums on seats.
Dziga Vertov and his pioneering approach, whetehr by accident or design, set out on another road, helping forge a distinctive and sturdy European art-house style of film making, alive and well to this day.
His greatest work coming as it does nearly halfway through his 20 odd year career.
Eventually falling foul of the artistic and personal compromises required of Stalinist social realism, Vertov and his Man With A Movie Camera slides neatly and independantly between the making and presentation of meaning in simplified linear forms to appeal to the widest demographic of consumers in the west and albeit more propoganda-driven versions of the same semi-literate and conceited efforts behind what by 1934, was rapidly becoming an the Iron Curtain in all but name.
There's a piquant irony in those most unlikely of bed-fellows, The Mighty Dollar and The Great Five Year Plan/Leap/March Forward ending up sclerotically staggering around in the same ever-decreasing cinematic circles. At least until the Berlin Wall dropped on them both.
Dziga Vertov's personal blend of montage, multi-layered time frames, character, action, metaphorical juxtaposition and auteurish faux-naivete have been credited with feeding into a divergent and experimental flowering of a third-way of approaching film making.
One which has done much to inform on and inspire the work of directors as diverse as Jean-Luc Goddard and Bresson. His techniques clearly impacting on more audience focused masters of cinema from Kurosawa and Tarkovsky to Kieslowski, Jarmusch and even the Coen Brothers to name a few whose "originality" can so often be attributable to previous technical innovators such as Vertov.
To see the film in its entirety with a brilliant score by The Alloy Orchestra, go here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6910724735856178670&hl=en
Here is a 9.00 minute clip from Youtube, with a more obvious and manipulative soundscape and score.
*meta-text*
Self-reflection on the actual process of making personal creative meaning as a formula.
This mindset can slip into conceited self-regard for the unwary, particularly if they suspect they might have a message for the world.
The notion of a movie audience, watching a man with a movie camera, being watched by another film unit, while the editor (in this case Vertov's wife) is seen splicing the footage of the audience watching a man being watched....all begins to engender the view that at least in terms of POV nothing much is new under the sun.
His given name was David Abelevich Kaufman, although he adopted the Ukranian Dziga Vertov (lit.trans. Spinning Top)during his early years after the Bolshevik revolution whilst working for Kino-Nedelya (Кино-Неделя, the Moscow Cinema Committee's weekly film series, and the first newsreel series in Russia.
Considered to be one of the most innovative and influential films of the silent era "Man With A Movie Camera" was made 10 years into a very focused film making career. It owed no small debt to a strict and thorough grounding in all of the cinematic techniques available at the time.
Dissolves, split screen, slow motion, freeze frames, whip-panning and Dutch tilts to out-Orson the Welles himself, the film further displays a fundamental grasp of the uses and forms in which cinematic *meta-text* can be exercised.
During the honeymoon early post revolutionary period, gradually freeing itself from the yoke of generations of stifling Russian Imperial bourgeoisism, the nascent thought police of the Soviet State could not prevent a measure of liberalism in artistic circles.
This allowed many of the Russian film makers to get regular access to much of the new cinema techniques being similarly pioneered under the sunny and pollution free skies of California.
Startlingly modern, this film utilizes a groundbreaking style of rapid editing and innumerable new-minted cine-effects to create a work of amazing power, energy and timelessness.
Broad in its cinematic eye, breathtaking in its apparent simplicity, masking a huge scope of urban, industrialised human life in the early 20th century, even prescient about the realities of early 21st Century urban life, MWAMC is entirely unique in its fly-on-the-wall record of life in Soviet Russia in the 1920's.
Subversive by any standards, in the increasingly febrile and propoganda driven atmosphere of officially sanctioned film making of the 1920's Soviet era, Man With A Movie Camera was an object lesson in how the camera or at least, what it sees, can be persuaded to circumvent many of the accepted "truths" of presentation.
This was at a particular time and within a peculiarly constituted political system in which "truth" in its broadest sense whilst becoming less and less evident, was nonetheless valued - particularly among those who understood its value and fragility.
For many commentators and learned cine-critics, it is fair to point out that in many ways Vertov's use of this plethora of techniques served to run counter to his creative view:
"It is far from simple to show the truth, yet the truth is simple."
However, on the basis that despite the use of advanced technologies to prove the moon is not entirely made of cheese, nothing can ever run counter to the actual truth, terrible beauty or sheer poetry of outer space, he comfortably argued against his own proto-Keatsianism with:
"Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the telescope...now they have perfected the cine-camera to penetrate more deeply into the visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten."
In my view, far from being antagonistic, this perceived ambivalence to cinematic artifice allowed Vertov both to explore a far more interesting set of realities beneath surface veneer and still make films which appear to stay "on message".
He succeeds in making to order an "...'aint life fun, fun, FUN here in Moscow amid progroms, secret police surveillance, acute shortages and civil repression..." film, all the while simple yet sophisticated cinematic choices quietly and powerfully imprinting graphic insights into the human condition by what appear to be stock framing decisions, deliberate cinematic cliche and occasional glimpses of stocking-top. A neat trick.
After the fact, Vertov seems to be attempting to find within a formal and quite traditionalist cinematic eye, a whole new set of communicative possibilities to encode a notion of time and linear narrative, but which are nuanced and distinct from the techniques and artefacts still strongly associated with literature and theatrical artifice.
We are fortunate that the movie camera brought in the wake of its invention and early development, one of the few true early examples of Cinema as the first (some might argue, only) self-contained and genuinely novel 20th Century artform.
Complete with all of the distinctions and creative possibilities which result from new ways of "seeing" the world, cinematographers of the time were the doing the equivalent of what this generation of Information Superhighway pioneers and digital film makers are trying to do now - plus ça change....
Whilst not original - Vertov's mentors and direct influences included Eisenstein and DW Griffiths among many - it could be argued that his work was consequent with the rapid commercialisation of "the movies".
Fuelled then, as is still is in the USA, by a voracious capitalist investment and return machine, the advent of talkies further drove cinematography as a catholic art-form for its own sake, towards the commercialisation of an emergent Hollywood aesthetic and its global ilk,
This with all of the imperatives and preoccupations of making fairystory-driven mass-entertainment to get bums on seats.
Dziga Vertov and his pioneering approach, whetehr by accident or design, set out on another road, helping forge a distinctive and sturdy European art-house style of film making, alive and well to this day.
His greatest work coming as it does nearly halfway through his 20 odd year career.
Eventually falling foul of the artistic and personal compromises required of Stalinist social realism, Vertov and his Man With A Movie Camera slides neatly and independantly between the making and presentation of meaning in simplified linear forms to appeal to the widest demographic of consumers in the west and albeit more propoganda-driven versions of the same semi-literate and conceited efforts behind what by 1934, was rapidly becoming an the Iron Curtain in all but name.
There's a piquant irony in those most unlikely of bed-fellows, The Mighty Dollar and The Great Five Year Plan/Leap/March Forward ending up sclerotically staggering around in the same ever-decreasing cinematic circles. At least until the Berlin Wall dropped on them both.
Dziga Vertov's personal blend of montage, multi-layered time frames, character, action, metaphorical juxtaposition and auteurish faux-naivete have been credited with feeding into a divergent and experimental flowering of a third-way of approaching film making.
One which has done much to inform on and inspire the work of directors as diverse as Jean-Luc Goddard and Bresson. His techniques clearly impacting on more audience focused masters of cinema from Kurosawa and Tarkovsky to Kieslowski, Jarmusch and even the Coen Brothers to name a few whose "originality" can so often be attributable to previous technical innovators such as Vertov.
To see the film in its entirety with a brilliant score by The Alloy Orchestra, go here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6910724735856178670&hl=en
Here is a 9.00 minute clip from Youtube, with a more obvious and manipulative soundscape and score.
*meta-text*
Self-reflection on the actual process of making personal creative meaning as a formula.
This mindset can slip into conceited self-regard for the unwary, particularly if they suspect they might have a message for the world.
The notion of a movie audience, watching a man with a movie camera, being watched by another film unit, while the editor (in this case Vertov's wife) is seen splicing the footage of the audience watching a man being watched....all begins to engender the view that at least in terms of POV nothing much is new under the sun.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
