The Showgirl & The Detective

A Job I Invented For Myself...

2011-12-02T11:56:00.000-08:00

So, over the summer I became an expert showgirl-spectacle viewer. I write about my experiences at length in my Chapter 2. During one show in Paris, my mind wandered and I began to develop a future consulting job for myself in which I get invited to view shows at rehearsal stage in order to advise how pleasure might be best generated in the show. I pictured my business card, ‘Dr Alison J Carr – showgirl consultant’. I mean, I think I could really help shows out, despite their wonderfulness, they really can make some bad dubious directional decisions. I could help them avoid that and enable them to create appeal for the broadest possible audience. And I could get to see the shows for free.

Viewing Yma at the FredrichstradtPalast, Berlin

2011-12-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

I tried to photograph the interior of this theatre, but without a magazine publishing deal they would not work with me. So I loved the show, but it makes me sad to think about it.

In the dark theatre I could not make notes. I make notes in the pub afterwards:

Voulez Vous Coche Avec Moi number: women groin moves/sex moves. Kicking routine ending in water, Busby Berkely. Homoerotics not sublimated, cave men with Mohawks and one woman with boobs out, men rolling on each other. Men stripping in shower. Dancing in black leggings. Tranny singing. Jumpers in black bodysuits with lime stripes. Girls not fully on beat of music. Smiles! I love smiles! Sex moves. Contemporary choreography and music. Girls over a barre number. I’m Coming Up by Pink – strange disco headwear. Trampy women in ‘cameras-flashing’ number, lace bondage leotards. Short-haired female dancer going for it, my favourite dancer. Tap-dance on a podium Matrix style. Sailor scene, strip for men. Tango with two men and one woman.

Viewing the Paradis A La Folie at the Paradis Latin, Paris

2011-12-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

I also visited Paradis Latin, and here are my notes from that show. At the end of the evening I rode a 'velib' - a bike you can rent in the street, to my friend's flat to say goodbye to her before she travelled back to Berlin. Just some context for you!

Paradis A La Folie: Madness in Paradise. Tourist crowd, same one as Nouvelle Eve. No style. Gaggles of women in 20s. Couples in groups in 40s, boring looking. 2 x couples alone in 50s. Blouse and purple knit jerkin. Australian bus load of 20s in semi-smart clothes (but a bit townie too). And audience on holiday, relaxed, drinking, speaking English. Large Indian family. Lower-middle class demographic? Professionals, skilled workers and students? Banquet tables. Large groups of women. Sparkly diamante hair-band. A straight audience? A photographer comes round, I say no. It’s strange how on the metro if I saw these women I see around me, I’d feel an affinity with them, but not now, in this context. The lights dim. Video projected. Roses outfit, 5 girls, 4 nudes, t-bar tan shoes, all short brown hair, 5 boys. Compère lowered on to stage, a pale pink top hat and tails. Rose nude lowered from ceiling long hair and flower thong, ballet flats, nude with leaves. Ballet pas de deux. Female singer enters from back of auditorium. Rose coloured long dress with large rose neckline. Singer with 4 men and then compère. Showboys for moment, lots of jump steps, tapping, cheeky, cheesy choreography, very Constance Grant Dance Centre. Compère speaks to audience in French, then English. Waiters on stage, the male dressed-up host as we came in, now in drag. In ballet class number at the barre, evolves and more sexy leotard girls come out, very Eric Pridz video. Judo boys – manly??? Music, Daft Punk-esque beats. Steam shower with girls, just towels, 4 girls, strip with tease removing towel. Bit more knowing choreography. Bums in showers – men. More comical choreography. Barbie doll bodies – hairdown, swish hair head roll. Rave disco scene – techno. Pop/street dance influences unzipped skeleton wet suits. Goes to black, zip up full skeleton suit. Oh-la-la song. Girls in Adidas type track suit bottoms. Compère back, black suit. Angelou, unicycling bar tender. The formula makes me think of the ‘70s. Country fair carousel, rotating with girls on as architecture – blonde pageboys. Opens up into 4 girls in leathers on motorbikes, take off helmets and shake out blonde hair. Strip off to boob harness and thong. Dance on bike, arched back. Hair swinging. Rope and man in white pants – ‘Christopher’ – sublime smile – Tarzan/Indiana Jones music. Shaved armpits, arm decoration, sequinned shorts. Very flit, flexible, was he an Olympic gymnast 15 years ago? The guy spotting him is a star too. Montagues and Capulets Prokofiev music, period dress. Court dance, with boobs, pas de deux scene from Romeo & Juliet. Strip off to under-net, they marry, sexy ballet?? Hip hop tribute to Romeo & Juliet. 4 girls in waistcoats, jeans and Trilbys, 5 boys in just jeans and Trilbys. Body hair free evening. Boys as objects. 17tth Century Louis 15^th number, girls as boys court dancing, boys strip off and stay, girls leave. Real boys in same sort of outfit and they strip off too. 2 sets of boys dance together. Bouillon? Tap-dancing juggler. Can-can, better costume, better choreography (than La Nouvelle Eve). Girl tumbler, 3 boy tumblers. Compère in white tails. Thanks technicians, dressers, musicians, front of house. Cheerleaders, singer in long white gown – Marie. No fake boobs. Crossdresser type dame goes back and forth between male/female dress.

Viewing Paris je t’aime at La Nouvelle Eve, Paris

2011-12-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

I visited the the smaller scale cabaret 'La Nouvelle Eve', and drank a small bottle of champagne, included in the ticket price, whilst making these notes:

Audience: tourists, families – large Indian family. Middle aged couples, girls aged 10, boys aged 13? Australian student group. Young smart couple, 20? Middle aged large group, breaks up into men and women. Two German women in 60s. Everyone dressed up smart. American father and son. Preppy Americans in front of me. Opening number, 10 women, 4 men. Is this chorography dated? Disco-ball entrance, blonde-singer, g-string. 5 girls techno-beat number, red top with cut out heart on sternum, more commercial dance. 4 boys enter, girls leave. 3 girls back – smiles! Topless dancer, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Sparkle sleeves, original. I like the dancers, personality. Head-dresses, just hair up, understated. Blonde-singer comes on with very Moulin Rouge headdress. Topless, singing. She doesn’t have ‘it’ fully. Two men juggling with hats. Black waistcosts, white shirts and trousers. Australian audience member pulled up on stage – juggler speaks English – tourist language. Cancan – three boys in red and black, two girls in pink. Ten-girl line, multicoloured costumes. Lots of yelping, like wildcats. Boy cartwheels and tumbles, takes centre-stage, why? Kicking music, same as Constance Grant Dance Centre uses (my dancing school). Three boys come on. Boy doing jumping splits – why? All girls in twos, 2 girls dancing together. Mr Bean type clown enters. Physical comedy. New number, 4 girls in trousers and 2 boys – all in the same costume, 5 girls in floppy drop-waisted dresses, 2 couples come on. Feels fresh, dramatic tango-like. Girls are boys in the choreography. Nice use of back. Cuban-heeled Oxfords on girls as boys, boys in a flatter heel but that’s the only difference in costume. Music is a bit Eurovision. 4 boys from Grease, 2 girls on ribbons, topless in S & M harnesses. They leave. Black strap costumes – nice. Blonde singer is ‘Arta’ the star girl/compère is a better dancer than singer. No singing. Topless male, more manly. White costume dancer with ballet-flats and thong. Enigma type music for ballet. Arta back in long backless frock. Good set of lungs on her. I don’t like her bottle blonde bob. Jazz Hot Baby – blue leotards and bows, pillbox hats. Great costume, not used enough. Jazz Hot – great song, would love a bit more tapping out. Arte talks in every langue – she’s like a flight announcement. Frothy, needs balls. Arta gets 4 audience men to dance on stage. Really?? A bride as a prize?? Bit weird. Bit buy-a-Russian-bride. Man comes on stage with showgirl holding a baby. Weird. Like Fire number, film Showgirls hand-move. Arte, she’s good, but I want a larger personality to carry the show, she’s slightly lacking in charisma. How do shows queer themselves? Finale black and pink. Love Me, 6 girls, topless, platform shoes for shorter dancers. Oui Je T’aime finale number.

Viewing Féerie at the Moulin Rouge

2011-12-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

In the summer I went to view a number of showgirl spectacles in Paris. During the shows I made notes. I wrote down descriptions and on the spot analyses of the displays in front of me. I typed up my notes with the hope of using them in my writing, however I have found it hard to make them useful. As I just cut the words from my Chapter 2, I thought I'd recycle them here. This is what I wrote from my not very good seat at the side of the stage, at the end of table I shared with noisy disinterested patrons.

Dance, Dance white caps, disco-dancing. Older showboys. Thong bum. Parle Dance? Long hair through caps, high kicks, glitter. Aujhord’hui 3 singing bun-heads, mics on face, string beads for a top. Pleat skirt with feather trim. Camp dancing. 3 nudes high-kicking. Male dancers, dry ice, uniform-type hats, marching. Female voice – la la. Women with coloured trim dresses. As girlfriends to soldiers. Bead top. Boobs covered for some. Red dancing pom pom. Slim thighs. Amazing costumes with moving parts. Juggler act to techno music. Pirate number, men. Hookers for pirates, hair down. Boobs out and harnesses. Sultry looking faces. Pith helmet – safari suit. Orientalism outfit. Harem with beads and harem women. Strange fan-like headdresses. Cat-like women – leopards, enter wailing – ahhhhh, fight with soldier guards. Body ripples. Medusa. Blonde girl slave enter. Jumps into pool with snakes. Snake dance underwater! Kisses snake. Couple fly in on string in neon and UV light. Orientialism. Pantomime. Real boobs. Featured act – male and female acrobat. East-European looking. Circus type ringmaster. Clowns – men – mini horses walk on x 6. Kossacks!!! Orientalism less successful than using tropes from entertainment – girl clown number. Pointing to own construction – more useful. 2 girls in one dress. Lions – dancers as lions. Wide trousers on clowns. Drum bit featured act. Audience interaction. Mexico – big sceam from crowd “Mexi-co!!” “China” “Ukraine” “Brazil”. Drunk woman – act – dancers clubbing, comedy. Cancan, no men. Men. All cartwheel. All cartwheel and splits – but male extra-flex man! Boogie Woogie number. 3 singing women – English – all other in French – short-hair wigs. Punks/Cher costume – zip t-shirt. ‘New Generation’??? 3 girls and all men. “I will survive!” song. Tom of Finland hat and jacket – strange Eastern European Eurovision moment. Stage lowered with men. Mirror ball man – over the top pink costumes. Hip wiggle move. Wardrobe malfunction - lights not on on one side of pack. Pink boots, thigh high and ankle.

Showgirls Commentary

2011-08-19T05:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I plan blogs, and I plan them so much with ideas in my head and notes in my notebook that basically they never happen. Over thinking. And other times, I just think of something and want to get it out there so it manifests somehow. That's what I'm doing now. As an artist, I am meant to be thinking about making art. In a studio. But I find myself thinking all kinds of things I'd like to do, usually nowhere near a studio. It's nice to spend time alone - like this summer - in Berlin, Paris and London, away from normal life, to let those ideas of all kinds rush to me, through me and wash over me. Like waves. Some of the water will stick though, and I'll take the idea forward and it will manifest in art. For now, though, maybe its fun to treat the ideas as the end product, the thing. So, one idea I had whilst watching Basic Instinct with Camille Paglia's commentary was that I'd like to do commentaries on films too. It would be like writing but better. I like writing because you have to give your ideas form on a page, but I like thoughts in themselves, and writing is just a carrier for your thoughts. Talking is my favourite thought carrier. But that's tricky. I mean, how do I get my talked thoughts 'out there', so they exist as a professional output? Why, is that important, you might ask. Well, the more thoughts I get out there 'in the world', and the more that people receive those thoughts (maybe like them? I can but hope) then the more freedom and potential for getting a wage I have. I am not after millions, just something to live on. I'm saying this because I have one more year of stipend at Sheffield Hallam University, so I can feel pennilessness rush towards me to steal my style. But freedom and a wage. That's what its about isn't it? It is for me. No outward signifiers necessary. The wage I blow on DVDs, audiobooks, books, second-hand dresses, make-up and haircuts (if I could have a bit more money I could have more frequent haircuts then I'd really have style).

None of this is the point. This is all off the point. These are idea waves.

What I was trying to say was, I would like to do an audio commentary for the films that I'll look at in my PhD research like Showgirls; Gilda; Dance, Girl, Dance; On Tour; Dancing Lady and Stage Door. The question is, and its the same question for everything I do at present, is it 'art' or 'writing'. A hybrid? How would it be disseminated? Could it be a DVD or something online, or an mp3 you have to play whilst you watch?

I have ideas in the moment, in the experience. The thereness. The in the moment. Like when I was watching spectacles this summer: Yma at FriedrichstadtPalast in Berlin and Moulin Rouge, Nouvelle Eve, Paradis Latin in Paris. I thought some really big thoughts. About what I was watching, about how to penetrate the spectacle, about visual pleasure, about how spectacle can be queered, or not, how it might evolve. My (dream) future life as a Professor of Showgirls, Desire and Art in which I am paid as a consultant to develop new shows that are both progressive and traditional. A life in which I do not have to pay to see shows, at least. And theatres give me access to photograph their auditoriums (unlike FriedrichstadtPalast, by the way. They said I could get access if I was to get the photographs published - going on a gallery wall is not enough, apparently. So if you could enable me to get a magazine commission for the interior of the FriedrichstadtPalast, then, let's talk).

If I could create an audio commentary for seeing spectacle, now that would be cool. Like an audio guide for galleries and museums. Only for spectacle. Maybe it would be for all shows, including burlesque. Huh, I really should do that shouldn't I.

Make Me Up

2011-06-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

Today I marched in Berlin's Alternative Gay Pride. Well, walk, not march. No military precision involved. I was thinking about make-up. I saw lots of smeared, daubed blobs and moustache swirls in eyeliner. Glittery skin surfaces transferring onto unglittered skin. Full-face tranny make-up – not a square millimetre of skin without a trowel full of make-up – hard lines at the edges of the colour swathes on eyelids.

Make-up seems important to me. If I can be certain of nothing – nothing essential about myself, no theoretical life-line author to cling to – lost in the PhD sea, swimming out in high tide without a life vest – all of which is true – I have to ask myself, frequently, who am I? What do I desire? What do I want? What do I want you to think about me? I cannot answer any of these questions. But I do know, that I love two things, intensely: make-up and dancing. By which I mean – make-up has been for me, the means of self-creation, -invention, -construction since I first started wearing it when I was I guess around 11 or 12. It seems more important than ever. I do, of course wonder if people think of me as a pantomime dame and/or a joke with my intricately blended turquoise and teal shading and red lips. But that’s how I need to fix myself up. That’s what I need to do to feel like I am me. Not everyday. This is not an addiction and I am no case for body dysmorphia. But if I have time to do my full-face, then I will. And of course, dancing. I am not saying I love dancing because I am any good, but rather, that sense of bodily freedom, pleasure, elation – happiness in my own skin. I don’t know. I’m trying to tell you, I’m trying to say – make-up and dancing – they are tools for thinking – they are daily practices that take me further on my journey…. my journey to say something about what we need feminism for, what we need it to be enable us – to be how we want to be in the world, to think how we want to think, speak, laugh, love, desire, be.

And so I ‘marched’ with my face on. My real face. The smeared abject make-up around me, make-up that can move, shift around, slimy, glittery and transfers across cheeks is social, bodily, temporary. Played for laughs. It’s fun because the wearers don’t wear it regularly, it moves around because there is no commitment to it, it’s a quotation. But my face is for real. I put it on around noon and it stayed exactly put, no movement, no red-lipstick kisses on cheeks from my mouth. It’s not so over-the-top its camp. My red lips and turquoise eyes are me. I bought the good stuff (MAC and Illamasqua) and put it on with good brushes, sealed it in place. This is work, and I care about it. It’s not a joke. It’s my face. This is who I am, the essential me. That I washed off at 2am.

Follow Up

2011-06-24T18:00:00.000-07:00

It’s the following day and I just went to the supermarket to buy some food. When I came out, one the Neanderthals from the night before was in the street. He did not recognise me. I had no make-up on, blue pedal pushers, a white blouse and a coral cardigan.

My Body, A Tool For Thinking

2011-06-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

Through my PhD I use my body as a tool for thought. A case study. A testbed. Tonight I went out in Berlin, in a nice outfit. I try to look nice / smart all the time – even more consciously now. At CalArts, such complicated feelings about my body arose that it felt the preferable option to stay overweight, to allow myself to gain weight, loose touch with my body: that appendage below my head I carried around. But not now, in this inquiry. I want to be the impenetrable, tight, theory-hard body.

I guess Lacan would say I chose to be the object of desire. But I know from experience, sometimes we choose to be, and sometimes we choose not to be. Tonight, I thought I looked good. I was wearing a black dress with white dots from Oasis, cropped leggings, black 2-inch buckle shoes, turquoise raincoat. I fixed my face with eyeliner and red lipstick. Oh my word, I could feel eyes on me. I become so aware of the gaze in public. I mean, could they stop staring? I did not choose this! I am not an object for Neanderthals on public transport! I am the object so that I look together, to conceal the wobbly mess I am. I am the object to give myself an outline around myself, an edge I can see around myself in the mirror. I am the object because I am constructed in any case, so I might as well construct myself! I am the object because I feel better when I put myself together well. I am the object because this is my tool for thinking.

Dancing with Bandage

2011-06-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

When I danced with a bandaged wrist in 2008, one week after surgery, I guess I was performing the abject, penetrable body. I was on heavy painkillers and danced to music I had never heard before – a reprisal of my performance piece ‘Me Against the Music’. I don’t really know what happened (do you ever when you perform), but I do know that my friend was cross with me for making her worry – she thought I was pushing my body too hard and wouldn’t feel it because of the painkillers. I have photographs, I never saw the video – too hard to get hold of. There I am, in clothes chosen for there ease of pulling on, with my arms outstretched with a huge bulging blob on the end of my right arm. The class performance evening was re-scheduled from the week before, because I fell and broke my wrist in three places as I warmed up in F200 in CalArts, half an hour before the original performance evening was due to start.

My Body

2011-06-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

My body seems to know things I do not know. Or, at least, I have observed it’s critically timed messages (rebellions?). I guess there is a battle for supremacy between my brain and my body. My brain can think and generate thoughts and words. But my body can call the shots. Let me recount an instance. Last year, I gave my first conference paper in Newcastle. Not only did I speak words, I danced a section of it. When I woke up very early on the morning of the conference, to catch the train to Newcastle, I realised I had very itchy toes. Athlete’s bloody foot! I hadn’t had it for years! I had my outfit planned out, which involved a trusty pair of blue t-bar shoes with a two-inch heel. Closed toe. So, I put on a pair of ugly, comfy Crocs sandals and took the pretty shoes in my bag. I switched the shoes over just outside the conference venue. On my way up the stairs to where the conference was held, an ugly sandal fell out my bag. I did not notice until a man ran after me with ugly shoe. I was mortified! Not only was I nervous at the ridiculously maschocistic nature of my presentation, but my body was telling me who was boss! There is nothing like my own body to make me look stupid at any moment!

Love Letter to LA

2011-04-03T09:21:00.001-07:00

I am gently encouraging myself to write an introduction to next Saturday's symposium 'How Do We Look?'. I have just typed the following. I am not going to use it. So, I am pasting it here. It makes no sense other than as a visual to help me think.

Imagine I find a hand-written love letter on the street in LA. I pick it up, and wilfully, misinterpret the letter as a love letter to the city itself. Not wishing to remove this letter from its original location (perhaps its author will return), I quickly write the contents of the letter. My new version is to no-one and from no-one. It is in my rushed handwriting and I do not know how much it bares resemblance to the original text.

Today

2011-01-13T10:42:00.000-08:00

Here are a few things about my day today. Driving to Hallam this morning, I was thinking about the loveliness of Rita Hayworth. I was thinking about the way she is remembered more for the tragedy in her life, rather than the virtuosity of her dancing. I remembered the quote I am using in my first chapter :

"Hayworth’s was a frank and open beauty. Her smile dazzled; her strong lithe body was amazingly fluid. Unabashedly sexual, she also possessed a playful abandon that the screen had not seen before."[1]

Then I was interim-assessing my third years - a conversation with them and another member of staff about their work and how they are going to approach their degree show. Bless them, I love them all and want them to do so well. All the things you hear about parenting I could apply to my experience of teaching. I feel, by turns, so proud, so disappointed, and so anxious that they will find their wings and fly. What I never realised was how teaching affects you, I'm constantly questioning if I am doing ok by students, if I am supporting them enough. Oh! I want them to do well, I don't think I will every forget this group of third years, my first to support through the degree show and dissertation. They are teaching me how to be a teacher.

Walking up to my car, I passed the star of the Crucible's Me and My Girl, Daniel Crossley, and so I couldn't help myself, I blurted out congratulations like a crazed fan. Perhaps I should own it, I am a crazed fan. I saw Crossley in A Chorus Line when I worked at Sheffield Theatres and I thought he was such an amazing and highly talented dancer, capable of real pathos in his role of Paul. In this current show, which he leads, he uses all that real dance-skill and pathos, but adds comic timing and charisma. Its an amazing show exemplifying the best of the musical genre, and I guess, I am a proud-fan. But I'm not alone Daily Telegraph Review, and you can hear him here Audioboo.

I got home and found the Picture Post (Vol. 6 No.11, March 16, 1940) I bought on E-bay waiting for me. I bought it for the 'Girls in Cabaret' article, I wish I could type out the whole text, because its difficult to pull quotes from and the whole thing is interesting. However, what really drew my eye was the wording of the adverts: not only because of their quaint, old-fashioned language, but also because of how current they still feel, in terms of the hard-sell for example:

"At 40 her skin is only 25. Why do some women look fresh and youthful with a minimum use of cosmetics while the complexion of others begins to age in youth? Remember that your skin reaches critical age before your figure. You know that the way to keep your skin young is to keep the pores clean. You have been told that before. But you may not know the one cleanser that will do this better than cream, better than water.

This one cream is Avocado Beauty Milk, made by Coty from the oil of Calavo Avocado pear, which has greater penetrating power than cream or water. Coty Avocado Beauty Milk searches out hidden particles of powder and rouge, buried deep in the base of the pores, and floats them out to the surface.

If you want to keep your skin young and get the most out of the cosmetics you use, get some Coty Avocado Beauty Milk right away. Your skin will feel fresher and cleaner. What is more, your powder will go on better than ever"

I just googled Avocado Beauty Milk, and I can't find it, I was hoping to get myself some…

Right, its time I get going to my dance classes – tonight its Jazz and Tap – wa-hoo!

[1] Majorie Rosen (1973) Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies and the American Dream, 1974 third edn. New York: Avon p.224.

Burlesque?

2011-01-09T04:53:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday morning and I'm typing in bed, watching Bugsy Malone on Film Four. Last night I went to see the film Burlesque, the one with Cher and Christina Aguilera. Oh dear, oh dear. I was forewarned by NY Times Review, but I had to go. I think the theme concept for summing it up, is apropo nothing. The lines, scenes, story line seemed like a disconnected re-hash of cliches. The script must have been made from the off cuts of standard studio rom-coms, and old back-stage musicals of the 1930s. Wait, that makes it sound better than it was. Let me interject that Bugsy Malone has a script and an original score, its low budget and its played by children, and its excellent. Compare that to Burlesque. A film without a script. With way to much dialogue, delivered with tacky-teen soap style 'acting'. And a huge budget.

So you don't have to watch it, here is the storyline in full:

1. girl arrives in LA from small town, no contacts, just some talent and tenacity

2. girl finds club, can't get an audition, works the bar

3. girl auditions and she can dance

4. girl proves she can sing too, becomes star of the show

5. girls apartment is broken into

6. girl moves into boy's flat

7. girl has no family (mum died when she was 7)

8. boy is poor, musically talented and engaged

9. girl meets rich man with no scrupples

10. some girl/girl rivalry

11. club owner about to loose club

12. boy breaks off engagement

13. girl saves the club financially

14. girl and boy get together.

This leaves a number of unanswered questions: this started life as a script by the wonderful Diablo Cody (see Juno), what happened? Why the shaky irritating handheld style camera work? How did they manage to make a film called 'Burlesque' without any stripping? How come the stage in the club is three times larger than bar are for patrons?

What the film does explore is the LA/Vegas revue format, like Forty Deuce, which borrows from the aesthetics of burlesque and the Paris revue Crazy Horse. The film does create a great little club, with great acts, costumes and sets, with lots of homages to Fosse. Some of the songs are ok, but what about this: ditch the pretence of a 'storyline', and make a film of the revue - let's see all the acts, no shaky camera-work, and more new big-band style songs written for the film. And Bugsy Malone's ending so its my cue to get up...

We could of been anything that we wanted to be

Yes, that decision was ours

It's been decided

We're weaker divided

Let friendship double up our powers

You give a little love and it all comes back to you

la la la la la la la

You know your gonna be remembered for the things that you say and do

la la la la la la la

Collaborator Wish List

2010-12-17T10:26:00.000-08:00

This is my desert island wish list, excluding friends or any actual collaborations past, present or future.

1. Adam Cooper, dancer
2. If not the above then Anton du Beke
3. Ben Drew aka Plan B
4. Or Paloma Faith? I'd have to meet them both to make the final decision.
5. Forced Entertainment
6. Rose English (I'd just be her apprentice)

This list broadly takes in my perception that I think I could actually work with these people. I haven't included visual artists because if I love their work, then I'd just be assisting them, or being a fan around them. I genuinely interested in the idea of making artwork from people outside my own art bubble.

Actually, I really like working with other people, and I'd love to work closely with dancers, perhaps a showgirl? also, I'd love do something in a theatre setting, so perhaps a writer too?

Right, well, let's see what Santa brings from that lot...

New Work

2010-12-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

Wow, this year is hurtling to an end. I always feel like I did barely anything over a year, but perception and reality are strange things. I'm not sure how my year went, I only know what I did not achieve.

I did however have a comforting moment of putting some large new work on the walls of the old S1 Artspace before they moved. Sadly, only for a meeting with my supervisors and also I stepped in and showed the work to my students in my crit group when the student showing texted me concussed in hospital. The work is an ongoing pairing of theatre interior and text bios. The bios are sourced from 1930s cigarette cards or online web presences. The work represents the public viewing spaces of the showgirl and theorists connected to my research. The project will be ongoing throughout my PhD.

Kitty's Debut

2010-12-05T08:00:00.001-08:00

On Thursday I shall travel to London to watch a very good friend’s debut burlesque performance. Having taken a class since the summer, the evening represents the culmination of the group’s commitment and hard work over the months to become their own burlesque stars. The anticipation and terror of performing publicly, revealing yourself to the crowd is something I too experience as I deliver conference papers or very occasionally I perform either as an amateur dancer or as an artist-performer. Nothing can rival the elation of braving the public gaze; presenting yourself as you are, performing for all you are worth, and exiting the stage knowing you have given your all. Roland Barthes the French theorist and decoder of the images that surround us, wrote a short essay “Striptease”, in which he interprets the female performer as she disrobes.^[1] The ‘classic props’ of striptease, Barthes writes, locate the female body in the domain of the object: ‘the whole spectrum of adornment constantly makes the living body return to the category of luxurious objects’. The final item of clothing, the sequinned g-string, hard and shiny, ‘drives the woman back into a mineral world, the (precious) stone being here the irrefutable symbol of absolute object, that which serves no purpose’.^[2] Amateur performers fail to turn themselves into objects through their lack of technique and inability to correctly handle their props. Thus, mastery of technique, dance ability, and adept execution of costume and props are professional skills. The performer must invest effort (tuition, practice, time, purchase of costumes and props) into turning themselves into objects; the striptease and its preparations are acts of self-objectification, prior to any gaze. My friend Kitty, therefore is currently self-objectifying as she prepares herself for her debut. What I am interested to find out as she exits the stage is, for whom has she performed?

[1] Roland Barthes (1972) Mythologies trans. Annette Lavers, London: Vintage, 1993 pp. 84-87.

[2] Ibid p.85.

Reading and Writing (the Problem)

2010-12-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

Argh! A couple of years ago, I felt called upon to really investigate problems my practice threw up (and I mean that phrase). So I started to write; to articulate my thoughts in written form. Now, as I undertake this PhD, I read and write regularly. And the more I know and learn, the more I am embarrassed about anything I have ever written! Can I believe my own front?! I've found some lovely articulations of the problems and thoughts I wish to work through, so I shall quote them here. With great thanks to their author, Craig Owens, whose words here could be re-interpreted into a manifesto. Perhaps I can get into dialogue with them later. Or, I need to confront the problem and take up the challenge of the last sentence.

Among those prohibited from Western representation, whose representations are denied all legitimacy, are women. Excluded from representation by its very structure, they return within it as a figure for—a representation of—the unrepresentable (Nature, Truth, the Sublime etc). This prohibition bears primarily on woman as the subject, and rarely as the object of representation, for there is certainly no shortage of images of women. [ … ] In order to speak, to represent herself, a woman assumes a masculine position; perhaps this is why femininity is frequently associated with masquerade, with false representation, with simulation and seduction.¹

What can be said about the visual arts in a patriarchal order that privileges vision over the other senses? Can we not expect them to be a domain of masculine privilege—as their histories indeed prove them to be—a means perhaps, of mastering through representation the “threat” posed by the female? In recent years there has emerged a visual arts practice informed by feminist theory and addressed, more or less explicitly, to the issue of representation and sexuality. [ … ] [W]omen have begun the long-overdue process of deconstructing femininity. Few have produced new, “positive” images of a revised femininity; to do so would simply supply and thereby prolong the life of the existing representational apparatus.²

1. Craig Owens (1992) Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press pp 166-190, p.170.

2. Ibid p.180.

My Song (With Thanks to Laura Mulvey and Kander and Ebb / All That Jazz)

2010-11-21T03:14:00.001-08:00

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance,

pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.

The determining male gaze projects its phantasy onto the female figure, which is sty~~~led accordingly.

In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at

and

displayed,

with their appearance coded for strong visual impact

so~that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at~~~-ness.

Woman displayed as sexual object is leitmotif of erotic spectacle: from pin ups to strip-tea~~~se,

from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holds the look, plays to

and signifies

male desire.

Mainstream film neatly combined spectacle and narrative.

(Note~however, how in the musical song-and-dance numbers interrupt the flow

of the diegesis.) The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film,

yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a

story-

line.

Gilda's Song: Put the Blame on Mame

2010-11-21T03:13:00.000-08:00

When they had the earthquake in San Francisco

Back in nineteen-six

They said old Mother Nature

Was up to her old tricks

That’s the story that went around

But here’s the real lowdown

Put the blame on Mame, boys

Put the blame on Mame

One night she started to shim and shake

That brought on the Frisco quake

So you can put the blame on Mame, boys

Put the blame on Mame

They once had a shootin’ up in the Klondike

When they got Dan McGrew

Folks were putting the blame on

The lady known as Lou

That’s the story that went around

But here’s the real lowdown

Put the blame on Mame, boys

Put the blame on Mame

Mame did a dance called the hootchie-coo

That’s the thing that slew McGrew

Put the blame on Mame, boys

Put the blame on Mame

Judy Confronts the Audience

2010-11-21T03:10:00.000-08:00

Go on, laugh, get your money’s worth. No one’s going to hurt you. I know you want me to tear my clothes off so you can look your fifty cents’ worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you. What do you suppose we think of you up here with your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of? We know it’d the thing of the moment for the dress suits to come and laugh at us too. We’d laugh right back at the lot of you, only we’re paid to let you sit there and roll your eyes and make your screamingly clever remarks. What’s it for? So you can go home when the show’s over, strut before your wives and sweethearts and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I’m sure they see through you. I’m sure they see through you just like we do!^[1]

[1] Judy’s direct address to the audience in Dorothy Arzner’s (1940) Dance, Girl, Dance [film], RKO Radio Pictures.

Watching the Vegas Showgirl

2010-08-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

Whilst in Vegas I watched the following shows; Crazy Girls, X-Burlesque and Vegas The Show! The first two were small scale revues. Crazy Girls (http://www.lasvegas-nv.com/crazy-girls.htm) featured a variety of female dancers, some with excellent training and performance-personality, whilst others who seemed to specialise in their boob job. I was unfortunate enough to get a front-row seat, which meant that I felt like my gaze was on view to the audience, and the dancers, I became self-conscious. Wonderful dancing meant I could get over myself, but a large foam penis-prop used to sit on in one number made me so unbelively embarrased and made the whole show tacky, rather than knowingly tacky in a guilty pleasure way. However, the show was fun overall.

X-Burlesque was a lack-lustre amateur job, nothing burlesque about it (http://shop.vegas.com/shows/showtimes2.jsp?show=1007#show_review). Totally unworthy of the word burlesque. The dancers were standard, with little charisma, and the numbers felt they owed much to the R'n' B video genre - if only they could be competently danced. Pretty darned awful.

Vegas The Show! (http://www.vegastheshow.com/) proved even Vegas can have moments of self-reflexivity, and this large-scale musical looked back on the past glories of the town and quite incredibly, paid tribute to Sammy Davis Jr who had to fight incredible overt racism in order to enter through the front door at a venue in which he was top-billing. A wonderful old-style revue to put a spring in my step.

Special Collections Archive UNLV

2010-08-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

Went to University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) special collection to meet the women who started the oral history archive there, and read some of their transcripts http://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/) . The testimonies of the various Las Vegas showgirls were amazing, and addressed such wide issues from technique, upbringing, travel and visa arrangements, racism in Vegas etc. They make for amazing reads and I managed to photocopy some of the best. This made me wonder about using appropriated interviews too. I’m not sure I have to be the interviewer, I’m just really interested in the voice of the showgirl. It still doesn’t quite answer the question of what I will do with the interview material, but it got me thinking about it.

Watching the Parisien Showgirl

2010-08-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

I saw the show at the Lido (http://www.lido.fr/us/cabaret-paris.html) and had great fun. It was so camp its indescribable. They feature showboys in their show as well as showgirls, and I have to say they just made me cringe (I’m cringing so much I cannot bring myself to type a description of their worst costume). A featured act was a male acrobat who performed on two long bits of material. He was incredibly strong and flexible and his costume was a small pair of white shorts. I was interested to think about this. Through the use of his body, he displayed both a masculinity (strength) and femininity (fluidity in his movements and flexibility), this routed his performance outside of camp, somehow and located him in some sort of more serious object-of-desire place, in a way that the showgirls operate. The showboys, on the other hand, are total camp, in a way that sort of negates their skill and makes them look like a Butlins act. They are not any sort of object of desire, they are, as far as I could tell, a tacky joke. Of course, I have no access to the spectrum of responses that a gay male spectator might have, and who knows, perhaps they function as an object of desire for them. My point is, for me, showboys, no. (From other performance instances I can say, male showgirls, yes).

Watching Crazy Horse (http://www.lecrazyhorseparis.com/) I lost my visual innocence. The cabaret featured a troupe of female dancers, who performed butt-naked except for a very small strip of what looked like black gaffer tape, strategically placed. Although there was an audience roughly evenly split between men and women, I felt transgressive watching it, as though the whole spectacle was directed towards a male spectator and not me. It was by far the most knowing caberet-revue I have seen. It reputedly crosses over with burlesque as earlier this year Dita Von Teese was their featured artist. However, I think this says more about Dita’s hetero-normative position within burlesque that she can cross over into more overt stripping contexts, rather than Crazy Horse’s closeness to burlesque.

I felt that the show did a number of things in terms of styling and choreography that took the whole thing far closer to a gentlemen's club dance context. For example, the lighting and choreography dissected the bodies so that we saw perhaps, only legs performing. I found the amount that we did not see the faces of the performers quite shocking. There was no opportunity for the performers to ‘send-up’ the performance with their faces in darkness or out of view. I found this the hardest aspect to handle. I also felt that the repetitive use of the arched-back position that pushes the bum out moved the performances away from mainstream theatrical dance technique (which is often clearly visible in burlesque performances and particularly at the Lido) and more towards of gentleman’s club stripping. I realised watching the Crazy Horse that I actually need to watch strip shows featuring lap and pole dancing so that I can write about the gaps and overlaps between the different styles of performing I’m interested in. The show also featured some numbers that felt really disturbing and uncomfortable, for example a solo performance with a dancer who commenced her number tied up in ropes, and then used the ropes as props to perform on. It’s S&M references felt shallow and quite frankly, anti-women.

The featured act was a male tap duo, which came as a blessed relief. Fully clothed, the two were fully spot-lit, used their faces, audience interaction, humour and a number of different tap dancing ‘quotes’ to create an entertaining number. And then we had to return to the strobe-lit naked women. It was like our one moment of fun. The seriousness of the naked women was alienating, I longed to see some smiling faces!

Glamour Etymology

2010-06-30T17:25:00.000-07:00

“The word glamour (magic charm, alluring beauty or charm, a spell affecting the eye, a kind of haze in the air) comes from the Scottish term gramarye (magic, enchantment, spell), an alteration of the English word grammar (any sort of scholarship)” http://ewonago.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/etymology-of-glamour/

I want to be a theorist. I want to be a showgirl. These two desires, which I try to reconcile, are brought together in the etymology of glamour. The glamour-spell affecting the eye. The spell of the viewer cursed to interpret what s/he sees. We can never believe what we see, because we are constantly trying to peer through the haze of our own projections onto what we see. The haze can never clear, we can never see something on its own terms because we are not mechanically viewing devices; cameras. We are interpreting subjects, condemned to only ever see through our own flawed eyes.

The Subjectification of Leigh Ledare's Mom

2010-06-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

Review of Leigh Ledare: The Confectioner's Confectioner, 16th April - 5th June, Pilar Corrias, London

Leigh Ledare’s ongoing photography work generously reveals the relationship he has with his mother. In the recent solo show at Pilar Corrias fragments from his childhood, notes written by Tina/Mom and himself make explicit some elements of their relationship. Tina/Mom’s thoughts on models is a beautiful ode to the creativity of the photographer’s model, her informal hand-written will expose the love and trust she places in Leigh. A narrative develops through the notes; the relationship with Dad ended, and Leigh, in some way become Mom’s man/boy. She talked to him, revealed herself emotionally and physically. As a ballet dancer, she was trained to be invested in her body, her artistic tool. This is the back story. One day, Tina/Mom asks Leigh to photograph her, to record her aging, vulnerable body now, before it is too late, before the flesh decays into an unphotographable state; before it can no longer be the object. And so Leigh dutifully does. Complicit in this recording, he is the third person in the room whilst Tina/Mom gets it on with Leigh-substitute boys. Her acts performed for Leigh, a performance for his benefit. Does she want to arouse Leigh? Make him jealous? Or push him to reject her out of repulsion for her sexuality, her aggressive exhibitionism designed to ensnare Leigh in an Oedipal game. Does she want him to throw down the camera and fuck her, pushing aside his replacement? Sometimes she is naked and alone, still enjoying her sexuality, but without a partner, less performed. If Leigh did not record this, if he did not have his camera in the room, how would he have reacted? How did he react, used as Tina/Mom’s sexual documenter?

Which answers the question, how can a sexually explicit photograph of a woman present without question the subjectivity of that woman, before or even preventing the objectification of that woman? Through the Oedipal narrative, Leigh becomes less the exploiting photographer and more an equal participant with the subject. The two locked into their fixed positions. The captions with the photographs, descriptively position the image contents. But even without such contexts, within the image frame, the faint silvery traces of stretch marks on Tina/Mom’s stomach testify to her mother status and jar with her version of maternal she is therefore enacting.

Leigh reaches beyond this project to challenge his own position from outside this mother-son courtship. Understanding the plane of representation as ‘the site of the trauma’, the place in which his Mom revealed herself to him, but in a sense foreclosed other possibilities of their relationship, he places himself in Mom’s position by re-enacting her fantasies by being the fantasy for other women. Leigh becomes women’s object, the Leigh-object: a gift for mother? Leigh-photographer becomes Leigh-model relinquishing the responsibilities of the lens.

In The Archive

2010-05-13T12:59:00.000-07:00

Today I wore white cotton gloves and handled photographs in the research room at the National Media Museum in Bradford. I am looking at two kinds of glamour, a very perfect one, with dreamy colours, courtesy of Walter Bird, and a slightly more real one, from the Daily Herald archive. The reportage of dancing lines, rehearsal stretches, promotional poses on beaches/airports/streets outside venues. Something real slips into the photos unnoticed, working against the artifice, tearing a whole in the glamour. For example a plaster on a bare foot on a girl in a line standing on some driftwood on a beach and a hole in some fishnets, close to the camera. In a 1956 photo of Tiller girls resting during a ‘Royal Command Show’ rehearsal, rest their legs (neatly) on the chairs in front. Underneath one pair of fishnets are white ankle socks.

Walter Bird's photographs however, construct a perfect glamour, the glamour of day-dreams. Working before the WW2 he used an expensive colour process, Vivex, which I believe is one contributing factor to their loveliness.

There does seem to be a glamour peak in the 1930s. By the 1950s, something, ‘common’ appears to have been invented, is it the film, cameras, lighting, hairstyles, costumes or make up? Obviously technological changes in one or all of the above contribute to an erosion of the glamour aesthetic. Which leads me to wonder, what and who makes glamour?

A Note I Wrote to Myself in Preparation for My Degree Show in 2001

2010-03-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

How to present the 'Take Out' project is not a question of how to present the photographs, but how to present my intentions. The 'hanging' of the piece has become more crucial and more integral to the work. How the practicalities are negotiated reflects on the work.

I must not aim for perfect or bombastic just because its a "show" (ditch the tap dancers then) but must think of how the idea is best translated into 3D space.

They All Had Glamour

2010-03-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get so confused. I don't know where to start and start in the place I know: the middle. I know for certain that I was trying to piece an idea from out of the tangle, I had to get hold of the thread and follow it, pull it apart from the others. I knew it involved photographing; portraits.

I have to get my camera out, I have to practise with it, what if I have forgotten how to work it? What if I can't borrow lights and a tripod? Will I have to buy my own? I don't think I can, I blew all my money on three 1950s style wrap dresses, which are en route over the Atlantic now, they sent me an email.

What if I can't work this idea loose, if it sticks together with all the others like cooked spaghetti left in the pan? I won't be able to tell Jaspar about it, he will think I don't get ideas, that I don't work on them; he will think I don't think.

I was in the theatrical bookshop off Charing Cross two weeks ago, there was a large book I wanted, but I was erming and ahhing about the cost: £25, I didn't know if I could afford it; but I wanted it and I didn't get it. On the train home, I realised how important the book was, I realised I had to take glamourous photographs, not of myself, of the other residents. They are pre-selected you see. I don't think I knew when I was on the train that I was going; I just hoped.

The book was called "They All Had Glamour".

The Personal is Political!

2010-03-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

Here are the first few paragraphs from the introduction of 'Sisterhood is Powerful' by Robin Morgan (1970) Vintage Books

"Introduction: A Woman's Revolution

This book is an action. It was conceived, written, edited, copy-edited, proofread, designed, and illustrated by women... During the year that it took to collectively create this anthology, we women involved had to face specific and very concrete examples of our oppression, with regard to the book itself, that simply would not have occurred in putting together any other kind of collection. Because of the growing consciousness of women's liberation, and, in some cases, because of articles that women wrote for the book, there were not a few "reprisals": five personal relationships were severed, two couples were divorced and one separated, one woman was forced to withdraw her article, by the man she lived with: another's husband kept rewriting the piece until it was unrecognizable as her own; many of the articles were late, and the deadline kept being pushed further ahead, because the authors had so many other pressures on them--from housework to child care to jobs. More than one woman had trouble finishing her piece because it was so personally painful to commit her gut feelings to paper. We were also delayed by occurrences that would not have been of even peripheral importance to an anthology written by men: three pregnancies, one miscarriage, and one birth--plus one abortion and one hysterectomy. Speaking from my own experience, which is what we learn to be unashamed of doing in women's liberation, during the past year I twice survived the almost-dissolution of my marriage, was fired from my job (for trying to organise a union and for being in women's liberation), gave birth to a child, worked on a women's newspaper, marched and picketed, breast-fed the baby, was arrested on a militant women's liberation action, spent some time in jail, stopped wearing makeup and shaving my legs, started learning Karate, and changed my politics completely. That is, I became, somewhere along the way, a "feminist" committed to a Women's Revolution"

New Pointe Shoes

2010-03-05T10:02:00.000-08:00

I don't know, I can't explain, I don't have answers. I found a new ballet class, with a good pointe class after it, and I did it again. I wore my Gaynor Mindens and they were too tight. So I bought a new pair. Half a size larger, and with a wider box. I am 31 and I bought another pair of pointe shoes. Part of me thinks it is practice; dancing ballet and pointe. And another part of me despairs. Oh but then they first part of me thinks - ha! I can dance en pointe in unexpected places, like giving a conference paper?

Dressing in An Image Based World

2010-03-03T06:53:00.000-08:00

When I think back to life between 17-23 years, I think about how I managed to maintain being size 12, and also, certainly up to the age of 21, how much flesh I used to bare. I also remember talk of images of young models, how inappropriate they were. You see, I could not imagine an identity beyond being a young woman, so the constant images of young women I was surrounded by did not register; I saw my own identity amongst them. And I also misread them, I thought they were saying, this IS you, this IS how you should be and look. I saw the pictures in Vogue, Marie Claire or even dare I confess it, More, and saw them as blueprints to re-create. It did not occur to me that these were outfits designed to opperate in the context of a photoshoot, not streetwear.

And now I as I see girls in stripper heels braving the cold with very little on, I smile to myself. One day, they will realise the benefits of long-sleeved thermal vests from M & S.

Is Objectification Always Bad?

2010-02-26T01:25:00.002-08:00

I wondered this as I looked into a shop window, in Santa Paula, a small town in California that was my home for 10 months, with an 80% Mexican population. The window display was filled with Catholic figurines, like the Pope, Saint John Paul II with Mother Theresa. There were also a variety of Jesus on the cross figures, heavily decorated. I noticed that the Jesus figures were androgynous in both their facial features and the shape of their bodies. Utterly attractive, they seemed to embody both a masculine and a feminine perfection. It was as though the sexual availability of the naked flesh, and his tragic skin lacerations made the Jesus figure a fantasy space for everyone. It was then that I wondered if offering oneself up for objectification could ever be considered as a generous act.

Jemima Stehli

2010-02-17T01:25:00.000-08:00

Jemima Stehli has taken up the position of the stripper in her photographs, whilst also locating questions of power in the artworld within a voyeuristic framework. In her series Strip (1999) she stands with her back to the camera, in front of a seated male, identified only by his job title, for example, ‘Critic’, ‘Writer’, ‘Curator’ or ‘Dealer’. A long cable release is visible in the male’s hand and in each photograph Stehli is in a different state of undress; caught in the act of stripping. The precise moment the photograph was taken during this private strip is controlled by the seated male, his power doubled through the status of his role in the artworld. And yet, he is the pawn within Stehli’s game. It is she that has created the scenario, it’s her concept, her brain, her skill and her body being displayed. She is active. The seated male is unable to not look, he must play the stooge. It is his level of satisfaction or discomfort that we see in the photograph. Is that us, the viewer looking at ourselves?

Me and Laura

2010-02-13T01:24:00.000-08:00

Laura Mulvey’s essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ became some kind of remedial text applied with frequency to my impasse at CalArts. This well written and convincing text served to make me feel guilty about what I wanted to do in practice. It also became a gateway to Kaplan, Doanne, de Lauritis and Modeleski. I needed to make work and I had to read a lot of material in a short space of time. The voices merged into one and I became alienated and overwhelmed by their high minded approach. However, I was attracted to their certainties, the tone of voice so authoritative and sure. The tone and their attachment of the spectacle and pleasure in film which they actively disavow becomes something ripe for parody. The question is whether or not this is something I want to explore in my work.

Why I am not a dancer

2010-02-04T01:24:00.000-08:00

Dancing has been my hobby for some 25 years. Over the last ten years I have considered my role in dance as a participant outside the normal trajectory. I am not professional-dancer material and so a career within it could not open up for me. Having performed on the Sheffield City Hall stage in the biannual dancing school shows, and then to collect my BA (Hons) degree, I perceived my interests converging in a rather interesting location.

With a chance encounter with some photographs, my art practice shifted to investigate some of the interesting problems I observed through my dancing. With my experience of wearing the most day-glo kitsch outfits as part of a line of dancers my perspective on spectacle is one of first hand experience as well as that of the well-informed spectator. I imagine myself performing as I watch dancers because I have performed.

When I went to CalArts to study, my regular dance classes ceased. For the first time in many years I did not have a regular dance practice. The pressures of the environment meant I lived in my brain, and I began to really investigate my stake in thoughts on the body, from an outsider position.

I am very happy to report I have now found some very challenging classes and I am confronting the reoccurring preoccupations in my art practice along side a regular dance practice.

Après-coup 1

2009-12-29T01:23:00.000-08:00

As a Germaine Greer feminist since my early teens, I understood problems of the patriarchal construction of societal norms. Post-feminism via the Spice Girls interrupted my teens and I claimed my body by wearing the shortest of mini skirts and the smallest of triangle tops only marginally more modest than the smallest string bikini and danced all night in clubs, catching the first bus home in the morning. It came as a total shock that my nights of fun could be misinterpreted as a display for men, when someone put their hand up my skirt. Some kind of bubble burst. I had been sold some dodgy rhetoric.

Secrets of The Boudoir Burlesque: An Audience Dresses

2009-11-22T09:32:00.000-08:00

Winkle pickers, black shirt white waistcoat. Silver ballet flats, hookeresque platforms, red patent t-bar, 2 flapper head bands, 3 feather hair clips, fishnets, patterned tights, lots of black, feather boa, 1 scruffy couple, top hat, red stilettos, puff ball skirt, patterned dress with leggings with pixie / cowboy boots, stiletto platform oxfords, jarvis cocker with longer straggly hair, plaid shirt, jeans and doccers, purple chiffon wrap dress with boach, mini top hat, blonde dreadlocks (girl) with duffel coat, black trousers, Eastpak and trainers. Fishnet stockings with visible suspenders, sparkly puff sleeves, man with dreadlocks, red and black corset with puff ball skirt, gatenet tights with patent black shoes, black dress with silver sparkles, red lippy with hair band, pin strip suit with waistcoat, shiny suit, grey suit, black shirt, purple tie and bald head, red tennis shoes, slacks and stripped shirt. Green strapless dress matching shoes and black jacket, 15 denier black tights. Sloochy top, mini skirt, leggings, big biker boots, addidas trainers, brown leather jacket and jeans, tartan skirt and black corset. High necked slinky dress with red and white corset, pink beanie hat, black layered frilled skirt, gothic flouncy coat, curler-ed hair. Flat shoes, vest top, satchel, curly mop over one side with stripe shirt, black waistcoat, converse with suit, glitter beanie, white thin cardie over dress, red corset with black lace, pencil skirt exposing hip bones.

A Page I Inserted into A Library Book At SHU (with thanks to Kim Noble)

2009-11-11T03:18:00.000-08:00

Kim Noble gave me a homework assessment - to find a library book, rip out a page and insert my own page, looking exactly like the original. I found a book I love 'Popcorn Venus, Women, Movies and the American Dream' by Majorie Rosen, a kind of love letter to the stars of Hollywood, with historical contextualisation that takes in the social status of women at the time the films were made. I couldn't bring myself to rip the page out, it felt too important in its analysis of Rita Hayworth in Gilda. I did slip in this new page though.

212 THE FORTIES - NECESSITY AS MOTHER OF EMANCIPATION

I am interested in asking whether it is possible to claim Rita Hayworth as a feminist icon. She is my heroine. I love her. And, so does Majorie Rosen. She says some great things on the previous page about her sexuality. In one line she states that through her performance of 'Put the Blame on Mame' in Gilda she is saying 'This is my body. It's lovely and gives me pleasure. I rejoice in it just as you do.' That’s a great idea. I think that exemplifies why I like that performance so much. I want to do a performance where that’s what my performance says. That's about as subversive as you can get with the male gaze. A disregard for it because you are so pleased with yourself. Is that ever possible, do you think?

However, this page makes me sad. This book is written in 1973 and the writer does not know that Rita Hayworth was the victim of early onset Alzheimer's Disease. In fact, the disease was far less understood then than it is today. When Rita had difficulty remembering her lines on set people thought she was an alcoholic. She started to drink because that was what everyone said about her. She was unemployable and became a joke in Hollywood. Her daughter by Aly Khan, Yasmin Khan, nursed her at the end of her life.

She infamously said that men fall in love with Gilda and wake up with Rita. And here we have the problem of Rita Hayworth. Her image as a sex symbol is so wonderfully joyous, so celebratory. She IS an incredible dancer. But, her life story and the biographies of her life paint her as so deeply tragic a person. She was repeatedly raped by her father and entered marriage after marriage with men who exploited her. But she said, looking back on her life, that she did not want people to be sad when they thought of her, she wanted to be remembered as giving joy.

Interestingly, one of her closest friends and confidants throughout her life was Hermes Pan, a choreographer she met on one of the films she did with Fred Astaire. It's as though her really understood her because he understood her as a dancer and that’s where she lived. She was a dancer first and foremost. I maintain she was the best partner that Astaire ever had. Way better than Ginger.

Lower down on this page there is a sentence underlined. I think it deserves to be read as a stand alone sentence, without reading on: "1946 emerged as a landmark for the female breast".

I like this book because the author reads the text and image of film, something I do as an art viewer. It's a slightly instinctive. It is interesting because she uses a personal subjective approach that was outmoded with the semiotic and psychoanalytic methods of the film-feminists later in the Seventies and Eighties. I get more out of this style though, and I return to this book often. It's not printed anymore so it's hard buy. Sometimes it comes up on Amazon, but they are ex-library copies with stamps and marginalia. I want a clean copy! A similar book 'From Reverence to Rape' is still in print. I wonder why that is.

The Day Everything Changed

2009-11-02T01:15:00.000-08:00

One afternoon in 2005, I came across a tin full of cigarette cards at a flea market. I leafed through to look more closely at the miniature pin-ups. I noticed the backs of the cards with the clipped-1940s-BBC-announcer biographies of the girls on the cards. I selected all the dancers from the tin (there were models, swimmers and tennis players I rejected, no one I had heard of before) and bought all of them. As I walked home, I decided to recreate all the photographs using myself as the model. My desire to explore another identity merged into a kind of wish, ‘What if I were this person in the photograph?’ The photograph represented such a desirable location that I wanted to be there. The details of the location, although totally unknowable to me, were here presented, as though the top layer of that location were lifted off and frozen. How could I thaw it out and get there?

The Tallulah Moment

2009-09-05T16:14:00.000-07:00

I walk out into the floorshow. The audience surrounds me. I strike a pose in the spotlight. I am wearing a strapless, floor length black satin dress slit up the side. The music starts. I wait for my cue. I start to sing…[1]

I propose the scenario I describe above be called the ‘Tallulah Moment’; the moment when the female performer enthrals an audience, projecting her personality, skill and physical presence using the accoutrements of her profession—lighting and costume. This moment is important to me and by using my personal identification with it as part of my investigation, I shall illuminate how a close read of its use in classic Hollywood films can be re-read as a celebration of women within a feminist discourse.

Why Tallulah? The name calls to mind the eponymous ‘Bugsy Malone’ (1976) star and the actress, Tallulah Bankhead and through them, it represents excess, opulence, sexuality and joie de vivre—all highly appropriate for my purposes. The word ‘moment’ relates to the photograph, the symbol, the emblem but not exclusively to the static. The Tallulah Moment is a moment because I am referring both to the moving image and the frozen symbol. In the classic Hollywood film, narrative flow is interrupted by such ‘moments’ bringing the unfolding of the story to a temporary halt. In this interruption, I find potency—it is credit to the Tallulah Moment that it can be extracted from the film story and stand on its own.

Hollywood has used the Tallulah Moment as a device for generating pleasure in its audience. It functions by giving the female character, who, in the course of the conventional narrative is strait-jacketed into stereotypes and simplistic desires, a platform for the display of her power. Ultimately, the storyline chastises her for that display, but within the Tallulah Moment, the woman is not punished; she is celebrated. Hollywood developed its celebratory spectacle of the female form through studying the Ziegfeld theatrical tradition of opulence. Indeed, Ziegfeld’s Follies provided both a ready supply of attractive young women for the Hollywood talent scouts in the 1920s and storyline fuel that was light on story and heavy on opportunities to theatricalise. Therefore, Hollywood has used the setting of the theatre and the chorus girl, the showgirl, the dancer and the singer frequently since it started to produce films—‘All singing! All dancing!’[2].

The 1930s-1950s represent a heyday for both the Musical, and other genres, like Film Noir that employ the Tallulah Moment. Therefore, it is this time period I want to address. A musical ‘interruption’ in these films may take on a number of different forms, and a film may include a variety of them. The Tallulah Moment proper features a single female singing and/or dancing, alone. A variation on this is a partnered dance where the woman has a male counterpart. The dance nevertheless allows the woman to shine, supported by the man. Fred Astaire does not outshine Ginger Rogers when they dance together.

The naughty Ziegfeld flapper/dancer of the Twenties became good-girl virginal figure[3] during the Hayes Code era (from 1930 to 1968), where inference was everything. The partnered musical number within a Musical film[4] functioned as a metaphor, representing the complexity of sexual relationships. Through gesture and dance moves, the back and forth of a love affair is embodied. During the dance sequence it is as though the two dancers go on date, have their first kiss, have an argument, reconcile and have sex. The dance stands in for the work of the relationship and through it we can understand their affection to one another that is not shown explicitly during the film. It is through reading the dance as more than a dance that we can understand why the characters become so attached, having seemingly only just met.

There is a complex craft in constructing the Tallulah Moment. It is created through a song (usually with lyrics but not necessarily), elaborate set, direction, camera angles and cuts. For example, in the titular dance of the film ‘Cover Girl’ (1944) the Tallulah Moment is introduced with a montage of magazine covers before Rita Hayworth descends down an elaborate smoke-filled set and removes a long gold coat to present herself in a gold flowing gown. She continues running down to meet a troop of men dressed alike as photographers who dance with her in turn, lift her up and support her swoons. The scene concludes as Hayworth runs up the path she descended on with the men running after her and glitter falling from the sky. All of these effects are deployed within the overall construct of the film as well as the studio system’s crafting of the actress as a personality in publicity campaigns and advertising. However, the story lines of these films repress strong female voices or personalities—something I perceive as I look back on films that reflect a different ideology of femininity. Indeed I have to suspend my pangs of sadness as I indulge my black and white film habit. It is so apparent how constrained the women are, which reflects the societal attitudes and limits that women where subject to pre-Second Wave feminism.

But there is release in the Tallulah Moment when the woman explodes with charisma and unapologetically revels in her objectification. The woman owns her body and the gaze within that moment. I recognise within this moment something quite absent in my life and I want that moment. Whilst the Hollywood machinery constructs a moment so pure in its pleasure, overlaying heavy-handed devices to ensure how my gaze is taking in that woman, it is credit to the women who thrive in this moment that they are not a zero point at the centre, but a charismatic being. Whilst I watch these moments, I imagine the performance in its barest incarnation—a woman, in a dress, in a spotlight. I imagine my gaze undirected by lingering pans and insinuating cuts.

During the 1930s-1950s time period the Hayes Code opened up possibilities in representing the female body that have effectively been closed down since then. I am identifying the Tallulah Moment as one of these possibilities. What I see happening was actresses with a high standard of technical dance training (and with that a working methodology of how to handle the gaze) were employed to display sexuality. The freedom and fantasy of their use of their body is being used as a way of being sexually provocative without being overt. My insider knowledge of dance training enables me to see that work being done and to feel its effect. It takes skill to project your body as a fantasy space and this is what I am interested in suggesting. When Rita Hayworth performs ‘Put the Blame on Mame’ in ‘Gilda’ she owns her body as a fantasy space, and credit to her for that.

[1] Imagery taken from ‘Gilda’ (1946) Columbia Pictures, directed by Charles Vidor starring Rita Hayworth.

[2] Taken from the promotional advertising posters for the 1929 film ‘Broadway Melody’, the first musical film featuring sound; ‘All talking All singing All dancing’.

[3] See Ruby Keeler in ‘42^nd Street’ (1933), ‘Gold Diggers of 1933’ (1933) and ‘Dames’ (1934).

[4] For example the Fred Astaire films; ‘Swing Time’ (1936), ‘Shall We Dance’ (1937), ‘You’ll Never Get Rich’ (1941), ‘You Were Never Lovelier’ (1942).