Today

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?

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

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

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.

Reading and Writing (the Problem)

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)

1.

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,

2.

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. 

3.

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

1.

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

2.

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