6 posts tagged “art”

I've been a huge Sound of Music fan since I was a kid. Sure, it's "just a musical" but It remains one of my favorite films of all time. It's pure escapism, but I love every piece of music and it just makes me smile. So I was thrilled that I had the chance to go see a professional stage production of it in Toronto this weekend.

My friend Eric and I hitched a ride with Junkii - who was off to Hamilton for school - and got dropped off in Toronto in time for the performance. It cost $100 ea for tickets, but it was worth every penny.

The production was incredible. The singing and acting were top-notch - especially Maria and the children - but even more impressive were the set designs and staging. The sets were on some sort of revolving stage, and set changes were seamlessly done. I knew from the start - from the first time we saw Maria - that we were in for a treat.

I was curious as to how they would show her coming down from the mountains, but it was brilliant. They had a large disc covering the stage, made to look like a grassy mountainside. With hydraulics, it was lifted in the air at a 45 degree angle, to make it seem as though you were looking down through the clouds on Maria laying on her back. As she started to sing, the disc slowly lowered to the stage as she twirled and danced about before running off to the abbey.

I could feel myself welling up during this number and - I won't deny it - it wasn't the only time. Tears were shed on several occasions. When Georg breaks down singing Edelweiss at the Salzburg festival....

Speaking of which, the festival scenes were brilliantly done, too. Basically they turned the whole Princess of Wales Theatre into the festival theatre, with Nazi flags flying from every balcony. This approach really encouraged audience participation, especially when they announced the festival runners-up.

Anyway, I won't recount the whole thing, but it really was a spectacle. And it compares favourably to the film. It's not going to replace the film for me, but I will hold this production dear.

In fact, I'd love to treat myself to musicals more often. I do enjoy them. I see Topol will be doing his farewell tour as Tevye in Fiddler On the Roof next winter. That would be a performance worth splurging for. And I see that they're mounting a musical production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert next Spring. I might be heading to Toronto a little more frequently than planned if I can expect the same calibre of production as I got this weekend.

Generally I'm not a huge fan of dance. I'm more of a concert-goer than a dance-recital-attender. But I've always liked the tango - even as a kid. I remember begging mom to play Jalousie on the electric organ (she refused, saying it was too difficult) and asking if she knew how to tango. To my surprise, she said yes, but she never showed me, so no guarantees she wasn't stretching the truth there.

Anyway, what with the past few years of watching latin ballroom on TV (So You Think you can Dance, NOT Dancing with the Stars, thank you very much!), I figured we were primed for at least one outing to a dance recital. Earlier this week, we took in the touring show called Tango Fire, which was on stage at the National Arts Centre. I was mucho impressed.

This was a show from Buenos Aires featuring 10 dancers and 4 musicians (on the stage), plus a singer who came on from time to time. There were duets, group numbers, performances by just the band, the band with the singer... I think that's what I most enjoyed about it. Rather than just being about dance, the performers really showcased every aspect of the tango: the music and the dance both separately and together.

For certain, the dancers were great, displaying some amazingly tricky footwork and some thrilling lifts and throws, but I  was most thrilled to find such a capable set of musicians touring with them. Their name was Quatrotango, and I need to see if they have any CDs of their own.

Here’s a short video preview from their website. If you’re curious, check out their site for tour dates.

...And the Withering Insults that Drove Us Onward

At Nuit Blanche 2007, one year ago, there was an exhibit slated to appear in Toronto's Kensington Market called Assbook. As near as we could interpret from the curator's description, the artist planned to set up a photocopy machine and have audience members photocopy their posteriors for posterity, binding them into a collection: The Assbook.

Because it sounded irreverent (and because we thought we might get to see some skin) we scoured Kensington Market for Assbook, but the exhibit was nowhere to be found. We're still not sure if the artist backed out or if the Nuit Blanche organizers pulled the plug on the exhibit, but for whatever reason, Assbook never happened.

Since then, any time there's an exhibit we can't locate, or one that is misleading (based on the curator's description), or one that's just plain bad, we term it an assbook and subject it to the acid wit of our crew of art connoisseurs.

Nuit Blanche 2008: Full of Assbooks

Let me preface this by saying that the group of friends that joins us for NB every year has no illusions about the  artistic efforts on display in Toronto. Oh sure, We're always very excited after reading grandiose curatorial descriptions promising wonderful and eloquent exhibits, but we've been attending this all-night art event long enough to know that the exhibits rarely live up to the hype. Yes, there are some that do, but it's no secret that you need to wade through a lot of crap to find the awe-inspiring.

Assbooks abound. But don't for a moment think that's a bad thing. There's more to Nuit Blanche than art. If there wasn't, the whole endeavour would have failed in the first year!

• There's the simple fact that you're out on the streets of Toronto much much later than you would ever normally be. We didn't get home until 5am this year.You get tired and cranky, but it's an experience that brings you closer to the friends you share it with.
• 

  Crack Team
  There's the fact that you're hopped up on drugs. In our case it was caffeine, but it was plain to see that alcohol was a big drug of choice this year. And our noses made it abundantly clear that weed was a big fan favorite too. Whatever your poison, altered states always add to the fun.
• Most importantly, there's the company you keep - in our case, a crack team of humorists, spewing barbed insults and directing their quick wit at every lackluster piece of crap that gets touted as artwork. What fun!
  

Yes, NB is less about art and more about making light of it. Still, we can appreciate the interesting exhibits:

• 

  House Of Leaves
  With House of Leaves, the artist tore thousands of pages from trashy romance novels and taped them to an outdoor hallway, inviting participants to walk through. I have no idea what it was supposed to mean, but it was pretty in its own way; making the hallway appear warmer, or at least more interesting. I suppose in the end it's not much different from wallpaper. 3-Dimensional wallpaper.
• Projekt Blinkinlights was impressive just for the technicality of it. The front of Toronto's City Hall was turned into a giant dot matrix display, with lamps in each office window turning on and off to let the artists play a giant game of Pong. This video is sideways, but you get the idea:
  Sideways Blinkinlights
• 

  Horrorridor
  The Horrorridor - a set of six projection screens set up in an unused portion of Union Station showing clips of actors screaming in rage, fear, and pain - was probably the most disturbing exhibit this year. Despite the fact these were all recognizable actors from Hollywood films and TV shows - and despite the fact that I knew they were just acting - being immersed in these sights and sounds actually had an impact on my emotional state. Which is great, especially given that this exhibit could have just been silly.
  

But for every worthwhile exhibit, there were multiple bombs. I'm not going to run through them all, but there was one that was particularly disappointing. Zombies in Condoland was supposed to take place in a park area surrounded by four large condos. People dressed as zombies were simply supposed to wander the park, I assumed as a comment on how our society is tranquilized and complacent. Should have been as easy as pie to coordinate, but by the time we arrived about halfway through the evening, there were only about a dozen zombies and the artist was trying to corral them for the start of the performance. There's something strange about someone in a zombie outfit yelling at other zombies with a megaphone to "Please congregate by the fountain!" It could have been wonderful, but lacked the organizational skill necessary to pull it off.

Unless... Wait! Maybe WE were supposed to be the zombies, gawking at this catastrophe of an exhibit... Naw. That would just be lame.

And to Finish?

Last year, you'll recall, we finished our evening at Lamport stadium, where we helped inflate a gigantic locust - the surprise highlight of the evening. Lamport delivered this year's surprise highlight as well. The curator promised dozens of sports team mascots working all night to entertain the crowds. After so long on the field (we arrived at 4am) we hoped to see mascots that had turned grumpy and lazy, but when we arrived they were clearly tired, but still going strong. It was so great to be among the crowd just listening to sports-event music and watching the mascots strut their stuff.

I don't know if it was art, but It was uplifting, and it was the best way to finish the night.

These are absolutely impressive. The amount of creativity required for the soccer players alone leaves me speechless. I mean, look at the left buttock of the player with the blue shorts! That's amazing.

Have a close look at the whole collection:

We all pretty much agreed that this year, Toronto's Nuit Blanche was less interesting in terms of exhibits than it was last year. I mean, come on. Three boxes -- one vibrating, one vibrating harder so that it moves, and one that intermittently "inhales and exhales" -- do not "embody the human experience." The artist was clearly inspired by her lack of creativity.

But here's the thing. Despite the lack of talent on display, it seems Nuit Blanche is still fun. But for us, that's because it became less about the art  - to be fair, there was a smattering of interesting exhibits - and more about the companionship. And it turns out also that exhibits like the three boxes were great fodder for the jokes and conversation that made this nighttime excursion so much fun.

It gave us a great opportunity to commune with our friends Lex and Ger - to gab about the art, the city, and the people, and to just hang out and poke fun at everything. We never strayed far from one another because there was always a sense that we were in this together - that we would make this fun and entertaining, despite the artists' best efforts to ruin it for us!

Best example: one of the last sites we visited was a giant inflatable locust that was supposed to be on display in a football field. It promised to be an interesting site to see. Well, when we got there, it was deflated. But people -- both those associated with the installation and just visitors who felt like helping out -- all took to tugging and pulling on the deflated carcass in a combined effort to help the giant fans get air back into the beast.

Gerry led the way as we tried to help and, while we lost interest before it was fully inflated, we definitely saw a vast improvement in the size of the beast before we left the scene. There was a great sense of achievement and community -- not only with the rest of the Nuit-Blanche-goers, but within our own party -- to try to make this evening work. And that sense of community was why it did work. Not because of the efforts of the artists, but because we were so connected with each other.

Anyway, we capped off our five hour trek with a last quest to find a decent quick meal at 4a.m. before heading home for a well-deserved rest. After much deliberation, we managed to find a yummy snack at an indian restaurant near Lex and Ger's. With tummies full, we headed to bed. Can't wait til next year! 

Since we completely bailed on our Toronto friends early in September when we altered our plans to visit and went instead to Syracuse we decided to make it up with a whirlwind visit this past weekend.

The hub of the visit would be Nuit Blanche - an all-night event celebrating culture/art in every form imaginable, and exploring different uses for the urban landscape at hand. From 7pm until 7am on Saturday night, downtown Toronto was bustling with spectators wending their way through the streets from Yorkville to Queen West looking for painting, sculptures,  sound installations, video projections, dances, games, readings, and pillow fights (more on that later) to name just a few. There was so much to see - too much for any one person - and all for free.

Our group grabbed a nap in the late afternoon, then grabbed a bite in Chinatown and headed off to prowl the night to find some really entertaining stuff - like readings of bedtime tales accompanied by hot cocoa and cookies,

or a huge speaker-like installation that you could walk on, creating sound sculpture - as well as a few installations that just made you scratch your head and say: This is art?! And some of the installations were just creepy - the most obvious being a woman asleep in a small plexiglass case in the middle of a parking lot. We couldn't bring ourselves to take a picture - but so many people were just getting right in close for a real good gawk.

There was an installation of 68 tents filled with personal effects of mental health patients - another eerie installation meant to explore the issues surrounding current mental health legislation. It made for a lovely photo though.

You travelled to the more distant installations on a set of

themed buses (like the clothing-swap bus). We managed to hitch a ride on a bus whose interior was covered in mirrored mylar. Kind of trippy.

Our friends lasted until anywhere between midnight and 2:30 am, but we managed to keep going until 4:30. The weather was iffy, but nothing an umbrella couldn't keep at bay. A good sleep until nearly noon left us refreshed and ready for the trip home. What Fun!

We were surprised at the turnout too. If this happened in Ottawa, you wouldn't get that kind of interest. We'll definitely keep it in mind for another trip next year.