Monday, September 28, 2009

Modern Dance

My best friend in university did her degree in modern dance. We went to all sorts of shows together over those four years. I liked modern dance better than ballet or jazz because it got below the pretty, elegant surface of the art to explore darker themes. I saw the beautiful juxtaposed with the grotesque, elegance with awkwardness, peace with violence. The performances that moved me the most were the ones that disturbed me.

So when I saw that Marie Chouinard was coming through town I bought my ticket right away. I'd seen this company three times already over the past eight years. They're wicked.

The show was based on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The dancers first entered the stage wearing gold nipple pasties and making low moans. Soon after there was a full-on orgy involving fur hats and strap-ons, set to driving horn music. The dancers, male and female, remained nearly nude throughout the show. I was in the front row, very close to the naked action. I can't say that I felt comfortable, especially when the dancers made eye contact with the audience.

To show Orpheus and Eurydice's journey out of the underworld, Eurydice started climbing over the audience seats, creating a loud spectacle as she did it. Dancers on the stage implored the audience, "Don't look back! You there in the red glasses, I see you looking!" I found my urge to look back and watch the show hampered by my equal desire to avoid getting singled out in a room of hundreds of people.

The choreography itself was very strong, dynamic and well-performed, which kept the performance from crossing the line into gratuitous titillation. Two of the dancers, Lucie Mongrain and Carol Prieur, I have seen in the company's past performances. Each possesses a compelling personality. I couldn't look away from them whenever they were on the stage.

Since I've given up my regular trips to the Korean bath house, I've missed being around naked people. This show will have to tide me over.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Japanese Films

I am a Japanese Film Community Outreach Volunteer for the Calgary International Film Festival. That means I get to put up posters in sushi restaurants and watch DVD screeners before the films show in theatres. The second part is the one I prefer.

So far I've watched Nonko, White on Rice and The Clone Returns Home. Nonko brought back memories of my visit to Japan, the clean tranquility of its shrines and countryside. Nobuko lives with her parents at the Shinto shrine they manage in a small city. Despite the fact that she lives in paradise, she's reticent, rude, drinks to much and doesn't have any real friends. She's an ex-TV/B-movie/porn actress (the movie doesn't really specify), single and pushing forty. She is not fulfilling her societal role, as is made clear by her strained relationship with her sister, who does have the husband and the child. Both her past and potential futures come to visit Nobuko in the form of two men, one her ex-husband and "business manager", and the other a young man named Masaru who wants to set up a stall at the shrine for the upcoming June Purification Festival. Masaru is an itinerant, a social misfit who wants "to see the world", even though the film barely leaves the confines of the city. Despite his persistence, the local yakuza boss won't let Masaru set up his stall. There's a scene near the end, where Masaru loses it during the festival after being humiliated by the other stall operators. He ends up knocking over his boxes of baby chickens, and he and Nobuko stand surrounded by a sea of fluffy yellow chicks. Both with nothing left to lose, but ankle-deep in new life.

White on Rice's protagonist is also divorced, forty-ish and very socially awkward. Yet he is irrepressible in his search for a new love. Hijime ("Jimmy") lives with his sister and her family in the USA. Jimmy was a fish out of water even when he lived in Japan. When a co-worker suggests a date with a Japanese woman, he replies, "No Japanese! My own people won't have me." Jimmy falls for his brother-in-law's niece, and has eyes only for her, even when at a Halloween party he gets hit on by an attractive young Asian-American woman (in a banana costume, no less). The movie spends time exploring all the characters in Jimmy's family, including his young nephew Bob, a serious boy who lends money and gives dating advice to his uncle. Bob operates a lawn-mowing business and plays classical piano at a neighbour's house, unbeknownst to his parents. Jimmy's hapless ineptitude forces his sister and brother-in-law to deal with their own issues and flaws. The film finds its funniest moments in the ironies that arise when cultures mix. Jimmy takes his Korean date to a Japanese restaurant, where they are waited on by a white man in a hachimaki headband. This same character later on comes to the aid of the family during a crisis, as might the hero of a martial arts movie. It reminds me of my time in Korea, eating birthday cake with chopsticks and kimchi with a fork.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Zombie Walk

I participated in my first Zombie Walk this weekend. It was in Medicine Hat, a small city built into the hills and coulees of southeastern Alberta. The downtown is filled with historic brick buildings. And there's a wicked Value Village.

Some people spent a lot of time and thought on their costumes, with latex flesh on their faces and homemade props and costumes. My friend and I, I think we made out well with the ten hurried minutes we spent at VV's. I was looking for one of those structured, off-the-shoulder satin prom dresses from the eighties that seem to crowd the formal dress section of most thrift stores. But, shockingly, there wasn't one to be found! Is it because the eighties are cool again? Anyways I found a nice brimmed hat with flowers and paired it with a long pink lacy number with puffed sleeves. I thought I looked elegant. My friend bought bicycle shorts and a leather vest.

Off to Safeway, where he attempted to buy cow's blood. It wasn't a go, so he bought a steak and tore off a chunk with a nice stringy vein, which he used to suspend the meat from between his teeth. This prompted a discussion of the raw beef restaurant down the street from my apartment in Korea. That place was so delicious.

Finally, and just in time, we made it to Tank Park, where a friendly zombie volunteer splattered me with cornstarch blood. She wiped it all over my chin and let it drip down my lacy decolletage. According to the Medicine Hat News, there were about 150 of us gathered. We took off down the sidewalk at noon. Considering that all were supposedly zombie enthusiasts, I was disappointed with the lack of leg-dragging, stumbling, lolling heads, outstretched arms and diabolic moans. Most people just walked like they were still of the living. I did my best to act repulsive.

Partway through the walk we met up with a biker show-and-shine. There must have been hundreds of motorcycles, because it took about twenty minutes for their parade to pass ours as we travelled in opposite directions. We were well-behaved zombies, obeying traffic signals, leaving civilians unmolested, occasionally pressing up against storefronts and stopped cars (only if the people inside seemed into it).

A few times I've had people ask me why we did the walk. To one woman, as we waited, bloodied, at the bus stop, I replied, "To raise zombie awareness!" Which wasn't meant as flippantly as it sounds. Because a Zombie Walk is a comment on the state of the world, a metaphor of society's herd-like, violent, consumerist tendencies. It's a chance to legally and publicly defy social conventions with like-mined people. But really...it's mostly just for kicks. It sure is fun to dress up.

Uuuuuuuuurrrrggghhhh.











Thursday, September 3, 2009

Legalese

I recently got my massage license from the City of Calgary. Reading through the thirteen-page bylaw document, I found some nuggets:

2. (o) "Massage" means the physical external manipulation of the soft tissue of the human body, in a scientific and systematic manner by another natural person for the purpose of therapy or relaxation.

2. (s) "Natural person" means an individual human being.

14. (5) (c) No licensee shall arrange for the distribution, publication or posting of any advertisement that describes or depicts any portion of the human body that would reasonably suggest to prospective clients that any service is available other than a massage.

14. (7) (e) No person shall perform a massage unless clothed in clean, washable, non-transparent clothing covering the area from neck to mid-thigh.

I also noticed that the title of the bylaw spells "license" with an s, but the word is spelt "licence" throughout the rest of the document. I can't help it, I used to be a copy editor.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Ponyo

If I am a good aunt it might only be for the fact that I got my niece and nephew into Studio Ghibli films. It started two years ago when we watched "My Neighbour Totoro" together. The two little kids sat mesmerized by this foreign-language film (I read the subtitles to them). We've watched it a bunch of times since then, as well as "Spirited Away". (Tried "Kiki's Delivery Service" but my Thai pirated DVD wouldn't work.) Since I got back from Asia in the spring, I've been gearing the kids up for the latest one, "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea".

I've been excited about this movie for over a year, since its release in Japan. I have no excuse not to have seen it since I was in Korea and Japan last year. I guess I was preoccupied. I downloaded it when I got back to Canada, but we never got around to watching it because, unlike me, my niece and nephew have busy social lives. Anyways in August it was released in North American theatres. Disney got their hands on it and dubbed it into English. Hannah Montana's sister and the little brother of the Jonas brothers got the main speaking parts. Truly!

Ponyo, fortunately, was mostly immune to Disneyfication. It was obscenely cute and extraordinarily weird. Everything a Miyazaki film should be.



I should mention that Disney did manage to ruin things just a bit, at the very end. Miyazaki films have charming theme songs sung by what sounds like real Japanese children, not sexed-up tweenaged popstars. Over Ponyo's end credits, we heard a suitably sweet English version of the song. Which part way through turned into a ROCK RAP REMIX. That's when we left the theatre.