Thursday, July 10, 2014

STERNE & BASS



The hunky Ricardo Montez one of the late Jose Esteban Munoz’s prized former students who is now a professor himself and teaches at the New School in New York sent one of his art children Justin Polera who is on holiday in Europa to pilgrimage the Vagimule Kabuki Starshine Doll.  Justin brought along his engaging lover a tall, languid young German opera director named Alex Scholz who staged a piece in the US last year called Detroit/Die Geschichte vom Soldaten by Igor Strawinsky.  Herr Scholz will attending a PhD program at ColumbiaUniversity next year so I will have to recruit him as part of my team along with Susanne Sachsse when we stage a version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute for Performa. 
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Those of you on holiday in Europa and will be visiting London I highly recommend that you check out a performance by one of my most brilliant live art colleagues.  See below for details:


The World is Flooding

Oreet Ashery | group performance
Tate Modern, Turbine Hall
Saturday 12th of July, 2014, 17.00 - 18.00
The World is Flooding is a performance based on Mystery Bouffe, a play by Mayakovsky written in 1921 for the anniversary of the 1917 Russian revolution.
Over several months artist Oreet Ashery worked with a group of participants to write, produce, and direct a performance influenced by Russian futurism, including Malevich’s set designs and Zaum poetry.
The absurd emerges as a continuous theme throughout the performance, where we are confronted with the absurdity of politics, of the language of administration and power, and of class and other socially based biases.
The performance includes specially made costumes, banners, a zine produced over the course of the wrokshops and commissioned music by Morgan Quaintance. 
In collaboration with Freedom From Torture (Write to Life group), UKLGIG (UK Lesbian & Gay Immigration Group) and Portugal Prints (Mind).
 

Tuesday, July 08, 2014

THE GRASS IS BLUE


Thanks to the love and generosity of the wonderful Piero Bellomo and sexxxy Dr.Professor Nanna Heidenreich the belated birthday boy and Scandinavian Muzlim translator to the schtars Daniel Hendrickson (fasting for Ramadan) and I were able to enjoy the rapture that ensued from the first performances in Germany in over 40 years of Miss Dolly Parton. Before our adventures began we had dinner at Taqueria Ta’Cabro’n in Kreuzberg on Skalitzer Strasse 60 which is going to become my new favourite eatery. I’ve already forgotten about Santa Maria on Oranian Strasse, though I was taken there a few days earlier and had a wonderful catch up with Professor Tavia Nyongo(cousin of Oscar winning actress Lupita Nyongo) of NewYork University Performance Studies Department, with handsome German Olympic swimmer Sebastian and his cute&cuddly Czech beau Michael who teaches at the Freie Universitaet. Now getting back to La Dolly, who was looking swelte and nothing near her 68 years of Tennessee Holler life. This Smoky Mountain High Blue Smoke World Tour has taken the continent to task and I am still doing severe lesbian processing over my time spent in the hallowed presence of she who must be obeyed. Ms. Parton is an olde school entertainer who is able to tell the same jokes and patter she has been using for centuries and make it all seem fresh and vigorous. The great lady treated over 20,000 plus super fans at the cavernous ueber commercial sporting arena 02 like they were in her country parlour, and that she was just singing a few ditties for the folks. Just hearing her talk and tell stories is well worth the price of admission, but when she sings the sad ballads and forelorn folk tunes backed lightly by an expert band and winsome session singers was when she completely soars. The pop world upstarts like Katy Perry could learn from this seasoned veterana on how to hold an audiences attention with sheer pluck, texture and talent. Over two hours worth of vocal delights while wearing four inch heels. Yowza!

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The civil engineer who looked like Paul Giamatti was a hound for bulbous breastage and went all warhola over Mini Praetarius of the Follies. The young miss was hoping that she would find a bevy of virile mandrakes or some hung drunk athletes who could pull a train on her---no such luck, so she had to settle for a temporary contemporary fornical marriage to the white collar son of a preachers bitch.

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Was never a big fan of the Canadian actress Claudette Colbert, but seeing her in the pre-code Hollywood film Torch Singer 1933 directed by Alexander Hall and George Somnes for Paramount as an unwed mother gave me new found respect for the lady whose decades long career seemed endless. For all I know Miss Colbert could still be alive, but I think she isn’t. In Torch Singer she goes from down and out to wealthy and famous. I love her playful interaction with her high yeller maid and how sweet her interaction with a young black child which comes so out of left minus right field in the film. Of course I had to stay for the second feature starring Mae West and Cary Grant in I’m No Angel directed by Wesley Ruggles. I’ve seen this film half a trillion times and its always able to push my hilarity buttons. Ms. West doesn’t just have one maid but four black maids one being an uncredited Hattie McDaniels years before she won her Oscar for Gone With the Wind, becoming the first African American to do so. Returned to Arsenal for Jean Harlow and Chester Morris in Red Headed Woman the film that really propelled Miss Harlow into the stratosphere of comedic stardom. Film historian Marcuse Siegelstein introduced the film with a ribald Catskills style that had the large audience howling. On a sad note writer, actor and filmmaker Paul Irwin Masursky died aged 84. He directed the films, Bob and Carol & Ted and Alice starring Natalie Wood, Dyan Cannon, Eliott Gould and Robert Culp, Harry & Tonto starring Art Carney, Alex in Wonderland starring Donald Sutherland, Blume in Love starring Glenda Jackson and George Segal, An Unmarried Woman starring Jill Claybourgh, my favourite Next Stop Greenwich Village starring Shelley Winters,Down & Out in Beverly Hills starring Nick Nolte, Richard Dreyfus and Bette Miller and Scenes From a Mall starring Woody Allen & Bette Midler and countless other films.