MAE returns to the Studio...

We've been back in the Studio, improvising, playing and discovering more phantastical worlds to bring into the mundane one by creating more moving image video poems. It's Yulia & I this time, joined for one session by two small friends (See earlier video posts, below, of Dancing with the Grandmothers and Phantazein). We were also treated to a surprise visit for our final Spring session, by pioneer dance therapist and expressive artist, Betty Backus. Stills & video from that amazing session coming soon! More sessions with Betty are in the works.

Each time I approach the Studio, lugging boom box, music cd's, tripods, cameras, and assorted props, I wonder, what's going to happen this time? It feels like we've taxed our brains and wrung them dry of ideas; that we've explored every inch of the Studio's dance floor, walls, mirrors, windows, barres, nooks, and crannies, even built some of our own environments to move within. Surely there's nothing more to gain from this place, nothing left to explore & to inspire us here. But more always comes.

I am not really sure why we do this, but it is clear that we have discovered a path with a mind of its own; one which is leading us-- perhaps to some unknown end, perhaps simply for the sake of the journey. But the Way has called us, and in this lovely spring of 2011, we are answering.

For the next few weeks, as I work on editing footage, giving form to what we've done, I will be posting the videos on this blog. I hope many of you will be intrigued by what we have made.

If you can find something in our work that speaks to you, or inspires you, or touches you, or resonates with you... we invite you to leave a comment, a poem, a photo, a drawing, a slip of music... or whatever way you'd like to convey it to us!

MAE's "Dimensional Reconn"

Pianta & Yulia White in "Dimensional Reconn"

Click here to view video:
http://youtu.be/g0sN95W4Nz4 

(And don't forget to leave a comment!!)

MAE explores ethereal, multi-dimensions with movement, light, music & video. Tripping in  time & space...

Phantazein: to make visible

click on the link to view video.

http://youtu.be/Tz2LM_1NPyQ

Yulia White, Maxx McCarron & Maelee McCarron in Phantazein

Dancing With the Grandmothers

Gwyn Henry, Maxx McCarron, Dancing with the Grandmothers

Click on the link below for MAE's latest moving image poem, Dancing With the Grandmothers:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH-qlqgElA8

TO DANCERS FROM WINTER

 

...humankind has afforded itself the right to create a world that is superimposed on the visible one and to make visible a world that is ordinarily invisible. --Jean Cocteau, The Art of Cinema

January 3rd, 2011 -- POST:

Don't know what 2011 will bring for MAE. Possibilities range from new birthings to Falling Away & Rebirth onto other creative roads for each of us. From the depths of this cold Winter day, I offer a poem for MAE and for all who dance...

The Winter of MAE
(to the Movement Artists' Ensemble)
by Gwyn Henry

Gwyn Henry, Yulia White, Pianta from Shadow Feet



 Quiet now our feet & deep
our dance-less nod
dreaming perhaps of movement
dreaming perhaps of floor,
thirsting for mirrored light                   
& yes quicksilver notes
that rise us through doorways
which only our bodies can explain

Yulia White, from The Camera

like leaves whose dances
have been felled
to waiting beds of snow
we curl, embryos,
with our lives sleeping
in our bellies,

tired, spent, content                             

to lie supine

upon pale days
& thick nights

Pianta, from Out of the Red

diva's we are,
with forgetfulness
of sweat & radiant musk
& graze of hand, ricochet of hips--
no longer accepting weight
not our own
nor trusting our bones
to other bones

Gwyn Henry, Yulia White, from It's Not in the Bag

each to her own
slumber
separate

Pianta, from Shadow Work

all the rest
absent for now,
sundered & scattered,
by this fallow time.

         --January 2011     
Escondido, California

The pre-wash cycle: Thoughts...

Gwyn Henry & Yulia White
Still from MAE video: It's (Not) in the Bag

Currently mulling over the idea of a gallery installation piece.

Concept

Showing a single film in several versions which are projected simultaneously on the walls of one room and/or on large, flowing hanging fabric, set to movement themselves by fans. Each film version would have different editing, music, color adjustments, different perspectives of the same shot--long shots, close ups, etc-- lighting, special effects. etc. A moving version of Andy Warhol's concept in his silk screen dyptich of the Marilyn Monroe photograph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Diptych

Another Concept:

An installation entitled, "Wall Works", showing our four most recent improvisations which were filmed in silhouette against a plain white wall. Each film would be projected onto walls of the room, and shown simultaneously. The viewer would use headphones at each wall/film to hear the music, as opposed to the sound being projected into the room simultaneously, which might be a bit cacaphonous.(A good thing or a bad thing?)

Perhaps offer an opening program with either of these ideas, which would feature improvisational live musicians, inviting the audience to free-dance/improvise movement inspired by the music.

Film this, add it to the exhibit afterwards. This concept perhaps influenced by an original punk tenet: anyone can be a rock star.

Anyone can and should dance. 

(Serve wine beforehand)

Blue Latitudes: A Poet Responds...

WATCHING BLUE LATITUDES
in response to a film

by Delaina Thomas

View Blue Latitudes, click here

it glides us into the whitewater
of inward streams lured toward open seas

the ebb and flows of filmy waves
limpid swirls flowing into taut hesitations
water-like or skin-like the fabric
of what separates us from ourselves
and our subtle bodies
or from those of other beings

there is a reaching toward someone's hands

or a turning in one's sleep
is the body moved by the wave
or the wave a movement of the body

a dancer forms ripples like a breeze of intent
over the body of another

finding herself alone, another dancer
skids her fingertips under the chiffon
like riffs
small peaks rising and collapsing
a range of fading thoughts
dancer bodies encased in deep blue
gesture what we have forgotten
in the dream when we so
abruptly woke
their hair waving as black
under the membrane of a whitening pulse
are they solid forms or seed impulses
not motionless for long

they are determined by light and shadow
they are defined by rhythms of waves
that change, enfold, escape, embrace

                                  --Delaina Thomas

Delaina Thomas is a poet who lives on Maui with her husband and children. Her work has appeared in such publications as Hudson Review, Ironwood and various literary journals in Hawai'i. She wrote this poem after viewing the short, experimental video of an improvisation by MAE, the movement artists ensemble, which was sent to her by her cousin, one of the MAE dancers.