FRIDAY DAY May 26th Part A

photo TOP Vida SImon ESCAPE
photo BOTTOM: One Night Only hanging out in Laura's Kitchen

Part A: DOUBLE CHATS: VIDA & ONE NIGHT ONLY

Vida Simon and I met for early coffee at the gallery.
She woke up with sciatic nerve pain so I massaged
her L4- to L-7 and radiant pain areas and then she did
posterior/glutes median hip stretches on the mat.

I asked VIDA about the role of improvisation in her work.
Her performance in the hotel gave me a STRONG
feeling of watching a jazz improvisation.
Vida said it is an important aspect of her process.
She has a long history of working with many improvisational groups
including the well-known PLAY GROUP of women performance
artists in Montreal as well as dance/music/vocal improvisation groups.
Vida enjoys the transformation and the surprise
of shared transformation that can occur in group improv.

It is not unusual for a performance artist to improvise
in front of an audience but he/she usually does it alone.
It is very unusual for performance artists to collaborate
in groups: exception-to-prove-rule is BLACK MARKET,
natch. Jazz musicians and contact improvisation dancers
share a lexicon of phrases/moves & a methodology
of how-to-improvise together. [In fact, flamenco
musicians/dancers/singers have rules of how to signal
beginnings/endings to fascilitate the dialogue/trade
of their improvisation.]

But how do performance artists improvise?
I ask Vida for a memory from PLAY GROUP improv-sessions
(they were, in fact, for process, not for presentation to a public).
She remembered pomegranates once being used by
1 or 2 artists in a circle, left on the floor, then a 3rd picked
out the seeds with pins and told a memory-story for each seed,
a 4th artist attached the pomegranate to her chest
like a bleeding heart, and so on ....
an oppportunity to discover transformations.

I catch up with ONE NIGHT ONLY later that afternoon.
ONO (Felipe Diaz, Blair Fornwald, Tanis Keiner, & Anna Scott)
are loosely based in Regina and tomorrow afternoon shall
perform HOUSEGUEST PROJECT in Laura's private home
from 5:00 - 7:00 pm. You should come!

I asked them about how they collaborate and/or improvise
together and what drew them from visual art-making to performance.
Blair instantly said it was "the immediacey" that she loved about
performance and Felipe agreed saying sculpture-making
does not provide the intense interaction he gets from performance.

ONO's process appears to be more like 4 artists in parallel play.
They agree on a theme/topic and each artist brings an aktion
(perhaps with a prop and/or soundtrack) and through the execution
of their individual performances some improvisation/chance events occur.
But they don't improvise 6 hours a week in a studio nor does one artist
plan/choreograph what the other 3 should do with him/her.

I ask them to describe some actions they've done in performance
and I find them deliciously CONCEPTUAL and very SMART even when
they sometimes are executed with technical problems
and so aren't "perfect". They usually make site-specific work
but have also performed in the holy white cube of the art gallery
and the historically burdened black box of theatre (my adjectives).
Despite my prejudice towards the black box, their recent collaboration
with a modern dance company and a theatre director sounded
FABULOUS. It sounded like they held their ground and still performed
their clean/sculptural/conceptual aktions but they were well-lit
and the dancers kinda whipped around them like turbulent wind.

Every day ONO arrives with fresh flowers for Laura' desk.
What good houseguests they are! And small art-making is left
like treats around the gallery -- small drawings, messages,
a gorgeous WELCOME MAT made out of talcum powder at
the gallery's front door.

Who wouldn't want these guyz as house guests?
Looking forward to tomorrow afternoon's performance.

Love,
La Dragu (the scribe)