One Reed Theatre Ensemble along with
The Theatre Centre’s Residency Program
request the honour of your presence
at their performance

A Prayer For Every Hour :
A requiem for our lives as we know them

on Saturday June 21and Sunday June 22
two thousand and eight
at 8 o’clock in the evening
The Theatre Centre
1087 Queen Street West, Toronto (at Dovercourt)

Imagine a coffin, any shape or size, that we can will fill with anything we’d like to pass on to a better place.
This funeral service has something for everyone; original songs, confessions, inspirational speeches, magic, and a disco. One Reed leads you through a transformative communion, as part of a larger project we like to call Self Improvement.
P.W.Y.C .and stick around after for drinks and finger sandwiches.
Wear what you will. Modest attire is recommended but not required.

I recently wrote a rather polemical post about the confusion that arises when we make a category error and look at art from a social or moral perspective rather than from an aesthetic and experiential point of view. Of course, when one makes big, splashy proclamations, fate has a way of coming up with nuanced exceptions. A friend offered me a link to this site: www.espatzrabinowitz.com/

Very arresting visual compositions that present a full embrace of human experience. Political?  Perhaps. Compelling; absolutely.

Scott and I went to see three shows together during the week, one at the large Yerba Buena theatre complex and the others in a nice DIY dance studio called Dance Mission.

The first show was the Lines Ballet performance ‘Long River High Sky’ choreographed by Alonzo King, which featured ‘monks’ from the Shaolin Temple USA. Both the ‘monks’ and the ballet dancers moved superbly although I think the ballet dancers really had the upper hand. Unfortunately, beyond the skills and precision of each performer, there was little that held my interest. The compositions were trite and bilaterally symmetrical and the partnering was totally unimaginative. The music provided live by a group of traditional Chinese musicians was quite evocative, but the nice sounds were diminished by one of the worst lighting designs I’ve ever seen. The performance was sold out and the affluent looking crowd loved it, rising to their feet at the end to applaud. While I can understand the economic, social and educational factors that make people go crazy for mediocre art, on a deep personal level grand enthusiasm for stuff that’s only so-so still utterly confuses me.

The second show, created by Art Street Theatre, was absolutely excellent. Entitled ‘Yes, Yes, To Moscow’ it was a variation on Chekhov’s The Three Sisters. Masterfully performed by three  women and one male narrator/interviewer the piece used theme and variation, dynamic physicality and simple, beautiful American folk songs to create a funny, tragic and touching performance. Unlike most theatre done in English in North America, this was actually theatre, not just live television and the performers themselves created the various spaces, times and atmospheres of the play using their bodies, voices and three chairs. In a year where I think I only saw one other interesting and well made theatre piece (Galin Stoev’s Genèse 2) this was absolutely a highlight. (Actually I saw two other well made theatre pieces this year, Mike Geither’s Ariadne and One Reed Theatre Ensemble’s It’s Hard to Count to a Million, but as I helped make them I’m biased!)

The third show was created and performed by Brazilian dancer Cristina Moura and was called ‘like an idiot’. While Ms. Moura is a very skilled performer, this piece really needed more coherence. A director or dramaturge or dance monitor would have been really useful to create real transitions and to help avoid the slide into facile irony and aggression that plagued the various fragments of dance, theatre and performance art. Ms. Moura had some excellent moments: dancing with a plastic water bottle she sprayed great jets of water from between her teeth in a way that evoked both childlike play and the ritual practitioner’s purification of the ritual space. She danced with rocks in a way that teetered between a child’s game and a divination ceremony. But these exciting moments were not built upon and the vignettes that followed offered well done but reheated critiques of consumerism, drug culture and the implied voyeurism of audiences.

So, all in all a very complete week. Back to work. Thanks to Scott and Sarah and all of the kind people who made it such an interesting trip.

Apart from just walking around (well, up and down really), I visited a few interesting shops that mostly don’t make the guidebooks. I went to China town and visited Clarion Music (www.clarionmusic.com) where I bought a Xiao Shou Gong, the small but powerful gong with the rising tone used in Jingju (Beijing Opera). (I’m regretting not also purchasing a Gen Gu, or small drum, but as Air Canada lost my suitcase for a while somewhere in Vancouver airport, perhaps its best I didn’t get it!) The folks at Clarion were really helpful and friendly, although they did insist that I test out the gongs outside (‘You go outside! You try on street! Not here!’) After Clarion I went to the famous City Lights Books, which is pilloried by locals (Scott – ‘there are way better bookstores’, Kris – ‘that place is too small’) but where I nevertheless found two rare editions of plays by Gao Xingjian with Chinese and English translation facing on opposite pages. The best bookshop though was Green Apple Books, a sprawling maze of used and new titles. I got everything from the monograph of an exhibit of drawings by director and designer Robert Wilson to an excellent primer on architecture every stage director should own to the writings of Judo founder Jigoro Kano. I bought some gifts and pop-art objects at Park Life, a hipster gallery and shop and I ate a surprisingly good bowl of jook at the Samovar. Another treat was walking past an old bank that had been converted into a branch of the Tat Wong Kung Fu Academy – it was Saturday morning and a small hoard of tiny Chinese girls were practicing the line drills of Choy Li Fut while their parents dozed with newspapers in the seating area. We don’t see a lot of Choy Li Fut in Canada and while it is quite common in California, this was the single largest group of children practicing my first art that I’ve ever seen. Pretty sweet.

My friend Kris is not, to my knowledge, a Daoist or a martial artist! He teaches in the Theatre Department at Stanford and is the co-organizer of the workgroup on Performance as Research at the American Society of Theatre Research. Kris and my friend Lisa Wolford just co-edited an issue of TDR on the work of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski and Kris’s interview with Thomas Richards (of the Workcentre of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards) appears in the recent Routledge publication Heart of Practice. Scott dropped me off at the excellent Green Apple Books on Clement Street where Kris picked me up an hour later, saving me from shopping induced bankruptcy! We had lunch together and then drove around San Francisco in Kris’ rather fancy new car, looking at the sites and talking. One of the things Kris showed me was a park where a flock of small green parrots have made their home. Its unclear where they came from exactly, but one can hear them really clearly in the park. I wandered around looking upwards for a while because although they can be heard, they blend with the leaves. An observant homeless person figured out what I was looking for and directed me to the tree where they were sitting. Pretty great to see a flock of parrots right downtown in a major city.

While we drove around we talked and the subject of one of our conversations related back to something I’d talked about with Scott earlier in the week.

For those who may not know, the late Jerzy Grotowski and his last principal collaborators, Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini, have created a kind of dynamic meditation that is done in an organized form that resembles a theatrical performance or a group ritual. The main ground of this dynamic meditation is a series of African and Afro-Caribbean songs. Grotowski did a lot of research into traditional arts and rituals in order to come up with this particular practice which is called Art as Vehicle. This is not some new age rubbish – Grotowski worked for years to assemble his sources and Richards and Biagini have been practicing and training in Art as Vehicle full time for around twenty years.

Kris has been one of the scholars involved with observing and studying Art as Vehicle and I’m always picking his brain because I find the project fascinating. Where this coincides with the other aspects of my San Francisco trip is as follows: Scott Phillips had been studying the somatic approach called Body-Mind Centering, which might be described as combination of dance therapy, movement re-patterning, and occupational therapy. His observation was that this approach would die out after its main instigator, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, passed on. He felt that his own physical awareness and abilities came from the many series of forms that his martial arts training had exposed him to. As Body-Mind Centering does not have forms in the sense of sophisticated pre-arranged movement patterns, Scott wondered how the knowledge that Ms. Cohen has discovered through intuitive experimentation might be discovered by future practitioners in her absence. Scott’s question confirmed my own experience that the forms or pre-arranged movement patterns of martial arts, when done seriously, are what allows practitioners to have a high level of physical understanding. This emphasis on formal practice flies in the face of a lot of the physical theatre training I’ve encountered in the Grotowski lineage, where highly elaborated or structured form is often dismissed as being secondary to rather less clear concepts as ‘intention’, ‘essence’ and ‘action’. Grotowski seems to be preoccupied with transcendence and form is one of the things to be transcended! I think that Grotowski’s Art as Vehicle may be similar to Body-Mind Centering in that both are highly intuitive practices that have not been formalized into physical curricula. While the ‘ground’ of Chinese martial arts training is the complex pre-arranged movement patterns, practices where the ‘ground’ is less concrete may be harder to transmit, even if they have rejected highly formal codification in search of increased depth…

This gets me thinking about transcendental approaches in general, which was a theme of much of what I discussed with both Scott and Liu Ming. Interestingly, apart from a few general references to world traditions of mysticism, the only major mystic that Grotowski spoke about in public at any length was G.I. Gurdjieff, whose rigorous, effort-based practices are just about as transcendentally aimed as you can get. Viewed with an eye to transcendental preoccupations, a lot of the major alternative performance currents of recent times seem to be concerned with soteriological outcomes, even when the discourse that surrounds them emphasizes process over product.

What is so nice about Kris is that he’s been reading lots of Heidegger (I know, crazy Nazi bastard, but, hey so was Rudolph Laban and they both left interesting ways of thinking behind them). Kris’ Heideggerian readings have led him to two very Zen-like positions: ‘dwelling’ in the present moment of experience and ‘not-knowing’ (Heidegger was apparently influenced by the writings of D.T. Suzuki on Zen). So when confronted with an observation like the one I made above that is potentially contentious, Kris just soaks it up and allows you to keep on thinking and exploring around your initial proposal. His students are very lucky to have someone around who can let them think in security!

I spent the last week of May visiting San Francisco on a short research trip. I met with martial artists, performing artists and Daoists and I also saw several dance and theatre performances, not to mention simply being a regular ole tourist!

Scott Phillips

I arrived late Monday night and rose early to join Taiji, Bagua and Gongfu teacher Scott Phillips for his 7:00am class. I wanted to meet Scott because of his very interesting blog ‘Weakness with a Twist’. Scott combines a lifetime practice of Chinese martial arts with a decade of training in Zhengyi Daoism and a professional background as a dancer and performing arts teacher. He has, correctly in my opinion, identified traditional Chinese Gongfu as being simultaneously a martial art of attack and defense and a religiously derived performing arts style. So of course I wanted to talk to him! I attended four of his early morning classes and also met with him privately for several hours of Taiji push-hands coaching and conversation.

In Scott I discovered a teacher who has a really deep knowledge of the body and a direct and clear way of presenting it. Scott is lean and fit and his Northern Shaolin kicks are something to see – they shoot out with the accuracy and suppleness of a frog’s tongue! His level of body knowledge, which he continues to develop through daily training and the study of such somatic systems as Body-Mind Centering is very very high. He pointed out several spots where my body was not moving efficiently and provided strategies and even hands-on manipulations to remedy them. Most helpfully he pointed out an overextension habit I have in my arm use during push hands. This way of moving is fine for Choy Li Fut, but is really counterproductive in Taijiquan. Thanks again Scott.

Most interestingly, Scott can change. Many of the martial arts practitioners I know have a ‘performance’ way of being and a more casual, daily kind of behavior. It appears that from his years of Daoist training Scott doesn’t just have one performance mode but rather can manifest several ways of being that are quite dramatically different from each other. It is impressive to see and has a real quality of credibility, as though he were enacting, rather than performing his martial art. (He’s written some things about this ability on his blog where he talks about the use of the eyes).

Scott also has a really nice group of students who brave the early hours and the cold San Francisco fog to train with him. It was a pleasure to meet such funny, devoted people.

Nam Singh

Given my interest in Daoism and cooking Scott suggested I contact his friend Nam Singh, so while in SF I was fortunate to take part in a Daoist/Chinese cooking class that Chef Nam Singh offered in his home. After a brief theoretical discussion about the effects of various foods and cooking methods on the body in relationship to the seasons, we went to the kitchen to prepare a meal. We made a mild yam and lotus root soup with a chicken and abalone stock, a green sauce to go with seared Romaine hearts and Mahi-Mahi with a crust of powdered green tea. As the least experienced of the four students, I was assigned to peeling and chopping the vegetables. Despite my inexperience, Nam Singh was patient and helpful and created a relaxed and focused atmosphere in the kitchen, a far cry from the adrenaline-soaked histrionics I’ve come to associate with professional chefs and their kitchens. After a few hours of cooking, we sat down on comfortable cushioned stools at the most beautiful round rosewood table I have ever seen and ate the fruits of our labours. Subtle and delicious. After dinner Nam Singh explained that the recipes we’d made were his adaptations of ones created by his Daoist teacher, Liu Ming, whom I met the next day…

Liu Ming

Daoist initiate and teacher Liu Ming graciously received me for tea in his loft in Oakland. Our conversation meandered across a wide range of philosophical topics. Several points stand out. The first was Liu Ming’s suggestion that the Daodejing was perhaps the only spiritual text that did not attempt to suggest how people ought to behave. There are many profound writings found in such comparable traditions as Dzogchen, but even these have some kind of a hint of suggestion about them. If there is a suggestion in the Daodejing, it is the subtle inference that expressing oneself with thundering confidence is the first step towards foolishness. Given that I do this all the time and never seem to learn from it, perhaps I ought to read that passage from the Daodejing on a daily basis! The other point he made that I’m still chewing on is that from a Daoist perspective, the subtle sensations of flow, heat and vibration that arise during qigong, martial arts and meditation practice, are associated with jing or the grossest level of human energy, rather than with qi or subtle energy, as is usually proposed. If energy is moving outward along a particular vector, it is jing. If it is diffuse and felt to the sides, it might be qi. Food for thought indeed.

Our conversation covered a lot of ground – a few more ideas that stick out include the fact that the Daoists of Mount Wudang (whose practices apparently involved some form of martial arts) were an iconoclastic lot who rejected the all-important notion of lineage and ‘did their own thing’ independent from the dominant orthodoxy. Liu Ming also explained that Tibetan and Mongolian Vajrayana Buddhism with its complex Tantric yidam practices was comprehensively absorbed into Daoism, leaving Daoism with its own version of the deity mysticism of North and Central Asia and wiping out most traces of actual Tantric Buddhism in China. So rather than practicing such Tantric visualizations as Heruka and Vajrayogini, Daoists visualize themselves as such deities as Zhen Wu, the Perfected Warrior of the North…. I feel that in the course of an informal and genial conversation I learned and was taught quite a lot of condensed information. I’m still thinking about our conversation, its content, form and feeling. It was very kind of Liu Ming to take the time to explain so many things to me.

My last post full of lists inspired me to offer some non-fiction book suggestions, so here is an eclectic sample of unusual and esoteric books that I have found inspiring and useful:

Developing Zeami: The Noh Actor’s Attunement In Practice, by Shelley Fenno Quinn

Amerta Movement of Java 1986-1997. An Asian Movement Improvisation, by Lise Lavelle

A System of Caucasian Yoga, by Count Stefan Colonna Walewski

Sculpting in Time, by Andrei Tarkovsky

Ritual Is Theatre, Theatre Is Ritual; Tang-Ki: Chinese Spirit Medium Worship, by Margaret Chan

Chinese Theatre and the Actor in Performance, by Jo Riley

Genesis of a Music, by Harry Partch

The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei, by John Stevens

The Academy of the Sword, by Gerard Thibault, translated by John Michael Greer

Zen and the Ways, by Trevor Leggett

Tropical Truth, by Caetano Veloso

And just to be a little provocative, here are some dreadful (shallow at best, deceitful at worst) books for you to be aware of. I actually DO advise reading these because they present the ‘journalistic’ or ‘folk theory’ views (common yet inaccurate views held by people with no real knowledge or experience) on such subjects as Zen, Taijiquan, martial arts and contemporary theatre practice.

Zen in the Martial Arts, by Joe Hyams

The Zen Way to Martial Arts: A Japanese Master Reveals the Secrets of the Samurai, by Taisen Deshimaru

An Acrobat of the Heart, by Stephen Wangh

The Bodhisattva Warriors, by Nagaboshi Tomio

Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain, Chungliang ‘Al’ Huang

The Protestant heritage of Anglo-American and Canadian culture has led to the widespread belief that art has to justify its presence in the world by having an important ‘message’. Authors such as Shaw and Ibsen are lauded for their presentation of ‘serious social issues’ rather than for their capable dramatic writing (how did you get from one scene to the next in the days before sophisticated lighting instruments? You wrote the changes, by gum!)

I for one am fed up with hearing artists who have been conditioned by this reductive trend justify their work because of its social content rather than its aesthetic form. I am equally horrified by the fact the my students have been conditioned all through high school to evaluate art not in terms of the aesthetic experience offered, but in terms of any simplistic moral message it might possibly contain.

IF YOU FEEL YOU HAVE AN IMPORTANT MORAL OR SOCIAL MESSAGE, WRITE AN ESSAY, A PAMPHLET, AN EDITORIAL OR A BOOK, START A POLITICAL PARTY, AN NGO OR BECOME A LOBBYIST BUT FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, PLEASE DON’T MAKE ANY ART!!!

So, in no particular order, here are some books, films and albums that have captivated my imagination and senses over the years. They are surely tacit influences on my work, and while many can be described in terms of moral and social issues, these are only contingent to the craft and élan that makes them compelling. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do:

Fiction (almost):

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk
The Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
Newton’s Niece, Derek Beaven
The Strange Case of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon
Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Peter Hoeg
Famous Last Words, Timothy Findlay
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Jack of Shadows, Roger Zelazny
Shikasta, Doris Lessing
The Khazar Dictionary, Milorad Pavic
In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje
Stick Out Your Tongue (short stories), Ma Jian
Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian
The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin
The Radiant Way, Margaret Drabble
The Good Apprentice, Iris Murdoch
For the Time Being, Annie Dillard
Elric of Melniboné, Michael Moorcock
The Lion of Boaz Jachin and Jachin Boaz, Russell Hoban
The Odyssey, Homer
Metamorphosis, Ovid
Apulius, The Golden Ass
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
Imperium, Ryszard Kapuscinski
White Teeth, Zadie Smith

Cinema:

Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky
Fanny and Alexander, Ingemar Bergman
2001, Stanley Kubrick
Prospero’s Books, Peter Greenaway
Trust, Hal Hartley
The Seven Samurai (Shichinin No Samurai), Kurosawa
After Life (Wandafuru Raifu), Hirokazu Kore-eda
Suzhou River (Suzhou He), Ye Lou
Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders
Underground, Emir Kusturica
Farewell My Concubine (Ba Wang Bie Ji), Chen Kaige
Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi), Miyazaki Hayao
Logan’s Run, Michael Anderson
A Touch of Evil, Orson Wells
The Quiet Earth, Geoff Murphy
The Man Who Copied (Homem Que Copiava), Jorge Furtado
Subway, Luc Besson
My Dinner with André, Louis Malle
Hidden (Caché), Michael Haneke
and High Fidelity by Stephen Frears, because I was almost that guy…

Pop Music:

Ege Bamyasi, Can
Another Day on Earth, Eno
Sign’o the Times, Prince
Low, Bowie
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco
Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth
Come on Feel the Illinoise, Sufjan Stevens
Clandestino, Manu Chao
Oil and Gold, Shriekback
Wrecking Ball, Emmy Lou Harris
Fina Estampa, Caetano Veloso
Junior Relaxer, King Cobb Steelie
Audio Active, We are Audio Active/Tokyo Space Cowboys
African Head Charge, In Pursuit of Shashamane Land
Remain in Light, Talking Heads
London Calling, The Clash

‘Serious’ Music:

Kol Nidre, John Zorn
Lux Aeterna, Gyorgi Ligeti
Palais de Mari, Morton Feldman
Tellehim, Steve Riech
Sonatas and Interludes, John Cage
The Dreamer That Remains, Harry Partch

Theatre and Dance (available on video)

Akropolis, Jerzy Grotowski & Polish Theatre Lab
The Gospel According to Oxyrhincus, Eugenio Barba & Odin Teatret
Einstein on the Beach, Robert Wilson and Philip Glass
The Trojan Women, Tadashi Suzuki
The Dead Class, Taddeus Kantor
Book of Days, Meredith Monk
Le Dortoir, Gilles Maheu
Unetsu, Ushio Amagatsu

Theatre and Dance (that I saw live)

Alkoremmi, Richard Fowler & Primus Theatre
Le Dortoir, Gilles Maheu
Noiject, Saburo Teshigawara
Water Lilies & Kachofugetsu, Kazuo Ohno
Kaosmos, Eugenio Barba & Odin Teatret
A Simple Thing, Thomas Leabhart
Its Op Bach, Allain Platel & Ballet C de la B

My notes are a bit brief, but worth posting nonetheless.

1. Taijiquan movement is characterized by a continuous outward thrust
2. Taijiquan movement is like the movement of a car engine – only one kind of motion should be present, but because of the structure of the vehicle, it can transform the engine motion into a variety of trajectories.
3. The thrust is a far less instinctual movement for human beings, but is far stronger and safer than the slash. Correct thrusting saves the joints, while slashing and hooking motions can harm them.
4. (my note, not Master Chen’s) According to American Army Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, historically the Romans had a senior officer behind every line of fighting soldiers reminding them by yelling and striking them that they must thrust with their swords and not slash. (Grossman, D. On Combat. 2004. PPCT Research Publications). Sorry I can’t recall the page number.
5. There is a visual centre and a functional centre. The visual centre is the centre of mass in the body, while the functional centre between two bodies can actually fall almost anywhere.

6. Master Chen covered a variety of drills. They seemed to fall into two categories:

a. Non-contact drills – avoiding an incoming strike by moving the centre of mass well out of the way and striking an exposed flank. Very quick response based on filling negative space
b. Contact-drills – manipulating your own structure to effect change on another body through a point of contact. Slow tactile drills based on precision and accuracy
7. Eight-Parts Theory. Master Chen presented the 8 Parts theory again, and linked it to his idea above about the ‘car-engine metaphor’, saying any one ‘firing of the piston’ is responsible for moving only 1/8 of the total possible range of movements.

There was of course lots more…

A few weeks ago I spent a couple of days in Montréal. My friend and colleague Sylvain Schryburt and I attended Brigitte Heantjens’ production of Sarah Kane’s Blasted (Blasté en français) at Usine C and I got to catch up with my Choy Li Fut and Wu Taiji teacher Wong Sui Meing.

The theatrical production was a great disappointment. I am dismayed that Ms. Heantjens, who is the most interesting established director working in Canada right now, has been seduced by the fashionable buzz around Sarah Kane’s otherwise infantile and nihilistic writing. Given her excellent earlier work on Heiner Muller and Bernard-Marie Koltès, there is of course hope that she will get back on course.

My visit with Sui Meing was very refreshing. I arrived at the tail end of a morning gongfu class and joined in. It felt great to be leaping and swinging and yelling again and I realized just how fit regular intensive gongfu training makes one. After class we had a snack and then discussed various points about Chinese martial art training.

Sui Meing reported that he’s beginning to feel the spiral structure of the bones and the spiraling of his soft tissues during practice more and more consciously. He also showed me his ability to initiate rapid, light movement from the feet. Rather than dragging and grinding through the various twists of Choy Li Fut movement, he can initiate very powerful yet seemingly light body-twists, steps and leaps seemingly directly from his feet. The result he told me is that everything becomes more efficient and in fact less tiring.

Sui Meing then took me on a whirlwind (literally) tour of the applications of the Tong Ping Taigek Kuen (Tang Peng Taijiquan in Mandarin) which is a branch of Wu Jianquan Taijiquan. In 40 minutes he demonstrated at least 3 applications for every movement in the set. Thrilling. We also reviewed a section of the Zhi Neng Qigong and then he showed me the Northern Shaolin Cane form he’d learned from Master Chiu Kwok Cheung, the Toronto-based Bak Sing Choy Li Fut and Northern Shaolin master whom he trains with.

It was very good so see my old friend and teacher, if only for a few hours.