Thursday, December 27, 2012

Das Lied Ist Aus (A video from my Butoh Vlog)


Das Lied Ist Aus (Butoh Vlog. Gustavo Thomas © 2012)


This is part of my daily morning training, and nothing else. 
After walking and working with some postures and inner images, a short choreography emerges, that's what you see in this Butoh vlog.
The music you are listening in the video wasn't that I was working with during my training, it was added later during the edition.



Video:

Das Lied Ist Aus (Butoh Vlog. Oct 2nd, 2012) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.




Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

 

Friday, December 21, 2012

A video with the poem "Hace Tanto" (It's been so long) (Read By Gustavo Thomas)


I've been recording in video some of my poems reading by me (in Spanish); first the reading and after the text. We'll see how it goes.

I'm a writer in Spanish so, my writings are in that language; sometimes I publish the translation to English, but sometimes not, it will be always an approximation to the original one.


Video of the poem "Hace tanto"

Hace tanto (Poema de y por Gustavo Thomas) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.
Hace tanto

Possible translation:


It's been so long


It's been so long since I saw your breasts
uncovered when it dawns,
nor your smile when you see me
and those eyes closing again

I have lost your smell, or I mistake it,
 but not your sound that moans,
nor your hands that touch,
and those warm lips that welcome me./

I have them here.../

You're not who walks at my side anymore,
nor who sweats when I ejaculate tired

Woman, you're not anymore
she who receives my embrace!/

I don't have you here!/

I also know of something that I miss from you:
your buttocks, your feet so cold
and your hair so long./


Gustavo Thomas © September 2011
(Translated by Tadeo Berjon © 2012)



Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Greensleeves (Video from my Butoh Vlog. Gustavo Thomas. 2012)


Greensleeves (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)


This is part of my daily morning training, and nothing else. 
After walking and working with some postures and inner images, a short choreography emerges, that's what you see in this Butoh vlog.
The music you are listening in the video wasn't that I was working with during my training, it was added later during the edition.





Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

9 Different Dreams Of Coldenss And Humidity (Digital Work Over Photographs From my Butoh Vlog. 2012)



9 Different Dreams Of Coldness And Humidity: Dream 1 (From my Butoh Vlog)
9 Different Dreams Of Coldenss And Humidity (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)

Those who follow my Blog know very well that my Butoh Vlog has become an unique source of visual art exploration, in video and in digital art and photography as well. Today I want to show to you a series of manipulated still photographies from one video of one of my Butoh trainings. These photographies acquired their own life when I was digitally working with them, and now are totally separated from the first impulse that provoked the movement in my training that day; you can imagine that is something I really love. They are now a series of 9 pieces that I've named: "9 Different Dreams Of Coldenss And Humidity".

Even you have here a slideshow with the 9 photographs, you can still going to the link in flickr and watching them separately, if you want: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gustavothomastheatre/sets/72157632111679604/


Slideshow of "9 Different Dreams Of Coldenss And Humidity"






Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


Saturday, December 8, 2012

Youthful Illusions (Video from my Butoh Vlog. Gustavo Thomas. 2012)


Youthful Illusions (A video from my Butoh Vlog. Gustavo Thomas © 2012)

This is part of my daily morning training, and nothing else. 
After walking and working with some postures and inner images, a short choreography emerges, that's what you see in this Butoh vlog.
The music you are listening in the video wasn't that I was working with during my training, it was added later during the edition.

Youthful Illusions (vals)

If you want to see other videos form my Butoh vlog you can go to the link: "Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog" on the upper part of this page

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Opinions of the young poet Henrik Ibsen against Realism.

The young poet Henrik Ibsen


Henrik Ibsen is recognized worldwide as a revolutionary playwright and it is said that his plays, even today, are the most performed on stage after Shakespeare’s; but Ibsen, in his native Norway and in the Scandinavian countries in general, is also recognized as a poet of great talent - in fact, he is the national poet of Norway (1). The cliché of his fame in his native country in relation to the Norwegian language is the same credited to Shakespeare with English or Cervantes with Spanish, no less. But his poetry, apparently too nationalistic or local (though no great poet is local only, I would say...) is virtually unknown outside Scandinavia, and even his plays written in verse have seen their poetic characteristics "erased" from them due to the translations that have been made of them. Let's not forget that translating from Norwegian to English or, worse, to Spanish, is extremely difficult - in the case of Ibsen it was from Dano-Norwegian, as it was called in his time, when Norwegian was not yet recognized as a language but as a dialect which used a lot of Danish words to become "literary" -, the rhythm and musicality of poetry are easily forsaken in order to maintain consistency with the dramatic text. That’s a pity, no doubt.

So, if today Ibsen’s work as a poet is unknown to most of the world, much more so is the time when our famous playwright had not yet taken realism as his battle horse.

While learning the art of success for the theater (which cost him blood and tears) the young Ibsen made his living as a critic, and his views were clearly marked by his love and respect for what he considered the highest quality in theater: poetic theater. No wonder then that the revolution caused by photography and Realism in  European theater (though not yet Naturalism) wasn’t to his liking.

In the biography of Ibsen written by Michael Meyer I found some small passages and quotations about the times of Ibsen the defender of poetry in drama and ardent critic of the new realistic fashion coming from France that flooded Danish and Norwegian theatres. In these comments we see an Ibsen little known to the world, criticizing what later became his gateway to global stardom, but curiously we also discover in his critique full of conservatism a visionary regarding the levels that the Realistic movement would achieve in future, even to the present day.

 
Here's the quotation from Meyer’s book:

 
On 11 October 1857, less than six weeks after his arrival in Christiania, we find him castigating the theatre-goers of the capital for their lack of taste. The play under review was Hans Andersen's A Country Tale, adapted by Salomon Mosenthal's Der Sonnenwendhof; and Ibsen warned his readers that it could hardly expect a long run, since "its quality is essentially poetic. This is the age", he continued, "of transparencies, of clever technical effects. Technique, in the most superficial meaning of the word, is the only thing the public is capable of appreciating, and the theatre is perfectly justified, from a financial standpoint, in continuing as hitherto to present more recent French works which have for so long constituted the basic diet of our repertory. These plays commonly display a skilled technique, which the public likes, and, which is probably even more to their taste, they have nothing whatever to do with poetry." Ibsen goes on to express sentiments which may surprise those, still, sadly, a majority, who think of him principally as a social realist on the strength of a few plays which he wrote in the middle of his career. Many people, he writes, "will regard this play as both untrue and unwholesome, because it does not bear a photographic resemblance to reality … People demands reality, no more and no less. That art should elevate is not a popular conception." The only limitation of photography, he concludes ironically, is that it cannot, except in abstract kind of way, reproduce colour; but this, doubtless, will soon be remedied, and an even greater realism will result, a tendency which art and poetry will doubtless follow in their quest for further popularity.

Two months later, in a tribute to the actor Anton Wilhelm Wiehe published in Illustreret Nyhedsblad on 13 Decemeber, Ibsen returned to the attack on modern French drama and photographic realism. Denouncing the former as "lacy weavings," which "so sadly flaunt virtuosity at the expense of art," and "can only degrade art into the vulgar emptiness of 'effect', he praises Wiehe for his "spirited pursuit, not of banal realism, but of truth, that loftier, symbolic representation of life which is the only thing artistically worth fighting for, yet the existence of which is acknowledged by so few
"- (2)
 

Salomon Mosenthal, author of Der Sonnenwendhof.

Cover of Der Sonnenwendhof libretto

Anton Wilhelm Wiehe, actor of "poetic theatre"



In my head stir all these initial conceptions of Ibsen, the realist, from my first theater studies around Realism, so reading and thinking about him as an advocate of ‘spiritual reality’ through poetry in the theater sounds like an idea coming from another world.

Certainly, an unrecognizable Ibsen, but  one that actually existed, and our recognition of that phase of his creative life could help us to have a better appreciation of his complete work, not only one part of it as apparently has happened.

People change over time, artists even more so, we are inherently unstable and we follow exploratory paths, either because of a deeply artistic interest or because we’re being pushed by our own life situation; some attempt to hide their changes and the changes of others are simply deleted by history, which chooses and edits in accord of its own interest.






(1) Ibsen's poetry can be found online, translated into English: http://www.ibsen.net/index.gan?id=26645&subid=0

(2) Ibsen, A Biography By Michael Meyer. Double Day. New York, 1971. Pages 146-147.
 






Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


Thursday, November 15, 2012

Death Of A Quiet Poet (Video From My Butoh Vlog. Gustavo Thomas. 2012)


Buto Vlog (June 13, 2012) Death Of A Quiet Poet
Death Of A Quiet Poet (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)


This is part of my Butoh Vlog, part of my daily morning training, and nothing else.

After walking and working with some postures and inner images as a warm up (and always with music), a short choreography emerges, that's what you see in this Butoh vlog.

The music you are listening to in the video is not what I was listening to during the exercise, it was added later.



Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

L'esprit de la danse à Montréal / The Spirit of the Dance in Montreal (Digital Work Over Photography By Gustavo Thomas. 2012)



L'esprit de la danse à Montréal / El espíritu de la danza en Montreal (Digital Work Over Photography. 2012)
L'esprit de la danse à Montréal / The Spirit of the Dance in Montreal

(Digital Work Over Photography. By Gustavo Thomas © 2012. All Rights Reserved)




Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Don't Want To Look Guilty (A Video From My Butoh Vlog. 2012)


"Don't Want To Look Guilty"

 This is part of my daily morning training, and nothing else. After walking and working with some postures and inner images, a short choreography emerges, that's what you see in this Butoh vlog.



Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Friday, October 12, 2012

The Diva and The Poet (A Poem)


María Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini walking near Nápoles, during the filming of Medea . 1970.*



THE DIVA AND THE POET*


Look at them both walking the dusty streets of the mythical Italy!

Smiling, with happy steps,  
living dreams others would soon shatter 
till they saw them both down, dead. 

She sings poems, shows her whole self off while in pain.  
He sings poetry, and dreams of handsome proletarians.

Oh, their feet are big,
as big as their amazed mouths!  

(Gustavo Thomas © 2012)

 






* This photogrpah has been published in several sites on the Net and none gives the author's name; if you know the name of the photographer, please, give it to me to put it as a credit.

 *Original in Spanish. Translation by Tadeo Berjon.


Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Lustful Girl (Digital Work Over Photography. By Gustavo Thomas. 2012)



Lustful Girl (Digital Effect Over Photography. 2012)
Lustful Girl

(Digital Work Over Photography. By Gustavo Thomas © 2012. All Rights Reserved)




Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Monday, October 8, 2012

"A short memory" (Video from my Butoh vlog. 2012)


"A short memory" (From my Butoh vlog) (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)


This is part of my daily morning training, and nothing else. After walking and working with some postures and inner images, a short choreography emerges, that's what you see in this Butoh vlog.

The music you hear is not what I was listened to when I was in the training, it was added later.
 

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

"Tamalera" (Digital Drawing and Painting. By Gustavo Thomas. 2012)



Tamalera (Digital Drawing and Painting. 2012)
"Tamalera"

(Digital Drawing and Painting. By Gustavo Thomas © 2012. All Rights Reserved)




Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Sergio López about Oscar Liera . Homage to Oscar Liera at Foro Luces de Bohemia. (1997)


Sergio López about Oscar Liera. Foro Luces de Bohemia. México, 1997.



Following this series of videos about the homage to Oscar Liera organized at Foro Luces de Bohemia in Mexico City, in 1997, it's now the turn to show Sergio López participation in it.

(I apologize, once again, to the English speaking followers of this Blog, this is a video only in Spanish) 

In that Round table were Oscar Blancarte, Soledad Ruíz, José Enrique Gorlero, Felipe Galván, Armando Partida and Sergio López.

Sergio López about Oscar Liera:





Texto, fotografías y vídeos en este Blog son propiedad del autor, excepto cuando se aclare otra autoría. Todos los derechos son reservados por el autor de este Blog. Si existe algún interés en usar textos, fotografías o vídeos propiedad del autor, sea uso comercial o no, es necesario hacer una petición por escrito y dirigirla por correo electrónico a Gustavo Thomas a gustavothomasteatro@gmail.com.



Tuesday, October 2, 2012

The Rose (From my Butoh vlog) (Digital Work Over Photograph. By Gustavo Thomas. 2012)



The Rose (From My Butoh Vlog) (Digital Work Over Photograph. 2012)
The Rose (From my Butoh vlog)

(Digital Art Over Photograph. By Gustavo Thomas © 2012. All Rights Reserved)


Summer has left me a difficult path in my own work and I haven't had time to edit the videos from my Butoh vlog (and therefore showing them off), but the digital art that surges from them has not stopped.

The flower is an object-subject Kazuo Ohno used to work as part of their own training and as part of his workshops in Yokohama, and his son, Yoshito Ohno, continues to do the same in his own workshops. 

This flower I'm showing here (an artificial rose) was given to me by Yoshito Ohno during a Butoh master class he gave in Montreal dance school last October 2011; the flower is now part of my daily training ... and part of my own art.





Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


Sunday, September 30, 2012

The book "Método de Actuación de Antonio González Caballero" (Spanish edition) is now in ebook version at the Kindle Store (2012)


Ebook of "Método de actuación de A. González Caballero" is already at the Kindle store

It has been another long wait but the Spanish edition of my book "Método de Actuación de Antonio González Caballero" is already on sale at the Kindle store in Amazon. This is exactly the same text already published in paperback: 381 pages (more or less, depending of the Kindle app version you use) with all the exercises and "apoyos" from González Caballero's acting method, with direct quotations from the master's voice.

As commonly occur there are minimal changes from the original text, mostly because of the change of format: for example, there are no links in the list of content, but you can easily find any word or sentences in the 'search" window.

The most important and valuable thing is the price, US $ 9.99 (instead of US $20.00 + shipping of the paperback version), and that you can easily download the book to your electronic device (mobile phone, tablet or computer) and start reading and working with it almost immediately.


Here's the link to the Kindle store:


Kindle amazon:  
www.amazon.com/Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero-ebook/dp/B009HUT5AA


It's time to rest a little bit around this project (around González Caballero's Acting Method) and continue with my personal work.

Hope in no much time I can start the work of the English version of this very important book.





*



The book "Método de actuación de Antonio González Caballero" (Spanish edition), in paperback, is on sale in these sites:

Amazon España:  
http://www.amazon.es/Método-Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero/dp/1466261919

Amazon.com: 
http://www.amazon.com/Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero-Spanish/dp/1466261919 

CreateSpace: 
https://www.createspace.com/3677417


The ebook version:


Kindle amazon:  
www.amazon.com/Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero-ebook/dp/B009HUT5AA




Friday, September 28, 2012

Bearded Man With Red Pillows (Digital Work Over Photograph By Gustavo Thomas. 2012)




Bearded Man With Red Pillows (Digital Work Over Photograph. 2012)
Bearded Man With Red Pillows

(Digital Art Over Photograph. By Gustavo Thomas © 2012. All Rights Reserved)





Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Armando Partida about Oscar Liera . Homage to Oscar Liera at Foro Luces de Bohemia. (1997)


Armando Partida during his talk about Oscar Liera. (Gustavo Thomas © 1997)


I apologize (once again) to the English speaking followers of this Blog, this is a video only in Spanish: Armando Partida, the Mexican theatrical researcher, talks about Mexican playwright Oscar Liera during the homage realized in 1997 at Foro Luces de Bohemia in Mexico City.

Armando Partida sobre Oscar Liera:








Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

"Body And Cushion" (Digital Art Over Photograph By Gustavo Thomas. 2012)


Body and Cushion (Digital Art Over Photograph. 2012)
Body And Cushion
(Digital Art Over Photograph. By Gustavo Thomas © 2012. All Rights Reserved)





Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


Friday, September 21, 2012

"Trilogía Oscura. Parte 2: La Cura", a play by Gustavo Thomas in ebook format (2012)


Cover of the book "Trilogía oscura. Parte 2: La Cura", a play by Gustavo Thomas (2012)


In 1997 José Enrique Gorlero wrote about La Cura:
  

"Stories alienated in the past. Short, tight, meticulous language. References to fiction and reality. Personal search through the maze of shared stories. Gustavo Thomas created deep inside his laboratory where actors are the original subjects. Failure of the memory (the subject undoubtedly falls into this generation); defeating of love. The event that might have been, the caress that could exist. Insecurity of everything. Crisis. Probably the "cure" is a metaphor, absence, a calling for change.

"Sexuality as a pastime of the defeated, intimacy as a result of deep loneliness. Commitment and again, absence. Creatures of the end of the century: the blind, the one that sells herself, the ghost or the angel of death.

"Perhaps Thomas's thoughts and research include severe theatrical resources, the same textual synthesis that becomes image, sound, space and economy of gestures. Yes, it's another generation that flies over our theater, with the force that will surely reach the transformations. " *

 
La Cura is a strange text, all the Trilogía Oscura (The Dark Trilogy) I think it is; those are texts that offer me, as an author, a door to the unknown paths of my own dramatic poetry, romantic and dark poetry of the late twentieth century where I saw that love, sexuality and death were intertwined because of the defeat of the utopias and because of the raise of AIDS. 

This -only in Spanish- ebook version (September, 2012) goes beyond that which was staged in 1997-1998 at Foro Luces de Bohemia in Mexico City, this text is more mature, with more delineated and strong characters, but without losing what attracted me so much in those years of my life, a great sense of exploration and a researching of human pain and sarcasm in our speech, freedom ... 

The book is on sale in the Kindle Store www.amazon.com site for US $ 3.00 and you can download it directly to your cell phone, your iPad, your laptop or your desktop computer:




Site of Amazon  kindle where "La Cura" is on sale
 


If you want to read an extract from the play it's better to download the "sample" than seeing the book inside that amazon offers, I don't know why the format they offer has lost all page breaks and that makes it look messy; the "sample" shows exactly what the text is like.






 * Original in Spanish:

“Historias enajenadas en el pasado. Lenguaje en síntesis, apretado, meticuloso. Referencias de la ficción y de la realidad. Búsqueda personal por los meandros de historias compartidas. Gustavo Thomas construye en la profundidad de su laboratorio; allí los actores son el origen del viaje. Fracaso de la memoria (el tema, sin duda, compete a esta generación); derrota amorosa. El suceso que pudo haber sido, la caricia que debió existir. Inseguridad del presente. Crisis. Probablemente “la cura” sea metáfora, ausencia, vocación de cambio.
“La sexualidad como un pasatiempo de los derrotados, la intimidad como una consecuencia de la soledad más profunda. Compromiso y otra vez, ausencia. Criaturas de fin de siglo: un ciego, la que se vende, el fantasma o el ángel de la muerte.
“Quizá la reflexión de Thomas incluya una severa investigación de recursos teatrales, la misma síntesis textual que deviene en imagen, sonido, economía de espacios y gestos. Sí, es la otra generación que sobrevuela nuestro teatro, con la fuerza que seguramente alcanzará las transformaciones.”



Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


Wednesday, September 19, 2012

A Children's Tale Tree (Digital Painting By Gustavo Thomas. 2012)


A Children's Tale Tree  (Digital painting. 2012)
A Children's Tale Tree
(Digital Painting. Gustavo Thomas © 2012. All Rights Reserved.)



To tell stories for children, either by writing or playing, you need a fantastic tree full of colour and simplicity. 

There will be time to start writing them ...




Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.



Monday, September 17, 2012

"Detroit Industry", A Diego Rivera's Fresco at the Detroit Institute of Arts (2012)

Diego Rivera's mural "Detroit Industry" at Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit. 2012)
"Detroit Industry" A Diego Rivera's fresco at the Detroit Institute of Arts (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)

To look at any of the Mexican masters of art in museums and exhibitions abroad is not only very interesting but it also makes one very proud. The history of the Detroit Institute of Arts and Diego Rivera (as well as the fashion of wondering what Frida Kahlo was doing at that same time) is already part of the mythology of the history of art in Mexico, and possibly in the world. Although Detroit is currently not the best place to visit in the United States (the city is mired in an economic crisis that has left it half-desolate and with extremely high levels of violence and poverty), the DIA, as the museum is known, is still one of the best places to appreciate world-class painting and its collection is truly one of the most beautiful and interesting that I have seen. *

The fresco (mural) "Detroit Industry" was painted by Diego Rivera between 1932 and 1933; we Mexicans know it from our elementary school books (at least those of my school years) and its images are present in tens of illustrations about Mexican muralism. Its main theme is precisely the Detroit industry, which is none other than the automotive and related ones. Apparently it's Diego Rivera's the largest mural outside Mexico.

Just after one enters the museum the receptionists offer detailed information about the highlights of their permanent collection among which, of course, is "The Industry Of Detroit"; you receive a clear explanation of how to get to the room where the mural is, in the central hall of the museum, a privileged space due to its light and spaciousness.

Diego Rivera's mural "Detroit Industry" at Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit. 2012)
"Detroit Industry" A Diego Rivera's fresco at the Detroit Institute of Arts (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)

After what little I've read of the research that Renato González Mello has done on the esoteric part of Diego Rivera in his works in Mexico City (especially the mural in the central building of the minister of education, "La SEP"), I could look at this fresco in Detroit with a new idea in my head; at some other moment I would have contemplated it only aesthetically as a perhaps direct and propagandistic remnant of social movements of the last century (like socialism, class conflict, etc.) and, though it certainly is very influenced by that, the addition of an esoteric interpretation extends the enjoyment and learning from what is observed.  Then those images of curvy women, of plants and fruits, of earth, roots and seeds, and of course the positions of the characters and the colors used within the overall composition of the painting, acquire another dimension. Obviously I am not an expert and I will not delve deeper, but I can refer you to the latest research on the work of Diego Rivera by Dr. González Mello et al.
I share here my photos of the mural.   I hope you enjoy them.

Diego Rivera's mural "Detroit Industry" at Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit. 2012)
"Detroit Industry" A Diego Rivera's fresco at the Detroit Institute of Arts (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)

Diego Rivera's mural "Detroit Industry" at Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit. 2012)
"Detroit Industry" A Diego Rivera's fresco at the Detroit Institute of Arts (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)

Diego Rivera's mural "Detroit Industry" at Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit. 2012)
"Detroit Industry" A Diego Rivera's fresco at the Detroit Institute of Arts (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)









* I've already published in the Blog some photographs of Vincent van Gogh's painting The Diggers.

About "Detroit's destruction" maybe this note by the BBC about Detropia, a documentary, helps to understand the current situation in the city: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19578766 






Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.



Saturday, September 15, 2012

This Child Behind The Glass Looks Like a Girl (Digital Art Over Photograph By Gustavo Thomas. 2012)


This Child Behind The Glass Looks Like A Girl (Digital Work Over Photograph. 2012)
This Child Behind The Glass Looks Like a Girl
(Digital Work Over Photograph. Gustavo Thomas © 2012 All Rights Reserved.)



Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.



Thursday, September 13, 2012

A Kyogen Performance at the National Noh Theatre (国立能楽堂) in Tokyo. (2011)

National Noh Theatre (国立能楽堂) Program with stamps of the 2011 season. (Gustavo Thomas © 2011)

As you would expect, there is no visit I could do to no matter what Japanese city where I do not look for the opportunity of seeing a traditional theatre performance, a kind of theatre that I admire and enjoy very much. In May 2011, in Tokyo, I could only go to see Kyogen, which is a comic performance that normally accompanies Noh plays.  As it took place inside a theatre I was not allowed to take any pictures or video of the performance, but I could take some shots of the building and of the beautiful "stage" of the National Noh Theatre (国立 能 楽 堂).

Contemporary Noh and Kyogen theatres are theatres within theatres, as if the space for Noh were a permanent stage: the spectacular wooden theatre (which has not changed in form or building materials since the sixteenth century) is surrounded by a modern event space, with the consequent addition of seats where originally there was just an open space for spectators in Shinto temples.


National Noh Theatre Stage (Tokyo, 2011)
Stage within the National Noh Theatre (国立能楽堂). Tokyo, Japan. (Gustavo Thomas © 2011)

National Noh Theatre Stage (Tokyo, 2011)
Stage within the National Noh Theatre (国立能楽堂). Tokyo, Japan. (Gustavo Thomas © 2011)

The lighting, which is modern, is directed to the "stage" (to the original Noh theatre) in a completely open way, with no changes during the performance and no adding any kind of "atmosphere". Occasionally during evening performances in temples or outdoors at festivals (I saw one in Osaka with the actors on a boat, for example) torches are used, giving a very special effect on the atmosphere, but the use of electrical light as part of a production’s design is never seen.

This Kyogen performance had a special meaning for me because, for the first time in my life, I was attending a performance of Japanese theatre with subtitles that translated everything to English;  every seat in the theatre had a screen, you could choose between Japanese and English, and so you could follow the performance without focusing only on the movements and the music (which can be interesting but also very tiring).  A wonderful addition for those of us who do not speak Japanese, because it really turns that performance into an event that is very enjoyable in every sense; for the first time in my life I could laugh watching Kyogen through understanding the verbal element and not only through visual cues. These are treasures of modernity that are well appreciated.

Screen with subtitles at the Noh National Theatre (国立能楽堂). Tokyo, Japan. (Gustavo Thomas © 2011)


Most viewers are people over 50, many of them fall asleep just as soon as the performance starts, but a good deal of them really enjoy the show, you can tell that they are familiar with it and they know what to expect from it.  It is not a ritual theatre anymore, of course, and it is not a theatre with great and famous actors and shouts of the public as in Kabuki, but it is highly respected, people applaud vigorously and shows are almost always sold out.




 

The Kyogen performance


Plays program at hall of the Noh National Theatre (国立能楽堂). Tokyo, Japan. (Gustavo Thomas © 2011)

Ticket for the Kyogen performance at the Noh National Theatre (国立能楽堂). Tokyo, Japan. (Gustavo Thomas © 2011)


Kyogen plays, in contrast to Noh, are very simple plays about earthly subjects, related with trickeries and vices, usually common people and with not very stylized movements on the stage. In the last play of that evening program, for example, The fish sermon, a drunk fisherman wants to fool people by pretending to be a monk, and when he's asked to give a sermon he starts to give a list of all the fishes he knows instead of religious sentences, as simple as that.
 
Just as a reference I transcribe the program with the plays performed that night which, as I mentioned earlier, was only Kyogen. There are many sites on Internet which resume Noh and Kyogen plays, so you can make a simple search on Google if you want to know more about them.


Three plays and a musical piece (about 90 minutes)


- Otoshi-Suo (The discovered gift)

- Tsuen (The tea Monk)

- Uo-Zekkyo (The fish sermon)

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Nude In The Mirror (Digital Art Over Photograph by Gustavo Thomas. 2012)


Nude In The Mirror / Desnudo ante el espejo (Digital Art Over Photograph. 2012)
Nude In The Mirror
(Digital Art Over Photograph. Gustavo Thomas © 2012. All Rights Reserced)




Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


Sunday, September 9, 2012

"Golem", A street perfomance by Shadowland Theatre at the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto (2012)


Ashkenaz Festival Street Performance "Golem" by Shadowland Theatre (Toronto. 2012)
Shadowland Theatre at the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)

Every two years Toronto celebrates the Ashkenaz Festival, and one of its main events is the performance and parade, in the end of the festival, by Shadowland Theatre, on one subject referent to the Ashkenaz culture.
Ashkenaz Festival Street Performance "Golem" by Shadowland Theatre (Toronto. 2012)
"Golem", by Shadowland Theatre at the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)

This year the theme was "the golem", that mythical monster of the Renaissance Praga, which once he is alive gets mad and kills everyone who's not a believer, and the only thing could stop his fury is being in love.

Ashkenaz Festival Street Performance "Golem" by Shadowland Theatre (Toronto. 2012)
"Golem", by Shadowland Theatre at the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto (Gustavo Thomas © 2012)


Shadowland Theatre works using giant puppets, Klezmer musicians and non professional actors who are volunteers from the Jewish community of Toronto.







Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


Friday, September 7, 2012

This Child Behind The Glass Is A Clown (Digital Art Over Photograph By Gustavo Thomas. 2012)


This Boy Behind The Glass Is A Clown (Digital Work Over Photograph. 2012)
Este niño detrás del vidrio es un payaso (Arte digital sobre fotografía. Gustavo Thomas © 2012)


All and every one of us change when we're seen through a glass...





Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.


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Gustavo Thomas. Get yours at bighugelabs.com