This occasion I could only spend some hours of one of the four days of Toronto Buskerfest 2012, the already famous street performances festival organized in many Canadian cities during summer. I had the opportunity to see two full spectacles, one by a Mexican acrobat, Pancho Libre, and another one by Ernest The Magnifique, an australian performer.
I'm sharing some of my photographs and I hope you like 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.
I’ve already shared my experience as spectator of a traditional Japanese puppet theater performance (1) during this Noge Street Performance Festival in Yokohama. Now is the turn to show you some pictures and videos of the performances of two street Butoh dance groups:
Watching Butoh in this kind of festival and space (an open space) transforms it in a more strange way than usual (we all agree that Butoh itself is not a very common performing art): it works very well in a visual point of view but it seems that all its characteristic inner strength disappears; it becomes a colorful spectacle and somewhat comical, but almost nothing in it recalled me traditional Butoh performances. Anyhow, that did not seem to bother the artists who were well adapted to those conditions, public and space, and even, I would say, they were acting in a kind of festive mood, very ad hoc with a street event like this.
The two groups performed on the same street space within the festival (24th, April, 2011), one after the other, and lasted about an hour each.
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.
This is the second part of 2 of the Ashkenaz Festival 2010 in Toronto, but I repeat the introduction of the first part:
¿In which part of the World you can experiment Jewish culture without feeling you are not part of it? Aside of New York and (maybe) Israel itself, almost everywhere in the world Jewish communities are closed to other eyes, and that's it, yes, well not in Toronto.
Jews are a very strong community here and also a very active one. Just months ago there was an impressive Jewish film festival with a huge quantity of Jewish-subject and Jewish-made films, and every September the whole city celebrates Jewish Culture with a festival called Ashkenaz Festival or Festival of New Yiddish Culture (as it was called in Yiddish). During more or less an entire week there are theatre performances, music concerts, dance performances and lessons, parades, a market fair, painting exhibitions, lectures, and religious ceremonies with a relevant openness to non-Jews that most of us have never experimented before.
Jewish artists and celebrities from all over the world come here for the festival and party and talk with everyone who wants to listen to or dance with or learn from, and that is simply amazing.
So I tried a little bit of everything and I had many surprises. I'm sharing some photographs of every spectacle and there is a video or audio when I could record something.
Now, the other five events I listened to and watched, including the parade with giant puppets, musicians and actors.
Sephardic and Mizrachi Cabaret
A concert with 10 of the best of the best in Sephardi and Mizrachi Music (from Israel and Morocco to Washington, from Sarajevo and Seattle to New York). It was the first time I experienced as spectator Ladino Songs.
Finally a very live performance and parade with hundreds of people lead by Shadowland Theatre Group with their big puppets and music bands.
Seeing a street theatre performance in Toronto is almost a miracle, there are some acrobatic groups performing here and there (Orange Circus and others), but street theatre groups I only know Shadowland Theatre Group. It seems they are working in Toronto since many years ago, and some of their first performances had political connotation for the city during the eighties, so it has been a long way on an almost deserted land. Good for them.
Yes, I finally could see a Cirque Éloize performance, and it was during this Toronto Buskerfest 2010. For many years I was trying it but always something happened stopping me to go.
ID is the name of Cirque Éloize's last spectacle, and it is all around street acrobatic acts, much of it with street dance (Capoeria and hihop styles), bicycles, street climbing, etc. It seems that it has been a great success in its natal Montréal and they are trying to expand that success to Toronto and all over Canada.
The Toronto Buskerfest Cirque Éloize's performance I saw was only a 30-minute extract from the original spectacle (originally for an inner stage and not for street festivals), but it shows many of the impressive acts included in it: some street acrobatic dance, a play with a hoop, and acrobatics with a bicycle. Well, I said impressive acts, when actually there were not as impressive as they should be. After have seen the video you will agree with me that this was not the best way to introduce a very interesting modern circus company to any public, many of the movements during this performance had no strength nor projection, and some parts were almost bad performed. I guess it was because this wasn't the original performing plan and they were very aware of the danger of working on a stone stage; even do the bicycle acrobatic act is surprising and well done.
Now I'm looking forward to see this company performing on a theatrical stage (in October this year), and then add my opinion to that of many others who have seen Cirque Éloize before, that they are an amazing modern circus company with the similar level of quality than its big brother, Le Cirque du Soleil.
Street Performers from all over Canada, and some others from other parts of the world, gather every year in Toronto at Buskerfest. Close-Act Theatre, a Dutch Street Theatre group performed yesterday (August 26th, 2010) SAU'RUS, a spectacle where 3 actors on stilts and dressed like dinosaurs, walked all around St. Lawrence Market and beyond, playing with the public and posing for some great photographs.
I’ve seen people dancing Tap in many occasions in my life, most of them in films, some, live, as spectator and as part of musicals I was working in, never dancing myself though, but enjoying watching it and in some occasions, very especial occasions (I’ll talk about them later), feeling the freedom coming from the dancer with that remarkable sound and that trembling in the floor those foot movements provoke when are very well performed, and on the street.
With the time and studying about acting techniques, and different ways of body speaking on stage, when Tap appeared again in my life I had to stop a little bit more than enjoying it, and thinking more about that strange feeling it has always given to me when is performed amazingly, a Jazz-like feeling of freedom and beauty.
You can speak, have a dialogue or singing in a group only by dancing Tap, and that is absolutely amazing.
But, how do they do it? I accept it, have no idea. It remains a mystery for me.
As Flamenco or Irish traditional dance do Tap dancers move spectators making hearts beat at their foot's rhythm. Strangely, the places I have experienced this feeling were not on a theatrical stage but on the street. That doesn’t mean nothing, only a coincidence; what I’m looking for is how to explain better my experience, how to share it with more than “my feeling” of it.
I remember two moments as spectator of a Tap dance performance on the street:
My first experience was when visiting London in 2007, on the Thames riverside (not far of Shakespeare’s The Globe) I found I guy dancing Tap on the street; he was performing on a simple piece of wood, with a colleague musician accompanying him drumming with a box as his instrument... Not talking about the quality of his technique (I guess he was a good dancer) I can only referrer to its dancing as the same unmistakable feeling of freedom and touch-sensitive experience I talked before; its sound of his steps echoed everywhere, including my body. I was seeing a man in ecstasy, impossible to know if was caused by the dance or because some drugs in him; anyway, his feeling was contagious. You can see him in the video I posted here.
My second experience, 2 years later, was in San Francisco. A group of street Tap dancers where performing for tourists at the corner of Market street and Powel Streetcars Station. They were happy performing there, having fun while dancing, and we tourists were happy with them. In this occasion dance dialogueand chorus was what I enjoyed most.
For sure many of you have had many great experiences with different kind of dances (street dances or very high professional), having those impressions I’ve been talking here, but do any of us can talk with knowledge about the reasons, about how they work and how they provoke on us this feeling?
Reading some dance anecdotes compiled by Mindy Aloff (1) I found a passage where Savion Glover talks about Tap, its rules and how they usually perform. It doesn’t explain everything but it is a word coming from whom is considered one of the most important Tap dancers in history and heir of a long American tradition of Tap dancers not exactly educated in a school but on the street :
“Honi (Coles) and Buster Brown and Lon Chaney and Jimmy Slyde and Ralph Brown and Chuck Green -they thought me the rules. And you have to know about the rules, because that’s respecting the tradition. Take the hoofer’s line for instance (2). That’s where everybody’s doing a paddle and roll and one dancer at a time takes a solo turn. There are rules, but the rules are unspoken, almost secret. The main thing is, you got to finish the phrase of the man before you, finish it and then add something of your own. And if you don’t, you’ll be cut by the next man, embarrassed, you’ll have your own step flipped back on you. You can spit on someone through the dance. You can murder someone through the dance. Dancers do that all the time. It’s part of our ritual to be competitive. And you know when you’ve been cut. It’s terrible, especially if a lot of people recognize it. If it’s like that, you’ll get everybody going: “Oooooooooo...”
So, as Jazz does, Tap "hoofers" got its own secrets rules, maybe I was not mistaken my perception coming from I was feeling about this kind of freedom while performing tap on the street, they are in a dramatic dialogue, taking risks and having fun. After these words I can watch again those videos I posted, and see one more showing Glover dancing with a fantastic group of dancers at the White House in 1998, and then having new approaches to this amazing art.
New Iphone, new way to post, Blog-news, but never leaving behind my usual way to write here, it'll come a serious post about the subject.
Nothing more than some quick videos almost in real time of "La Nuit Blanche" in Toronto, Canada, a whole night of Art Installations and party all around the city's streets.
If you are interested in using any text, image or video from this Blog, please contact the author writing your e-mail and information in comments. (comments are private)
