You may withdraw and proceed with your walk

An excerpt from All This Can Happen produced by Siobhan Davies Dance, based on Robert Walser's 1917 novella The Walk. (Discovered via the New York Review Books newsletter.)

All This Can Happen

[I am rediscovering walking this week. Montreal is a good city for walking, made all the more beautiful when it's under fresh snow.]

An Inexpressible Feeling for the World

I stood and listened, and suddenly there came upon me an inexpressible feeling for the world, and, together with it, a feeling of gratitude, which broke powerfully out of my soul.

Excerpts from The Walk, by Robert Walser.

See also Maria Popova's reflections: Robert Walser, the Art of Walking, and Our Daily Dance of Posturing and Sincerity.

What is tango?

"Tango?" said Mrs Rupa Mehra in alarm. "What is tango?"

"Bye, Ma," said Meenakshi. "Tango. A dance. We're going the Golden Slipper. Nothing to worry about. There's just a large crowd and a band and dancing."

"Abandoned dancing!" Mrs Rupa Mehra could hardly believe her ears.

— from A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth.

(I'm only about a third of the way through the book, but the number of pages is alarmingly high — easily the equivalent of two average novels.)

Part seven with all its parties and socializing has been particularly delightful. Lots of clever repartee, and throwaway lines like, "He's just a writer, he knows nothing at all about literature."

Living poetically

We saw the circus last weekend.

Cirkopolis
C'est la quête identitaire d'un travailleur solitaire.
C'est l'obsession de retrouver son âme d'enfant.
C'est le parcours initiatique d'un clown
qui par sa poésie va changer son environnement.



A little purer than the now seemingly garish and bombastic Cirque du Soleil.

Smashed

Yesterday, I saw the Gandini Juggling show Smashed.



It's not acrobatic or clowning-around juggling so much as it is a dance performance and artistic statement. (In fact, my favourite segment had the players working only one apple (is it still juggling if you're juggling only one thing?).) It is breathtaking, even jaw-dropping, nonetheless.

The show starts off so civilized, elegant, a little coy, witty; with humour, it pokes at male-female relations and power and control (isn't that what apples are all about?); then the tea party veers off into chaos.

Choreography is inspired by Pina Bausch (see Wim Wenders' spellbinding treatment of her work), and the music for the show is superbly chosen.

I won't reinvent the wheel: McAughtry has an enthusiastic write-up of the show (performed in an outdoor setting), with a breakdown of some of the segments, with video clips.

The Montreal show plays till Monday; if you're in town, check it out. If you're elsewhere, keep your eyes and ears open for a chance to see it.

Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost

Official site.
A bit of background.

It's joyful and thought-provoking, beautiful, and even funny at times. It's a "documentary," but without much dialogue — it's all about the dance, in the studio, on stage, and out onto the streets. The floating trams of Wuppertal are a marvelous backdrop. It's in 3D, directed by Wim Wenders, and nominated for an Academy Award in the category of best documentary feature.

Aging and memory are major themes in the works that are excerpted. The dance is deeply psychological (and with a touch of absurdity), the more so for humans being cast alongside basic elements — cascading water, flinging dirt, blowing leaves.

I dragged the family to see it this weekend, and we all loved it. J-F was astounded to discover that modern dance could be so meaningful (having seen Lalala Human Steps with me years ago and being unimpressed by the repetitiveness, and in contrast to, say, Cirque du Soleil, which ultimately is about feats of strength) — he is currently considering giving up his career in the civil service to join a dance troupe. The 9-year-old says it was very cool, so don't hesitate to take your kids — expose them to something a little out of the ordinary while saving yourself the expense of arts centre tickets. See it.