National Folk Festival 2014

I concluded my Indy HeroClix Easter Pentathlon is not, possibly never, going to happen and went to the National Folk Festival instead of rearranging my dolls again. There I saw many artists, none of them was bad and several were excellent (Dylan Hekimian, The Little Stevies, No Hausfrau, Sparrow-Folk). I was disappointed there was a comma missing in Silkweed's blurb, "Voice, cello, violin keyboard, flute and accordion...", and if that was the worst thing to happen then it was a pretty good festival. This is what I watched, mostly:

• Australian Chinese Music Ensemble (I couldn't find a website)
• Candy Royalle & Sloppy Joe
• The Crooked Fiddle Band
• Doctor Stovepipe
• Dylan Hekimian
• The Ellis Collective
• The Fiddle Chicks
• Glover & Sorrensen
• Grimick
• Hayley Shone
• Howard
• The Little Stevies
• Moochers Inc
• No Hausfrau
• Pants Down Circus
• Poncho Circus
• Pocket Fox
• The Raglins
• Robert Zielinski & Cliodhna Ni Ruairc
• Rory McLeod
• Round Mountain Girls
• The Rusty Spring Syncopators
• Silkweed
• Sparrow-Folk
• The Squeezebox Trio
• Tim Maloney (Hey Tim, timmaloneymusic.com wasn’t working)
• Ukes of Today

Also, various other artists appearing in:

• Slam Poetry vs Bush Poetry
• Circus Performers vs Morris Dancers
• Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit!
• The Fabulous Corricks' Travelling Show

As well as a dozen blackboard acts whose names elude me; well done, everybody, that was nice.  ¶ 18:35 0 comments

  Fiona Jopp’s terpsichorean hair.

Last night I watched Sydney Dance Company perform Interplay. There were three pieces to the program. The first piece was called 2 in D Minor. The music was extraordinary; it was mostly Bach violin solos being played live on stage. The dancing was great, because Sydney Dance Company are great dancers, but it did not complement the music. It was like line dancing to ska. Fortunately it featured Fiona Jopp’s terpsichorean hair, which was my favourite part of the whole evening. Finally the choreography seemed to come to terms with the tempo in the last set - and then one of the speakers crackled and died. Bravo violinist, Veronique Serret! This is not the first show to be affected by the sound system at the Canberra Theatre.
The second piece was called Raw Models. This featured industrial electronic music; harsh lighting, including strobe effects and some kind of anti-spotlighting arrangement which managed to illuminate only the dancers' outstretched limbs; black costumes all round; and contrasting stationary poses with quick movement. Everybody got to lie down for a spell during this piece. The dead speaker had been resurrected as (the sound of) an aquarium bubbler which made me think the orthogonal black curtains outlining the stage represented a mostly empty aquarium, and the dancers were various arthropods trying to make a go of it. I liked it.
The third piece was called L'Chaim! [noun (Hebrew) a toast drunk to a person's well-being]. The dancers were all wearing different colours, which was nice after the dark brown and black of the first two pieces. That was the best bit. The rest of the piece was a dance routine (i.e. an exercise routine) with a microphone handed around for the ensemble to respond to an actor asking questions from the audience. That was all, nothing happened. There were a couple of breaks in the routine where the ensemble apparently loitered on stage, but really they had been paired up (by colour) and were mirroring each other's movements. Still nothing happened. There was some talk about the dancer's identity being suppressed by prescribed movement but it didn't lead anywhere. Yet still nothing happen. At the end the actor said he had always wanted to do a folk dance so they called him up to the stage and coaxed him into joining them in a (Hebrew) folk dance. It wasn't worth the wait.  ¶ 18:54 0 comments

  Rainy but not raining.

It's not raining but the clouds extend to the horizon in all directions. It is well after noon and there are beads of water on the grass. When the wind gusts drops of water fall from the trees, not quite from the sky, rainy but not raining.  ¶ 14:28 1 comments