Modern Dance_a burning obsession

Years ago I shot some pictures for a gentleman and his wife; Both were movers and shakers in the art scene here in London, Ontario. As payment for my work they gave me not just cash, always nice, but tickets for two to each show at a local theatre.

Of all the theatre stuff I was exposed to in those 12-months, I think the modern dance nights were my favourites. I knew very little about modern dance but by then end of the year I was making the drive to Toronto to catch the Danny Grossman Dance Company and attending the Joffrey Ballet in New York. When the touring arm of the Joffrey stopped in London, I made sure I was there.

For me, the best modern dance was imaginative and visually witty with a patina of surrealism. I would go on about the "incongruous juxtapositions" but I never felt comfortable with that talk in art school and I am not about to get into it now.

The only way to make such a conversation work is to get a good group of friends, a couple of jugs of beer and lots of pub-popcorn and peanuts and then, and only then, is it possible to launch into a discussion of what it means to conduct an entire dance routine under a bright red sheet of lycra stretched tautly over an entire stage. The dancers are never seen. All we see are the moving, expanding and contracting bulges, the result of the dancers performing under the distorted fabric.

All the foregoing was an introduction to this video by Memo Akten.

This video is an off-shoot from a visual performance accompanying the Rambert Dance Company at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank, London UK . . . When the clip starts, you probably won't recognize a human shape, but your eyes and mind will be searching, seeking mental connections between abstract shapes and recognizable patterns, like looking for shapes in clouds. You'll be questioning what you see, is that him? is he sitting? is he crouching? is he kneeling? until all of a sudden, he'll be crystal clear . . .

The dancers are Robin Gladwin and Miguel Altunaga. Choreography by Alexander Whitley.


Reincarnation from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Enjoy,
Cheers,
Rockinon

Christmas in Norway

I have linked to this site so often in the past that I am beginning to feel pangs of guilt. Oh well, I can handle them.

I saw Elle's tweet and thought "ho hum" but no, it's a" ho ho ho." What gives this post an edge? - the picture of the helicopter placing a Christmas tree on a bridge. It is just such a neat thing to do on so many levels.

The lights are starting to appear in London and soon I'll go out and get some shots of the local crazies who light their homes better than Niagara Falls.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Social Networking

Last night I blogged on my reaction to women wearing hijabs in London, Ontario. My thoughts had me thinking about how I treat Muslims and why I treat them that way.

This morning I heard from a blogger in Iran! A woman who goes by the name of Shahrzah, and she gave me permission to use some art from her site. She also took the time to enrich my knowledge concerning the attire of Muslim women.

Here are her comments:

Salam/Hi/Peace

I read your post and it's thoughtful. You have permission to use photos from my blog if you want to. And i am so happy that you've decided not to treat Muslim stereotypically as some few people do.

However i would like to give you few information about the hijab and hijab law in Iran. Actually based on law, Iranian women must cover their head by scarf, but it does not include forcing to wear burka or things like that. There's no force to cover the head thoroughly as well. There was a religious police since some years after revolution, but now after coming for second term, Ahmadinejad has eliminated that ancient religious police!

Nobody wears burkas in Iran. Burkas are popular in Afghanistan and some other Asian countries. In fact Iranian women never cover their face, bcs religiously they're not recommended too. (Iranians follow a different sect of Islam, name as 'Shia or Shiite Islam and women are not recommended to wear face cover.)

There's a traditional way of hijab with the name "Chador" and this chador has a history related to pre-Islamic era when Iranians used to follow Zoroastrian religion and women of rich families were obligated to wear chador. Nowadays nobody is forced to wear chador, but some women 'chose' to wear it.

Best Regards,
Shahrzah


My addition: Years ago, while still working at the newspaper I shot pictures of two sisters who were practising Zoroastrians. At the time there were about four or five dozen Zoroastrians living in London, Ontario.

Just a scarf?

The young woman wore a dark, long-sleeved, floor-length dress with a matching hijab. She was working behind the counter at a local store. She smiled at my wife and at me and started totalling our purchases.

This was my second contact with this young woman. She had checked me through a few days before, when I bought a large, wooden toy stove for my new granddaughter. The hijab wearing woman had asked if I would need help carrying the stove to my car and I had laughed that I was not that old. Well, I allowed, I might be that old but I wasn't that out-of-shape.

She had asked who the stove was for — a granddaughter perhaps? I had replied, "Yes." As she taped the loose parts, ensuring I would reach home with the complete stove, we had chatted. I paid, we parted and soon I was struggling through the parking lot with a stove that grew bigger and heavier with every step. I was that out-of-shape.

Driving home I thought about her head covering, her colour coordinated scarf, her hijab — a traditional headdress worn by Muslim women. But before I worked through my thoughts, I was home.

Now my wife and I were back and we had the same young woman checking us out. I think she recalled me — the foolish old man, too proud to accept help carrying an immense, heavy, wooden toy stove to his car.

My wife had a number of delicate canisters and each had to be individually wrapped to make sure they wouldn't knock together and break. As the young woman worked, she chatted with my wife and with me. She asked about our family and Christmas. She confided that her family was quite large and if they celebrated Christmas it would be one expensive festival.

The hijab, unlike the burka, does not cover a woman's face. This young woman's charming and disarming smile was not hidden. When we took our bags filled with Christmas gifts to leave, her thank you followed by the invitation to come again, had the warmth of sincerity.

I'd like to say that I treated this young woman exactly the same way that I would treat any counter person, but I didn't. I tried to be friendlier than usual. I went out of my way to not look at, and to not react to, her obvious Muslim attire.

I mentioned this to my wife and I told her how, if a Muslim family was approaching a store door immediately behind me, I would walk through and then hold the door open for them. I will wait a few moments longer for a Muslim family. I go out of my way to let Muslims see that I treat them just like I treat others.

I see my actions as my own, small way of fighting terrorism. I will not be bullied into treating my Muslim neighbours differently because of the actions of a few nasty extremist crazies living, and dying, many thousands of miles away.

My small, positive actions don't seem like much, almost nothing.

But then I think of France. Last June President Nicolas Sarkozy said, "In our country (France), we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity." The burka — the all-concealing Muslim dress, with mesh covering the eyes — is "a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement," he said. " . . . it will not be welcome on our territory."

In 2004, a law banning the Islamic headscarf — the hijab — and other highly visible religious symbols from French public schools sparked heated debate. He's not smiling and ignoring the head scarf. He's not holding any doors.

Interestingly, in Tunisia — Muslim North Africa — a similar ban has been enforced and ignored in waves since 1981 when a government decree prohibited women from wearing Islamic head scarves in public places. Tunisian human-rights activists accuse authorities of depriving women of a basic freedom guaranteed by the Tunisian constitution.

Photo credit: Shahrazad. [The two images of Iranian women wearing hijabs.]

When I was in Tunisia about a decade ago I would see women walking together, some wearing hijabs, some wearing western dress, while still others in the same group wore body-covering robes hiding all, including their faces. I thought it was pretty cool.

At one point during my visit, I was able to slip into a women-only-club in downtown Tunis. Dozens of western dressed Tunisian ladies held a business luncheon from which all men were barred but for some waiters, the musicians in the band and a smooth talking Canadian photographer. How I managed smooth talk my way in using my limited high school French, I don't know.

But I do know that those women would agree with Sarkozy. They talked about how Saudi and Iranian women must wear the hijab by law and often wear the full burka, not by choice, but out of fear. These ladies might not hold the door for a woman wearing a hijab.

Confused? Me too. But, I think I'll keep smiling, chatting, and holding doors.


Addendum:

"I go out of my way to let Muslims see that I treat them just like I treat others." My wife thought this too subtle. If I go out of my way, I do not treat Muslims as I treat others. My behaviour has been changed by the events of this decade.

The picture on the left accompanied the story I wrote for the paper on Tunisia. This woman had passed on the hijab in favour of the cap and white cuffs of the Police de Circulation, or traffic cops.


For more info on Muslim dress, check out my post "Social" Networking. A lady from Iran contacted me and has added first-hand info. Ah the virtual world is a wonderful place, and that's reality.

Computer Died, Blog Stalled, Back Thursday!

I'll be back - Thursday. I have a new computer. Yeah!

Romantic Fever

Welcome!    Velkommen!     ¡Bienvenido!     Salut!      أهلا وسهلا
____________________________________________________

I can still recall the first time I even gave a thought to having a computer in the home. I was in Detroit buying nylon rode plus dacron sheets and halyards for my sailboat, stuff was cheaper in the States. I caught an Apple II ad squeezed in between the steady stream of old Motown hits.

Why would anyone, I mean anyone, want a personal computer? Talk about stupid.

Then I went to a Canadian Industries Limited (CIL) open house and visited their "computer room." It was a relatively dust-free room, no carpets, with an air conditioning system specifically installed for the computers. The room had to be cool. And it was. It had a dozen Apple IIs running something called a VisiCalc spreadsheet.

Change the number in a square, called a cell, and a wave quickly rippled across the screen as all the numbers changed. These little computers were at the heart of the London CIL operation. They calculated financial projections and complex “what if” scenarios. I was awed.

When the Mac 128 came out, I bought a computer for the home. I did it while my wife was away. I set my baby up in the kitchen on one counter top and ran cables across the narrow room to the printer on the opposite counter. The Mac had 128KB of RAM,  a 64 KB ROM, a 400 KB floppy that didn't flop, it was encased in plastic and the best thing was the screen - run the word processor software, MacWrite, and the screen was like a window on a white sheet of paper with black type. It gave a WYSIWYG image. All I could say was WOW!

There was no going back. I had seen the promised land and it was populated with computers. My Underwood sits in the garage forgotten. My early favourite film camera hasn't been out of its box in years. My darkroom is now in a dark box. My World Books no longer reflect the world and sit shelved in the basement. Computers are everywhere and do everything.

A few years ago I decided to try and learn French and so I went back to school. I did O.K. I can now read French fairly quickly. Today I loaded a new beta version of Blogger software, and if I want to blog in French it is computer easy. Select the words, click on the Define / translate icon.

To put the words into French was as easy as select, point, click, copy and paste.
Pour mettre les paroles en français était aussi facile que pointer choisir, clic, copier et coller.

Let's try translating the same words from English to Spanish.

Para poner las palabras en francés era tan fácil como seleccionar el punto,, click, copiar y pegar.

Out of curiousity, if I went from English to French to Spanish and back to English. The result?

To put words in French was as easy as pointing to select, click Paste.

It got muddled in translation and yet to err is human. Someday, they'll get the human error out of the software. For now this software reminds me of my high school girlfriend. She was from Cairo and her mother tongue was not English.

She would enter a room and "open the lights." When she asked for a favour, she would start out, "I beg of you . . . " When she arrived in Canada she was asked her medical history. Rosy had had rheumatic fever as a child and replied, "I suffered badly from romantic fever."

I do hope they have the bugs out of the software soon. "Suffering badly from romantic fever," sounded much better when Rosy said it.

Put out to pasture_they've earned a rest

Some blogs posted here have been entertaining in their own right but they also had other reasons for hanging around gathering digital dust. In the past three days they have all been checked out. Now, their work done, these blogs have been retired.

They are going to join the one and only video ever shot for posting here and which was taken down after just a day or two.

Cheers,
Rockinon