Bare Bones Butoh "Showcase #22"

Greeting,

This week there will be two butoh performances in San Francisco.  July 29 and 30 Bare Bones Butoh Dance Company will present “Showcase 22”.  On Friday you will be lucky to see Koichi and Hiroko Tamano in one of there last U.S. performances before they head back to Japan.  And on Saturday butoh dancer Luku will perform a self-choreographed piece in which I will be part of.  Come out and experience butoh.

If you are interested in learning what butoh is you are always welcome to come to the workshop in Berkeley, Ca at the Subterranean Arthouse taught by master butoh dancers Koichi and Hiroko Tamano.

-DBL

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Bare Bones Butoh

Studio 210

Studio 210, San Francisco

July 29, 2011 - July 30, 2011

“Showcase 22,” with special guests Vangeline and local Butoh Master Hiroko Tamano. Bare Bones Butoh Presents is a performance showcase for local, national, and International artists working the areas of butoh, performance art, and/or ritual performance.

July 29, 2011

8:00 PM

10:00 PM

July 30, 2011

8:00 PM

10:00 PM

Ticket Prices - $5.00 - $20.00




Studio 210
3435 Cesar Chavez
San Francisco, CA 94110

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Tuesday Night Post #16

Burning Wicks,

I hope you enjoy this short but sweet one.

-DBL

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Keen Edge

Yes I feel like a child always finding my gaze

Settled on to things in amazement

Heroes exist in a cross between confusion and hope

A new one walks in front

In interest my eye waits to unveil

Sweat and heat a forge’s your conceit

Shoulder square round and taut

Arms that hammer bend and hold

Stands higher than any man, alone

Loving your dirty work

Working in the bodies mirth

I haven’t had time to investigate

This maker’s hand

From atop going down the slowin starts

First I take some time to slide

Into stern but coolin blue eyes

Complimented by the soot and skin

Then the arms that bare

I lose my place in the thoughts of strength

And what equals the forming of this flesh

Nothing past the waist below

The power I love is the fatigue in muscle

Long and lean a dancers soul

This one's love is in the coals

Melting metal in the hand

Owning it on an anvil

Queer behavior 
Hardens as it cools

Lay it down
With this sight
You hold me down

Your authority

The only one for me 
If I had a choice


She is a work of pure beauty

A maker skin in the red 

Always giving more than is said

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Tuesday Nights Post #15

Butoh Dancers,

Life has recently sent me some little gifts. Some Performance time and sometime to be with ones I love. I will keep you up to date on some performances and a new series of performance post. The posts on my bench will be on hold since I am living in the Bay Area at the moment.

-DBL

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They Didn't Fell this Redwood

This weekend I visited a new found friend

The only giant I know

The oldest soul I have ever conversed with

It told me of systems that realign

Situations that set the tipping point of potential energy

It told of times deceit

A riddle only understood when pulled away and re-evaluated

Only to fall apart when closely scrutinized for clarity

It helped me imagine a world in which I became a giant sequoia

Towering high and long

Holding hands with its friends

Told me of rain that helped it measure its size and girth

A rain that fell hard and drilled it in every crevice

It told me to imagine myself

Walking a walk that is slower than perception

On steamy stones and dirt

It impregnated an image of soil turning into flames

Leaping reaching for its limbs

In hopes of feeding on its flesh

With a walk of unperceivable speed it told me to rise

Rise with every wreckage that comes

Be it a fire storm from below or a drowning satiation from above

Told me to build my bark with every growth

Things are not always temperate

Many want control

In a clue it told me

Even when one holds on

To the ones one love

One can still be left alone

But even then we must stand

Walk

Move grow

For we are always dancing

Let us give a good show

And defiantly have some fun

This is its butoh

Life redefined

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How to ‘Make It’ in the Art World

Don't sue me Guillermo I got no money, but you can have my wife and kids.  I just had to share it.  Maybe i shouldn't this is GOLDEN.

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How to ‘Make It’ in the Art World

22 Easy Tips for Young Artists of Color (YACs)

 by Guillermo Gómez-Peña

(with Anastasia “La Hungara” Herold)

If you are young, ambitious and brown, here we offer you these simple instructions to "make it" in the seductive world of limitless gallery walls in less than one month ... put/a-tension!

Uno: To look more auténtico, grow a moustache. And if you are female…también! Pero, don’t grow a huge beard unless you live in Afghanistan. If you are an Afghan woman artist, wear a burka. But please, wear a mini-skirt upon exiting the gallery. Burkas are scary in real life.

Dos: Nurture your accent. If you don’t have one…hire a voice coach!

Tres: Get a tan. ‘Tropi-loco micro-mist’ spray-on self-tanner will do.

Cuatro: Learn how to dance salsa, zumba or merengue with curators. Over do it. They love it! Señoritas: learn to shake your hips. Remember Shakira: the more you shake, the more art, money and friends you make!

Cinco: Appear only mildly intelligent. If you outsmart the critics and frighten the theorists, they won’t write about you.

Seis: Act cool, muy suave and discreet. Don’t vehemently express your political or artistic beliefs, ‘cause you may be perceived as unsophisticated. You can talk about your grandmother’s mole recipe, to be on the safe side. If you don’t know how to make mole, google it.

Siete: Don’t attend too many art openings…unless you are hungry. It’s important to only be a partial insider. If you become too visible, people get tired of you and there are always 100 younger & better looking bohemian Latinos waiting for their turn to replace you.

Ocho: Don’t walk into art openings with a big smile on your face and your portfolio under your arm.

Nueve: Don’t constantly take photos of the famous artists in the room.

Diez: Don’t show up with ten relatives to a Museum opening. The art world is definitely not family-friendly. Better to leave your familia at home. Even better, rent them a one-bedroom flat in the marginal yet bohemian/up-and-coming part of town so you can claim to be from there. If you are sharing a house with 10 other hipsters and your studio is in the kitchen, don’t ever bring a curator over.

Once: Don’t be the first one to arrive or the last one to leave a cocktail party. Once there, don’t engage for too long with one particular individual. Work the crowd. Spend 20 seconds max. with each interesting-looking person and move on. Otherwise, grab a glass of wine and stand in the corner looking like you are full of angst.

Doce: When an enthusiastic gallery owner asks you, “Hey Paco, do you know so and so the artist? He’s also Mexican!” take a deep breath and politely answer: “No, I don’t. Can you please introduce me to him? I am looking for a guitarron player for my mariachi band…or perhaps together we can start a local chapter of a Norteño gang.” If he/she does not know you are actually joking, it’s time for you to move on to the next opening down the street.

Trece: If you get muy borracho at the art opening, just speak in Spanish or esperanto. They’ll think it’s cute and will become enamored of you.

Catorce: Don’t get resentful when you discover there’s another “young artist of color” mingling at the “very exclusive party” you were invited to. Feel compassion for him. He is is probably as lost and lonely as you are. But definitely don’t mingle with him.

Quince: A caveat: You can both have your picture taken with a rich Museum Patron in between the two of you for the gallery’s next fundraising letter. You can both discreetly grab the Patron’s nalgas during the staging of the photo. They will LOVE you for that.

Dieciseis: Don’t share anecdotes of recently experienced racism or homophobia with someone you just met at an art event. No matter how hip they look, they may not be on your side of the story. Scary,  pero cierto.

Diecisiete: Never upload goofy photos of yourself and artsy friends to Facebook with pretentious titles such as “Hanging out at the Bilbao Guggenheim” or “Crashing a Mathew Barney opening.” Se ve chafa!

Dieciocho: Don’t constantly upload bad videos of your informal homemade performances on YouTube. You are making it harder for other experimental artists to become legitimized by pop culture. Leave that job to Marina Abramovich or…Lady Gaga.

Diecinueve: When a really sweet but bad artist asks your opinion of his/her work, you are in an impossible situation: if you tell the truth, you will have an enemy for life. If you lie, well, you become a liar. So what to do? Just tell him/her you don’t know enough about their work to have an informed opinion and…slowly walk away…Now, if you are already in bed with them, well…you are so fucked!

Veinte: Loco, if one day, you suddenly realize that there are more anthropologists than art critics writing about your work…start to worry. You have been…taxonomized! Que catástrofe!

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Tuesday Night Post #14

Travelers of this Lil Quaint Spinning Rock,

Right down to the wire.  Your post, my heart and this simple jester will make life turn up and let it fester.  To the one/s I love, you know who you are.  I have no surprises just the ones that are a surprise to me.  Can’t wait to see those with you by my side.

-DBL

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What a Choice Peek or a Grope

I see you eyeing from afar

My skin burns from all the stares but I see that one that you sent me

I have no reason to feel ashamed

But what’s in that look that makes me feel I have something to hide

Every one that knows me knows I wear it on my sleeve

My thoughts my feelings and my morals

It’s just how I’ve been taught

No fear no so restrains

But to you that is a trait that you have been trained to care for

To smell it out uproots it and stomp it dead

I try to act like I don’t notice

That the situation that is about to arise will make me the victim

I start to play it in my mind

Try to see which part I could enjoy and which I could flip it to focus it onto you

This event that will surely come to

I start to be aware of my body

Not the awareness that comes from feeling my skin a perfect fit for a perfect one

But the awareness that come with feeling each hair on my body

Pushed against the grain

With any sudden motion I know I can shake this false feeling but know that

That will just

Make that gaze you have narrow tight

Stick it deep in, against my space

I face forward and walk a step

Wait and walk another

My nakedness here for your consideration

I make another contact with that eagle eye twice looked over

Need only one mistake

I find an exercise in living the situation over and over

With

X variables and infinite possibilities

I find freedom in these choices

And a creative outlet in the scenarios

I will own the path in which this water will flow

If need be I will use the water to bath in

In its lesson

I start to pine for your eyes

I fall in lust with that gaze

That one that gets my heart beating

And makes my creativity volatile like an I.E.D

I soon find this skin of mine crawling with little bugs of want

A want to confront

A want to have you intimately

One on one

Your hands your eyes and mostly your mind

I stand and step and step again

Now the anticipation cracks my heart

A beam of light breaks onto you

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The Sun Bear (My Roubo Workbench) ep1

Creators,

There is one woodworking piece of mine that I think I have not given enough exposure.  Do to the fact that it is the most functional piece I have made and that it is a piece that I constantly use, I am sad to say that ironically I have not given it enough acknowledgement. 

This piece has an interesting history and a history that I hope will last longer then I.  As of now it is a piece in need of repairs do to this history.  

This piece is my workbench.  An 18^th century Roubo inspired workbench.  Very non-traditional with its natural edges, two square corners, tripod style legs and single stretcher, it is at times unfriendly with its functionality and a quark to see and use.   

It has weathered my blood, sweat and tears.  At times has waited patently for me to use and has held me up for short naps late nights at school in the past.  It also has secrets here and there that it keeps for me.  I have lovely memories being covered in dust beside my bench with lust and trust, at school working waiting to find the perfect moment to confess my love to a girl of my dreams.  But that's another story.  

As said before do to its history and design it is in need of rework, which is why this bench will now exist and have its rebirth in cyberspace

The story started back when I was in college and a new student to wood exploration.  In need of wanting to work on a piece exclusively in hand tools and in want of building something that would last me a lifetime, and be functional though out that time, I decide to make a Roubo workbench.  

A Very Very Brief History of the Roubo

André Jacob Roubo was a French cabinetmaker and author.  The son and grandson of Master Cabinetmakers, he earned that designation in 1774 through the publication of his masterwork treatise on woodworking.  In his publication, in wish I can only presently wish to own,  he wrote of a jointers work bench, design and specifications.  This Roubo Workbench was a beefy one.  Here are some pictures of this 18^th century monster.

The top made of a thick solid slab and with very archaic (but fast and functional to the skilled) clamping devices it is a design not very reasonable in the modern world.  This appealed to my impractical nature.  Now only realizing an impactical nature that is much more practical then I was aware of  since there is a revival of the Roubo workbench among wood workers. 

Most modern work benches have tops that are laminated from very stable quarter sawn pieces.  This is because one can create a laminated top with greater ease and with more reliability than try to find a massive hardwood tree cut a stable piece of this tree and make a top.  This would be laborious, expensive and the wood will move (lose its squareness) in the years it would take for it to dry.

The Giants Felling

One very wet and windy winter in 2007,,,,I think,  an Iron Bark Eucalyptus fell which was located in the parking lot of my university, Cal State University, Long Beach.  Our department was in luck!  The luck was two fold, lucky the school was not in session, no cars or delicate little humans to smash for this tree was at least 4 stories high and at least 4-5 ft across  that’s just the trunk (the Iron Bark is a very dense and hard wood, when dry!).  

There were limbs everywhere.   We were also lucky that we owned a portable bandsaw mill.  That winter day we spent most of it milling the trunk and bigger limbs to sizable slabs so we could put them in our pick-up trucks and haul them back to the shop.  The interesting and dangerous character of the Iron bark is that it is a very high growing tree that is brittle due to the weaving of the fibers and density.  This particular tree seemed to have been rotting in the roots.  One strong wind and it gave.   

The scene was just awe provoking.  The tree literally fell broke and bleed.  As we moved the pieces around and stood some up water ran out in streams creating pools of clear blood.  It was a very curious and eye opening experience.  The, smell fantastic.  A fallen giant in our Urban Forrest. 

Fred Rose working the Mizer.

One trip with just a fraction of the tree in my truck made it bottom out.  I estimate one trip was one ton plus.  

My Roubo (the Sun Bear)

The pieces probably stayed in the stacks to dry for bout a half a year to a year.  At this time I decided to make my bench with not so thoroughly dried wood.  I knew in time the bench would move.  And will always do to temperature and moister change.    

I will not bore you with the design aspects of the bench they are personal and always in flux, but the making is something to be mentioned.  The only time I used woodworking machinery on this piece was in the milling of the top and the milling of the apron and legs. For the leg vise I did use a router jig to make the wooden screw.  I squared the top, chopped the tendons and mortises using traditional hand tools. It was and is a very laborious thing and I love it.  Oh yes and no glue was used.  Makes future repairs and mods easy.

So the present day:

As I said before the wood was still wet as I worked on the bench.  Now the top is warped partly do to its drying/movement and a bad fox joint (I will explain what that is later). 

The first step in the rebirth is the re-design of the third leg.  The fox joint is a tenon joint that wedges when hammered in, creating a once square tenon into a wedge preventing it from it ever coming apart.  The fox joint I created was ill in execution.

I had some thoughts about making a dovetail joint to attach the leg but first I must fill in the mortise that was previously there and create a square area to attach the leg.  I will square the area to the other two legs as much as possible since I am dealing with a piece of wood that is not square to begin with.  The essential squaring that will be need for it to function will come later.  In dealing with this piece everything is relative: squareness, levelness and all.  This does not mean it will not be perfect for its function.  There is too much emphasis on perfection in this world.  Perfection is relative. 

Here are some vids showing the old fox joint mortises, the leveled area to fill and the old tenons and third leg.  

My Roubo still needs hardware, dogs, and other various things that will make it a solid work bench and an odd thing to see. 

The next update will be the making of the plug and the design of the new joint.  Dovetail, twin tenon, or something absurdly inconvenient?

Until next time,

-DBL    

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Tuesday Night Post #13

Sweet  Sympathetic Socialites,

There are times when one is confronted with the fact that one is not as strong as one wished they were.  Situations that I have found test the limits of ones endurance.  Tests that show  how long someone can hold out and wait and struggle and hurt.  After that has been seen and reached what now?  Maybe next time one can know "this is it, this is my limit no more need to go through it again" or maybe say "Next time I know I can hold out longer see the fear real and alive with no fear".  In any case I respect you for your decision.   It is yours to see how much to save yourself pain and sorrow or test the limit of your soul.  Try not to doubt your gut and feel empowerment in a choice.


-DBL



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Yet Another Circle Step

There’s an action I could perform

A distinct rudimentary silence that would be the result

It’s hard to visualize any other action that would make this situation

Removed from the inevitable end

You see I have this tree I love

It has grown high and wide

I have tended to it since I grew fond of it

As the years have gone by I have noticed its want's and its dislike’s

Once in an absent minded gaze I found this tree

Several things caught my eye but one is of our importance

It is the subject of these winding words

There is a section of this tree that I have always loved

A lyrical limb that cuts through space with a twist and a curve

That allows one to imagine the growth in the past and the direction

It is leaping towards

In a second the violent thrust imagined in the minds eye

Sweetness to me but a burden unraveled to disease

This limb I have tried to nurse, to care for

Hours and hours of attention and thoughts I have given it

I see now that it is the love of this appendage not for the tree that keeps me from

Doing this unsaid act

My friend, this tree, struggles from the weight and the disease that this limb offers

And struggles in this indecisiveness that I have

In all honestly I find this diseased limb quite beautiful in its own right

Changing and adjusting to this conflict

Stubborn in its need to live 'cause its unable to liberate itself

I sit and stare, gaze hard onto this tree thinking planning

Visualize the act

Trying to ingrain the action in my mind

Trying to feel my body do what it has to do in a dream

So I can do it in this world

In a daze I sometimes awake startled not knowing if what I had just seen was I

Or just a vision of my wanting mind

Then I see my friend

Looking lean and tired

Swaying struggling in its own dream of pain and torture

Then, the limb I see, beautiful in its grotesqueness

I am happy, for a moment, that the occurrence was just a fraction of my psyche  

For you see I have this tree that I know

It has grown high and wide

I have tended to it since I grew fond of it

As the years have gone by I have noticed its’ wants’ and…

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Free Friday Post

My sensitive Skin Bags,

Eat, Shit and Die.  In that order.

-DBL

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Horrid Ripples

She has Shrugs and I don’t knows

She owns wait’s and just a second’s

She caters to the slide of hand that is information directing

Or in other words, leaking what is just enough to keep us waiting

But she is more then just a person

A wall to scale to find things in disorder

A micro situation of the macro that we are all part of

Easily let off by the lack of voice

There is no comfort in dialogue

We find truth in still waters

This “lack of”, a scissor to our fears

But I say what lacks sound also lacks trust

There is no misinformation if there is no information

There is no wrong when there is no reaction

A hidden intent is just as dangerous as a noose hung high

What is there to say about a power plant thats already is forgotten?

Safe only from our worried minds

What to think of an assault through cyber-space

Not an act of war until another decides to do it

Let us think of the way the world has changed just this week

That is only if we had paid attention

What if we all decided to just keep it in until something happens?

Until we see the other act for us

Lets just keep our breaths shallow and wait

Just wait

Something will happen something always happens

Someone always happens others always respond

Others always come close to us to become a distraction

A pressure cooker with a release valve that you have no control of

I can find distraction in a fly on a dog pile, beauty in its simplicity

But am I the fool if I fall in love with this fraction of a situation

A piece to something more profound and yes maybe

Heavier than you and I can lift

To eat, shit, and fuck I think I have that down

Don’t think that makes me special

Little by little we are awakening

But I say to be shoved out of bed is not an awakening

It’s just another role for a kept person

To act as others allow

To keep still

Ripples in the pond are so unappealing

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