Ringing in 2013 with Art and More Art

0 CommentsTuesday • January 1, 2013 • by Imei

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It’s become a tradition for me. I love, love, LOVE welcoming the New Year with art in the form of costuming, dance, music, and theater. NYE 2011, I was in Las Vegas watching pole dancers in the Hard Rock Hotel before kicking up my heels. While I’ve never been a huge fan of Vegas as a city, I have great respect that it curates some of the best concerts, theatric shows, modern dance, and art in the nation. So you all wouldn’t be surprised how NYE 2012 went down, would you? I’ll never get tired of ringing in the New Year with art.

 

BREAK IT DOWN

8:00 AM  Pancake breakfast with the Man-Geek (and NYE day strategy time)

10:30 AM – 12:00 noon Costume strategy time. I worked up a devilish unitard get-up with a slinky dress that made the best of the best of what it means to have a backless outfit. But sorry folks. If you didn’t see it and take a picture, there is none for you. Some moments are meant to be taken in with the brain and archived off the server, you dig?

12:30 PM Lunch at Thai Ginger, aka “what part of no peanuts do you not understand? [Man-Geek caught the peanuts in the dipping sauce and sent it back to the kitchen before I could finish checking-in on Facebook].

1:45 PM Life of Pi in 3D. This is only my second attempt at watching 3D film. Some of you might remember I experienced nausea and dizziness during the film Avatar in 3D. While the unnatural eye movements 3D movies demand do not cause nausea in everyone, I have figured out how to diminish this unhappy side effect: blink faster than the normal rate, and watch the edges of the film screen to provide a frame and ground for eye movements. No nausea, just images of animals swimming in the raging ocean.

4:00 PM Standing in the window dressing area of Williams-Sonoma, pretending to be happy cooks while people passed by and laughed. Naturally, I was using all Le Creuset cookware.

5:00PM Frans Chocolate on 1st Avenue. Because you know you are going to want some choco bon bon noms after dinner, with a little caffeine to get you through the night.

5:15 PM Japonessa Sushi Cocina for din-din, omikase style. The colors on the plate are artful, the sashimi was fresh and satisfying, and the sparkling sake made for a wonderful photo on my iPhone (check out the unexpected reflections in the glass).

8:15 PM The Paramount Theater. Who doesn’t like being greeted at the door by circus people on stilts and Circus Contraption playing happy music that makes you feel like you’re in a French movie?

8:30 PM Lynx takes the stage. She gave us the unexpected pleasure of particularly DJ-perfect beat boxing that left the small but growing crowd scream for more. The link is from an SF duet performance several years ago she gave that will astound you. Check it.

9:15 PM Y La Bamba takes the stage. Again, I had the feeling I was in a movie, with world tunes that between the houses of some backcountry South, South America, and CoCo Rosie. Loved it.

[To the people who keep smoking pot in indoor public venues: you suck. After helping you decriminalize marijuana smoking, I wish to help create legislation that fines you TRIPLE for smoking that same pot in an indoor space with people who are allergic to your smoke, you selfish little pigs].

10:15 Beats Antique takes the stage. Zoe Jakes comes out in costume #1, channeling one of India’s 300 million Hindu gods. I realize that this is one of those times I must make an artistic decision to turn the phone camera off and just enjoy the show. We’re pressed up against some completely wasted revelers, one of whom is large enough to break my toe if he were to stumble backwards. As soon as one of the triad looks like she’s going to yak, a few of us eagerly take their place, and we’re one deep in from the stage.

Beats Antique has been a band and performance group I’ve followed since the early days when Zoe Jakes, choreographer, bellydancer, and music director was still performing with Miles Copland’s Bellydance Superstars. Her intense gaze matches her equally intense focus on every movement she makes, allowing her to complete multiple fast turns while removing and placing a mask on her face, to moving in sync with two other dancers with sharp isolations and flirtatious glances at the audience. The band consistently composes and performs electro-acoustic sounds borrowed from the far ends of the earth, giving a little something to everyone.

How Beats Antique moved from India goddess opening number through tribal bellydance trio into cantering horse head drill team flag dancing  and even an Animal Farm-like production, no less an encore involving a giant air squid fighting dancers who were minutes ago Mayan worshippers whilst alien robots raised their arms in victory is just a journey that you really can’t experience from in front of a screen. I felt like I was in a high school play, watching people walk cardboard trees onto stage, hold screens to project shadows, and skitter on stage with a variety of props, costumes, and other things that close up reveal all the things you don’t see in a KeyArena show — bras, undie lines, Go-Go girls vulgarly shaking bottoms like dogs, circus performers hopping out to the audience and pouring champagne into the throats of the lucky in the first two rows [I was two people away from getting a sip of bubbly from Zoe, dammit!].

While I’m waiting for reviews to show up online about the show, I’ll say that Beats Antique did not disappoint. Every show I’ve seen of theirs is different, and while the energy of the musicians was perhaps a bit subdued for NYE (they have had a grueling tour around the world), they still delivered a massive show that left the stage full of confetti, a air-squid, balloons, cables and bellydance costume pieces, feathers, an audience crying out for more. When the stilt walkers and animal-head performers took the stage, I felt like I was at Burning Man. Welcome home, they say.

12:30 AM Spilling out into the streets with the rest of the New Year’s Day revelers. Apparently, they all congregate at the 3rd and Pike bus stop, waiting to go to Tukwila. This was my least artful moment of the entire evening. Being too short to comfortable grab the overhead bar on this standing-room only bus back to the Old Rainier Brewery in SODO (where my comfy bed and two even more comfortable kittehs await me), I spent half the trip feeling like it might actually be normal to stand at a 45 degree angle.

[To the person who's hand kept trying to creep up my dress: I was wearing a f*cking unitard. Ha ha! You get nothin' but spandex].

2:00 AM In bed and wearing the musician’s earplugs to ensure a good night of sound sleep.

8:30 AM Pancakes and chocolate for breakfast. Oh yes. And happy kittehs, who cuddle like the little masters of the universe that they are.

11:30 AM Make a resolution to take down the LED Christmas tree hanging from the fire extinguisher water pipes before Jan. 9 [when wicked bellydance stuff begins]

 

PUTTING IT BACK UP

So we break it down, and then we put it back up again. More art! More art! MORE ART!

What I have in store:

1. More instructional time, both learning and teaching.

2. More costuming: innovative and non-traditional dance costuming with one-of-a-kind construction

3. More short choreographed pieces with bellydance, bollywood, and butoh/modern.

4. More video. Like the one here, performed live at the Beasts show at Tin Can Studio Dec. 1, 2012.

5. More photography, including a hosted photo walk with Jacob Lucas through the Old Rainier Brewery (more on this soon).

6. A return to playing and creating music (I’ve had to take a break until I finish writing my book).

 

Oh yes, there will be a whole hot mess of art in 2013. It’s what I do. It’s what I love. Keep following me here and on Hips for Hire on FB,  even though my posts are fewer than I would like (writing the book, I am). You’ll hear about more stuff, including my new launching page, The Veil Whisperer. <— you can click here for a teeny tiny peek at this project.

 

Posted in: belly dance, Bollywood, costumes, Creativity, dance, funny, music

Tagged with: art, Beats Antique, entertainment, food, New Year's Eve shows, review, Seattle