twi-ny talks

TWI-NY TALK: RAQUEL CION

The Lounge at Dixon Place
161A Chrystie St. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
Friday, June 8, free, 9:30
212-219-0736
www.dixonplace.org

Last Friday night, Raquel Cion packed the Lounge at Dixon Place for her latest show, Gilding the Lonely, billed as “An Evening of Cabaret” that explores being single in the big city. Accompanied by 3 Teens Kill 4 drummer Bill Gerstel and downtown pianist Lance Cruce, Cion, wearing a dazzling, form-fitting gown designed by David Quinn, goes through a repertoire of carefully chosen, mostly deep-cut ballads by David Bowie, Prince, the Rolling Stones, and Dwight Yoakam (!) while sharing personal stories about dating actors, being scarred for life by The Giving Tree, and needing to replace a lightbulb. Cion will be back at Dixon Place on June 8 at 9:30 for an encore presentation of Gilding the Lonely; get there early if you want to grab a seat.

twi-ny: You played to a packed house last Friday. Are you happy with how things went?

Raquel Cion: Very much so! It was a blast. The audience was so present. The Lounge at Dixon Place is such a great place to hone a show. Ellie Covan and her staff are very supportive of new work while giving artists such freedom. You work it out and just show up and do it. There’s a wonderful sense of trust in that. In 2010, I work-shopped another cabaret-esque show, Cou-Cou Bijoux: Pour Vous, in the Lounge. This past fall I ran into Ellie and she asked if I wanted to bring anything to the Lounge. I told her I had been throwing around some ideas for another cabaret and within a week we had booked the space even before anything on the creative side was created. Nothing like a deadline!

So, yeah, it was a blast. Working with Lance, Bill, and our amazing director, Hillary Spector, has been really great and, well, challenging. It’s NYC and we all have such packed schedules, so rehearsals were very limited. Bill did the first incarnation of the show this past December, so we had a context for the material. All of us come from such different backgrounds, stylistically and aesthetically. Bill’s a full-on kick-ass rock ‘n’ roll drummer but is incredibly sensitive to the emotional arc of the whole show and really provides a backbone to it. Lance comes from a more traditional cabaret background and has been valiant in dealing with much of the song selection, which required him to play by ear and make huge jumps between different styles of music and get them to flow together. Hillary and I come from the theater world. It’s quite the mix. So we had to find, and quickly, where those worlds intersected. I think those differing perspectives serve the show really well. Like with any show, you create your own language. Thankfully, the audience really could understand and connect deeply with our vernacular.

twi-ny: Your show deals with various aspects of loneliness. How do you think being lonely in New York City compares to loneliness in other places?

Raquel Cion explores loneliness in nontraditional cabaret show at Dixon Place (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Raquel Cion: Hmmm . . . I’ve lived some other places and uh, yeah, I think being lonely in NYC is different. Though loneliness is universal, no one is immune. But there is something about feeling lonely in New York that has its own particular flavor. Sometimes it feels like an everlasting gobstopper in how it can change flavor and how you gotta just suck it (up). We’re constantly in relationship with others, be they familiar or not. We’re so thrown together, and each one of us has such drive, be it personal, professional, or, hell, just getting on the train. The constant information of “others” for me can increase that feeling of loneliness. It’s perhaps that compare/despair thing that the twelve steppers speak of, that wanting that our wonderful but sometimes overwhelming city can set up for us or bring out in us. And it’s particular, what we want. Strangely enough, even though I have been wrestling big-time with these feelings of loneliness, I am fierce about getting time to be alone. I think that’s a New York thing, too. Carving out our particular world within the worlds of this city and, well, finding who can inhabit that world intimately with us isn’t the easiest thing to do, especially as one gets older. I don’t mean to sound trite, but I don’t think I’m alone in this.

twi-ny: You sometimes perform under your real name, Raquel Cion, and other times as your alter ego, Cou-Cou Bijoux. What are the differences between the two?

Raquel Cion: When I speak of Cou-Cou Bijoux it’s like she is her own person. She feels that way. To backtrack a bit, I’ve always loved to sing but was mostly an apartment singer. Yeah, it encompassed much more than the shower. Cou-Cou Bijoux was created with Katherine Valentine for her show The Va Va Voom Room. Coming as I said before from a theatrical background, singing from a character was much easier and got me singing in front of people. Which due to some horrible posttraumatic-college-voice-class-syndrome hadn’t happened in a long while. Cou-Cou was that character that let me be a singer because she is a singer and, well, she’s also a hot mess, so as she would say in her French accent, “everything is possible.”

So singing as myself has been a process, one that is still revealing itself to me in beautiful and unexpected ways. I still approach song from an acting perspective; that’s where it translates to me. Telling the story. Connecting emotionally. Singing as me is still a bit terrifying but incredibly satisfying. When I was in the process of creating this show and was flipping out about its structure, etc., a friend of mine said, “Why don’t you ask Cou-Cou about it? She knows how to put a show together.” Okay, now I just sound schizophrenic.

twi-ny: Although you refer to the show as “An Evening of Cabaret,” it has a decidedly rock-and-roll aesthetic, with cover versions of songs by David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, and Prince, among others. What do those artists bring to the loneliness table?

Raquel Cion: Damn, you found me out! Yeah, it’s not a traditional cabaret. I don’t know if I’d know how to do that, actually. I’m a ridiculously huge Bowie fan. His voice, his music, his presence in the world — see, told you — just immediately comfort me on such a deep level. So, when I’m feeling lonely or pretty much any feeling, Bowie both sends me and grounds me. In terms of that “no one is immune from loneliness” thing that I mentioned, all these great songwriters are able to sink down into those feelings and we go with them. When choosing songs for the show, they broke down into a few categories for me: those songs that present a vision of happily ever after, those songs that drive you deeper into loneliness, and the songs where there’s an equanimity in regard to the very human experience of loneliness. The songs actually encompass a few styles; there’s pop, rock, R&B, punk/wave, country, and a show tune, to name a few. They’re some of the songs I love and turn to when I’m feeling lonely. I’m very moved by the quality of singers’ voices. I’m also a sucker for melody and a good modulation. If I connect to the sound of someone’s voice, that’s pretty much it for me; I’m in and in for life.

twi-ny: Who are some of the other artists that have influenced you?

Raquel Cion: Wow, there are so many influences. Did I mention Bowie? (Tee hee.) Seriously, the list is endless and can go from things like Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam to Vladimir Nabokov. I’m a bit of a magpie.

twi-ny: Is it possible to be covered in more glitter than you were last Friday night?

Raquel Cion: As I said, I’m a bit of a magpie. I love sparkly things! But to answer your question, yes, yes, yes! There can always be more glitter. Just ask a Dazzle Dancer.

TWI-NY TALK: JACK FERVER

Jack Ferver’s latest show, TWO ALIKE, examines the plight of abused queer youth (photo by RicOrnel Productions)

JACK FERVER & MARC SWANSON: TWO ALIKE
The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
May 17-19, $15, 8:00
212-255-5793 ext11
www.thekitchen.org
jackferver.org

“Jack’s an extremely, if obsessively, dedicated creator,” says composer and sound artist Roarke Menzies of dancer, writer, and choreographer Jack Ferver. “There’s an exacting quality to what he makes.” In such works as Rumble Ghost, A Movie Star Needs a Movie, Swann!!!, and I Am Trying to Hear Myself, the New York City-based Ferver has explored obsession, gender and sexuality, the cult of celebrity, the American dream, and the creative process itself through an inspired mix of text, music, movement, and humor. His latest piece, Two Alike, a collaboration with visual artist Marc Swanson that features an electronic score by Menzies, is a solo performance that examines abused queer youth from the perspective of both a child and an adult. Originally a copresentation of the nonprofit DiverseWorks Art Space and the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Two Alike is now being presented at the Kitchen May 17-19. We corresponded with the amiable and personable Ferver shortly after meeting him at New York Live Arts, where he was seeing his friend John Jasperse’s Fort Blossom revisited 2000/2012.

twi-ny: Two Alike arrives at a time when the abuse of queer youth and bullying in general is front and center in the news. How did the show come about?

Jack Ferver: Marc and I met in 2008 and he saw some of my work (he has pretty much seen all of it by now) and told me he loved it and I did a studio visit and fell in love with his work. It opened a dialogue for us about how we make our work, why we make our work. Of course, that question led back to our childhoods, which seemed to be the best first collaboration. As I worked on the piece, however, the lonely quality of being in a room by myself for hours every day brought up all those early fantasy acts from a very isolated childhood. I was intensely abused by my peers growing up and it was lonely and terrifying. I created worlds by myself to escape and/or confront what was happening to me. And so that early quality of “play” came up and out as I worked on the solo. It was organic and honest and indeed does come at a good time for me to say something about this issue that I feel strongly about as an artist.

twi-ny: At NYLA last week, we spoke briefly about the It Gets Better Project and the responsibility LGBT adults have to LGBT youth. What do you see as the critical issues in that dynamic?

Jack Ferver: What I was talking about was hope, and when you get to have it. Children get to have hope. I had to believe there was somewhere better I would get to when I was a child. I wouldn’t have survived if I didn’t have that. However, I don’t believe in hope as an adult. Adults need to be in reality. Children are killing themselves as a result of ignorance and hatred. Adults who have suffered as children may not be doing so well themselves. That’s the reality. As adults we are responsible, so what are we going to do about it?

Ferver collaborated with visual artist Marc Swanson on TWO ALIKE (photo by Marc Swanson)

twi-ny: We were at NYLA to see John Jasperse’s remarkable restaging of Fort Blossom. Both of you regularly challenge audiences in the way you explore issues of gender identity and sexuality. Would you agree?

Jack Ferver: I can see that. I donʼt function in categorical thought. Martha Graham (my dance mom) quotes Empedocles in [her autobiography] Blood Memory: “For I have been, ere now, a boy and a girl, a bush, a bird, a dumb fish in the sea.” Artists are the stomachs of society. We digest the indigestible. That means we explore all terrains. Gender and sexuality roles are assigned or taken in hopes of a sense of self, as a branch of the ego. And the ego begins with “Me, not me.” As an artist I make my work so that people donʼt feel as lonely as I have felt. Therefore my work expands into something more akin to “I am you.”

twi-ny: You have a wickedly delicious sense of humor. Where does that come from?

Jack Ferver: My mother.

twi-ny: You have playfully skewered such popular films as Poltergeist, Notes on a Scandal, and Black Swan. Do you have plans to take on any other movies or pop-culture icons?

Jack Ferver: Actually, I leave a few days after closing Two Alike for the MANCC residency to start work on All of a Sudden, which I am creating with my dramaturg/associate director Joshua Lubin-Levy. It is loosely inspired by Tennessee Williamsʼs Suddenly Last Summer and explores the similarities between the artist/dramaturg and the patient/therapist relationship. It will go up in 2013 at Abrons Arts Center. Of course, it was a play before the film, but having played Cleopatra this past year [in Me, Michelle], I feel I am being haunted by Liz in some way.

TWI-NY TALK: JOHN JASPERSE

John Jasperse revisits FORT BLOSSOM at New York Live Arts this week

FORT BLOSSOM REVISITED (2000/2012)
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
May 9-12, $15-$30, 7:30
May 11, 10:00 pm show added by popular demand
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.johnjasperse.org

Manhattan-based dancer and choreographer John Jasperse speaks eloquently about his profession both on- and offstage. For more than twenty years, the Bessie Award winner has been challenging and engaging audiences with complex productions that cleverly combine movement, music, visuals, and text in unusual ways, never taking the easy way out. Although he usually performs in his own pieces, he’ll be on the sidelines this week when he brings an updated version of his 2000 work, Fort Blossom, to New York Live Arts. An intellectual and personal exploration of the limits of the human body, the gaze of the viewer, and the effects of time, Fort Blossom was originally performed at the Kitchen by Jasperse, Miguel Gutierrez, Parker Lutz, and Juliette Mapp; the expanded Fort Blossom revisited features Ben Asriel, Lindsay Clark, Erika Hand, and Burr Johnson, with music by Ryoji Ikeda, lighting by Stan Pressner, and costumes by Deanna Berg. There will be a preshow talk with Mapp on May 9 and a discussion following the early show on May 11 with members of the cast and crew; in addition, a bonus late-night 10:00 show on May 11 has just been added by popular demand. A smart, funny, and deeply introspective artist, Jasperse shares his fascinating creative process in our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: What made you want to go back and reexamine Fort Blossom at this time?

John Jasperse: I wasn’t planning on revisiting this work. I have rarely remounted old repertory; I’m more interested in making new work. The occasion to do so came out of an invitation from Lisa Kraus, programmer at Bryn Mawr Presents, who wanted to have my work as part of their 2011–12 presenting season. When it became clear that a new work wasn’t possible, she asked me if there was any work that I wanted to revisit. I immediately thought of Fort Blossom. Very quickly the idea emerged to not only remount the work as it was but to substantially expand it. Subsequently, I contacted Carla Peterson at New York Live Arts to join in the adventure. I have long felt that Fort Blossom was an initial gesture that didn’t actually fully get finished.

Fort Blossom was originally conceived as a work-in-progress towards the first work I made for BAM, which was later called Giant Empty. Fort Blossom was made at a very special juncture that I would be hard pressed to describe concretely. It was made with Miguel Gutierrez, Parker Lutz, and Juliette Mapp, a group of dancers whom I had consistently worked with for a number of years at that point. We rehearsed Fort Blossom for less than two months and presented it at the Kitchen in May of 2000. Then we had a break for the summer. When we returned to rehearsals in the fall to continue work on Giant Empty, it gradually became clear that the “special juncture” of the group had ended and that it was the beginning of the dissolution of that group, that those dancers were getting ready to move on to other things. Giant Empty was the last project I made with Miguel and Parker; Juliette made one more, a duet project called just two dancers. So Giant Empty took a turn of sorts, and it became about our history together in a way — about things coming together and things falling apart.

In the process and also in part in response to the idea of doing my first work for a larger proscenium venue, the simplicity of the design of Fort Blossom got left behind as well as the starkness of the contrasts in the work in favor of an evolving visual environment and a more complicated tapestry where ideas were being approached from multiple angles. I remember a moment of crisis at the end of the process of Giant Empty where there was a discussion in the group about whether or not the men’s duet from Fort Blossom still belonged in Giant Empty. I remember thinking and saying aloud that it represented the last vestige of what I originally wanted the work to be, and as such, it was too problematic to remove it — that it would feel like some sense of me was being removed from the work if I took that choice.

Of course, that is silly, since Giant Empty was also made by me in collaboration with others. I have always felt that it is more interesting to respond to circumstance, to acknowledge and take advantage of what is actually happening rather than to willfully deny that reality and try and thrust some other thing upon the present.

But that willingness to accept things “as they are” is tricky, in part because things aren’t often just or only as they appear at first. In truth, things are always many different ways, all at the same time, so there is also practice in choosing what to align yourself with that is manifest in the present. To speak of how this played out in Giant Empty, to say that things are falling apart, places the focus on their eventual separation and dissolution, to energize that aspect of a potential future in the present. There is also the possibility of looking at the same situation and marveling at the fact that these seemingly different, separate entities are miraculously floating in a dialogue with one another that is perfect just as it is right now, and celebrating that instead of projecting some perceived inevitable fall from grace upon them. The shifts in how we see something (in how we perceive a body, a relationship, or the present moment) are clearly manifest as such in Fort Blossom, and I think after all these years, I have finally realized that there is a profound aspect of hope embedded in Fort Blossom, and in its simplest terms, it is a hope for a multiplicity of connectivity that isn’t compartmentalized and exists in a space beyond shame.

So much emphasis gets placed on the naked men, but it is very important to remember that they cohabitate a space with clothed women. The four figures are together with the simple contrast throughout the hour. The difference (which is initially a difference of division) remains throughout the work, but there is a way in which it becomes both relevant and irrelevant, and I think this is key to the work.

Bessie Award winner John Jasperse speaks openly and honestly about the multiple sides of dance (photo by Chris Taggart)

twi-ny: What have you discovered about yourself and the work in revisiting it?

John Jasperse: I think this work has again taught me something about the power of hope. I would be remiss to not mention something here about aging. I was originally in this work and chose to recast it without me in it. I thought long and hard about the young body vs. older body. I have been concerned that I would be criticized for not being in it this time around, for casting it with younger men. I was clear that redoing Fort Blossom with me and a noticeably younger man would add a whole other dimension to the work that I felt would complicate matters without knowing what to do with this complication. When we made Fort Blossom, it was not with a notion of an idealized body; quite the contrary, it was with the bodies that we had which happened to be of a certain age. The idea to recast the work with peers of my own age did occur to me, to have our bodies reflect the passage of time, but I wasn’t able to complete the picture in my mind of who this would be. And some of the dancing in the second half of the work was challenging for me at the time twelve years ago and would be even more challenging for me now.

So I chose to work with people who were roughly the same age as we were then. Doing it this time around with a younger cast than my current age and being a director from outside, not a dancer in the work, I was concerned that I would be shifted into a role of voyeur. But again, this brings me back to a practice of how you look at something, of what aspect you invest in. And I have found that this can help define both how your experience it and how others experience your intention and your presence in that role. In Fort Blossom revisited (2000/2012), I have really been able to step up to the plate as a director in a way that I have seldom felt in making a new work, because I understand from memory what this terrain is; I’m not trying to invent it all from ether. So while we are trying things, it is as if we have a script for a play and we are playing with how we might interpret it. Or we are developing a scene that is missing and needed by the preexisting context. So I’m more easily able to say what I want because the field is much more delimited than in a totally new work. Contrary to feeling like this is stifling, I have noticed what a relief that is to others to be directed in that way, and I’ve wondered how this experience will color my going back into the studio on new work, where there isn’t a “preexisting script” of sorts.

twi-ny: You’re one of the busiest dancer-choreographers out there; in the last few years alone, you’ve done Becky, Jodi and John at the former Dance Theater Workshop, Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies at the Joyce, Misuse Liable to Prosecution and Canyon at BAM, and now Fort Blossom revisited (2000/2012). Are you just constantly going nonstop? I’m getting a picture of you just running and running and running around, like you do in Canyon.

John Jasperse: I’m not sure that I’m any busier than any other dance artist. It is not an easy profession. I am aware of a balancing act, which could also be described as a stretching of bringing together circumstances that don’t naturally meet. That tension of the stretching is likely shared by any dance maker trying to make work today, and certainly by any artist working in New York City. It takes a lot of stamina, or perhaps a better word is “tenacity,” to keep that going. But I feel like I’m a dance artist/choreographer and I want to be doing that right now while I have some vibrancy in that. It is important to find ways to regenerate, and it is important to know that the well can run dry. I’m aware that I’m not so good at pushing back to make the space that I need for regeneration, and I’m aware that can take a toll on the work. I’m also aware that you as an individual are the only person who can take that responsibility on, as the machine of nonprofit arts production is hungry and it must be fed, so there is enormous momentum pushing towards working 24/7.

twi-ny: In regard to nonprofit arts production, several years ago at a post-performance talk you very openly and honestly discussed how difficult it is to make a living as a dancer in New York City. Are things getting better or worse these days?

John Jasperse: I worry that my dealing with these issues and trying to talk openly and honestly about them sounds like I am whining about my situation. I am incredibly grateful for the luck and good fortune that I have had as a dance maker in being able to do what I do. I feel very fortunate to have people interested in the worlds that I create, and I am grateful that this recognition has allowed me to keep working.

I feel that there are shifts in the current climate that ease some of the above pressures and shifts which are more challenging from a pragmatic standpoint. Doris Duke Charitable Trust just announced their first in a series of substantial unrestricted grants for performing artists, US Artists has developed a fellowship program for artists which is filling a gap made in part by the decrease in individual artist funding when the NEA stopped funding artists directly. Many of these opportunities are one-time grants. They create substantial support in a delimited period but don’t/can’t address the ongoing concerns of sustaining a practice over a long period of time.

I would like to see justice in general in the world. I’d like to think that the work that I make is participating in this greater collective effort. Since money is our primary mutually agreed system of valuation, I would like to see more ethics reflected in how money gets spent in the domain of culture. A budget is a value system, and while I have to accept some level of what value others place on things (including the value of my own work to them), I also feel that I need to be proactive in asserting my own values and ethics in budgets, which I am at least partially in control of.

twi-ny: When you do get a chance to slow down and take a step back, what kinds of things do you like to do when you’re not dancing or choreographing?

John Jasperse: I’m still trying to figure that out. I have some energy over the last years in gradually trying to make a calmer living space. I think this is partly trying to create the space for the slowing down to occur in.

TWI-NY TALK: MIKE WATT

MAY DAY 2: MIKE WATT + FRIENDS
(le) poisson rouge
158 Bleecker St.
Wednesday, May 2, $20, 7:00
212-505-3474
www.lepoissonrouge.com
www.threeroomspress.com

One of the original DIY punks, Mike Watt has been a musical fixture for more than thirty years. Beginning with the Minutemen and continuing with such bands as fIREHOSE, the Secondmen, the Unknown Instructors, the Stooges, and a series of solo concept albums, Watt has played the bass like no one else. The longtime San Pedro resident has just released his second book, On and Off Bass (Three Rooms Press, May 2012, $25), a collection of photographs of the harbor town he so dearly loves paired with short excerpts from his diaries, what he likes to call spiels. On May 2, Watt will gather with a bunch of his musical friends for a special show at (le) poisson rouge, performing as Hellride East with guitarist J Mascis and drummer Emmett Jefferson “Murph” Murphy III of Dinosaur Jr, along with surprise guests; he will also read from and sign copies of the new book. We recently spoke with Watt by phone about San Pedro, D. Boon, photography, the internet, and mothers in a wide-ranging conversation that revealed Watt to be a gregarious, deeply thoughtful man who loves to laugh and use the word “trippy.”

twi-ny: You’ve just published On and Off Bass, which is filled with peaceful images of the sea, nature, sunrises. What does being on the water mean to you?

Mike Watt: That time of day, the crack of dawn, is almost like Pedro is mine. It’s not like I own it, but I’m the only one around except for that nature you’re talking about. Being in the kayak, that feeling of the sea, it’s a trippy feeling.

twi-ny: The sunrises are beautiful.

Mike Watt: With the bass, sometimes accidentally I find stuff, but usually I have to work on it. But with this thing, you can’t set up these things. You just gotta be ready to capture it when it happens. It’s a different kind of thing about expression. The same thing on the bicycle. I’m not in charge of the sun and the ladder and all. They come together the way they do, and if I’m lucky and ready, I can try to get it.

twi-ny: On the cover of the book, you have just gotten out of the water after having jumped into the ocean on New Year’s Day. How cold was it?

Mike Watt: Yeah, the Polar Bears. Well, we’re in California. I have a friend who does the Coney Island one; that’s crazy. Last year I think it was about fifty-eight. But if you’re not acclimated to it, it’s still a heart attack.

twi-ny: You’ve lived in San Pedro since you were ten. What is it about San Pedro that keeps you there?

Mike Watt: Forty-four years now. Part of it is, I think, from all the touring. So when the bungee cord snaps back, ya know. . . . Being a harbor town, I really like. All of my music history’s here. I met D. Boon here, and that pretty much was the biggest life changer for me. It’s kind of like Malibu with hammerhead container cranes. They’re a strange mix. We’re a working town next to the ocean and cliffs, so we have a lot of nature for a twelve-million metropolis. It’s a mixture of different things. [Charles] Bukowski’s last fourteen years were here, and he picked it out of all the towns, he was telling me. He liked the feel of it, the town and the people here. It may be something about that with me too mixed in with these other things I just told you.

twi-ny: Your photos show unexpected sides of San Pedro.

Mike Watt: One trippy thing is, I guess San Francisco is like this too, but we’re on a peninsula, so we actually face east, for being on the West Coast, so that’s why there are all those pictures of sunrises. We don’t get sunsets here. A lot of people tell me that they didn’t know about this industry. I think we’re third only to Hong Kong and Singapore as the biggest ports in the world. They don’t think of that. NoCal people think of Hollywood. They think that California is actually a big huge farm state. No one thinks of that. San Pedro’s a fucking harbor town. I mean, this is where most of the people work. My Secondmen band, both those guys [Pete Mazich and Jerry Trebotic] are longshoremen. I’m actually hipping people to things they don’t know about. New York City used to be a harbor town, but it all changed. Maybe that’s gonna be in the future of Pedro, I don’t know.

twi-ny: On May 2, you’ll be playing a special show at (le) poisson rouge. What do you have planned for that night?

Mike Watt: It’s something I did twelve years ago. You know about this sickness that almost killed me? It’s actually what my second opera is about. [The Second Man’s Middle Stand details Watt’s life-threatening perineum infection in 2000.] That’s when I last played with them like this. It’s to celebrate this book coming out. In a way, the book is not just mine. It’s a collaboration. I didn’t pick the pictures. I didn’t pick the spiels. I felt I needed some objectivity. It seemed like it would be just too heavy-handed making a thing of myself.

twi-ny: So it was curated for you.

Mike Watt: Laurie Steelink picked the pictures, and Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges from Three Rooms Press picked the poems and the spiels from the diary.

twi-ny: The text and photos work really well together.

Mike Watt: I’m very grateful to them. They did a good job. They really cared. In a way, it’s like them taking a picture of what I’m showing them myself. It’s a neat thing. Maybe if I did another book, I would . . . I don’t know. It’s kind of weird. I’m a little more secure about working the bass than cameras and diaries and stuff. But both of these things were presented to me. I didn’t really come with this thing and solicit people for it. People gave me the opportunity, sort of like D. Boon: “Hey, you wanna make a band?” To me, ya know, I’m so close to it, I feel like a fucking dork, like a learner. But I’m into being a learner.

twi-ny: You mention your parents a lot in the book.

Mike Watt: Did you ever see the We Jam Econo thing? The mas were big-time important for the Minutemen. They were really into this stuff. Maybe not the movement ― they didn’t understand that so much. They thought of it as art.

twi-ny: Were you thinking about it that way?

Mike Watt: [Laughs] D. Boon could have been. And I met my best friend, Raymond Pettibon, who’s an artist. So there’s this kind of art thing. You know, these are working-class ladies . . . It was pretty open-minded of them to support us like that. I think Pops was more like, “What the fuck?” But the moms were really into it. Every now and then, my sister will take my mom to come see me play. She was worried a little bit in my early twenties ― “What are you gonna do for a living?” I think she wanted me to be a lawyer.

twi-ny: In March, you and George Hurley played the songs of the Minutemen at ATP. How did that go?

Mike Watt: We played in England, yeah. Oh, man, we practiced and practiced, and when it came down to it, Georgie was so nervous. Georgie’s a really strong guy and shit, but it was trippy. But I was proud to be with him. He said it was very emotional for him to play with me. I’m doing it again with him, but with Ed Crawford, to do two weeks of fIREHOSE gigs. We haven’t played together in eighteen years. We’ve practiced a week now. And in January, the whole month, I recorded the fourth Unknown Instructors album with George. So this is the third time with George Hurley in 2012 that I got to be with him musically.

twi-ny: The two of you are very connected.

Mike Watt: I’ve played with him fourteen and a half years, if you count Minutemen and fIREHOSE. He’s a really fucking happening guy.

Mike Watt plays Central Park with Four by Floor in August 2010 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: You said that he was nervous about the ATP gig. What about you?

Mike Watt: Yeah, I was nervous too. [Laughs] I mean, the way we thought about it was, we can’t have another dude in D. Boon’s place. So we had to shoulder all that stuff without a guitar. It was emotional. Georgie asked me to pick the songs, so I picked a lot that Georgie wrote. Some that were so much D. Boon, like “Corona” and “This Ain’t No Picnic,” we didn’t even try. . . . It was intense. I’m so proud we did it, because I love Georgie. The curator, Mr. Jim [O’Rourke], really dug it. He told me he was in your town there, he went to Occupy Wall Street and sang a D. Boon song to the people. He was very sincere. I’m so glad we did that. It wasn’t a gimmick to enhance the career or something. I don’t like to do those kinds of things anyway. When things have a reality connected to them, that’s why we got into this scene.

twi-ny: You’ve always been a DIY guy, but you also keep up on the latest technology.

Mike Watt: That goes back to the old days, the fanzines.

twi-ny: Blogs are like ’zines.

Mike Watt: Yeah, they go back to the whole punk scene. The fanzines were like the fabric for our community. And then also the bands ― the Hüskers out in Minneapolis, the Meat Puppets in Phoenix, Ian MacKaye in DC ― we were already kind of connected. This was just a technological way to realize what I had been doing since a young punk rocker.

twi-ny: So the digital revolution just came easy to you.

Mike Watt: The way I use it, yeah. It allows me to collaborate with people and never even meet them. There’s this young guy in Canada, he sent me a whole album. I never met this guy; I just put the bass to it. One thing about middle age for me is, everybody’s got something to teach me, so why not go for it. I just got a song from some guys in Genoa, Italy, they want me to put a spiel on it about an immigrant who’s just getting beat down all the time. These kinds of connections were a lot more difficult in the older days. You actually had to be in the room with the guy. So I like that part of the new technology.

twi-ny: How is it collaborating with someone who is not there? Are you worried they’re not gonna like what you’re doing? You can’t just bounce ideas off each other.

Mike Watt: You get kinda worried, but I think it’s worth it to have that worry to take the chance, and you might grow a little bit. One of those projects, I remember having to go back maybe fifteen, sixteen times. Now do it again. Yeah, it was Funanori. Now do it again. Please do it again. [Laughs] There’s a danger if you’re just always getting your way. If you’re always getting your way, you’re not gonna learn anything. It’s all right to get into these situations that are trippy when you’re the deckhand. Like with the Stooges. I don’t tell those cats what to do. But what a classroom to sit in.

twi-ny: You seem to have a blast playing with the Stooges.

Mike Watt: Yeah, well, come on ― I don’t even know if we’d have a punk scene if it wasn’t for that band. It was such good fortune. I can’t believe that happened. Boon’s laughing his head off. You know, I hear from Ig, “Ronnie [Asheton] says you’re the man.” I could never have imagined that in a million years. . . . Ig, man, he really believes in working hard for people. I like his ethic; it reminds me of D. Boon when it comes to playing a gig.

twi-ny: With all these people who are contacting you from all over the world, who’s out there that you would like to collaborate with but you just haven’t had the opportunity?

Mike Watt: Someone I’ve always wanted to play with is Bob Mould. Those Hüsker guys, they were very interesting musicians. You know, me and D. Boon put out their first album, Land Speed Record. The Grant [Hart] thing might happen. He’s been writing me about it. In fact, he wants to play drums; he’s been on the guitar for a long time. I don’t know if I could do Bob and Grant at the same time. I don’t know if they’re into that. But Bob, that’s one guy from the old days . . . Those SST guys were interesting musicians, characters, people. Not to be all sentimental or nothing, but man, those cats, that was a trippy label.

twi-ny: My guess is if you could collaborate with someone who’s no longer living, it would be John Coltrane.

Mike Watt: Oh yeah, he would be happening. John Coltrane, shit, that would be a mind-blower. I got an interview where this guy asks him, “What are you listening to when you’re doing those solos?” He says, “I’m listening to the bass.” You know, I’m always trying to think of the bass as a launch pad or a springboard to set people up. Man, when he said that, it was like, fuck. D. Boon’s mom, I’m very grateful to her for putting me on this machine.

twi-ny: You just love playing the bass, don’t you?

Mike Watt: Yeah, I do. But even though I’ve been doing it a while, even more than moving to a five-string or six-string, I just stay with the four strings and somehow make it more a part of my own expression. And that’s what all these people are doing. They’re helping teach me to do that by giving me these assignments.

TWI-NY TALK: LEIMAY (XIMENA GARNICA AND SHIGE MORIYA)

Ximena Garnica reflects on the return of FLOATING POINT WAVES to HERE (photo by Piotr Redliński)

FLOATING POINT WAVES
HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
April 10-14, 8:30, $20
212-647-0202
www.here.org

Artistic directors of LEIMAY, CAVE, and the New York Butoh Festival, dancer-choreographer Ximena Garnica and video installation artist Shige Moriya collaborate on works that beautifully integrate sound, movement, and image. In such pieces as Furnace, Trace of Purple Sadness, and Becoming, they’ve created immersive, meditative environments that subtly dazzle the mind. They’re currently in the midst of a two-week run of Floating Point Waves, an evening-length show they first presented in January 2011 at HERE’s Culturemart festival as part of the downtown institution’s Artist Residency Program. In between working on Floating Point Waves and preparing for the inaugural SOAK Festival, which begins April 25, they answered some questions for our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: We saw Floating Point Waves when it was presented as a work-in-progress at HERE’s Culturemart festival last year. How has it evolved since then?

LEIMAY: The Floating Point Waves process has been a bit like the formation of those things inside a limestone cave called stalagmites. That kind of formation rises from the floor of a limestone cave due to the dripping of mineralized solutions over long periods of time. Last year the piece itself needed more time for the dripping to carve new forms and uncover new colors. Last year we had found new elements, such as two new kinetic systems — the point sculpture and the tulle tubes — but had not fully integrated them to the level of the other two (pool & string sculpture). The pool and the string sculpture had been worked longer. In the creative process and especially in Floating Point Waves, time is very important. There is something about cooking on a small flame, no?

twi-ny: Indeed. The two of you have been collaborating now as LEIMAY for many years. What is the best thing about working together?

LEIMAY: We were born in very different places, Japan [Moriya] and Colombia [Garnica]. We speak very different languages and communicate in a third language. We were educated very differently, and growing up we studied different things, but somehow we share similar values. So the best thing is when through the work we make together, despite all our differences, somehow we can connect and find the essence of whatever it is we are creating. This might sound vague, but think about those so called “aha moments”; if you have them alone it is great, but when you have them together it is beyond words! However, sometimes those “aha moments” don’t come and one of us is stuck but the other can keep going — that is great too; there is some generosity involved and lots of love.

twi-ny: What is the worst thing about working together?

LEIMAY: When we are totally disagreeing about something and the more we talk the more we disagree but then suddenly we realize that we actually agree but our English is so off that it all seems like a disagreement . . . but in fact it was a lost-in-translation moment. It is awful.

twi-ny: Much of what you do is rooted in the butoh discipline. What is the most misunderstood aspect of butoh?

LEIMAY: Well, we like to say that our work ranges from photography to video art, art installations, interdisciplinary performances, and training projects. And although it is true that Ximena has been training with butoh artists and masters for the past twelve years, our performances and training projects are rooted in the body. What is really at stake is the body. Our contact with butoh has opened our mind to thinking about and questioning the meaning of the dancing body and its possible relationships with space and time.

For audiences, perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of butoh is the expectation of white body-painted people moving slow with grotesque faces and a bit of drooling. For performers, perhaps the most misunderstood aspects are 1.) the mystification of master teachers and of butoh itself and 2.) the view of butoh as a codified form.

FLOATING POINT WAVES is another subtly dazzling collaboration between Ximena Garnica and Shige Moirya (photo by Piotr Redliński)

twi-ny: You’ve been organizing the New York Butoh Festival since 2003, and this year you’re staging the first SOAK Festival. What can people expect to see in this new festival?

LEIMAY: Actually, the SOAK Festival is taking over the New York Butoh Festival. In the spirit of the interdisciplinary nature of our creations and of the ecology from which our work sprouts, we are launching the first annual SOAK Festival. People can expect nothing. Yes, it is true: We want people to come without expectation. They are invited to our home to meet our friends. We have a good sense for assembling acts and we have an eclectic group of friends and colleagues and, most importantly, we want to share their work with those who make it out to Williamsburg.

This year we will have a deluge of acts and workshops from April 25 to May 13. Opening the festival are an experimental guitarist from Sicily, Ninni Morgia, and his partner, vocalist Silvia Kastel. Next is an unplugged version of a collaboration between butoh legend Ko Murobushi and San Francisco’s Shinichi Iova-Koga of inkBoat. The festival will continue with work from CAVE resident artists such as Russian theater innovator and international master teacher Polina Klimovitskaya and choreographer Rachel Cohen. Former Fulbright Fellow and Movement Research resident Ben Spatz and his theater partner Maximilian Balduzzi are also among those performing. The SOAK Festival workshops are equally eclectic, such as a drawing mural narrative workshop by Tijuana-born, Brooklyn-based draftsman artist Hugo Crosthwaite, an augmented reality lecture/demonstration by NYU teacher and activist Mark Skwarek, a sonoric voice workshop by Uruguayan vocal virtuoso Sabrina Lastman, as well as our own workshop led by Ximena on our training and performance technique called Ludus.

It seems to us like we all see life and performances and things with our own frame. Through our work and the production of the SOAK Festival we challenge ourselves and our audiences to make these frames as malleable as possible so we can expand our understanding of the body and our experience and understanding of daily life. Consequently, we enlarge the realms of perception and creation and discover the possibilities for interaction therein. We hope all of you reading this will make it out to CAVE for the first SOAK Festival.

TWI-NY TALK: LEELA CORMAN

Tuesday, April 3, WORD, 126 Franklin St., free (advance RSVP requested), 718-383-0096, 7:00
Thursday, April 5, Tenement Museum, 103 Orchard St., free (advance RSVP requested), 212-982-8420, 6:30
Saturday, April 28, and Sunday, April 29, MoCCA Festival, 69th Regiment Armory, 68 Lexington Ave., times TBA

Illustrator and cartoonist Leela Corman makes her graphic novel debut with Unterzakhn (Schocken, April 3, $24.95), a dramatic tale of twin sisters coming-of-age on the Lower East Side in the early twentieth century. Young Esther Feinberg gets a job working for a burly woman who operates a burlesque theater and a brothel, while Fanya starts helping out an elegant female obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions. The gripping family drama takes on an added poignancy knowing that Corman and her husband, cartoonist Tom Hart (How to Say Everything), recently suffered a horrific tragic loss, shortly after moving from New York City to Gainesville, Florida. (Hart writes about it here.) Corman will be at WORD in Brooklyn on April 3 for the official launch of Unterzakhn, and she will follow that up with a Tenement Talk at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum on April 5. She will also be signing copies of the book at the MoCCA Festival, taking place April 28-29 at the 69th Regiment Armory. We recently discussed graphic novels, a woman’s right to choose, and belly dancing with Corman.

twi-ny: Unterzakhn is reminiscent of such other graphic novels as Persepolis and Fun Home, yet while both of those were deeply personal memoirs, your book is fiction (but feels like a family memoir). Are there personal memories that can be found in Unterzakhn that you’re willing to share here? Or are the stories and characters a complete fiction?

Leela Corman: The books you mention are works of urgent personal and historical memoir. They are in a different genre. I’m a fiction writer. I think it does fictional comics a disservice to constantly refer back to autobiography, and I wonder why people always seem to expect comics to be autobiographical now. I don’t think it’s a good thing, though I love both books you mentioned, so this is not to take away from those works. Fictional storytelling pulls from all areas of a writer’s life, including (and especially) the imagination. No, there are no significant, specific personal memories in Unterzakhn. Some characters are inspired by people I’ve known, but that would be about 5-10% “real person” and 90-95% fictional character — or more. There’s an alchemical process when creating fiction. Memoir is a different art form, with its own processes. I’m worried that serious fiction in comics is being undervalued, and that anything autobiographical is getting attention, whether it’s interesting or not.

As I said above, I’m not sure that the focus on autobiography is always such a good thing for comics. There are a few places where it works well: 1) When learning to write and draw comics; this would be student work, and is not always for public consumption. 2) When someone REALLY has something to say, and can tie their personal experience to something important happening in the world — Fun Home, MAUS, Persepolis. 3) When someone can turn their personal observations into something interesting for the rest of us, and can avoid solipsism. Great examples of this are Vanessa Davis, who is hilarious and universal, and John Porcellino, who is a poet of observation. 4) If you’re Lynda Barry. She can do anything.

Belly dancer and cartoonist Leela Corman returns to her native New York to talk about her new book, UNTERZAKHN

twi-ny: Unterzakhn comes along at a critical moment in American society, when abortion clinics and organizations such as Planned Parenthood are coming under more fire than ever in the political arena. Did that specifically influence the creation of the book? How do you feel about what’s going on in the country regarding a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body?

Leela Corman: I initially started this project in 2003, and that was my explicit goal, to explore the consequences of not having a choice. If you are a woman in this society, these rights have always been threatened, and this conflict has always been hot. There’s very little difference to me between the discourse in 2012, and the discourse in the ’80s and ’90s, when I was growing up. I’ll wager that every woman my age has older relatives who had to have illegal abortions, unwanted pregnancies, or both. There is absolutely NO excuse for anyone in the public sphere, especially men, to have any say whatsoever in what women do with their bodies. My feelings can be summed up by a photo I saw recently of a woman about my mom’s age holding a sign that read, “I cannot BELIEVE I still have to protest this shit.”

The story eventually moved away from this subject matter, but it is clearly part of the base of the book. I’m glad it’s visible, beneath the tulle and the hair pomade. These issues may be used as political chess pieces by men, but for women, they’re the urgent stuff of our daily lives. We owe much more than we realize to the women who fought not only for our right to a safe abortion (because women will have them, legal or not) but for our right to plan and control how many children we have. We shouldn’t ever take it for granted. Whatever freedoms any of us have, in general, someone else fought and died for them.

By the way, they’re women’s health care clinics, for the most part, not simply “abortion clinics.” Reducing women’s health care centers to “abortion clinics” is inaccurate. Planned Parenthood offers prenatal care for women who want to be pregnant, as well as general women’s health care. When I was in college, they were the only clinic I could afford to go to. I wouldn’t have had any medical care if not for them. The Planned Parenthood clinic I regularly went to for my general medical care was the one that that turd from New Hampshire attacked, about a week after one of my appointments, in fact. He killed the receptionist, and possibly more people, I don’t remember every detail. [Ed note: On December 30, 1994, John Salvi killed receptionist Shannon Lowney in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts.]

twi-ny: A lot of your illustration work has dealt with women’s undergarments, including Underneath It All, and Unterzakhn translates as “Underthings.” What draws that subject to you?

Leela Corman: Underneath It All was a commission. I’m an illustrator. I work on assignment and can’t control what people think my style is appropriate for. I do what people pay me to, in that realm of my life.

twi-ny: You’re also a professional belly dancer. How did you get into that?

Leela Corman: Quite accidentally. I went to a Moroccan restaurant on Atlantic Avenue that no longer exists, I think, and was pulled up to dance by the house dancer. I just imitated her, and afterwards I thought, hmm, This is fun, maybe I’ll take a class. When I got laid off from my job at Thirteen, I had time, so I signed up for classes at the Greenpoint Y, across the street from my house. The teacher happened to be Ranya Renee, who coincidentally happened to be the perfect teacher for me; she became my mentor, and really turned me into a dancer. I didn’t expect to fall in love with classical Arabic music, and with Egyptian dance in particular, but I did, and I turned out to have a natural ability to do it.

TWI-NY TALK: DAVID GEDGE OF THE WEDDING PRESENT

David Gedge cuts loose at the Seaport in August 2010 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

More than a quarter-century ago, the Wedding Present anchored NME’s C86 cassette, which helped introduce the world to such British indie bands as Primal Scream and the Mighty Lemon Drops. The Wedding Present’s lineup has changed often over the years, but there has been one constant throughout: lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter David Gedge. In August 2010, the Wedding Present played a blistering free concert at the South Street Seaport, including a full performance of their 1989 record, Bizarro. The foursome is back in New York this week for two shows that will feature their 1991 Steve Albini–produced disc, Seamonsters, as well as tunes from their eighth studio album, the exceptional Valentina (Scopitones, March 20, 2012). The brand-new record consists of exquisite, mature, bittersweet songs of love and heartbreak, of relationships gone seriously wrong. Powered by Pepe le Moko’s loping bass, Charles Layton’s furious drumming, and Gedge and Graeme Ramsay’s guitars, the quartet pounds out the group’s trademark sound of continually changing styles and tempos, moving from punk to pop to lounge to electronic noise, sometimes within the same song.

“So now you want to apologize / Well, that comes as no surprise / ’cause I can read you / and I don’t need you,” Gedge sings with brutal honesty on “You’re Dead,” which opens the new album. “This time you went too far / I know exactly what you are / I understand you / and I can’t stand you / But how come during times like this / I still want your touch and I want your kiss / It’s insane and I can’t explain why / You’re not the one for me although / I just can’t seem to let you go,” he continues. But on the next song, “You Jane,” he spits out, “I hope you find what you’re looking for / Do you even know what that is anymore? / I hope he’s really the one who / will make all your dreams come true / But if by some unexpected chance / this doesn’t turn out to be your fairy-tale romance / Just don’t come crying to me.” We corresponded with Gedge just as the Wedding Present, who come to the Bell House on March 21 and (le) poisson rouge on March 22, was preparing for a series of shows at Austin’s SXSW festival.

twi-ny: In 2010 you played Bizarro in New York City, and now you’ll be tackling Seamonsters. What do you think of this relatively recent trend of playing older, complete albums?

David Gedge: I must admit that I wasn’t particularly fond of the idea when it was first suggested to me, but now I’m a complete convert. I think I felt that, as an artist, I should be looking forward, not back, but it really is such an interesting experience to revisit something you’ve done a while ago. It’s a brilliant opportunity for reevaluation and reinterpretation. So I think I’ve now come to the conclusion that what we’ve done in the past is just as valid as what we’re doing today. Seamonsters, especially, works very well live. It’s such an intense experience.

twi-ny: Do you envision revisiting any other earlier records in the future?

David Gedge: Whether we’ll do more, I don’t know . . . I’m not a big planner. Planning’s for architects, not rock musicians!

twi-ny: How has the Wedding Present managed to be among the only two post-Smiths, C86 bands (besides Primal Scream) that’s still around and successful?

David Gedge: Hopefully it’s because we’re good at what we do! We have attained a certain standard and try not to let people, or ourselves, down; I’m very conscious of not releasing weak material. But also I’ve tried to establish a relationship with our fans. I’m not here just to sell them products. I want people to have a lasting relationship with us . . . and I hope that doesn’t sound like marketing-speak!

twi-ny: You’re currently in the midst of playing a series of shows at SXSW. What is that experience like?
 
David Gedge: We’re not there yet . . . courtesy of United Airlines! Our early-morning flight to Austin is now a late-night flight to San Antonio! We have a pretty hectic schedule ahead of us because a lot of people wanted us to play at their showcases or parties. We are doing so many we had to turn some down. So it’s going to be pretty crazy.

twi-ny: Valentina is a phenomenal-sounding album. With the digital revolution, have you changed your approach to songwriting and recording?

David Gedge: Well, recording’s definitely a bit easier now with portable recording devices in the rehearsal room and sending files from studio to studio and stuff, but most of our music is still recorded on old-fashioned analogue tape, anyway. And it definitely hasn’t changed the songwriting process. That’s still just me with a pen, paper, guitar, and solitude. Oh, and a rhyming dictionary.