Prom party
FORMAL FUN: How to rock the prom
“I was giving Sherwin Tjia a ride to Toronto for Christmas and we were in the car for eight hours, so eventually...” says Serah-Marie McMahon of Worn Fashion Journal. She’s talking about the collaboration with Slow Dance Night organizers (Tjia and Amber Goodwyn) to create Slowdance Prom—a launch party for the journal’s sixth issue.
Worn isn’t your typical fashion magazine. “We don’t follow trends or tell people what to wear or be an editorial source of ‘how to be,’” says McMahon, “which a lot of people have problems with in regular fashion magazines. But people still like clothes, so we talk about fashion history and things that are related to clothes but not necessarily trends.”
With every issue comes a tailor-made launch party that pulls from different aspects of the publication and works with different themes.
“We try and do something that makes it more than just people showing up and getting a magazine,” McMahon says. “And with prom dresses, there’s not one certain era—there’s awesome ’50s prom dresses, ’80s prom dresses. It’ll be interesting to see different eras together in one room, when the only thing that’s tying them together is formal wear.”
Break out your best on Friday, April 11 at 9 p.m. at Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent). Tickets are $10 and include a dance card and a copy of Issue 6.
by SACHA JACKSON
Stains and transitions
WATERLOGGED: A still from ChrysalidesThe first images you come across in local artist Patrick Bernatchez’s show at Skol (372 Ste-Catherine W., #314) look like a bunch of Rorschach Tests. I stared at the stains for a while, but all that came to mind were thoughts of leaking body fluids.
The exhibition is titled Chrysalides, but don’t bring the kids expecting to see some nice butterflies. The work is about transitional states and not the pupa, per se. It’s definitely one of the most varied and eclectic assemblages of work by one artist that I have come across in a single show.
Besides the stains at the entrance, there is a musical piece called “Fashion Plaza Nights,” which consists of 12 compositions for two pianos; a wall covered with rather twisted apocalyptic drawings of naked people; and an excellent 35mm film of a car slowly filling with water.
Bernatchez may be completely self-taught, but his technical abilities are strong. His drawings straddle the line somewhere between Goya’s fantastical etchings and a goth teenager’s sketchbook; the film is nothing short of mesmerizing.
Until May 3, info: (514) 398-9322, www.skol.ca.
by CHRISTINE REDFERN
Giddy-up
Local choreographer Manon Oligny has always been interested in the ideas of femininity and power. Her new trio L’Écurie, which she describes as an “installation show,” continues where her last work, Pouliches, left off.
 Keeping in the equestrian theme, Oligny transforms the Société des arts technologiques (1195 St-Laurent) into a hippodrome/stable, where spectators are free to circulate and peek through wooden slats at the three performers, Anne LeBeau, Karina Iraola and Mathilde Monnard, who dance untamed within the confines of three stalls.
Oligny says the choreographic work, which was done in collaboration with the dancers, is a mix of animal-inspired movements, contemporary dance and “equestrian yoga.”
For the hour-long piece, Oligny also collaborates with Putain author Nelly Arcan, whose projected live writings “gallop” and encircle the performance space.
Oligny originally approached Arcan because she found there were a lot of similarities in their work, especially concerning the ideas of “women and their bodies.”
April 16–26 at 8 p.m. nightly. For tickets, call (514) 844 2172.
by MARITES CARINO
Plosives and gutturals
Jordan Scott’s second book of poetry, blert, tries to capture the sound and feel of stuttering from the inside. Scott, a stutterer himself, asked, “How could I make the language system itself stutter? Could I arrange language so as to  mimic my own blubbering mouth? With these questions in mind, I gathered thousands of words that are medically determined to be the most difficult for stutterers to say, words that start with, or contain a predominance of: consonants, plosives, gutturals and fricatives.”
Scott test-drives those plosives and fricatives this Sunday, April 13 at 8:30 p.m. at the Green Room (5386 St-Laurent), as part of Coach House Press’s spring launch.
“So much of blert is designed for sound, designed to be read aloud, and I relish any chance to do just that,” says Scott.
Presented by the Matrix litzine crew, the reading also features Jen Currin, R.M. Vaughan, and Talonbooks poet Sachiko Murakami.
Free.
by MARITES CARINO
Is it art?
SEX IN THE DARK: You might not associate porn with the sight-impaired, but a new Web site is about to change all that.
Pornfortheblind.org is a not-for-profit organization out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, that offers audio descriptions of movie clips from porn sites. Though the reading style is more university lecturer than breathy dream girl (like the voices behind the now defunct soundsdirty.com, which offered audio descriptions, alongside erotic stories and mp3s of girls giving blowjobs), it’s still a helpful tool in the search for porn.
Each recording opens with the Web address of the site and a brief description of the homepage before the start of the movie description.
A clip from “Big Sausage Pizza” sounds something like this: “The delivery man is sitting on the couch giving a thumbs-up to the camera. There is a pizza box on his lap and his penis is protruding from a hole in a centre of the box. One girl is touching the penis. One girl is sucking the penis, one girl is massaging the penis between her breasts while simultaneously eating a slice of pizza.”
You can help the blind by contributing your own recording at www.pornfortheblind.org.
Arts
hole
FOOTLOOSE: Silken Dance presents Refuge, the latest show by Afghanistan-born choreographer Manijeh Ali. Inspired by Sufism and traditional Indian dances, the piece, performed by four women dancers, is playing nightly at 8 p.m., April 10–12 at Art Neuf (3819 Calixa-Lavallée), tickets $20. • BRIGHT BLUE YONDER: Toronto-based artist Corinne Carlson brings her latest work, Arizona Topaz, to Articule (262 Fairmount W.). The show opens with a vernissage tomorrow, Friday, April 11 at 7 p.m.
Artistat
The amount of money it will set you back to create your own Japanese Floral arrangement in the Ikebana style, materials included, as part of the Ikebana workshops this Sunday, April 13 at 1 p.m. and 2:15 p.m. at the Japanese Pavilion in the Botanical Gardens: $6 (adults) and $3 (children) |
