CULTURE CROSSING: The Suspension of Wait

New experimental theatre collective LANDED 2 gathers stage and sound designers with artists, musicians and performers from many disciplines, places them in an unusual location, and creates a theatre to cross cultures and languages.

Occupying an old train depot in St-Henri, their new event, The Suspension of Wait, looks at the immigrant experience in the history and modern daily life of Montreal.

Following a young man and woman who leave their respective countries and their subsequent journey until they meet here, this novel setting is used and transformed, “...taking us across ocean and border into new lands and inside the cultural subconscious of displacement.”

Steering the cast of 11 performers are director Cathia Pagotto, scenographer Amy Keith and sound designer John Wilson.

The show, which starts tonight Thursday, Nov. 20 at 8 p.m. and runs until Nov. 29 at Les Ateliers Rose-de-Lima (661 Rose-de-Lima) aims “to push the boundaries of both the narrative and the aesthetics of theatre, as we know them.”

See www.landed2.org for more info.

by NEIL BOYCE

Sex, smut and dance

AGENT PROVOCATEUR:
Les Cuisses à l’Écart du coeur

Choreographer Virginie Brunelle didn’t have the typical dancer’s upbringing where she was shuttled between ballet, tap and jazz lessons at a young age. She only started dancing at 20 and completed her bachelor’s in dance at UQÀM last year. She hasn’t looked back since.

Her work Les Cuisses à l’Écart du Coeur, which was her final project, stirred up a lot of attention for its subject matter of sex, love and the disconnect, and its similarities to the work of provocative choreographer Dave St-Pierre.

Brunelle got an unexpected break in the spring, when St-Pierre invited her to present an excerpt before his piece at the Festival TransAmériques, and since then, the awards, bursaries and residencies have been rolling in.

Brunelle’s 55-minute work for seven is structured in 10 tableaux and uses clothing items as props to explore Brunelle’s ideas of pornography and sexuality, all with a smidgen of humour.

The soirée opens with Cible de Dieu, a short work by 2007 Noisemaker Jacques Poulin-Denis. Drop in on one of the performances at Studio 303 (372 Ste-Catherine W., #303) this Saturday, Nov. 22 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

by MARITES CARINO

 

Cinematic manifiesta

Surrealists were known to dawdle away entire afternoons in cafés playing the parlour game cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse), in which a person would draw or write on a sheet of paper, fold it to conceal most of its contents and pass it along to the next person.

EXQUISITE SHIRTS:
From Kalavera Deliciosa

The Montreal short filmmaking collective Makila adapted the concept to moving images by having members conjure up 30 seconds of video based on the last five seconds of the preceding collaborator’s clip. The sum of these poetic accidents—dubbed Kalavera Deliciosa—will be screened this Sunday, Nov. 23 at 8 p.m. as part of its Makila Manifiesta bash at the SAT (1195 St-Laurent).

The indie collective, which originated courtesy of like-minded Spanish-speaking filmmakers, will be unveiling a manifesto with 13 guiding principles by way of short video capsules.

“It’s a clear declaration of our intent,” says member Ellen Tang. “We don’t just offer services or make products; we’re proposing a new model for working in production, in line with concepts of sustainability and social media.”

Also screening is Jimmy Medellin’s Dalai Lama and Argentinian street sensation Blu’s Muto. $5 at the door

by MICHAEL-OLIVER HARDING

Provocative performance

How does one present works that are transient to the point of leaving little or no visual traces? This is the question that confronted the organizers of Reading the Limits, a retrospective look at the work of Montreal artist Tim Clark, which wraps up next Saturday, Nov. 29 at Concordia’s Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery (1400 de Maisonneuve W.).

BEHIND THE LINES: Clark’s A Reading From The Bike Riders by Danny Lyon

Encompassing a body of work dating back to 1975, the exhibition begins with some of Clark’s early photographs, and ends with 2003’s video articulation of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. But the heart of the show is Clark’s performative work, and the philosophical and socio-historical issues raised by this often controversial, and always provocative, art form.

Each piece is accompanied by a text, written by Clark, that discusses not only the inspiration for each performance, but the challenges—both philosophical and logistical—behind mounting the work. This approach works well, providing an opportunity to reflect not only on Clark’s oeuvre, but on the idea of performance art as a practice.

A panel discussion with Clark and curators takes place this Saturday, Nov. 22 at 3 p.m.

by STACEY DEWOLFE

Is it art?

IDENTITY CRISIS: Many people spent their adolescence cultivating a style that, while individual, still allowed them to be identified with a particular group.

For the past 14 years, photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Elle Uyttenbroek have been researching and documenting the dress codes of various social groups. What started in Rotterdam as a way of capturing the city’s multicultural street scenes has expanded—they now travel the world photographing social groups in places such as Casablanca and Praia.

The groups in this collection run the gamut from the everyday, like dads with baby carriers and Yupsters (a mix of hipsters and yuppies), to esoteric subgroups like Technohippies and the particularly confounding Gabberbitches.

www.exactitudes.com

Arts hole

MORE HUMAN THAN HUMAN: Lickety Split smut zine celebrates the launch of their seventh issue, “Beyond Human,” tomorrow night, Friday, Nov. 21 at 9 p.m. at la Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent) with performances by the Dead Doll Dancers, Parlovr, Coulees and Nightwood. Masks and beyond-human attire are not a requirement but they are requested. $10. • NEW REVIEW: Brand new online arts rag Rover (www.roverarts.com), which went live in early October, celebrates its official launch at la Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent) next Thursday, Nov. 27 at 8:30 p.m. Some 25 contributors, including Heather O’Neill, Dimitri Nasrallah and founder Marianne Ackerman will be on hand as will music by Coral Egan, Sweet Mother Logic, the Darling DeMaes and Amanda Mabro & the Cabaret Band. Admission is $10.

Artistat

The number of works on view at le Cheval Blanc (809 Ontario E.) as part of Cachez ce mur, which features silkscreened rock posters by Nate Duval, Mille Putois, Seripop and Bongoût among others: 40+