Savion Glover: Sound Your Shoes.

The crowd has gone and I'm still clapping for Savion Glover's SoLe Sanctuary.  Rhythm-rhythm-rhythm is smack-dab center spotlight in Glover's show - but, there is the conscious balance of stillness too.  No Busby Berkeley pretty girls, no glitz and dazzle - or musical shenanigans to pad the performance... because here - with Savion Glover - are the feet and the legs and the heartbeat, ears and memory of a tap-dancing hoofer who knows his art - the art of pure rhythm pouring forth from his soul to his soles.

Savion Glover SoLe Sanctuary program flyer - with addition of blue.

Reading the program flyer, prior to the show - there was promise the performance would be good - for the text itself was full of rhythm and thought:  "Entering the Monastery of His Out'ness, Gee Oh Dee, Tranes Tribute, Holy Strings, The High Priest of Gone, Improvography, Directed and Choreographed by Spirits Known, Meditation on the Art of Tap" - and listen to these rhythmic names... "Little Nuk Nuk, Cat Daddy".  And the performance overview:  "Savion Glover's Reverence for the Art of Tap is Put to the Stage Literally in the Form of a Living Altar... ."

If you are a fan of tap, rhythm, percussion, drum, bass - You just have to see SoLe Sanctuary for yourself.  The miraculous, glorious racket Glover - and hoofer Marshall Davis Jr. - make with their feet, I can only aspire to create with my typewriter.

As a Bravo-Encore-Shout-Out, here is my ode to SoLe Sanctuary:

Savion Glover, Sound Your Shoes

Shiva Nataraj of Clackety-Clack

Train on Track

Percussive Locomotion

Mediatation of a Hoofer's Soul

Circle and Slide

on Life's Rhythm-Ride

Tic Toc

Clip Clop

Drum Staccato

Pizzicato

Whisper-Crash and Clatter

pitter-patter-Morse Code 

Ode

to the Universe Pulse

Om

All Sounds 

Yin-and-Yang-of-Still-and-Quick

Quick and Still, Yang and Yin

Song Stepper

Hands Together

Franz Marc's Audible, Living Color.

Franz Marc's 1914 Animals in a Landscape, which you can see here , reflects the artist's reverence for and strong connections to color.  Marc - perhaps a synaesthete - saw a world in which color contained vital emotions - and even sound.

Depicting cattle yoked to an environment of "prismatic forms" - Animals in a Landscape, recently displayed as part of Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts Detroit Institute of Arts German Expressionism exhibit, is said to "symbolize the integration of all living things" within the cosmos.  Marc and other members of The Blue Rider - Der Blaue Reiter - believed colors to be imbued with spiritual values capable of battling the "corruption and materialism" of their time. Text in quotes - Frist Center for the Visual Arts audio tour commentary.

Do your color perceptions coincide with those of Franz Marc?  Here are a few of his color theories:  BLUE is male, penetrating, and spiritual - YELLOW is female, joyful, and spiritual - RED feels heavy and fierce and must be kept in check through a balance of the male and female.

Do you feel the energy or emotions of color?

I Am A Color Sponge Wholly Absorbed by Ken Nordine.

Color beckons me. Not merely the look of colors, but their names too - reel me in.

Many years ago, driving to some now-forgotten destination, I heard - from Ken Nordine's Colors  Word Jazz album - the Green selection. 

In Green, Nordine's voice, the epitome of the phrase "cool as a cucumber", describes various shades of green - assigning them personalities. According to Nordine, "... green can be a problem... there's the green that should never have happened - the stupid green", but then - on the other hand, there's another green -  the one "to be seen with" . "We should spend the better part of our time - yours and mine - with a green like this," says Nordine about the green to be seen with.

Here's a link to a Jonathan Kaplan YouTube video word animation of Ken Nordine's Green.

Nordine's album includes what sounds like a whole coloring crayon box full of selections: olive, lavender, burgundy, yellow, green, beige, maroon, ecru, chartreuse, turquoise, white, flesh, azure, puce, magenta, orange, purple, muddy, russet, amber, blue, black, gold, crimson, brown, rosey, hazel, mauve, fuschia, sepia, nutria, cerise, grey, and coral.

Nutria was the only color that threw me for a loop. A nutria is an invasive rodent, so - as a color - it posed a challenge visually.

This Skip Heller article at Asphodel paints a nice picture of the making of Nordine's Colors album.

Rosanna Orlandi: Intelligent Beauty.

Rosanna Orlandi photo by Leslie Williamson for Dwell July/August 2012.

Rosanna Orlandi's eyes peer at me through those spectacular shades as I flip-flip-flip through the pages of Dwell magazine.

Rosanna's look was unlike any other look. I had to know more about the owner of those eyes, who wears big silver cuffs - and I discovered... this explains the look... Rosanna was once a knitwear designer, but has for more than 10 years now turned those incredible eyes to assessing and selecting works for her Milanese design gallery Spazio Rosanna Orlandi.

What do they seek, those eyes of Rosanna? "Honest" designs, according to The New York Times. (Julie Lasky, April 25, 2012)

In a How To Spend It article, Rosanna reveals: "... I never think consciously from a commercial point of view. Something catches me because it’s amazing. I fall in love and I have to touch things. I’m always curious, always learning. When you feel that you’re constantly learning, you can only improve.” (Jenny Dalton, Jan.6, 2011)  Orlandi's gallery selections do indeed seem to be one-of-a-kind and sometimes upcycled - leaning more toward functional art - catering less to commercially-driven manufacturing.

"To add humor to a home", Rosanna tells The Wall Street Journal, "you have to have courage in your choices.... You have to be daring and find things that make you say 'wow'". (Jackie Cooperman, Sept.24, 2011)  Orlandi's own look is proof that the right amount of daring is wowing and her advice might easily apply to fashion as well as furnishings.

Listen to Rosanna, as she invites you into her design gallery and speaks of the useful and very-often artful works of her design "family" - here.
(Above video link from crane.tv "Spazio Rosanna Orlandi's Magical Space" at youtube)

Street Bard.

Downtown Denver, CO on August 10 - this traveling poet with a trolley and an old-school Underwood typewriter caught our interest.  Here's her signboard.

The signboard of poet Abigail Mott.  Photo Toile La La.

Undaunted by my photography, or the shuffling of passersby, or the panhandler hoping to divert our attention... Abigail Mott composed for us a custom-made poem, right there on the sidewalk - unaided by computer, dictionary, thesaurus, or anything - except her non-electric Underwood.

But it wasn't just her talent to spontaneously produce poetry (the words apparently transmitting
obstacle-free - head to fingers), it was the sight of her poetry-production that was also somehow significant.

Abigail Mott composing a poem in Denver, CO.  Photo Toile La La.

She looked as if she should be painted - at this age and that moment in time, with her leg crossed and fingers tapping  - and with people passing by and seeing her typing.

The poem-typing hands of Abigail Mott.  Photo Toile La La.

So, someday - when I'm not reading about art, fashion, and design - or sewing, or trying to organize all the books, fabric, thread, pencils, paint and boxes full-to-the-brim of artsy detritus (or walking my Good Luck Employee cat - on her leash)... perhaps I will paint the poet.  But, for now - I offer a sentence poem in return for the poem Abigail created for our family (which I won't share, because - after all, she created it especially for us).

Les Mots for Mott:  Street Bard Angel Poet Pulling Thought from a Word Piano, Tap Your Fingers,  Clack Your Keys Please for a Snapshot Paragraph.

Antony Hegarty: Gold Stars!

His Mona Lisa visage winking at me from the center of I-D Magazine's Spring Royalty Issue, Antony's interview with Susan Corrigan is one of the most compelling, thought-provoking articles of the publication.

Antony Hegarty in I-D Magazine:  Daniele and Iango photography, styling by Patti Wilson.

How could I resist such statements as this - by Antony: "I believe a sustainable future for society and the world requires a paradigm shift toward a more feminine system.  Men should find a profound humility and realise that they were born with the strength to better serve and protect the feminine in society." He believes that is the true role for men, rather than "to dominate and to subjugate the rest of humanity and nature".  

Antony believes a matriarchal system would save the planet:  "Male power is disconnected from a more interior or organic relationship to the environment and the world.  It's a bizarre, hierarchical fortress where all they care about is their own team, just like an army... . It's the most virulent, broken aspect of maleness." He explains that the biological-introduction of testosterone instilled a protective mind-set that has led to destruction and accumulation of weapons.

Summing it up, grandmothers should be managing the important issues.

You may be interested in this Guardian interview with Antony, by Peter Conrad, or on your own - search for YouTube video interviews.

A couple of years ago, with extreme foresight, my husband predicted women would be dominant in the future.  You can read more about this in older "Men of The Future" posts (Oct. 13, 2010 and Dec. 29, 2010).  We laughed as he made a story about it, but increasingly - I'm thinking he's right.  Antony is definitely a "Man of the Future".