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Act Conceptualisation: Part 3

21/2/2015

Song choice

A song that I’d had loitering in the back of my mind for some time, and thought might have act potential was I Let Love In by Nick Cave. It's a dark, gothic love song. I realized the lyrics were unexpectedly synchronous with the Ishtar concept I was planning for my Dark Act. I’m a little bit of a Nick Cave fan (ok fine, full disclosure – when he played at the Civic in Auckland recently I ended up going to both nights of the gig and went up the front with the Nick touchers). So I was fairly confident I wasn’t going to get sick of hearing this song over and over while I rehearsed. Do you want to read the lyrics? Ok then, if you insist:

I Let Love In – Nick Cave

Despair and Deception, Love's ugly little twins
Came a-knocking on my door, I let them in
Darling, you're the punishment for all my former sins

I let love in

The door it opened just a crack, but love was shrewd and bold
My life flashed before my eyes, it was a horror to behold
A life sentence sweeping confetti from the floor of a concrete hole

I let love in

Well, I've been bound and gagged and I've been terrorized
And I've been castrated and I've been lobotomized
But never has my tormentor come in such a cunning disguise

I let love in

O Lord, tell me what I done
Please don't leave me here on my own
Where are my friends?
My friends are gone

So if you're sitting all alone and hear a-knocking at your door
And the air is full of promises, well buddy, you've been warned
Far worse to be Love's lover than the lover that Love has scorned

I let love in

Dark, right? A song from the point of a view of a man who has been broken by his lover, but doesn’t quite know how it happened….? Or maybe a cautionary tale about being in love with the idea of love… ? Perfect.

Performing The Dark Act. Photo: Peter Jennings

Giant wrist tassels in motion during The Dark Act. Photo: Peter Jennings

Choreography

So I began the choreography. I’m fairly terrible at music theory, so at this point I realise that I’m confused by the time signature, which seems to be… 12/8…? Maybe? What the hell is that? For the time being let us describe it as a ‘fucked-up waltz’, because that is how I approached the track when choreographing. It felt like it had the romance and old-time momentum of a waltz, but with the extra beats threading under it like a wire, creating a kind of relentless tension. So when I perform to this song I move slowly, much more slowly than I’m used to. I move on the first accented beat mostly, and try to use the under-notes unexpectedly. There’s something about the piano in this track that reminds me of a clavichord, I can’t put my finger on it, but it feels like part of this song exists a couple of hundred years ago.

I’d been inspired by a video of the inimitable Lou Lou d’Vil performing one of her signature acts, using boas attached to her wrists. I was fascinated with how she used the boas, particularly how having them attached to the wrist was both similar to and diverged from using a boa as it’s more conventionally employed – slung around the shoulders or neck, and tossed around. This was when I though of Ishtar’s bracelets (as I mentioned earlier regarding costume inspiration) and became interested in using giant wrist tassels.

I wanted to see how the weight and the movement of the tassels would affect my dancing. It turns out, they had a significant effect on my movements. Unsurprisingly, giving the heavier, swinging, whippier quality of giant DIY tassel, the movement of the tassels and the resultant choreography realised itself as very different to that which one would do with a boa. I loved it. I tend to dance and communicate a lot with my hands, so having tassels on my wrists added to the tension and expressive qualities I was trying to create with my hand and arm shapes.

Performing The Dark Act. Photo: Peter Jennings

Performance

An idea that underlies most of my acts is to intentionally set out to challenge what society conventionally tells us is considered sexy. I knew for this act I was using more or less a classic burlesque costume, so if I desired to challenge what we consider sexy with this act, I wouldn’t be relying on costume. It would be though performance, and performance only.

I decided the particular flavor of sexy I would aim for in this act was ‘powerful... and terrifying’. Dark-avenging-goddess sexy. This was going to be fun. I was going to create a horror act without any of the usual trappings of horror – no blood, no fangs, no chainsaws, no violence.

What’s more, if I did my job well, I knew I would hear barely a peep out of the audience. It’s unnerving as a performer if you have the audience go quiet on you, but some acts they do. It’s usually when they are really paying attention. Or it can just mean they hate the act... This is why it can be unnerving. With comic acts I find the audience reaction is usually more boisterous. However, in order to grow as a performer I have tried not to let my love of a laughing audience put me off exploring different styles of performance.

The act itself I’m still learning to perform to it's full potential, currently it's in the refinement and polishing phase. But I love it. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it evolves and what it’s final form takes. If you’ve seen The Dark Act, or Coney Bow’s Dancer in Green, does having an idea of the conceptual underpinning of this act make you consider the act in a different way? Is that a good thing? Or do you prefer to take performances at face value and make your own meanings of them? If you are a performer, how do you go about conceptualising your own acts? Feel free to comment!

Parts 1 & 2 of this series on act conceptualisation can be found on the main blog page

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Act Conceptualisation: Part 2

14/2/2015

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Theda Bara in Salome (1918)

Theda Bara as Cleopatra (1917)

Silent movie stars, playing to strengths, Egyptology & Theda Bara

When I was a new performer, one of my mentors Misty La Moore (who can always be relied on to boost a girl’s ego when she needs it) used to say that on stage I had the face of a silent movie actress. So I decided that I’d explore this skill which I’d accidentally stumbled across, silent movie face-pulling (if that's a skill?), and try and build it into an entire act.

I went back to some of my favourite silent movies for research. I was focusing on Theda Bara, the original silent movie vamp. She was always portrayed as the dark character, the man-trap who used her sexuality to her advantage, the exotic ‘other’. The vamp character originated, well, because people are sometimes really racist, and this character was created to play on stereotypes and demonise eastern European migrants in the West. (If you think this doesn’t happen now take a look at how British Media portrays Roma Gypsies.)

I had also been looking into the 1920s’ obsession with Egyptology. With the discovery of Tutenkhaman’s tomb in 1922, the west went Egypt-mad. In 1893 the performer ‘Little Egypt’ (or one of three performers going under the name of ‘Little Egypt’s) had performed at the Chicago World’s Fair. As a result the ‘cooch’ style of dancing, based on Syrian & Egyptian folkloric dance styles, had become a staple of burlesque shows in the following decades.

So I decided Eastern Mythology was my theme. Flowing on from this, I wanted to incorporate some old-style belly-dance influenced bump and grind moves into my act.

I loved the images of Theda Bara in her roles as Salome and Cleopatra, so I started looking at characters and costumes that would relate to this idea.

The character

I was attracted to the idea of doing an act based on the goddess Ishtar, as Theda Bara might have played her. Ishtar was the Babylonian/Assyrian goddess of love, the night, fertility, sexuality, and war, but who had a tendency to destroy her lovers. This was the perfect vamp character – exotic, seductive and destructive.

Old Babylonian period Queen of Night relief, often considered to represent an aspect of Ishtar.

Ishtar. Note the layered skirt and 'wings' which came to be a part of my final costume. I wanted a lion too.

"Woe to him whom Ishtar had honoured! The fickle goddess treated her passing lovers cruelly, and the unhappy wretches usually paid dearly for the favours heaped on them.”

Also:

One of the most famous myths about Ishtar describes her descent to the underworld. In this myth, Ishtar approaches the gates of the underworld and demands that the gatekeeper open them:

If thou openest not the gate to let me enter,
I will break the door, I will wrench the lock,
I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.
I will bring up the dead to eat the living.
And the dead will outnumber the living.

The gatekeeper hurried to tell Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld. Ereshkigal told the gatekeeper to let Ishtar enter, but "according to the ancient decree". The gatekeeper let Ishtar into the underworld, opening one gate at a time. At each gate, Ishtar had to shed one article of clothing. When she finally passed the seventh gate, she was naked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar

Shedding clothing? Why, it just so happens I’m into that!
Naked, you say? What a great idea!

But in all seriousness, if shedding clothing is a part of one of my routines, I do like to know the motivation for why a character I'm playing might be undressing.

The costume

I began to research Ishtar for costume inspiration. I was interested in Eastern-inspired 1920s costumes and sought out archival imagery as a starting point. Many sketches of swathes of shimmering beaded fringe and loops of beading were made.

left and far left: vintage belly dance costumes
above: Theda Bara

As a goddess of the night, I decided her dress must be dark and glittery. The sparkle was important not only for glamour, but to pick out the contours of the black costume, so it doesn’t disappear against black stage backgrounds. I had a hunch the contrast between the black costume and my skin under stage lights would make my skin glow almost supernaturally.

I'm facinated by classic burlesque and showgirl headdresses, and wanted to take on the technical challenge of making a headdress with significant structural demands (my first). As Ishtar is referred to as a 'cow moon goddess', I decided to construct a horned headdress. The horns were literally made from number eight wire (or a wire gauge that was pretty damn close), and I constructed the form for the horns out of packaging that a motorcycle magazine had come in.

left: A burlesque performer with horned headdress, circa 1950s
above: the final headdress

The layered skirt is based on representations of Ishtar's dress in bas-relief carvings (above). The cape references the wing forms usually depicted behind her. She’s most often depicted naked, wearing only an ornamental headdress, an ornate necklace and bracelets at her wrists. These costume elements are what I strip down to, forming the basis of my final reveal. On the eve of my first performance my flatmate told me the underwear piece that I constructed looked 'like sparkly pubes’. Success!

Under-layers of the costume
left: bellydance inspired panel skirt. photo: Peter Jennings
above: beaded G-string pant piece (a.k.a. sparkly pubes). photo: Adam Baines

Face

I accompanied my luxe-gothic costume with period-appropriate makeup. This was based on photos of Theda Bara and a Russian actress that I had used for costume inspiration. Conveniently the Kryolan concept store had just opened in Newmarket (a glorious wonderland!). There I was able to find the blackest of black and cochineal coloured eye shadows to recreate 1920s makeup.

The actual makeup they used when filming silent movies was rather unusual. In order to be able to be registered by the primitive cameras, blues, lavenders and yellows were used to contour the face. I suspected it looked truly bizarre in real life, so I aimed to approximate how the make-up would have appeared on screen, rather than in reality.

left: a vintage photograph of a Russian actress
above: makeup for silent film

Part 3 of 3 to follow...

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Act conceptualisation: Part 1

13/2/2015

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What is the thought process behind creating an act?

Backstage at a show towards the end of last year I had a conversation with burlesque performer Coney Bow about act conceptualisation. She mentioned that her Dancer in Green act was based on the Hollywood Ballet Green Duet between Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in the movie Singin' in the Rain. In this bar scene Charisse’s character is drawn from her chair into a dance with Kelly’s character Don Lockwood. Coney Bow’s act is based on the extrapolation and interpretation of what Charisse’s character would do if Don didn’t turn up. The act explores how Charisse's character would move and act if she were dancing with herself.

I found it an interesting discussion, her comments gave me an insight into her act that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. While this perspective is by no means essential to enjoying her act, I found it added an extra layer of depth to her performance. As someone who is very much the type of person who goes around art galleries reading the wall labels, I get a kick out of hearing the concept behind people’s acts. As with wall labels, I don’t think a conceptual explanation is essential to understanding or enjoying the art itself, but I like how the contextual information suggests ideas that I would have otherwise been unaware of. This is partly why I loved hearing about the inspiration for Coney Bow’s performance, as it allowed me to view her act in an entirely different way.

Hollywood Ballet Green Duet from Singin' in the Rain

Coney Bow as The Dancer in Green. Photo: Peter Jennings.

At the time of this conversation I was in the position of nervously debuting a brand new act that was stylistically rather unfamiliar territory for me, while Coney was performing a polished and stunning signature act in a style that is very much her trademark. Despite the obvious differences in our acts, I realized the one thing they had in common was the similarity in the way we had both approached developing a ‘classic’ act conceptually.

So this led me to where I am now, writing a post about my most recently developed act, and the conceptualisation behind it. I call this act alternately Let Love In or The Dark Act. (It’s still settling into its true form, so I’m more or less waiting to see which name sticks.) If any of you have seen me perform before, most of my acts are character-based neo-burlesque. This act is unusual for me, in that it is essentially a classic showgirl act, albeit a slightly unusual spin on the genre. Like Coney’s act, the concept behind my routine probably isn’t immediately apparent to the audience, but this concept colours the entire act and informs all the decisions made in creating, costuming, and choreographing the act.

image left: Performing The Dark Act at The Cat's Meow
photo: Adam Baines.

It begins…

The starting point for this act was being invited to take part in a 1920s themed show, The Cat’s Meow, for the Rock n Roll Circus. I had been thinking for some time that I wanted to develop a new ‘classic’ routine. In the year or so since I’d last created a classic act, my style as a neo performer had become more developed and I had grown a much better sense of who I had become as a performer. However, the classic side of my performance had remained comparatively underdeveloped in style. But that set an interesting challenge – how would neo performer Amourous Ava perform a classic routine? Or more accurately, because you can’t take the 'neo' out of a neo performer – how would she perform a neo-classic routine?

I also set myself another challenge – no Charleston. I knew other performers would be doing up-tempo numbers, so I wanted to do something that would set my act apart a little, play to my skills, and to push myself in a different direction. I’d also been watching a lot of classic-style acts and wanted to challenge myself to do a slow number. My usual performance style is high energy, frenetic and comedic. This to a certain extent is because of my physicality – I’m slight of build, so to get any sort of decent movement out of my costume I often need to move very, very fast. Torque is not my friend. I also tend to move quickly to dispel nervous energy, so I wanted to learn to control and direct it… and just for kicks see what would happen if I didn’t try to be funny. It was terrifying...

Part 2 of 3 to follow...

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Act Conceptualisation: Part 3

Act Conceptualisation: Part 2

Act conceptualisation: Part 1

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