bodycity

Don't worry, we won't hurt you. But this collaboration is big. Not big, like a had a pretty big sandwich today. Big, like a mountain covered in old growth forest and inhabited by an aged gnome who knows all, grants wishes and visualizes visceral images beyond your wildest dreams.

LIGHT + bodycity = l o v e and there's plenty to go around. Put that together with Billygoat and you've got a happening too big to miss.

Today! Thursday, May 14 from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. it comes true. Billygoat, LIGHT and bodycity fill the space at the downtown arts walk at 410 Spring Street.

We want you and you want this.

here are the outer edges:

This vid is an excerpt from our performance at the Gala opening of Collisionfest, an intimate, 11 day celebration of fringe artists from all over the world. Taking place in Los Angeles, this eclectic program of Cinema, performance and Multimedia dynamically presents - the current state of ‘Genre’, the influence of past, and the vision of future.
Check out flaunt.com for more coverage of the event.

mostly we are tromping around on the surface of something; future mountain. getting the lay of the land, surveying the atmosphere, developing maps and plans. we have new suits full of air and textured sound (it's a strange thing to sweat inside of paper/plastic - a perspiring lemonade fresh from the market) that enhance our lady shapes in all the best ways. but we've built a small city here; point to the horizon, there.

what does your edge of the mountain look like?
is there dancing there?
can we come visit?

-meagan

There is no question that Kate Bush has had a great influence on bodycity. We are no strangers to youtube, researching birds, dressage, foreign dance shows, Janet Jackson, and cat videos to name a few. But I find myself (this is Lake btw) always coming back to Kate Bush’s videos.

Kate Bush is a powerhouse choreographer songstress who was at the front of the music video revolution. Each music video tells a story with her as the main character dancing through foggy futures, forests, and shattering glass. Her choreography has the elements of modern dance that we all know, everyday gestures exaggerated to sweeping moves, enthusiastic prancing and the precision of a trained dancer. The dancing can be as narrative as her videos, clearly trying to tell a story and lead her audience, but what I love is her very particular attitude, enthusiasm and weirdness. Her quirky facial expressions, "edgy" costumes and bizarre sets are what make her videos so charming and entertaining. Looking back, the videos seem a little amateurish, lots of fog machines and dudes with beards, though I would guess she was on the cutting edge of video fx. But this just adds to the pleasure of her videos, and it’s that aspect, the enthusiastic awkwardness (as well as the straight up humor) that has been most inspirational to me, especially when we built the Halloween dance, "through the Glass Mass." Here is a smattering of some favorite videos:
The set and costumes alone make this video amazing, that and her signature all male back-ground dancers.

This is the classic folk story of the wife thinking her husband is cheating on her so she disguises herself to trick him into adultery, note the double bass as the symbolic gesture of her husband.

She was only 19 when this single came out, signaling the beginning of many cross-fades, mirroring effects, and fog machines.

Everbody knows and loves this song, right? The video is a classic and very modern dancey, with fans.

I also have to mention “Army Dreamers” which features an incredible sequence of her being blown up and flying backwards, ass over teakettle. In "Sat in your Lap", the fx is taken to another level with video inserts of dunces and jesters dancing in her palms and rollerskating. In "Breathing" she is in a plastic womb with an umbilical chord. "Cloudbusting" features a paternal Donald Sutherland and is similar to "Hounds of Love" in that they are her most narrative videos. And she just looks so freaking cool in "Them Heavy People."

All of these videos are little masterpieces of music, dance, and video fx, they also hold a special time in television history. I grew up in the music video age when MTV still was music television and musicians were besting each other with the coolest videos. I was listening to the radio today and heard tell of the virtual death of the music video. It saddens me to see that imaginative, original, and weird music videos like Kate Bush's have been replaced by uninspired reality tv shows of washed-up actors and wannabes. Perhaps this is our cue to bring it back around and make a bodycity pre-MTV music video. Stay tuned!

~Lake

If you couldn't make it to one of the shows in NYC, click on these animated .gif's for a taste of the live action!

Or, watch this mashup of our show w/Glasser at Cafe Zebulon in Brooklyn. It may have happened a month ago, but the moves are still fresh!

also, flickr.

Late Night Snack
at BPD at the REDCAT lounge

Tuesday, September 30 at 7:30pm

We will be debuting bodycity XII: more tales from Future Mountain

Here are some keywords/phrases/ideas:

labor of love: giving birth, caring for children just born and elders or invalids soon to die, gardening, cleaning house, home repair, rebuilding cities/communities after war or disaster - rugged and monetarily unrewarding work that is wholly necessary for survival. Movements that are fluid but heavy and muscular, seemingly involuntary like a heartbeat.

women (working) in war times: My Nana worked in a factory during WWII fabricating nylon parachutes. Since all of the nylon was going to the war effort, ladies stockings were very hard to find so the women in her factory drew lines up the backs of their legs to stand in place of the dark seams of actual stockings. The maintenance of American femininity in recent history is facinating behavior. In war times,this feminine identity seems to be split into a few archetypes: (1) the iconic notion of woman as the sweet sex salvation for soldiers who've sacrificed their minds and bodies for country, (2) the proud mother, devoid of sexuality who blindingly supports of her men in uniform by fulfilling her own duties of sustaining the labors of her home, (3) the grieving mother, wife, daughter who has lost and is made beautiful by her sense of honor. Fortunately, we can add a few more identities to this list: (4) the protester, hysterical and passionatly close to self-destruction, (5) the female soldier, a still feared anomaly who marches as unflinchingly as the next man, (6) The victims - mothers, wives, daughters who are killed or survive acts of war inflicted upon them and their families, they are characterized by shock.

Archetypes are fodder: summon up and emulate their movements but don't go overboard with mimicry. Oblique references are always more effective than attempting literal translations - they allow your viewers to follow you along to the next idea without getting stuck in their own train of thought. For example: movement can reflect factory work by being repetitive and referencing the mechanical nature of an assembly line without literally acting it out. Also borrow from/bastardize rag time, swing, pin-up styles to F with the iconic notion of women as sweet sex salvation.

For me, this is also related to women in times of disaster. I think it is important to imagine ourselves in the actual areas of war or weather, the practice of domestic mysticism - there is something other-worldly about the raw, post-apocalyptic identity of survivors.

domestic mysticism: finding transcendence in the domestic atmosphere, locating oneness with the universe at home - I'm thinking about an embrace and glorification of domesticity - it is humorous and tongue-in-cheek: the endless and mysterious nature of refrigerator mold, seeing the future in coffee grounds, mourning the past on a reflective linoleum floor, etc. It is the belief in one's own corporeal reality.
I think that this idea can translate into calling out our relationship with the physical structure we're in by 'washing/watching' the windows - arcing arm movements, jumping with arms up, 'sweeping' the floor - any sweeping of limbs , 'painting the walls' - slow motion flailing and heavy contact...handstands that melt onto the floor and then do it again. Follow through and see how far you can develop it - can you push it so far that you hardly recognize it?

hearts are involuntary,
M