Butoh in the Sala Verdi
In the late afternoon he goes running and Gershwin's Rhasphody in Blue comes on the headphones. The vista is broken into two. Sea and skyline. Eclectic buildings arrange themselves around the waterfront. The sun begins to fail.
At night, with C rehearsing Henry the Fourth, Parts 1&2, he goes around the corner to the Verdi. There's a Butoh dancer from the States performing. In his other life he would never go to a see a Butoh dancer from the States perform on a whim. It would cost too much, it would involve travelling too far. But this isn't the other life, this is this one. It's round the corner and it's free. So he goes, meeting a friend in the lobby.
The Butoh dancer appears. In her opening sequence, she is caught up in a vast red sail, struggling to escape, writhing in the most deliberate of fashions to music by Phillip Glass. In the next, she is naked on a plinth, contorting her body into bizarre, challenging, impressive but uncomfortable shapes. In the third, she is naked again. Again, her body is contorted. Her shapely figure struggles against gravity. Her hands become one with two branches lying on stage. She gives birth to the universe. At the climactic moment, a phone rings. The dancer is immune. She is giving birth to the universe. My friend suggests this must be the end. I say there's plenty more to come. I am right. Now that the universe exists, it needs to be populated. The next phase is a film. The dancer, naked, contorted. Her mouth held open in an eternal O. As though meditating as she turns herself into a living sculpture. Soon she's back in person, only now the projection is there too. She's double dosing. Now she achieves an even more impressive feat. Not content with giving birth to the universe, the dancer now gives birth to herself. Petals fall from the ceiling. Transcendence is back. In spades. Old ladies shuffle in their seats. The theatre creaks. So much nudity is not good for its blood pressure. Acknowledging this, the dancer puts some clothes on for the final sequence, a Butoh parody of a ballet, all strained limbs and minimal movement. She appears for her curtain call. Montevideo rises to its feet.
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Oro De Rhin
The Germans get everywhere. They didn't have much of an empire, ever. Which probably didn't help. But, just like the British, whose influence reached parts you would never expect, the Germans had long tentacles.
So here I am sitting in one of the city's oldest cafes. Which looks like something out of old Berlin or Vienna. Pretty tablecloths and faintly art nouveau chairs. A place inspired by Mittel Europa and populated by the descendants of elderly Spanish ladies. Who are now, on the whole, elderly Hispanic ladies themselves. Drooling over their cakes and elaborate coffees served in glass cups with emaciated handles. Piped Brazilian music waxing over the airwaves. So tasteful you can almost smell the odour of the Motherland. Although it's not clear which one.
In theory this is the sort of place where Lenin plotted the Russian revolution or Klimt dreamt up eroticism. You don't really get the feeling anything too radical is on the cards here. If anything it has the feel of a place which should feature in a movie involving a neurotic mother of two grown up children who believes she used to be beautiful but no longer is who finds love one last time in life with the unlikely figure of a manic depressive former rock god whose star has now waned and who wiles his days away creating sculptures of celebrated pre-Colombian monuments out of guitar plectrums. Sort of Julian Cope meets Kirsten Scott Thomas. I can picture them now, whispering to each other in a corner, struggling to find a way to say how fascinated they are by each other, the man twisting a plectrum in his hand inside his coat pocket, the woman fearful that her mobile phone will ring even though it's switched off, knowing that people know her mobile phone is never switched off.
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Another Kind of Bar
This is where a whisky nacional costs 25 pesos. Just across the road from the bus station. On a day so grey it could be the 1st day of Autumn, forget about Spring. A small bicho crawls across the table. Might be an ant. Might be something uglier. An old man struggles to stay standing as he tries to read the paper and drink his whisky at the same time. The music is Bryan Adams. The waiter has grey hair which touches his nape and bifocals. He looks like he should work in advertising. Have three children by his first wife. One with the second. A stepchild he gets on with better than his own children. A house that backs on to the river with a half acre lawn and plans for willow trees. Says he doesn't like work and complains when he gets home but he'd be lost without it. The ant crawls across my hand. The waiter stares out of the window. He's got some great ideas for the Persil account. The anti-white. An ant crawling across an iceberg. A fly on a woman's petticoat. The detergent that will annihilate not just stains but your enemies too. Clean up your bank balance. Your conscience. Your carbon footprint. The ideas are endless. They spill out of him. If it wasn't for the customers interrupting his train of thought he'd be rich.
+++
Cafe, Plaza Independencia
We've started rehearsing in SUA. SUA is the actors' union. Their offices are in the centre of town. One of those old, inordinately high-ceilinged buildings which were constructed by rich families in the late twentieth/ early twenty first centuries. When Montevideo and Buenos Aires would become the new Europe, eclipsing the tawdriness of the States, describing possibilities which Borges alone fulfilled. In the pages of his books.
We rehearse in the ground floors. The embossed wooden doors are the giraffes of the door fauna. So tall and elegant they should be on a catwalk. Three D tiles, designed by the computer graphics merchants of the 1920s adorn the floors. The sound of water and voices permeate. The influence of the Alhambra is there somewhere.
In this space, the work flourishes. My pair of distressed loners find a way to communicate without words. They dance and repeat themselves and make strange noises which betray the feelings which words cannot reveal.
+++
A writer requires these moments. Those that fall between stools. Which don't belong to anyone. Whose redundance permits vacillation, pedantry, impermanence. Space for the words to slip through.
The wind gets up and the flies, which have only just hatched, prepare to die again.
+++
In the late afternoon he goes running and Gershwin's Rhasphody in Blue comes on the headphones. The vista is broken into two. Sea and skyline. Eclectic buildings arrange themselves around the waterfront. The sun begins to fail.
At night, with C rehearsing Henry the Fourth, Parts 1&2, he goes around the corner to the Verdi. There's a Butoh dancer from the States performing. In his other life he would never go to a see a Butoh dancer from the States perform on a whim. It would cost too much, it would involve travelling too far. But this isn't the other life, this is this one. It's round the corner and it's free. So he goes, meeting a friend in the lobby.
The Butoh dancer appears. In her opening sequence, she is caught up in a vast red sail, struggling to escape, writhing in the most deliberate of fashions to music by Phillip Glass. In the next, she is naked on a plinth, contorting her body into bizarre, challenging, impressive but uncomfortable shapes. In the third, she is naked again. Again, her body is contorted. Her shapely figure struggles against gravity. Her hands become one with two branches lying on stage. She gives birth to the universe. At the climactic moment, a phone rings. The dancer is immune. She is giving birth to the universe. My friend suggests this must be the end. I say there's plenty more to come. I am right. Now that the universe exists, it needs to be populated. The next phase is a film. The dancer, naked, contorted. Her mouth held open in an eternal O. As though meditating as she turns herself into a living sculpture. Soon she's back in person, only now the projection is there too. She's double dosing. Now she achieves an even more impressive feat. Not content with giving birth to the universe, the dancer now gives birth to herself. Petals fall from the ceiling. Transcendence is back. In spades. Old ladies shuffle in their seats. The theatre creaks. So much nudity is not good for its blood pressure. Acknowledging this, the dancer puts some clothes on for the final sequence, a Butoh parody of a ballet, all strained limbs and minimal movement. She appears for her curtain call. Montevideo rises to its feet.
+++
Oro De Rhin
The Germans get everywhere. They didn't have much of an empire, ever. Which probably didn't help. But, just like the British, whose influence reached parts you would never expect, the Germans had long tentacles.
So here I am sitting in one of the city's oldest cafes. Which looks like something out of old Berlin or Vienna. Pretty tablecloths and faintly art nouveau chairs. A place inspired by Mittel Europa and populated by the descendants of elderly Spanish ladies. Who are now, on the whole, elderly Hispanic ladies themselves. Drooling over their cakes and elaborate coffees served in glass cups with emaciated handles. Piped Brazilian music waxing over the airwaves. So tasteful you can almost smell the odour of the Motherland. Although it's not clear which one.
In theory this is the sort of place where Lenin plotted the Russian revolution or Klimt dreamt up eroticism. You don't really get the feeling anything too radical is on the cards here. If anything it has the feel of a place which should feature in a movie involving a neurotic mother of two grown up children who believes she used to be beautiful but no longer is who finds love one last time in life with the unlikely figure of a manic depressive former rock god whose star has now waned and who wiles his days away creating sculptures of celebrated pre-Colombian monuments out of guitar plectrums. Sort of Julian Cope meets Kirsten Scott Thomas. I can picture them now, whispering to each other in a corner, struggling to find a way to say how fascinated they are by each other, the man twisting a plectrum in his hand inside his coat pocket, the woman fearful that her mobile phone will ring even though it's switched off, knowing that people know her mobile phone is never switched off.
+++
Another Kind of Bar
This is where a whisky nacional costs 25 pesos. Just across the road from the bus station. On a day so grey it could be the 1st day of Autumn, forget about Spring. A small bicho crawls across the table. Might be an ant. Might be something uglier. An old man struggles to stay standing as he tries to read the paper and drink his whisky at the same time. The music is Bryan Adams. The waiter has grey hair which touches his nape and bifocals. He looks like he should work in advertising. Have three children by his first wife. One with the second. A stepchild he gets on with better than his own children. A house that backs on to the river with a half acre lawn and plans for willow trees. Says he doesn't like work and complains when he gets home but he'd be lost without it. The ant crawls across my hand. The waiter stares out of the window. He's got some great ideas for the Persil account. The anti-white. An ant crawling across an iceberg. A fly on a woman's petticoat. The detergent that will annihilate not just stains but your enemies too. Clean up your bank balance. Your conscience. Your carbon footprint. The ideas are endless. They spill out of him. If it wasn't for the customers interrupting his train of thought he'd be rich.
+++
Cafe, Plaza Independencia
We've started rehearsing in SUA. SUA is the actors' union. Their offices are in the centre of town. One of those old, inordinately high-ceilinged buildings which were constructed by rich families in the late twentieth/ early twenty first centuries. When Montevideo and Buenos Aires would become the new Europe, eclipsing the tawdriness of the States, describing possibilities which Borges alone fulfilled. In the pages of his books.
We rehearse in the ground floors. The embossed wooden doors are the giraffes of the door fauna. So tall and elegant they should be on a catwalk. Three D tiles, designed by the computer graphics merchants of the 1920s adorn the floors. The sound of water and voices permeate. The influence of the Alhambra is there somewhere.
In this space, the work flourishes. My pair of distressed loners find a way to communicate without words. They dance and repeat themselves and make strange noises which betray the feelings which words cannot reveal.
+++
A writer requires these moments. Those that fall between stools. Which don't belong to anyone. Whose redundance permits vacillation, pedantry, impermanence. Space for the words to slip through.
The wind gets up and the flies, which have only just hatched, prepare to die again.
+++
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