Skindiving in Tokyo Bay

Photo by Natalie Kelsey (deviantart.com)

The sea wall shoots straight down

Beyond the threshold of the eyes

Beneath the inky evanescence above

And the silky nothingness below

That centrifuge where the mind stops minding

And the extremities embrace the moonless chill

And in the unblinking undertow

Yamashita’s gold glistens, then vanishes

Yet another bioluminescent blur

Beyond the precipice of the abyssal plain

Where spider crabs bide their time

And searchlights dissolve like sugar photophores

The curve of your back

Your pearldiver skin

Freezeframes in front of me as I fumble

Dusktreading and night terrorfoaming

Over angry tectonic ridges, rusted warships

And the barnacled skeletons of young men pressed into death

By imperial dreams and decrees

And yet still you urge me forward through the cross current

Beckoning with a supple serenity to surrender

To the will of the waves and the boundaries of reason

When one climactic zone transitions to another

Do we change our name or simply inch forward as we are

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

それ . . . あれ

Why don’t you turn around to face me

As I flail about amidst the black surge

Edo-wan at dusk is lonely beneath the skin

At odds with the detritus below and the neon crescent wrench

That grasps it tight at night

When the denizens of the depths recoil from reach

Why don’t you relight, ignite, send a pulse, a flair

At least make clear

That your crystal tips and grey-eyed equanimity

Were no deep-sea deceit, midwater mindfuck mirage

Minding your own business on the seabed is no trouble at all

When you were there all along and doing it anyway

Skindiving in Tokyo Bay

Past the shored-up satiety of Odaiba

Past the rusted-through remnants of the showy and the Showa

Past the echo-bait of subterranean human mazecraft

Past where the plateau pauses, then drops into the deep beyond

That place where the sawn edges of the Pacific parted ways

Leaving only memories of electric Taisho and the swordsharpeners of the Shitamachi

Blades brandished to keep the merchants at bay

Skindiving through the black machinery of now

Moorings loosened and discarded

Caution fed to the crabs, eyeless in the cold abyss

Reaching out to your lips with ease and understated grace

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

それ . . . あれ

Shreds of red sky refract through the surface zone

Twilight ignites with new dreams and tender memories

Sexy exits, sleek décolage
Runway lights through the depths signalling a bridge beckoning to the abyssal plain below

Beyond the Minamibōsō boundary and into the open ocean

Where no one will dare follow

Where drunken tengu sharks swim sentinel

Round the rusted hulls of prison ships and drowned memories

That place where chemosynthesis keeps me warm

Where all our junctions jut out to face the spectral surface

The weight of four million square feet of sensory overload

Rolls my eyes back as my back imitates the nautilus, twirling and fading into you

And through the midwater zone

Curviline contours shade in and out of sight

Beyond the convection of currents into the discrete vocabulary of night

Ribbons, cloaks and shields tumble to the depths

As my senses lose all defences

And sea and sky turn black and fiery phosphorescent

I’ve seen you here in the sightless jagged caverns of the hadal zone

Shimmering self, alive as angry weight attacks my eardrums

Sparks flying upwards, depth charges blowing holes through my sense of space and self-imagination

No choice at all but to follow the pinpricks of light and crawling cloudbursts of belief

Maps of the universe splashed across the void

In violent disarray

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

それ . . . あれ

The depths breathe and churn

Viperfish stir from their sleep

Shipmarks dissipate in distant darkness

We venture on inch by endless inch

Your tenderness and spark my only beacons

Your sonar my only sight

Nothing left but to face the light

And dive deep through rifts and currents

Ocean sinew unconstrained by mind or pressure

And then the tsubo markers of the ocean floor open outwards

With soft landings in sheets of silt ensured

Alone together enveloped in empty space

Freezeframe, endgame, freeze still, stay the same

There’s no pain in paralysis

Grasping hold of the moment and never letting go

Even as the silt and sediment scratch the membrane, erode the nerve endings

Hollow reeds bending and snapping

Broken on our piece of seabed

All my fibres, all your curves, connected and alive

Safely sheltered from the angry currents above

Beyond the ridges and rift valleys that tear at our senses

Leaving only echoes of their teeth-grinding tension

Growing softer and more distant

As we settle in for the long night

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

それ . . . あれ

あれ

あれ

あれ


This poem was written for the Mile Zero Dance's show Without Borders - and specifically for a dance-spoken word collaboration with the amazing dancer/choreographer/human being Jen Mesch. It was performed with Jen at dc3 Art Projects in Edmonton on February 20 and 21, 2015.

"Sho-Tel" - A Wild Night at the Aurora Motel with Mile Zero Dance

Allison, Jen, Gerry and Jodie descend on the Aurora Motel (source: Edmonton Journal)

I live in the west end of Edmonton. And for the most part I quite like it, and wish it would get more love. While Edmonton's city centre is green and increasingly inspired architecturally (as it should be), the west end is a mishmash of industrial and commercial sprawl - economically vital, teeming with life and hypnotic in the way a vintage Skinny Puppy album is, but on the whole unloved.

While Edmonton's new-found love for its downtown core is a welcome development, that love doesn't seem to extend west of 124th Street. The rest is pre-Mandel Edmonton - functional and essential to live but underpinned by a nagging sense of "It's better in the Bahamas."

But thanks to Mile Zero Dance's invasion of the classy confines of the Aurora Motel for one of their most memorable performances to date, I have a new appreciation for this repudiated part of town. In a show that felt like part Fernando Arrabal play, part Coen Brothers film (of the Barton Fink and Fargo vintage) and part episode of Portlandia, MZD again did what they do best - take an under-appreciated piece of Edmonton real estate and turn it into something wild and phantasmagoric.

Going to the show I had no idea what to expect, but it turns out a motel is a perfect space for an interdisciplinary dance-music-visual art installation: a bunch of rooms one after the other, occupied by a mix of MZD performers and actual paying tenants. At least I assume they were actual paying tenants, as in this show you were never quite sure who was a spectator and who was a conspiring member of the company whispering things you're supposed to hear into your ear.

Photos courtesy of Allison Nichols

The show began with simultaneous performances on opposite ends of the motel by Alison Towne of the Good Women Dance Collective and Jen Mesch of the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy, the latter featuring bass saxophone of New Music Edmonton Production Manager and U of A reed instructor Allison Balcetis.

Alison-with-one-L's performance was a sort of shopping-trip-from-hell dreamscape in which she dances through a never-ending series of gigantic President's Choice shopping bags, while mezzo-soprano Michelle Milenkovic (the star of this month's Body of Colour show) serenaded the crowd from her bubble bath in the other room in what was clearly the cushiest gig in this show. A gig that anyone who saw Body of Colour can agree she earned.

Over on the other side of the motel complex, Jen Mesch managed to defy both her impressive dance resume and her US Midwest origins by inhabiting the role of a nameless Alberta rig pig with a fixation on cologne and lofty aspiration (if questionable aptitude) as a dancer, in what was one of the most compelling pure acting performances ever thrown up by Mile Zero. Her performance was punctuated by the constant trolling of the character's gnawing subconscious self, as portrayed by Allison-with-two-Ls' bass sax, a rare instrument that she employed in a similar role in Gene Kosowan's Ghosts that Guard the Gateway back in New Music Edmonton's Now Hear This performance back in March.

And then it went on - with one of Mile Zero's most endearing performances to date courtesy of Jodie Vanderkerkhove and Artistic Director Gerry Morita in what was the only show to date I've ever been to (with the exception of a couple of Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings) where I've been offered toast - with butter and honey no less. Which admittedly was nothing compared to the pair of live lobsters in Jen's room, which she repeatedly offered up for dinner - although no actual lobstercide was committed.

With this closing show in Mile Zero Dance's 2013-2014 season, a troupe best known for their outlandish reinventions of the urban landscape truly outdid themselves. With the additional participation of Le Tivoli performance art madman Patrick Arès-Pilon (owner of the Sho-Tel megaphone car), installation artists Carly Greene and Devon Beggs and sound design by Dan Brophy, Jeff Carpenter and Dave Wall, Sho-Tel was a tour-de-force by some of Edmonton's most outside-the-box arteests in a piece of creativity run wild that will forever change the way I look at cheap motels - in Edmonton and elsewhere.

We've all, I'm sure, been fascinated by what goes on behind closed doors in places like the Aurora Motel. And MZD, in their endless quest for new perspectives on, well, everything, just gave us a glimpse of some of the wild dreams and raw, chafed dialogue that invariably goes on in half-asleep, half-awake states in places like these. And coupled with the olfactory component of the show - the cigarette smoke, the cologne and the weed (the weed may have been an audience contribution), it was as raw and all-encompassing a performance as I've ever seen - with absolutely no fourth wall whatsoever.

The name 'Mile Zero' has always made me think of a repudiated, end-of-the-road cul-de-sac somewhere - kind of like that motel that you always drive by but never give a moment of thought, that still has VHS and doesn't turn up anywhere on Yelp or Trip Advisor. and this time, more than ever, they owned that name. Happy summer, MZD! Thanks for a wonderful season - and an epic closer!

See you next year!

New Music Edmonton's 'Body of Colour' will mess with your mind!

Seeing tonight's performance of Body of Colour at the ATB Arts Barns in Old Strathcona reminded me of why I adore Edmonton's arts scene. In artistic terms Edmonton is truly the Goldilocks City - big enough that there's always something interesting going on but small enough that the local scene is accessible, friendly and relatively free from the sort of tribal fault lines that tend to carve up the scenes of the world's larger cities.

A number of years ago I interview Mile Zero Dance artistic director and Body of Colour collaborator Gerry Morita for an article in Avenue Edmonton magazine. When I asked her what it was that kept her in Edmonton after having lived and worked in Vancouver, Montreal and Tokyo, she responded that, among other things, it's Edmonton's natural inclination towards interdisciplinary artistic collaboration, a trait she attributed to the city's lack of 'tribalism' in the arts.

Having had the good fortune to be New Music Edmonton's blogger-at-large, I've come to realize how true this observation really is. Spend enough time in artistic circles in this town and you tend to see many of the same names in projects and contexts that you'd never expect. In this particular performance, Morita, the 'big name' on the ticket, opted for a supporting role for the show's real 'star', mezzo-soprano Michelle Milenkovic, whose magnificent instrument was matched only by her incomparable stage persona.

Nobody - not even NME director Ian Crutchley - really knew how to introduce this show. A few minutes into it revealed why. Body of Colour is in essence a collective brainstorm run wild, courtesy of singer Milenkovic, dancer Morita and stage, set and lighting designer Daniela Masellis. The dramatic set pieces (giant musical score canvas screens) and jarring lighting, combined with Milenkovic's haunting musical soliloquies, gave the show the dramatic tension of a Greenaway or Pasolini film, while Morita's understated choreography, much of which was behind the giant screens, had all the impish mystique of Balinese shadow puppetry.

The show began with a piece originally conceived for Mile Zero's Bodies in O show, featuring one of Edmonton composer Shawn Pinchbeck's characteristic noise soundscapes shoved against a lachrymal aria from Henry Purcell's opera Dido & Aeneas. The performance focused largely on the innovative solo voice compositions of Greek-French composer Georges Aperghis, an innovator best known for his blended singing-spoken word text looping compositions written for French stage actress Mariane Viard, as well as vocal works by NME favourite Luciano Berio.

An excerpt from Georges Aperghis' Récitations (source: sepia.ac-reims.fr)

But there was none of the dry, antiseptic sting that often comes with this sort of music. The show's steady parade of unlikely props, which included (in no particular order) a wheelchair, various carpentry tools,  playing cards, a bathtub and honest-to-god shots of grappa kept things interesting.

The second half of the show was particularly rivetting. After some particularly flirtatious and sarcastic material by Aperghis, the mood shifted to the emotionally roller-coastery with a gut-wrenching performance of Cigane, a Serbian-language Roma (Gypsy) protest anthem that was adopted as the official Roma anthem for the First Roma Conference in 1971. (Spoiler alert: this is when the grappa shots were distributed among the audience. Ziveli, y'all!)

The show concluded with some re-imagined Mahler lieder centred on nostalgia and the beauty of the ephemeral, as represented by the 'Lindenbaum' (linden tree). And this too was taken to its dramatic logical conclusion, with Morita morphing into a shadowy forest imp and Milenkovic donning a tree goddess crown and assuming the role of some sort of Jesus of Nazareth/Lorax hybrid. These things don't explain themselves, but as a BC boy who's had his share of transcendental experiences in forests, I think I get it.

The incomparable Michelle Milenkovic
(Source: New Music Edmonton)

The second-last performance of the 2013-2014 NME season might just have been its highlight. Funny, sexy, intense, disturbing at points and totally compelling from start to finish, Body of Colour is, if nothing else, a great showcase of what this city's artistic community does best - put a bunch of creative people in a room together (usually in the dead of winter) and get them to come up with something cool and improbable. And if you're in Edmonton and are looking for something interesting to do tomorrow night, I highly recommend checking this show out, which runs again tomorrow night at 7:30 at the Arts Barns.

And if you can't make it, at least carve out some time this summer to get down to the river valley with your Dr. Dre headphones, find an isolated corner of the wood and meditate to some Mahler. Or some Berio. Or whatever. We're a cool, weird town here - we all owe it to ourselves to take full advantage of that fact.

Mile Zero Dance Will Save Us All (When The Next Great Depression Comes)

When it comes to the arts, most Edmontonians have no idea how good they've got it in their own backyard. Sure we've got our summer festivals and our world-renowned symphony orchestra and a Ukrainian dance troupe or two, but that barely touches it. Edmonton's arts scene is as lush and untamed as the vegetation of its river valley (the longest interconnected urban park system in North America), and on any given Saturday night you can walk into any given theatre or live house and be pretty sure of hearing something either inspired or highly skilled or, more often than not, both.

Consider Edmonton's own Mile Zero Dance. One of the city's best kept secrets for over a quarter century, MZD is its own festival - and one that doesn't shut down during the summer. For those who haven't had the pleasure of seeing them, MZD is a dance troupe best known for their irreverent avant-garde performances (often in public places) that have ranged in style from the NYC José Limón school in the 1980s to the macabre world of Japanese ankoku butoh and Noguchi Taiso under the stewardship of current artistic director Gerry Morita. They've also - with very little fanfare - emerged as one of the greatest promotional platforms for the city's most outlandish artists, both within and outside the medium of dance, through their cabaret-esque 'Salon' performance series. For a newcomer looking to sample Edmonton's wildest creative output, Mile Zero's Salons are a great place to start.

MZD's latest Salon-series performance, The Great Depression, was held last night on a suitably bleak late-January Edmonton evening at L'UniThéâtre, the cultural and artistic hub of francophone Edmonton. The theme: depression, both the 'great' one and the psychological condition by the same name, and how great they are. Yes, both of them. At a time when Edmonton's well-heeled denizens are plotting their latest escape to Manzanillo or Maui and the rest are commiserating about the frigid darkness on Facebook, MZD urges us, in Morita's words, to "find new ways to break the spell of winter and embrace our creative collective with the talented artists among us." In other words, creativity will keep us warm. And if The Great Depression is any indication, it certainly can. At least in this town.

Dance conspirator Jen Mesch (dance-conspiracy.org)

The show opened with "Psychology of a Strip Tease" by MZD fellow traveller Jeannie Vanderkhove, which featured a remarkably compelling 'reverse' stripper routine (yes, involving getting dressed and complete with backwards burlesque music). This was followed by a very matter-of-fact appearance by Edmonton poet laureate Mary Pinkoski, who delivered two of her trademark poetic torrents on the show's subject matter.

This was followed by a brutally intense dance performance by Edmonton's own Jen Mesch (of the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy) entitled "Anna and the Other Anna" featuring the noise soundscape accompaniment of Edmonton-based sound artist Scott Smallwood - a performance that more than any captured the grinding blackness that I've always associated with the dread word 'depression'. The first half finished with a lecture-turned-barn dance party led by University of Alberta folklorist and accomplished Ukrainian folkdancer Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky, which ended up with over half the audience on stage recreating a 1930s-style prairie diaspora hoedown.

The second half of The Great Depression kicked off with a Chaplinesque trapeze performance by the very talented Edmonton circus performer Annie Dugan followed by an experimental film montage entitled AurA centred on derelict farm equipment by filmmaker aAron munson - with a soundtrack evocative of Boards of Canada's woolier moments.Following this was a montage of archival photos from Dirty Thirties Edmonton courtesy of the Alberta Provincial Archives (which MC Kristine Nutting described as "like a prison, except more fun"), an interlude that allowed local noise punk deviants Rubber Nurse to set up their elaborate stage setup consisting of 'prepared' guitars, electronic gear and a 1980s-vintage school overhead projector, featuring a procession of night terror-inspired transparencies. Rubber Nurse's nerve-jangling performance "Sister Missing" was followed by the prodigious and absurdly charming Edmonton rapper/multi-instrumentalist Mitchmatic, who delivered his own heartfelt take on the titular subject to close the show.

Gentleman rapper Mitchmatic (dealerofpeopleemotions.com)

The Great Depression was more than simply a good show. It was akin to an audio-visual mix tape that Edmonton could hand to any other city with a reputation for artiness and knock its proverbial socks off. The show made me think of another Nordic city that Edmontonians have been crushing on of late, namely the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, which starting in early March will be a non-stop flight away from Edmonton International Airport. Thanks in no small part to the international success of alt-pop pixie Björk and the molasses-paced post-rock of Sigur Rós, the pint-sized Icelandic capital has become magnet for hipsters and genuine freaks alike. Are we as cool as Reykjavik here? Well, we don't speak a living fossil language little changed from Old Norse, nor do we have glaciers or thermal pools within an easy day trip of the city. And unlike Iceland, our winters are genuinely bone-chilling. But in artistic terms, surely we're in the same league.

We are that cool here. We just don't know it. While the Make Something Edmonton campaign has done an admirable job raising local awareness of our truly creative and outside-the-box nature, we're still too hung up on being an Oil City, a northern Houston or Abu Dhabi, and have yet to truly embrace our inner Reykjavik or Berlin. But the time will come when we're going to need to. Iceland experienced its own miniature version of the Great Depression in 2008 when its entire banking sector imploded and the country teetered on the edge of bankruptcy - while its arts scene surged, aided by an influx of currency devaluation-driven overseas tourism. Ditto with Berlin, the capital of the beleaguered hyperinflation-plagued Weimar Republic, capital of cabaret and all things racy in the 1920s. Economic history clearly indicated that our runaway oil and gas economy will eventually sputter. And when it does we'll need other things to fall back on.

If we're smart, we'll realize that our arts and culture sector, which unfailingly injects vast swaths of capital into our economy on less than a shoestring, is one of our greatest economic assets. It's also a sector that always seems to thrive when everything else is in the crapper, while simultaneously making bad times a little more bearable. Eventually our runaway oil and gas leviathan will grind to a halt, either slowly or precipitously, driven by plummeting world prices that will once again render bitumen processing unprofitable, and possibly exacerbated by another global recession. It'll suck, but so long as we continue to nurture our arts community we'll always have the likes of Mile Zero Dance waiting for us with open arms, ready to teach us how to enjoy the coming depression.

Leaflets from heaven, courtesy of the Provincial Archives (photo by author)