Author: anna-caritj

Code f.a.d. riffs on fashion designers at McGuffey dance event

Modern dance is so 20th century. Or is it the new black? Last Friday night, choreographer Autumn Mist Belk, proved her style of dance as fresh, provocative and au courant.

Traveling up from Raleigh, North Carolina, Belk’s dance company, Code f.a.d. Company, presented threes pieces of a larger work-in-progress entitled Fashion Briefs at the McGuffey Art Center. "Fashion" was literal: Each performance featured the lives and works of famous fashion designers Christian Louboutin, Oscar de la Renta and Gucci. For the completed work, Belk anticipates 12 or more clips from the fashion world, culminating in an evening-length performance to be premiered in December.

The 15-minute preview, hosted by Miki Liszt Dance Company, piqued appetites for the larger work with a down and dirty crash course guide to the fashion world. The performances were laced with runway glares, stomping high heels, and the ever-present tension of competition and mistrust. The final performance—based on shocking Gucci family history—ends with a reenactment of the murder of Maurizio Gucci, allegedly arranged by his former wife. In a battle of disputed share holdings, the three scowling dancers circle around one another, tumbling and leaping through the air with poise while still “watching their backs,” as Belk put it.

While some of the pieces openly exhibit the darker face of fashion, even the seemingly just-for-fun fashion has a flipside. “The first one is about shoes,” Belk says of her performance based on designer Christian Louboutin. “We’re acting like we’re all that because we have these awesome red-soled heels.” But, even a pure fashion indulgence reveals a more complex meaning. Of the two dancers on stage, one of them “isn’t real,” Belk says. She explains that one is “an alter-ego reflecting that piece of [the dancer’s] personality she didn’t know was there.” Fashion is not only a game of flaunting, she described, but also one of concealing and masking.

In addition to movement, Belk features an original musical score composed by Raliegh musician G. Todd Buker. She also plans to incorporate film into the completed performance. A self-proclaimed multimedia dance company (f.a.d. stands for film, art, and dance), Belk has always sought to combine various artistic mediums to create original and relevant art.

This piece’s relevancy? Obsession and indulgence. Like her 2009 piece Indulge—which exposed a world dominated by business, food, technology, eternal love, and high fashion—Fashion Briefs examines the roles of materiality, greed, desire and suspicion in modern society. Belk executes these performances with runway precision, attitude and overwhelming elegance.

Mi Circo es su circo

Guest post by Anna Caritj.

“Damas y caballeros…” the megaphone crackled, as a clown in full whiteface and broad, polka dotted pants scanned the crowd. One of the group’s instructors, Sergio Castellón, mounted a 10′ tall “tall bike,” and passed the megaphone down to another clown, producer and director Jason Randolph, who looked sharp in an oversized top hat, as he translated between Spanish and English. In Spanish, he welcomed spectators to Mi Circo, Charlottesville’s first bilingual children’s circus, pieces of which are on view through September at The Bridge/PAI.

Mi Circo is a non-profit program that works with Latino communities and at-risk youth, fostering creativity and teambuilding through a variety of circus activities like acrobatics, balance, clowning and props. It was started six years ago in Bogotá, Colombia, by Adriana Rojas who used comedy as a way of interpreting urban life. That project gave way to a variety of programs in which at-risk youth are introduced to the circus and the stage.

 

(Photo by Anna Caritj)

These educational programs have since traveled to Queens, in New York, Brazil, and Australia. Earlier this summer Mi Circo was founded here and is set to continue as an annual, tuition-free summer program. The group holds practices in Washington Park and the Southwood Community Center, led by bilingual instructors as well as a visiting circus professional from Colombia. Practices often attract 15-20 students who spend the day playing games and learning new tricks, ranging from juggling and acrobatics to costume design and duck-duck-goose.

“By speaking Spanish," Randolph told me, "we want to let kids appreciate the importance of speaking a second language. It also helps them respect their peers who [don’t speak] English as their first language.”

This year, the group of 20 students participating in the circus included Latino, African American, and Native American children. Considering the diverse ethnic communities in the area, a circus seemed the perfect way “to bridge the gap,” Randolph said, “by offering bilingual activities and making it accessible to kids who have means and also ones that don’t…We want to give kids the opportunity to be part of a real circus [where] they’re empowered to act, to change things, to take on different personalities and just be creative.”

“We saw a bunch of new kids’ faces,” said Castellón of the reception at The Bridge earlier this month. “They were excited that we’re here and that we’re sticking around. The bad side is that the actual kids who participated in the circus didn’t show up. [They] never got a chance to be stars. They deserved that.”

 A montage of events from Mi Circo, at the Bridge.

Categories
Living

Once cup at a time

Forget everything you know about tea. Forget Lipton, Snapple and Ginger Kombucha. Milk and honey are now taboo terms and any allusion to a “tea bag” will be considered sacrilege. From now on, tea, as Olivia Pushkareva puts it, “is life.”

Tea teacher Olivia Pushkareva leads classes on tea ceremonies at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar over the next several weeks.

In a series of five upcoming classes at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, Pushkareva will back up her claim, dissecting the intricacies of tea. These classes range from the culture and history of tea to the workshops entitled “The Architecture of Tea,” “Horticulture of Tea,” and “Tea Theatre.”

The tea ceremony that Pushkareva performs—called “Gong-Fu”—comes from an ancient tradition in which a host serves tea to a small number of guests. (Tea first became popularized in China’s Qin Dynasty around 200 BCE.) This intimate ceremony begins by examining the whole leaf tea in a special presentation vessel called “Cha He.” The guests examine the leaves, taste them, and acknowledge their freshness, shape and aroma.

Then, on a smooth bamboo tray, the host pours water into a tiny teapot to begin steeping the leaves. With the hot water, she also warms two types of cups—one for aroma called a “smelling cup,” and one for drinking—and the “Ocean of Tea,” a delicate glass pitcher. “Water should flow as life,” Pushkareva says, letting the cups overflow with steaming water, “free and healthy.”

When the tea is ready, it is poured into an “Ocean,” then into the smelling cups. Guests place their teacup upside down atop the cylindrical smelling cup and flip it, transferring the liquid from smelling cup to teacup. Sticking their noses into the smelling cup, they enjoy the floral, honeyed scents left by the tea’s oils. Finally, having enjoyed the aroma, guests drink the first steeping of tea. 

Pushkareva smiles, “I would say that tea ceremony would symbolize our life. The first steep is very gentle like how we are born: fresh, silly babies who don’t know anything.”

Pushkareva got involved in tea 11 years ago in Russia, her home country. After finishing a degree in sociology, she says, “I was looking for something that I would love to do, that was good for people, and that would sustain me financially.” 

She says that tea (as in, serious tea) is not as daunting as it may seem. As specialty food and beverage cultures have arrived in America—wine, cheese, beer and coffee—Americans have developed their own personal relationship with these complex products. “People in this town are ready for this,” Pushkareva says. “They know taste; they value different flavors and subtleties. It’s the same with tea. It’s not just a bag with some kind of dried powder that you put in your cup.”  

Through her classes, she hopes to encourage innovation and experimentation, for “each individual communicates with tea differently.” To emphasize this point, Pushkareva’s final exercise allows each student to hold his or her own tea ceremony. 

“They will get the same setting, the same amount of tea, the same tea sort and quality from the same bag. But, we will see how it’s different from every single individual. [When drinking tea,] you’re consuming not only the beverage itself, but part of a personality. You find both yourself and others within tea.”

Tea class began September 10, and continues every other Sunday. In October, Pushkareva plans to present her White Lotus Tea Club in partnership with Miki Liszt Dance Company. With events held at the McGuffey Art Center, she hopes to collaborate with artists and tea enthusiasts.