dreammapping

The Book rehersal

2012-01-21T00:51:00.000-08:00

side effect by Aleksey Bochkovsky
on these photos Mihyun Lee and Daisy Phillips

2012-01-21T00:48:00.000-08:00

The Book rehearsal

Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain | Video on TED.com

2011-10-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain | Video on TED.com

The Book's notes

2011-10-20T17:04:00.000-07:00

about The Book 07.14.2011

это было как «театра на кладбище» Jean Genet... это было кладбище моей структуры... или это было как "театр жестокости" Antonin Artaud, зрители точно были в опасности..., перформэнс в галереи дает возможность испытать зрителя внутри, через, снаружи..., зрителя наблюдающего, безразличного или готового заменить тебя.
или это был инстинкт матери, да очень даже может:)

2011-09-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

Vadim's portrait from Intersection 2004

The Book Faces

2011-09-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

The Book Faces by Rob Kunkle exhibited at SOMArts gallery as part of The Book installation. http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodlux/5904138922/in/contacts/

Ueno/Ingalls duo performance at SOMArts with Avy K dancers

2011-08-03T20:57:00.000-07:00

The bottle of oil...

2011-07-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

"Если в начале пьесы на стене висит ружье, то (к концу пьесы) оно должно выстрелить."A.P.Chekhov.
The Book прошлой ночью, просто классика! Collapse! Oops! with an incredible group of collaborators.

about The Book

2011-07-11T11:11:00.000-07:00

The idea for The Book was actually initially inspired during Avy K Productions' previous project, Nocturnal Butterflies (2009). This project explored the diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, an artist and extreme introvert, and I became fascinated with both the hidden inner world of the artist, and the nature of the artist as being either an introvert or an extrovert, especially as it relates to today's society. The Book seeks to answer whether the artist can be solely an introvert, or if extroversion becomes a necessity in contemporary society, as it seems that there has been a shift in the art community in that its leaders are more social, more extroverted. Moreover, does sharing one's art—one's internal world—transform the artist into an extrovert?
A second source of inspiration came from an experience which occurred during performances of Nocturnal Butterflies, which was a multimedia structured improvisation. I was interested to experience the performance as neither strictly performer nor audience member, in order to both observe the structure and to influence and change it in unexpected ways, perhaps even to destroy it so that it could be built up anew. This is a very important and untapped aspect of performance, and The Book introduces new guest artists with each performance who are free from the structure of the performance and can alter or destroy the structure as they choose.

For The Book, an invitation into the private world and diary of the artist, it was important to me to understand how I can create a diary, not with words but with my artistic medium: dance/movement. I created video diaries in which I “wrote” a diary with my body, with movement. In order to be completely honest, methods I employed were stream-of-consciousness, randomness, and no editing; this became the method of approach for rehearsal, in order to prepare our diaries for observation.
After a period of time since beginning rehearsals, I see a change in each of the participants; I see that they have digested all the information and can see on their bodies how the project has changed them. For me, the remarkable moment is when suddenly, without my control, the group becomes transformed into a single, connected organism, fully immersed in the world of The Book. On a personal level, I prize the moments in the process of my creative research when I find an unexpected answer to a question, or, better yet, completely change my opinion on an idea.

Avy K Productions has a signature approach to its performances: audio-visual-kinetic. The core idea is that no media serves another; instead, we facilitate a dialogue between artists of different media and unite them under a common theme. It is essential in performances that everything occurs in live time so that a real-time conversation between artists can emerge. In The Book, we invite the audience into our internal world; the viewers participate by bringing in the external world and this creates tension between the two worlds. As they enter into our territory they bring with them their opinions, thoughts, and energy, thus completing the performance so that it is not merely an image we present to the audience but an experience within the same physical and energetic space.

2011-06-15T04:17:00.000-07:00

"The Torah compares vowels of the alphabet with the living soul of a human being and says that the consonants, in contrast, belong to the world. Significantly, the vowel symbols are circular in shape, whereas the consonants are square. The vowels are seen to be spiritual in their nature, possibly because they are formed freely, without needing to connect the tongue or teeth. Therefore, the constructed consonants symbolize the world of matter."

Language "kills ideas by giving them permanent form."

-quotes from The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols

Book

2011-06-01T12:54:00.000-07:00

"It might seem as though the book is such a commonplace object that it should not really have much significance as a secret symbol. However, this isn't the case. Take, for example, the High Priestess card in the Tarot. The Priestess holds a book or scroll, half concealed within the folds of her robe. Here, the book symbolizes knowledge and hidden secrets, and in a wider sense the book symbolizes the very Universe itself. There are also parallels with the book and the tree of life; like a tree, the book has "leaves" that represent individual ideas and concepts and that collectively represent the sum total of all knowledge, occult or otherwise.
If we delve into word meanings, we find more analogies between books and trees. The etymology of "book" comes from the Old English bokiz, or the Germanic buche, meaning beech. This is likely to be because runes were initially inscribed on beechwood tablets. Similarly, the word "library", originally meant the "inner bark of trees".
A book that is closed is a book that conceals its secrets; sometimes we refer to an inscrutable person as a "closed book". An open book is the opposite, ready to share its information with all and sundry.
The Book of the Dead, for the Ancient Egyptians, was the series of magical charms that were interred with the dead in order that they might journey safely into the next world, and that would provide answers to the questions posed by those casting judgement on the soul. This book, effectively, symbolizes the secrets of the divine that are revealed only to those who have undergone the ultimate initiation: death. The Book of Shadows is a sort of recipe book of spells, charms and rituals, generally belonging to the Wiccan practitioner, written by hand and often in code. This book is the personal property of its owner, and can be a series of traditional texts as well as a personal journal, containing secrets that are passed down from generation to generation."

July 1, 7, 14, 21, 29 The Book at SOMArts Cultural Center more info:
http://www.avyk.org/pg1_ln1.html

taken from The element encyclopedia of secret signs and symbols.

exposure

2011-04-26T18:37:00.000-07:00

at the breakfast table, oakland

2011-04-07T15:07:00.000-07:00

Also found this; oddly similar (see previous post). Must be from last summer.

Trying to follow Slavoj Zizek

2011-04-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

While clearing out old files from my computer, I found this video from last October. It's a shame about the angle- I was too busy trying to follow SZ's every movement to notice that I wasn't fully in frame. I fell behind at times and had to simplify, but the attempt was to copy his gestures as best I could in real time.

ДНЕВНИК ПИСАТЕЛЯ 1873 Fyodor Dostoyevsky

2011-04-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

...,в Китае было бы несравненно выгоднее, чем здесь, издавать "Гражданина". Там всё так ясно... Мы оба предстали бы в назначенный день в тамошнее главное управление по делам печати. Стукнувшись лбами об пол и полизав пол языком, мы бы встали и подняли наши указательные персты перед собою, почтительно склонив головы. Главноуправляющий по делам печати, конечно, сделал бы вид, что не обращает на нас ни малейшего внимания, как на влетевших мух. Но встал бы третий помощник третьего его секретаря и, держа в руках диплом о моем назначении в редакторы, произнес бы нам внушительным, но ласковым голосом определенное церемониями наставление. Оно было бы так ясно и так понятно, что обоим нам было бы неимоверно приятно слушать. На случай, если б я в Китае был так глуп и чист сердцем, что, приступая к редакторству и сознавая слабость моих способностей, ощутил бы в себе страх и угрызение совести, - мне бы тотчас же было доказано, что я вдвое глуп, питая такие чувства. Что именно с этого момента мне вовсе не надо ума, если б даже и был; напротив того, несравненно благонадежнее, если его нет вовсе. И уж, без сомнения, это было бы весьма приятно выслушать. Заключив прекрасными словами: "Иди, редактор, отныне ты можешь есть рис и пить чай с новым спокойствием твоей совести", третий помощник третьего секретаря вручил бы мне красивый диплом, напечатанный на красном атласе золотыми литерами, князь Мещерский дал бы полновесную взятку, и оба мы, возвратясь домой, тотчас же бы издали великолепнейший Љ "Гражданина", такой, какого здесь никогда не издадим. В Китае мы бы издавали отлично.

2011-04-03T00:52:00.002-07:00

I am looking for timeless and meaningless beauty.

2011-04-03T00:52:00.001-07:00

Слова убивают движение. Надо бы поосторожней с информацией.

the wind

2011-03-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

on The Book

2011-03-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

2011-03-05T11:26:00.001-08:00

space-inhale~exhale~inner~out~diary~the book~space~~~~~~

The Man and His Dog

2011-03-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

Full Moon Syndrome photos by Rob Kunkle

2011-02-21T16:06:00.000-08:00

performed as part of WestWave Dance Festival

November 8th,2010 at Cowell Theater Fort Mason Center, San Francisco (at Marina Blvd and Buchanan St.)

Extroverts or/and Introverts

2011-02-15T23:42:00.000-08:00

Extroverts (also spelled extraverts[1]) tend to be gregarious, assertive, and interested in seeking out excitement. Introverts, in contrast, tend to be more reserved, less outgoing, and less sociable. They are not necessarily loners but they tend to be satisfied with having fewer friends. Introversion does not describe social discomfort but rather social preference: an introvert may not be shy but may merely prefer less social activities. Ambiversion is a balance of extrovert and introvert characteristics.

Geography

It is asserted that Americans live in an "extroverted society" that rewards extrovert behavior and rejects introversion. "American culture values extroverted qualities more, and people often feel like they've been given the 'short end of the stick' after receiving their results on extroversion/introversion tests." Other cultures, such as Central Europe, Japan or regions where Buddhism, Sufism etc. prevail, prize introversion.

Inside a book

2011-01-30T14:07:00.000-08:00

"And then my thoughts, too, formed a similar sort of recess, in the depths of which I felt that I could bury myself and remain invisible even while I looked at what went on outside. When I saw an external object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, surrounding it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever touching its substance directly; for it would somehow evaporate before I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body that is brought into proximity with something wet never actually touches its moisture, since it is always preceded by a zone of evaporation. On the sort of screen dappled with different states and impressions which my consciousness would simultaneously unfold while I was reading, and which ranged from the most deeply hidden aspiration of my being to the wholly external view of the horizon spread out before my eyes at the bottom of the garden, what was my primary, my innermost impulse, the lever whose incessant movements controlled everything else, was my belief in the philosophic richness and beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire to appropriate them for myself, whatever the book might be." (Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Volume I)

ЛУЧ / Кинетическое небо

2011-01-15T03:24:00.000-08:00

ЛУЧ / Кинетическое небо

2011-01-07T03:23:00.000-08:00

"For the artist," Malevich said, "reason is a form of imprisonment."

"No phenomenon is mortal," Malevich wrote in an unpublished manuscript, "and this means not only the body but the idea as well, a symbol that one is eternally reincarnated in another form which actually exists in the conscious and unconscious person."

taken from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/malevich.htm

2011-01-07T03:16:00.000-08:00

non-naturalistic style

inner-void

2010-12-23T06:44:00.000-08:00

homebody

2010-12-15T10:54:00.000-08:00

with the sound

2010-12-11T14:46:00.000-08:00

Album2

2010-11-28T03:28:00.000-08:00

album 1

2010-11-28T03:20:00.000-08:00

2010-11-21T17:39:00.000-08:00

В гибком зеркале природы
Звезды - невод, рыбы - мы,
Боги - призраки у тьмы.
Velimir Khlebnikov

I am ready to continue.

2010-11-19T00:18:00.000-08:00

The Book here and on http://t-h-e-b-o-o-k.tumblr.com/
"By representing as a labyrinth the world into which I see myself abandoned, I am seeking to gain distance from it, to step back from it, to look it in the eye like an animal-tamer vis-à-vis the wild animal."
Friedrich Dürrenmatt

2010-10-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

RIP VD

2010-10-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

RIP VD

2010-10-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

2010-10-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

2010-10-10T01:21:00.000-07:00

The released rabbits. from Erika Tsimbrovsky on Vimeo.

2010-10-09T00:34:00.000-07:00

skyboo for my daughter

Fleet Week #1

2010-10-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

in which the ocean dances more than I do

2010-10-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

shyly: I've always wanted to dance with street performers

2010-10-07T13:53:00.000-07:00

excerpt skype-session with Grundik, Vadim and me

2010-10-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

Heat and a Vacuum

2010-09-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

Color Plates for "The Book"

2010-09-29T05:38:00.001-07:00

Stepping lightly

2010-09-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

Toes tipped
in step 
read in a glance
a passage
that shifting impulse
this way
and that
unconsidered except
as an advance
a path picked

The Book session 2010 summer

2010-09-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

photos by Elena Zhukova

illustration n.b.book#5

2010-09-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

laundry#1

2010-09-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

laundry#4

2010-09-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

day7 book

2010-09-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

2 color plates

2010-09-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

The Book session

2010-09-16T12:30:00.000-07:00

Alena's beautiful eyes from Erika Tsimbrovsky on Vimeo.

The structure exists. The hidden codes... I can find them.

Sketches for Book-2

2010-09-15T06:06:00.000-07:00

Sketches for Book-1

2010-09-15T05:59:00.000-07:00

skitsaA

2010-09-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

The Book is a series of multimedia structured improvisational performances…

2010-09-06T15:23:00.000-07:00

September 18th, 8 PM
The Garage, 975 Howard, SF

Upcoming The Book # 1 Resident Artist Workshop at The Garage
"The number of pages in this book is exactly infinite. No page is the first; none the last. I don’t know why they’re numbered in this arbitrary way. Perhaps it’s to demonstrate that an infinite series includes any number."
The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges
Artists:
Erika Tsimbrovsky (danser), Andrew Ward (dancer), Daisy Phillips (dancer), Elizabeth Tenuto (dancer), Grundik Kasyansky (musician), PC Munoz (musician), Izmail Galin (visual artist), Alena Zhukova (photographer), Aleksey Bochkovsky (photographer, Vadim Puyandaev (visual artist).

2010-08-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

enter the created structure
I can find the structure, I can not create the structure...

2010-08-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

morning expressions

nocturnal notebook

2010-08-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

my diary
August 25, 2:30 am, 2010

2010-08-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

2010-08-22T03:12:00.000-07:00

The Book of Sand (translated from the Spanish) by Jorge Luis Borges
…thy rope of sands…
George Herbert (1593-1623)1

Lines consist of an infinite number of points; planes an infinite number of lines; volumes an infinite number of planes, hypervolumes an infinite number of volumes… No, this, this more geometrico, is definitely not the best way to begin my tale. Affirming a fantastic tale’s truth is now a story-telling convention; mine, though, is true.

taken from http://anagrammatically.com

2010-08-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

Video Diary - Day 1

2010-08-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

official description

2010-08-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

The Book is a series of multimedia structured improvisational performances which investigate the inner world of the artist and the artist’s relationship with a society of a rational and technological age. Each performance is a random page from The Book, and each invites a different guest artist to enter the created structure in order to destroy it and give it new life.

In The Book we allow our personal stories to enter the performance space. The Book is a kaleidoscope of sketches, snippets of thought, debris of feelings, traces of movement, and echoes of sounds that we once heard. This world pulses with unshaped ideas and unformed beauty, a world compelling in its limitless possibilities.

Upcoming installation-performance The Book at SOMArts Cultural Center in July 2011.

The Book at SOMArts Cultural Center—a multidimensional, multimedia installation—reflects the investigative process of a meditation on the inner world of the artist and the artist’s relationship with a rational society and a technological age. The Book is an performance-installation allowing the viewer to freely move within the work and participate volitionally. We allow our personal stories to enter the performance space and leave behind an intimate message using any art media, creating a collective public diary.

will be more info about our guest artists and performers

Our diary: http://t-h-e-b-o-o-k.tumblr.com/

2010-08-14T01:55:00.001-07:00

day book from Erika Tsimbrovsky on Vimeo.

prescriptions

1)randomness
2)stream of consciousness
3)no editing
4)no more than 3 prescriptions

day book

2010-08-14T01:08:00.000-07:00

day1 book from Erika Tsimbrovsky on Vimeo.

"TRUD"

2010-08-12T03:22:00.000-07:00

"TRUD"

2010-08-12T03:15:00.001-07:00

Lop

2010-08-11T20:57:00.001-07:00

internal emptiness

2010-08-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

наблюдение внутренней пустоты, день первый.ничего не чувствую, но произнесла глухой звук HАААААААААААААААААH.

Nocturnal Butterflies (excerpt)

2010-05-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

2010-05-20T23:59:00.000-07:00

2010-05-13T01:30:00.001-07:00

http://t-h-e-b-o-o-k.tumblr.com/page/5

video:)...

2010-04-13T00:09:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed watching Nocturnal Butterflies's video. Thank you everybody, who made the performance! List of favorite moments:

#1 I love the beginning of the performance that was a quotation/first sentences of Nijinsky's notebook that were written by him before his last public performance...apropos, it was solo-improvisation (maybe structured:)...

2010-04-09T15:22:00.000-07:00

audio approach on the book

do it

2010-04-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

Morning training as a visual approach.Part of the new project, The Book

Last Butterfly

2010-04-06T05:41:00.000-07:00

Does not release....

2010-03-01T00:30:00.000-08:00

'Side Effects' by Vadim Puyandaev

'Side Effects' by Aleksey Bochkovsky

'Side Effects' by Izmail (Israel) Galin

'Side Effects' by Natasha Zborovskaya-Sigawi

post- performance silence

2009-12-18T01:28:00.000-08:00

еще тихо,но это наполненная тишина.я еще не хочу говорить,но я еще буду анализировать,да я хочу это сделать.неожиданное решение быть частью перформенса,спасибо Грюндику подтолкнул слегка,но мне этого очень хотелось.а вообще-то это было необходимо чтобы оживить структуру,создать экстрим...

http://www.translit.ru/

Going back home

2009-12-13T02:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Grundik, I began to listen to and look at all sorts of sounds and noises. I relate to visual noise a bit more, but roots and emotions are virtually the same

Thank you everybody for an awesome time
I'll post gallery for your memories, when done with film

cheers,
Aleksey

The Making Of

2009-12-08T13:45:00.000-08:00

With only two days left, I decided to put together a few pictures, reflecting the entire process of the project. Searches, rejections, spaces, etc. In chronological order, for the most part.

babochkov (c)

Glimpsing Nijinsky ... 100 Years Later (a second extract)

2009-12-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

Reading Nijinsky’s notebooks is no easy task. While there are moments of crystal clarity, revealing both a depth of awareness and a certain poetic vision, it is obvious that this artist’s creative genius did not extend to the literary. Indeed, Nijinsky was known to have great difficulty with verbal communication and was sometimes considered “a slow thinker” or “an idiot of genius” by his peers. Accordingly, suffering through Nijinsky’s prose, not to mention his “poetry,” can feel like a kind of torture. In the streams of bizarre and frequently contradictory thoughts, Nijinsky uses the same simple syntactical structures over and over ad nauseum, and many of the ideas he obsesses over can be mind-numbingly tedious to one not so gripped —“Nature is life. Life is nature. An ape is nature. Man is nature. An ape is not the nature of man. I am not an ape in man... An ape is stupid. I am stupid. But I have reason. I am a reasonable being, but an ape is not reasonable.” As Tsimbrovsky’s London-based composer/musician Grundik Kasyansky says of his experience reading the notebooks, “I feel weak, dizzy, sick. My eyes water. My head spins.” Echoing this sentiment, dancer Andrew Ward describes how the rhythm and pace of Nijinsky’s writing, “the short jerky sentences that immediately contradict
themselves,” gave him a feeling of madness in his own head.

Despite its ability to nauseate, to make one feel demented, or perhaps because of it, Nijinsky’s writing is a rich source of inspiration for the dancers in Nocturnal Butterflies. As Rosemary Hannon says, “I find the sounds of those crazy poems from the book coming out during our improvisations—as if the repetitive rhythmic syllables are animal sounds. I notice the rhythm of the sentences and how each thought is followed into a maze of other thoughts. This, therefore that. Therefore that. Therefore that.” Of course, the effect that Nijinsky’s writing has on the dancers is not always known on a conscious level and Tsimbrovsky encourages them to be guided by intuition rather than the rational, conscious mind.

A reoccurring theme in Nijinsky's notebooks is the emphasis on feeling over thinking. Referring to his wife, he writes, “She thinks I am mad, because she thinks a lot. I think little and therefore understand everything I feel. I am feeling in the flesh. I am feeling in the flesh and not intellect in the flesh. I am the flesh. I am not feeling. I am God in the flesh and in feeling. I am man and not God. I am simple. People must not think me.” In her rehearsals for Nocturnal Butterflies, Tsimbrovsky uses passages like this one that particularly resonate, ones which speak to the division between body and consciousness, between the material and the spiritual. While she prefers to remain tight-lipped about the specific techniques she employs in creating the performance, Tsimbrovsky’s dancers agree that it is a deep and interesting process. As Christine Bonansea says, “I really like how Erika uses the text. With her direction, we make the spirit and words of Nijinsky alive—we give him a resonance. It's not about history anymore, it's about physicality, bodies, ‘matière.’” Lindsay Gauthier adds, “Nothing is without connection to the theme, even if you are not intentionally trying to make a connection. The information expresses itself through your body and the dance because you have ingested the material. What is most interesting about how we use the text is in the ways that we don't intend to; in the moments that something happens without expectation or planning, a discovery is made, a piece of magic uncovered.”

Perception by Association

2009-11-25T23:43:00.000-08:00

A good image, just like good music, or book, or any other media we use to communicate, may benefit to a certain degree from applying "special effects" to achieve specific mood and convey creator's state of mind. With today's technology we often abuse these effects to hide mediocrity and lack of conceptual perception. By doing so we also employ subconscious associations with timeless masterpieces that may also bear similar properties. A true "worthiness" test for any form of art is to strip it down of all the "glitter" to see if it can still hold it's own.

babochkov (c)

babochkov (c)

Mind Set

2009-11-25T23:22:00.000-08:00

Georg Simmel:
gratitude is no less than moral memory of man kind

babochkov (c)

Glimpsing Nijinsky ... 100 Years Later (an extract)

2009-11-25T15:57:00.000-08:00

Extract from “Glimpsing Nijinsky ... 100 Years Later” by Laura Maguire, published by In Dance, December 2009

This turn of events was a disaster for Nijinsky, leading to his first documented nervous breakdown in 1914. Romola was by then already pregnant with their first child, Kyra, and war had erupted in Europe. The couple moved to Budapest to live in safety with Romola’s mother and they stayed there till 1916 when Nijinsky was granted permission, with Diaghilev’s help, to travel to Vienna. Negotiations with Diaghilev began on a Ballets Russes tour of the United States, in which Nijinsky was to make his final ballet, Till Eulenspiegel. In early 1917, he returned to Europe and continued working for the Ballets Russes in Spain, followed by another tour of South America. During this time, Nijinsky’s erratic behavior, his nervousness, depression, and paranoia increased, and upon his return to Europe toward the end of 1917, he and Romola moved to the Swiss Alps. There, in creative isolation, Nijinsky worked on a number of ballets that he wanted to make, including one called Papillons de la Nuit (Nocturnal Butterflies), a name that Tsimbrovsky has borrowed for her new work inspired by the dancer. Tragically, Nijinsky was not to make this or any other ballet. His psychiatric condition further deteriorated in Switzerland, eventually leading to his hospitalization in 1919.

For those of us interested in art and artists, there is something fascinating about the story of a creative genius gone mad, about someone who struggles to tread water but who is eventually pulled under by the invisible currents that threaten to take us all. We ponder that fine line between genius and insanity, between this world and another unknown, potentially menacing, potentially beautiful world. We wonder if madness and vast creativity share a common source and, if so, what that implies for those of us who are only a little mad. Nijinsky’s tragic end is not unique. Less than twenty years earlier, the brilliant German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche spent the last eleven years of his life in a near vegetative state prompted by a nervous breakdown in 1889. What makes Nijinsky’s case remarkable, however, is that he documented his own “leap into madness” as it was occurring. In the six week period prior to being committed to a psychiatric clinic in Zurich, Nijinsky kept a series of notebooks, which later became known as The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, when his wife published them in 1936. It was not until much later, long after Romola’s death in 1978, that a new, unexpurgated version of The Diary was published. These notebooks, Nijinsky’s so-called “diary,” are the last creative work we have from this artist.

For Tsimbrovsky and her dancers, Nijinsky’s notebooks form the foundation of their research for Nocturnal Butterflies. A recent immigrant from the former Soviet Union, Tsimbrovsky started reading Nijinsky’s diary as well as Romola’s biography in a period of insomnia induced by a deep anxiety about being a stranger in a strange land, unsure about how her art would be received in the Bay Area. Something about the title Nocturnal Butterflies resonated with her, if only in a liminal, unexpressed way. As a dancer, she was fascinated by the rare opportunity to catch a glimpse into the internal workings of another dancer’s mind, especially one of such exceptional talent as Nijinsky. It felt to her like she had been given a key that unlocked a gate to a hidden garden, one she could only dream about on those nights when insomnia did not grasp her in its clutches. She imagined the manic Nijinsky, scribbling incessantly throughout the night, while Romola slept nervously by his side. She began to feel her way into his unhinged world, into a darkness where one navigates only by the faint sound of a moth’s wings flapping somewhere in the distance...

Peinzen Boven Mij (an episode of "Dutch" clanging)

2009-11-19T01:07:00.000-08:00

Nacht vlinders verflugen
Een zestig met moegen
Bei dansen zind uben
Dier flintig es zei.

Nactvlinders/Papillons de Nuit

2009-11-16T11:17:00.000-08:00

From IMDb:

"This short, dedicated to the memory of Paul Delvaux, is literally an animation, in that it brings alive some of the Belgian Surrealist's most famous paintings. Delvaux is a grossly underrated, wonderfully haunting artist whose nocturnal works usually feature still silent women in vast bourgeois houses, or naked goddesses awaiting seduction by lean skeletons against elaborately detailed classical buildings. The deceptive lucidity and transparency of his style combined with the yearning shadowy purples and blues, the elegance of his form and the grotesqueness of his subject matter seem, to me, to strike a much truer, more emotional note than the amusing tricksiness that characterises his school.

Before he became a Surrealist, Delvaux dabbled with Impressionism and, most importantly, Expressionism. One of the greatest fruits of cinematic Expressionism was the American melodrama (visualising the trapped mindsets of characters usually ignored, like housewives, teenagers etc.), and Servais' film is an excellent example of this genre, because, although it purports to evoke the dream life of its repressed characters it also reveals the context of that repression.

Significantly, this context is untenably beautiful, a wide hall in a bourgeois mansion, its geometry and colour are strangely evocative. Two typical bourgeois women sit as rigidly as the toy soldier that faces them. This is a perfect encapsulation of a feminity reduced to petrified infantilism. Except that, impeccably, respectably and conventionally dressed, their naked bosoms are on view.

A butterfly flits into the hall, and its occupants are suddenly animated, as the soldier plays the most beautifully aching music, part melancholy waltz, part carnivalesque fairground. The choreography is unbearably moving, as each woman summons her reflection from a mirror lit like a cinema projector and dances with her. These movements are linked to the flapping of the butterfly, and it is clear that he represents the liberated dream spirit that craves fragmentation of a fixed self, poetry, activity, self-revelation, a female realm free from repression and expectation.

Of course, both Delvaux and Servais recognise the murderous irony of being male artist revealing female trauma, and they show that the very act of pinpointing a malaise and revealing an escape route results in its destruction. The butterfly flees the house, leaving it and its dependents open to violent capture and destruction. The denouement features trains and a Nabokovian lepidoptorist closing in on this privileged world.

This is one of the most moving, haunting and emotional films I have seen in a long time. Not the least of its achievements is its creation of a genuine dream state, its ironical revelation of freedom to dream as lonely, puppet-like and self-effacing. It captures Delvaux's paradoxes perfectly, the elegant violence, the truth that it is our habitation that rules us and not the other way round. Best of all is the animation, that combines an almost childlike joy in colour and object, with an adult's depressing awareness of the truth behind these things."

parallel text

2009-11-15T16:45:00.000-08:00

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood-
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure dispair,
My shadow pinned against the sweating wall.
That place among the rocks - is it a cave,
Or a winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady stream of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natrual shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, freeing in the tearing wind.

--Theodore Roethke

Nocturnal Butterflies

2009-11-13T08:42:00.000-08:00

Tickets now on sale! Click here.

DANCE; Nijinsky's Inner Choreography

2009-11-09T11:53:00.000-08:00

Check out this wonderful article by Daniel Gesmer from the NYT, 1999 (thanks, Daniel, for the link!)

Diagnosing Writing II

2009-11-07T19:35:00.001-08:00

Nijinsky's notebooks, his so-called "diary," written during the six weeks before he was first committed to an asylum in 1919, have been taken time and again as clear evidence of his descent "from mania into psychosis," both from those involved in his treatment at the time (e.g. Dr. Frenkel, Nijinsky's physician in St. Moritz) and by later commentators. Indeed, as Joan Acocella, editor of the 1995 unexpurgated edition of The Diary, writes in her Introduction, "it is the only sustained, on-the-spot (not retrospective), written account by a major artist, of the experience of entering psychosis."

After reading the notebooks, I felt somewhat bewildered by these kinds of assertions, which seemed overly sensational in nature. Nijinsky's writing is strange, no doubt about it. It's full of trains of obsessive, repetitive thought, much of it contradictory or incoherent, a lot of it just mind-numbingly boring, and all of it written in an artless style that would be enough to drive anyone mad. Yet it also reveals something of his struggle to be understood and not considered a madman by those around him, a reasonable worry for such a visionary artist in his position. In much of his writing, he simply and straightforwardly recounts events from his past, or expounds on his views on pacificism, vegetarianism, sustainability (Nijinsky was, perhaps, way ahead of his time in more than just his approach to choreography), masturbation, feelings, love, and art. His views may be considered by turns radical, naive, idealistic, narcissistic, or just paranoid, but do they constitute clear evidence of insanity? And are they sufficient to provide a psychiatric diagnosis? As mentioned in an earlier post, what struck me most about the notebooks was simply what a poor writer Nijinsky was.

Peter Ostwald, psychiatrist and biographer, adopts, in my opinion, a much more nuanced and sensitive approach to Nijinsky's notebooks in Nijinsky: A Leap into Madness. First, he spends some time documenting and explaining the difficulties Nijinsky had since childhood with verbal communication. Given the perception of him by some of his peers as "an idiot of genius" or "a slow thinker," it is not surprising that his writings betray this distinctive lack of verbal ability. Second, Ostwald offers alternative explanations (such as the chloral hydrate sedative Nijinsky was prescribed) for the some features of his writing (such as his "perseveration," or persistent repetition of words) that others, like Acocella, have taken as clear indication of a psychiatric disorder . Third, he notes that many of these features of Nijinsky's writing were not present in his speech, which one would expect if they were truly symptomatic. Most importantly, though, Ostwald highlights the hazards of making a psychiatric diagnosis on the basis of writing alone: "Letters and notebooks can help up to understand how people think, remember, and deal with problems; they have little diagnostic validity."

Ostwald does make a formal diagnosis in the end, which is that Nijinsky suffered from Schizoaffective Disorder (schizophrenia with bi-polar affective disorder) in a Narcissistic Personality. This diagnosis is made on the basis on Nijinsky's personal history and the details of his behavior as documented in the medical reports of the many nurses and doctors that treated Nijinsky over the years. So, there is no suggestion that Nijinsky was not mad after all. There is, however, some question about when exactly he made the leap. Certainly, the notebooks cannot answer this question for us.

Horizontal body and vertical time.

2009-10-14T01:08:00.000-07:00

Through a time with a body-new part.
Горизонтальное тело и вертикальное время.

War Documentary

2009-10-08T17:47:00.000-07:00

There's no death on Earth.
We're all immortal,
It's all immortal.
Don't be afraid of death
at 17 or 70.

Hindenburg Zeppelin

2009-10-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

P-a-p-i-ll-ons-

2009-10-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

Image taken from Peter Ostwald's Vaslav Nijinsky: A Leap into Madness

2009-09-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

"I am God in a body."

Vaslav Nijinsky

Rudolph Valentino - Tango Kisses

2009-09-27T15:37:00.000-07:00

Rudolph Valentino - Tango Kisses II

2009-09-27T15:35:00.000-07:00