Filed under: Performance | Tags: columbia heights art salon, Performance, salmagundi, washington irving
“With baked, and broiled, and stewed, and toasted,
and fried, and boiled, and smoked, and roasted.
We treat the town. Fee Faw Fum” Salmagundi 1807
Salmagundi: The etymology of Salmagundi stems from the French word salmigondis which means disparate assembly of things, ideas or people, forming an incoherent whole. And there is a lot to be said about the incoherent whole. It’s a beautiful paradox. A mish-mash, slap-dash assortment of things bound together.
Salmaguni the recipe dates back as early as 1565.
Salmagundi the periodical or (the Whim-Whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff Esq. and others) first published in 1807 by Washington Irving
I performed Salmagundi at the Inaugural Columbia Heights Arts Salon in Washington DC on January 16th, 2010
Here is a sample of text. I’ve chopped up the original text and given it some alternate rhythms, a mish-mash of contemporary spoken word set against some of the older ways of writing.
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I delight in everything,
everything novel
everything eccentric
An old coat for a new idea- yes!
Strangers- hell yeah!
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And being as I am, delighting in new things and eccentricites
I am particularly attentive to the manners and conversations of strangers
Oh Gotham Gotham! Most delightful of cities- how does my heart swell with delight when I behold your spaient inhabitants lavishing their attention with such wonderful discernment.
But scarcely a traveler enters this city whose appearance offers anything original
Yet, I form an acquintence with him
And I suffer manifold afflictions
My curiosity: punished
Punished by the endless stupidity of a blockhead
Punished by the shrill verbosity of a coxcomb
My curiosity: punished
My shopping trolley: murdered
My groceries: JUST GONE
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I delight in everything,
everything novel
everything eccentric
An old coat for a new idea- yes!
Strangers- hell yeah!
-
I would prefer to timetravel with bullocks through a Carolina SandFlat
than plod through heavy unmeaningful conversations.
I would sooner hold sweet converse with the wheel of a knife sharpener
than endure monotonous chattering.
-
These strangers who flock to this most pleasant of earthly cities
are generally birds of passage whose plummage is as gay as anything I own.
Do you hear what I am saying:
Strangers flock, birds of passage, plummage:gay
My curiosity: punished.
For their notes “heaven save me” are as unmusical as those of the classic night bird
the ancients selected as a symbol of wisdom.
-
Those from the south, it is true, entertain me with their stories of horses
and it is excessively pleasant to hear these ‘four in a hand’ gentlemen tell tales of their exploits.
Those from the east have often induced me to doubt the existence of wise men of yore,
who are said to have flourished in the quarter
And as for those from parts beyond the seas, oh!
My master ye shall hear more from me anon!
-
If anyone wishes to know my opinion of the irish and scotch,
well she may come to me and ask and I will give her nothing but the truth.
But the french…I must confess are my favourite
and I have taken more pains to argue my cousin Pindar out of his antipathy to them,
than I ever did about any other thing.
When, therefore, I choose to hunt a monisour
for my own particular amusement,
I beg it may not be asserted
that I intend him as a representative of his countrymen at large.
Far from this——- I love him, that right merry monisour as he possesses the true secret of being happy; which is nothing more than thinking of nothing; talking of nothing, and laughing at everything.
Filed under: Performance
Lola L’Orange. She came to me in a vision, she came with a series of gestures, actions and a super cool costume. But what of the tension between these two art forms? As I began to put her together in rehearsal I have come up against some intriguing questions about the nature of each performance genre; how they both complement and sometimes contradict each other. This, my latest creative venture, is proving to generate a fascinating conversation between me and myself, so I figured it would be good to put my thoughts out there and hopefully have some input from you all.
At the crux of the matter I have been trying to reconcile the interplay between Burlesque and Clown. If burlesque knowingly plays an audience with the intention to entertain and tease in a very adult space, while clown is characterised by childlike whimsy, awe and miraculous accidents, then how do they fit together? Can a performer embody both? If you forget about the Burlesque performers tendency to dip into striptease and the Clowns tendency to attend children’s parties — aspect of each art form which seem to set them wildly at odds with one another– the genesis of both these performance styles stems from vaudeville traditions of parody, playfulness, irony and political commentary.
I have trawled the internet searching for my contemporaries. There are very few. Among them is a woman from the west coast “Bombshell Betty” who fuses the art forms in ridiculous paradoy; clown attempts burlesque, stripping down in an utterly ridiculous manner, getting caught in her clothes. I laughed and laughed it’s totally slapstick, she’s embraced the clown’s accidently prone nature, the fool who fails again and again and finally succeeds, and we love her for it when she whips out some pretty hot tassel twirling. But what of the eternal child the wide eyed wanderer, the being who takes everything so literally and so personally… how would this clown survive burlesque?
Lola will squeeze as many dimensions of clown as possible into a Burlesque show, and does she even strip? This will remain to be seen as I still have questions about the male gaze and the potential ‘empowerment’ of striptease that many performers speak of. Personally I’m not really feeling it and I think I will need to find some seriously subversive angles and motivations to perform this element of burlesque.
I will continue to document the evolution of this character and I welcome your comments.
