The fundamental realities of St. Louis burlesque

Producer Lola Van Ella approving the Wheel of Death in the erotic circus room of Tropic of Cancer.

"Here is a book which, if such things were possible, might restore our appetite for the fundamental realities." Thus Anais Nin prefaced Henry Miller's 1934 novel Tropic of Cancer.

Here is a show which, such things being possible, restores our appetite for the fundamental realities. I think that's safe to say of Tropic of Cancer, the interactive multimedia show that Van Ella Productions has created on commission from the Koken Art Factory for its Naughti Gras 6 festival. The show opened last night and closes tonight, or rather at 1:30 in the early morning tomorrow.

Lola Van Ella, lead producer of Tropic of Cancer, describes it as "a truly interactive adult playground featuring numerous themed rooms representing some of the sexiest time periods and places. Visit an artistic Victorian brothel, a flapper and gangster filled '20s speakeasy, a 1980s-era 'gentlemen’s' club, a dance party glow rave, an erotic circus and so much more."

"So much more" includes the most jamming basement party I've ever been a part of. Curated by Michelle Mynx of Gravity Plays Favorites, her Pinks & Winks show reminded me of epic nights in Cicero's Basement of early St. Louis indie rock, but this was the woodshed and cutting floor of indie burlesque in St. Louis.

The Pinks & Winks set that started at 11 p.m. Friday night will be one to remember. It included Lola busting through three improv dances in a row, taking an onstage shower somewhere in between that left the stage in need of a burlesque Zamboni machine. But Katrina Dohl, the other half of Gravity Plays Favorites, stomped right through the onstage puddles in high heels that, even when wet, managed to glue her to the dance pole when Katie went vertical and horizontal at the same time, the way those Gravity's favorites do.

It restored our appetite for the fundamental realities. I might add that Lola and her many coproducers know that is exactly what they are doing for us. These gals are just as smart and shrewd as they are sensual. The show was conceived and elborately constructed as a meditation on Henry Miller's 1934 erotic classic -- in Poetry Score's terms, Lola and her creative sisters have scored Tropic of Cancer for interactive burlesque.

The interactive aspect is essential to their art. Lola does much more than produce shows. She is self-consciously a community creator. Van Ella Productions itself is now a teeming community that includes Lola, her parner in all matters Kyla Webb, Michelle, Katie, Foxy, Jeez Loueez, their house band The Royal We, and many more people. They all have been wearing their masks and costumes in public for so long now that they have at least temporarily become the mythy beings they've imagined for themselves.

The burlesque counter-culture in St. Louis is now deep and layered and in active fermentation with an almost countless number of other niche scenes: the tattoo heads and Zombie Squadsters and creative anachronisters and alternative theatricals and gay scenesters and roots rockers. But the public is allowed to pet them. And surprisingly to me, the wider St. Louis public that used to only know when the game was on is now waking up to local burlesque as a safely freaky way to spend a Friday night.

It helps, in this regard, to understand the safe limits of interactivity. The performers in Tropic of Cancer wait for you to come to them. The Mermaid lady lounges as only a Mermaid lady can -- approchable in her sly way, but not even able to approach you if she wanted to. (A burly roustabout waited on her hand and fin on Friday night, occasionally picking her up and lugging her to the lady's room.)

In the faux brothel, the Victorian-clad dolls recline, or swing in a birdcage, at a safe, regal distance. Women are running this show and women know how to set boundaries for women. There isn't anything approaching carnal action going to happen in this interactive exhibit, though it's an intently charged erotic atmosphere, tinged green with the absinthe bar and the large snake one of the dancers cuddles, curled up on her lacy divan.

At the kissing booth in the erotic circus, a raven-haired beauty with fiery lips is offering kisses for tips, but you have to lean in to her. And you're not even getting any lip, though the kisser is offered a glimpse of second base if he or she wishes to plant a kiss halfway down her bosom.

"He or she" is key. Nothing is expected of the audience, no one's personal boundaries are going to be tested any more than they wish, but the love and lust being performed by the showgirls (and, occasional, showboys) is free and open. The female form is being worshipped and investigated (or, much less often, the male form), but the gender of the worshipper appears to be interchangeable.

"This is an orgy of beauty!" Lola shouted from the Naughti Gras mainstage, across Victor Street from Tropic of Cancer. It was just that, an orgy of beauty. It restored our appetite for the fundamental realities.

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Image borrowed from social media of Lola's friend Michelle Schaeffer.

Heather Corley is Guest Co-Curator for Poetry Scores in 2013

In keeping with a tradition established last year, Poetry Scores has picked a Guest Co-Curator for 2013: Heather Corley. She is a longtime contributor to the Poetry Scores Art Invitational and enthusiastic supporter of the organization.

According to her artist bio for her prestigious Gallery 210 show in 2012, she was born in Houston, Texas, and was raised in St. Louis, Missouri. During her pursuit of a Bachelor of Fine Arts she attended Hartford Art School in Connecticut, Parsons School of Design in New York, and received her degree in printmaking from the University of Missouri at St. Louis in 2004. After receiving her MFA from the University of Tennessee, Knowxville, in 2007, she returned to the St. Louis area. She exhibits in the St. Louis region, nationally, and internationally.

In 2013, Poetry Scores will start work on two new poems: Yet Dish by Gertrude Stein (in partnership with the Gertrude Stein Estate) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Anne Sexton (in partnership with the Anne Sexton Estate).

With two women poets, it seemed like a good idea to ask a woman to guest co-curate the season for us. We tend to build upon existing relationships, and Heather has been a regular contributor to our invitationals who has done consistently stunning work for us. Stein's Yet Dish is a formal and conceptual poem, and Corley does formal and conceptual art; Sexton's Snow White is a tragedy of gender identities (among other things); the same could be said for an important strain of Corley's work.

Corley takes the torch from the inaugural Poetry Scores Guest Co-Curator, Andrew Torch.

"I'm pleased to hand over the co-curatorial reins for 2013 to Heather Corley," Torch said in a text message while soothing a baby who was not feeling well. "She is one of the most dynamic printmakers and conceptual artists on the art scene today, and her discerning eye will guide the Poetry Scores art exhibitions to their full potential and beyond."

Poetry Scores' projects span years, as the same long poem is translated into visual art, music, silent cinema and whatever else comes along, so Corley already has picked up where Torch left off on one project. Torch was Guest Co-Curator for Poetry Scores' November 2012 Art Invitational to Phantom of the Dreams' Origin by Andreas Embirikos. Corley helped choose a piece from that show for the cover art for the CD that Poetry Scores will produce of Barbara Harbach's score to the Embirikos poem, and Corley is overseeing the package design that starts now.

"I'm thrilled to be Guest Co-Curator for 2013," Heather Corley said in an email. "This is a wonderful opportunity to work with talented people and to offer my enthusiastic perspective within the visual aspects of Poetry Scores."

Perhaps Heather's biggest opportunity is reinventing the Poetry Scores Art Invitational, which is held the second Friday of November at Mad Art. The poem for this year's Invitational is  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Anne Sexton.

Contact Heather Corley via her website.

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The image is Heather Corley's submission to the 2012 Poetry Scores Art Invitational.

Word into media w/ high art & amateur enthusiasm

It's always interesting to see people you know do work you do, so I was fascinated last night to watch the "May These Changes Make Us Light" production on Cherokee Street. This was an ambitious multimedia show that mixed live music (rock band, string section, handdrums) with dance (aerial, pole, Mexican folk), video, spoken word, shadow puppetry and costumed theatrics. Most of it was ultimately text-based, so they were translating poetry and folklore into other media. That's exactly what Poetry Scores does, so I was fascinated to watch how other very talented people do what we do.

In the cast was one of my very favorite local artists in any media, Michelle Mynx, choreographer and pole dancer and half of Gravity Plays Favorites. Michelle performed in a narrative piece with many other elements. Like most of the production, it had an earthy yet spiritual basis, and I enjoyed to see one-half of the burlesque duo Gravity Plays Favorites choregraph for solo pole dance in a setting where sexuality was not themed.

I have a reverent attitude toward Michelle's work and Gravity. I get so blissed out that I experience it differently and it's hard to compare to the rest of my experience of a show. For the part of the show where I wasn't awestruck, my favorite bit was the opening: Fire Dog playing "Prelude," their collaboration with The Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra. I listen to that song so often from my sampler of the new Fire Dog record that my daughter, who joined me for the show, blurted out at the second chord, "I know this song."

I was struck elsewhere in another Fire Dog number that Celia is an amazing bass player. I always assumed she was a chord-chopping band leader playing bass in a buddy's band to help out, but she has made the instrument her own.

The aerial dancer Indie Nombrilou had another featured spot. Her work also puts me over toward that awe-o-sphere where there's not much I am able to say about it other than I am glad she is working here while I am here.

The venue was a nightclub, more given to loud bands than multi-media shows, so the lighting was poor. I especially couldn't see Indie's act as well as I would have liked. There is a trade-off in the lighting, because Light was the main theme of the show and various projections of light (which required darkness to work) were integral to the show. That includes skilled video work by Mike Pagano which threaded in and out of the other performances.

The show closer was led by the voice of Lyndsey Scott. Lyndsey is one of my other favorite artists in town whom I've always asked to do everything. I've not seen her in her own element that much, so it was interesting to see her persona in its more native setting. I felt her as a strong spiritual center for the show.

I was dragged out to a show on a school night by Rebecca S. Rivas, who choreographed and danced and had a role in the overall shape of the production. Rebecca and I share a highly demanding and rewarding day job at The St. Louis American. So though I see her more days than I don't, and though we have dozens of friends and creative partners in common, I actually never share art with her.

We talked about the show and about producing shows today. We agreed on a shared aesthetic, which is also an ethic in a way. We agreed it's good to mix high professional talent and vocation with amateur enthusiasm. It's good to have both Michelle Mynx, who could work anywhere in the world, and your friends who want to put on an animal costume and act out a folk tale. We agreed there's something really good, and something really St. Louis, about that mix.

Translating poetry and folklore into other media with a playful mix of high art and amateur enthusiasm -- that's the thing I am talking about; that's the thing we do around here.

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Photo of the great Michelle Mynx borrowed from her Facebook page.

"Water Bread & Beer" served in digits, plastics, live gigs

Our longtime producer, licensing honcho and e-distributor Meghan Gohil is jumping our band Eleanor Roosvelt through the iTunes etc. loops for our new record Water Bread & Beer to be available for worldwide digital download.

The band is also covening in St. Louis from Nashville, Los Angeles and New Jersey this weekend to usher into the world small pieces of plastic with the new record and companion artwork digitally imprinted in physical form. Fred Friction opens for a house concert in Olivette at 8 p.m. Friday, December 7 (email David Melson - melsond@gmail.com - for his address and to get on the list). Then we play a tavern gig in Granite City at 10 p.m. Satuday, December 8 with Dana Anderson at Jacobsmeyers Tavern, 2401 Edwards, by the scenic steel mills.

Our digital distributor asked of us some detailed notes for Water Bread & Beer, and here is what we had to say. I used some vague terms ("Americana") and made band-name comparisons in some feeble attempt at popular appeal.

Eleanor Roosevelt: Water Bread & Beer

Eleanor Roosevelt’s new record Water Bread & Beer captures a folk-rock songwriting team half-way in its evolution from pioneers of alt-country (as Enormous Richard, they released their first record in the same town and summer as Uncle Tupelo) into the music department of an arts organization, Poetry Scores, that translates world poetry into other media.

The new record has an even mix of “original” Americana songs, and musical settings of poetry and traditional texts. Among the songs where frontman Chris King penned the lyrics, “Watch a Cloud” is about doing exactly that while lying flat on your back on a farm; “Seeds & Shit” is about moving off a barstool and down to the country to live with a woman; “Grainery Light” muses on a hometown dominated by that grainbelt icon. But their future as Poetry Scores is glimpsed in “Death & Taverns,” which sets a Federico Garcia Lorca poem to music; “Children’s Rain Song,” a new folk-rock setting of a Moroccan Jewish children’s chant; and “Tortilla,” a new working of  a Peruvian labor protest song.

These songs were composed and the basic tracks recorded while the songwriting team was on the road as Hoobellatoo, a field recording collective that provided a pit stop on the journey between the band Eleanor Roosevelt and the arts organization Poetry Scores. These songs were written and initially recorded in grand, scattered places: a mansion on Mount Desert Island in Maine; a cabin in Door County, Wisconsin; a campsite in the Virginian Appalachias; another cabin on South Turkey Creek in Leicester, North Carolina beside the square dance platform built by Bascom Lamar Lunsford; and in the living room of Pops Farrar in Belleville, Illinois. It was finished by producer Elijah “Lij” Shaw at his studio The Toy Box in Music City, Nashville, Tennessee.

When King, Shaw and their songwriting partners Matt Fuller and John Minkoff wrote these songs, they had been on and off the road for the better part of a decade, as rock bands and then field recordists. In these songs you can hear the edge and unpredictability of the road, especially “Strangers & Dangers” (where the title says it all) and “James Brown Boulevard,” the name of an actual road on the wrong side of the Godfather of Soul’s hometown, Augusta, Georgia. “Pair of Skunks” is an homage to that angel of every traveling band, the pretty girl pouring coffee in the morning at a roadside diner. Certainly “Nothing Feels Better Than Doing Wrong” – though a very free adaptation of a traditional Zulu text – expresses sentiments familiar to anyone who ever saw the country via the van of a traveling band.

The Zulu folktale buried in that rock song points to another element that runs throughout this record. Though Water Bread & Beer is dominated by the acoustic, guitars, banjos and fiddles of Americana, it takes much of its perspective from the traditions of Africa. As Hoobellatoo, these guys recorded a traditional Grebo (Liberia, West Africa) elder named Nymah Kumah, who influenced them profoundly as people. “Pepper Soup & Local Honey” is basically a recipe of Grebo traditional immunology: local honey to inoculate yourself against local pathogens and pepper soup to clear your chest and head once they get in. “Me as a Horse” sets to music a passage from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by the father of the African novel, Amos Tutuola of Nigeria. And “Head Rolling Down a Hill” includes a fragment of a novel by the great Ghanaian writer A.K. Armah: “We have time to bounce across yards of mud from days of rain.”

Musically, Eleanor Roosevelt sounds like some of the other bands that incubated alternative or insurgent country, such as The Jayhawks, Uncle Tupelo in their mellower moods and Whiskeytown, with scratchy acoustic textures offset by the grime of John Minkoff’s electric guitar. Guest instrumentalists include Geoffrey Seitz, who has won the highest traditional fiddle honors at Galax and Clifftop; and keyboardist Pat Sansone, who would soon leave the Nashville rock scene to join Wilco in Chicago.

Eleanor Roosevelt blog: www.eleanor-roosevelt.blogspot.com. Or email brodog@hotmail.com.

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Cover painting by John Minkoff

Nick Barbieri live scores Embirikos' "Desire"

At this year's big Art Invitational devoted to Andreas Embirikos' classic 1935 poem Blast Furnace, we added a new musical component. Poetry Scores translates poetry into other media, but up until now our work producing records, movies and art shows have been disconnected in the public experience of what we do. We wanted to change that. So we hit upon the idea of inviting some composers to write and record a musical score to an Embirikos poem during our Art Invitational (7-11 p.m. this past Friday).

We had slimmed down Nikos Stabakis' selected translation of Blast Furnace, excluding six of the prose poems to leave us with a more manageable text for the poetry score that Barbara Harbach is composing for us. With six poems left out of Barbara's score, we invited six songsters each to score one of these six texts. Six being the number of sides on a conventional die, Embirikos being a Surrealist (the first, and best, in Greece), and Surrealism being absorbed in accidents and chance, we assigned poems to composers by casting a die.

Before songsters reported for duty on Friday night, musical supervisor Richard "Skoob" Skubish and I took turns casting this big puffy yellow die until the numbers 1 through 6 had been assigned uniquely to the six Embirikos poems (in Stabakis' English translation) that we had cut from Blast Furnace. Then, as a composer would come into the gallery, he or she would cast the die and take the poem assigned to that number, provided it wasn't already taken.

Only two poems were left when Nick Barbieri showed up, so it took him a few rolls to hit upon a poem that was not already taken, but a roll of 1 finally assigned "Desire" to him. As a relative latecomer, Nick also did not have the widest selection of spaces to do his composing. Mad Art is located in an Art Deco police station, so we had songwriters working in jail cells, in previously smoke-filled backrooms, and in foyers. We set Nick up in closed space set off from the police station's garage, which now is the gallery's main event space. There was an electric-powered door that closed, giving Nick privacy and sound separation, though it closed from the outside, reducing our valiant songster to pounding on the door from the inside when he finally had finished recording his song.

Nick took his cue from the title "Desire" and wrote sort of a sultry soul song that launches into rock guitar about halfway through. Here is the poem, followed by the song.

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"Desire"
By Andreas Embirikos

Prostrate with sugarcoated lips she lay on love’s luminous wreath. Before long the call was heeded. First she was taken away by two birds then by the wires of compassionate intrigue and finally by five roosters resembling trained horses who placed her between her own thighs. The response of alien ingredients vanished and with longing perfumed seaweeds and scintillating sighs she came unrestrained and clean like an essential and intense cloud. Now they are both named Merope.


-- Translated from the Greek by Nikos Stabakis, from surrealism in greece

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Music composed, performed produced and recorded by Nick Barbieri for Poetry Scores

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Photo is of Nick Barbieri picking up the die. He had rolled a 1, the number randomly assigned to "Desire" among the six poems from *Blast Furnace" we had set aside for live scoring.

Jay Alan Babcock and Deb Douglas have no quinces

So like I was saying, Poetry Scores has an Art Invitational coming up 7-11 p.m. Friday, Nov. 9 at Mad Art Gallery on the southern edge of Soulard, 2727 So. 12th St.

Deb Douglas just sent me this image of her piece, "We have no quinces," after Andreas Embirikos. This Art Invitational is based around the first masterpiece of Greek Surrealism by the great Andreas Embirikos, translated by Nikos Stabakis.

Like all pieces in our show, Deb's collage responds to and takes its title directly from the same poem by Embirikos, as translated by Stabakis. We are scoring a selection of prose pieces from Embirikos' 1935 classic Blast Furnace. Our selection, titled jointly with the composer Barbara Harabach, is Phantom of the dreams' origin.

Barbara is composing miniatures to sequence around the prose poems presented in human voice. My co-producer Stefene Russell and I recorded ourselves reading the whole sequence between us, but we also wanted the options of other voices. So I hit upon an idiosyncratic idea.

I asked Roland Frank, Poetry Scores actor and BBQ curator, to host a backyard BBQ where people were invited to bring an ingredient cited in the poem (it's full of food and animals) for Roland to BBQ, in essence translating Greek Surrealism into a backyard BBQ, and I'd then ask them to read and record the prose poem in the sequence where their ingredient is quoted.

Jay Babcock, longtime contributing Poetry Scores artist, brought his son Owen to the BBQ and they had whipped up some incredibly tasty iced lime concotion. There is a poem in the sequence titled "Lime," so naturally we had Jay read that.

"Lime"

Andreas Embirikos
Trans. by Nikos Stabakis

We have no quinces. We have been deprived of our briefest pulp’s equivalent sum and beneath its murmuring only the young leopards remain alone with their dark florins and with the final gull’s cold desolation. We have no quinces. Eucalyptus burdens die in the palm of our pulses and whatever we say and see we treat the distinguished intelligence of perfumed youths. We have no quinces or is it that their quince-made harshest form struggles of barrages and tepid gleanings of transients pole’s roaming and hole.

Poetry Scores hosts 8th art invitational Nov. 9 at Mad Art

"A most thunderous storm covered the country"
by Robin Street-Morris
after Andreas Embirikos/ Nikos Stabakis

Event includes live collaborative drawing experience and live poetry scoring

 

From 7-10 p.m. Friday, Nov. 9, Poetry Scores will host its 8^th art invitational where some 50 visual artists make new work based on the same long poem at Mad Art Gallery, 2727 So. 12^th St. in Soulard. This invitational responds to Phantom of the Dreams’ Origin, an excerpt of the first masterpiece of Greek Surrealism, Blast Furnace (1935) by Andreas Embirikos, translated into English by Nikos Stabakis.

 

The event is free and open to the public; Mad Art will run a cash bar and there will be some free food. The art work will be for sale, with proceeds split evenly between artist, gallery and Poetry Scores, a St. Louis-based non-profit arts organization that translates poetry into other media. Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate in Literature from Nigeria, describes Poetry Scores as “a very special celebration of creative collaboration.”

 

Confirmed artists for the invitational include many of St. Louis' most beloved and accomplished working artists, plus Julie Evanoff of Brooklyn, Ipek Tuna of Istanbul and a trio of London artists associated with inc. magazine: Hannah Bailey, MSTR Gringo and Lorna Scobie. The complete list - which includes a chocolatier, a florist and a balloon sculptor -- below.

(Note to parents and anyone offended by human nudity: some of the art work includes adult themes and graphic depictions of human anatomy.)

In addition to some 50 works of art based on the poem, the November 9 event also will feature a live collaborative drawing experience, open to the public – Exquisite Corpse, conducted by John Pruitt – and a live musical score experience, where six local songwriters are each randomly assigned one of six Embirikos poems to score musically and record their composition that night. Their completed recordings will be played at the end of the show.

The songwriters composing and recording poetry scores at the event are Nick Barbieri (Heebie Jeebies), Mike Burgette (Lettuceheads), Amy and John Camie, Ann Hirschfeld (The Deciders), Tim McAvin (Karate Bikini) and Tim Rakel (Union Electric, May Day Orchestra). They will be recorded at the old sergeant's desk at Mad Art by multiply Grammy-nominated Adam Long, whose production credits range from Nelly's first recordings to Broadway original cast show extravaganzas.

The St. Louis Curio Shoppe (2301 Cherokee), which sells only things made by someone from St. Louis or connected to St. Louis, will have a booth selling all Poetry Scores releases and many projects by artists in various media who have worked with Poetry Scores. St. Louis Curio Shoppe will be accepting inventory on consignment at the event, so local artists with a record, movie, book, whatever, to sell, are welcome to bring a few copies to put on consignment at the shop.

Poetry Scores’ work with Andreas Embirikos' poem will continue 7:30 p.m. Friday, January 11, 2013 with a live performance of composer Barbara Harbach’s poetry score to Phantom of the Dreams’ Origin featuring a dance interpretation of the poem by MADCO at the Touhill Center for the Performing Arts.
 
Info? Contact: Chris King, brodog@hotmail.com.

CONFIRMED ARTISTS


Hannah Bailey
Kevin Belford
James Blackwood
Jeff Brawn
Hunter Brumfield III
Dail Chambers
Bill Christman
Jen Collins
Jon Cournoyer
Heather Corley
Mikey Davidson
Deb Douglas
Dr. Andrew Dykeman
Jennifer Saenz Dykeman
Julie Evanoff
Thom Fletcher
Flowers to the People
Marth Rose Green
Paul Hartman
Sue Hartman
JoAnn Houle
Alexa Hoyer
Rick Jordan
Chris King
Leyla Fern King
Julie Malone
Tim McAvin
MSTR Gringo
Carmelita Nunez
Mike Pagano
Hap Phillips
Thomas Plunk
John Pruitt
Jeremy Rabus
Tony Renner
Kim Keek Richardson
Cindy Royal
Stefene Russell
Lorna Scobie
C. Scott
Janiece Senn
Derek Simmons
Dana Smith
Robin Street-Morris
Brian Styles
Mark Swain
Andrew Torch
Ipek Tuna
Wayne St. Wayne
Jess Witte