MAY The Force be with Katie Duck in Italy!

Digital reinterpretation of Katie's Profiles dance piece. Faux-projections from her website by Ilaria Honsinger.

May 7-10 workshop Milan, Italy
Talka - performance May 8
Talka is an improvising group -- check out their website.
(It's in Italian, strangely enough!)

On the Upwind Side of the Ash Cloud

Stuart Curtis (according to his Facebook page) will be appearing with Corvallis' own Hilltop Big Band this coming Saturday 4/24, 7:30-10:00 pm. Free dance lessons start at 6:45 pm. The event is a benefit for AHIC: A Home in the Community. This is a group that is promoting Partnering with Cohousing Communities to create subsidized rental opportunities for low-income adults with disabilities. See you there!

From AHIC's Website: Finding a house that feels like "home" can be difficult for anyone. For a person whose physical and financial resources are limited due to severe disabilities, it can be even harder. A Home In Community is a 501(c)3 status non-Profit Public Benefit Corporation. We help people with disabilities fulfill their dream of living in communities where they benefit from daily connections with others, while having opportunities to support and give back to the community where they live. We do this by: Educating communities and people living with disabilities about the benefits of living in community together. Providing information and support that makes it happen. Partnering with Cohousing Communities to create subsidized rental opportunities for low-income adults with disabilities.

Only An Act Of God Could Stop Ernst Reiseger

Digital mashup of the North Atlantic and Europe from space, with volcanic clouds erupting up into Earth's atmosphere from the ground.
According to his Facebook page:
I was mentioned in the New York Times because I missed my own concert at Carnegie Hall yesterday (due to vulcanic ashes). I guess I should perform more No-Shows in order to boost 'my career.'

'Way to have a sense of humor about a bad situation, Ernst!

Further Around the Globe with Katie Duck

From Portraits, as performed by Alfredo Genovesi and Katie Duck (foreground) with associated dancers (midground) in Amsterdam, Holland circa 2009. Projected images by Ilaria Honsinger.
Katie Duck -- Workshop and Performance at Schwelle 7 Berlin, Germany Monday - Friday, April 12 to 16, 2010, 12 am - 6pm

From Schwelle 7's Website:
"Over the past 10 years (Katie's) workshops have been titled “Improvisation” in order to emphasis her views on theater as a live art form reflective of how she executes her own professional performances. Her research is placed in practice with lectures containing her recent interest in brain studies and film ...

Katie’s workshops are aimed toward all dancers, performers and musicians. She does not aim to provide a technique or style for how one conducts them-self in a live performance. Her work is relevant for any performance situation without discrimination for levels or performance platforms. She does ask that anyone who chooses to study with her have an intense interest in the work and is willing to experiment and take risks with the material she offers.

Her warm-up and exercises emphasis how the eyes and the ears work in co ordination with movement, sound and exposure to gathered crowds altering our perception of time, space, feelings and emotions. Improvisation sessions revolve around the terms pause, flow, exit, choice and presence with discussions articulating play, memory and intuition.

(Katie's) aim is to provide a situation where artists can practice together and grow in confidence toward public performances with an objective to clarify that improvisation is not the antitheses of choreography or composition, but rather the way choreography and composition can be executed. She promotes to her students that the mental connection to the practice of improvisation can be accessed weather they are doing set or open framed performance pieces and that the definitions of what improvisation within art practices means today needs to be reflective to advances in brain-studies and technology.

For the workshop at Schwelle 7 Katie will be accompanied by Musician Alfredo Genovesi.

On Saturday, April, 17 at 8:30 pm, Katie Duck will show the solo performance Portraits alongside with a piece developed with participants of the workshop during the week."

Next on her very busy schedule:

April 23-May 2 Seoul, Korea, 10th Seoul International Dance Festival

May 7-10 Workshop Milan, Italy
Talka - Performance May 8

Ernst Reiseger -- A Fine Fellow on the Cello!

Ernst Reiseger sent me almost a dozen photos from one of the very last performances by The Great Salt Lake Mime Troupe in 1980. (L to R) George was working with Otto, Katie had moved to Florence with Tristan, and Ernst was working with Sean Bergin, which he still does on occasion. (Michael Moore would come along with these three for a later gig in Berlin.)
Ernst writes: I guess they have been taken in Rome, Teatro In Trastevere. There is one name ... Dominique Vérin, maybe the person who took the photo.

Katie is working in County Devon, England this weekend, in her old haunts at Dartington Hall, near Totnes and the lovely village of Buckfastleigh. Ernst is enroute to Portugal, but he took the time to contribute his photos to the Great Salt Lake Mime Troupe Saga before he left.

Thanks a million, Ernst! I will make a full web page featuring all these photos very, very soon.

Katie Duck -- Flying 'Round The Globe

Katie Duck is traveling to England this upcoming week.
First the sprawling city of Manchester in the industrial Midlands (large circle), and then visiting her old haunts at Dartington Hall near Totnes and Buckfastleigh (small circle) at the foot of rural Dartmoor in the county of Devon.

April 3-4 Workshops Manchester

April 10-11 Workshop Devon England

Look where else The Road is taking her:

April 12-17 Workshop + Performance Berlin Schwelle 7

April 23-May 2 Seoul, Korea, 10th Seoul International Dance Festival

May 7-10 Workshop Milan, Italy
Talka - Performance May 8

What's Going On In The USA?

(Via Facebook): Stuart Curtis will be performing with the venerable, time-honored Yachats Big Band at the Yachats Commons on Thursday, April 1, 7-9 pm. Come as you are, $5 donation at the door, kids are free. The Yachats band has been playing at this venue for decades and a lot of enthusiastic dancers and listeners typically turn out.
Special note ... to alert readers: even though this takes place on April Fool's Day, (Stuart is) not making this up.

Yachats is on the Oregon coast, 80 or so miles west of Eugene, then a little further north.

Update, April 2: Stuart Curtis commented on (Facebook): "It was big. There were plenty of happy dancers and a good time was had by all. "

Nouveau Clown Institute Graduation This Weekend!

Assemblage from photos by Juan K. Casado
Jango Edwards' second series of Master Classes at the Nouveau Clown Institute in Barcelona is throwing-down it's graduation on SUNDAY, March 28, 2010, according to new intelligence from Facebook:

Jango Edwards March 27, 2010 at 5:19pm

Subject: N.C.I. MARCH 2010 "CLOWN MASTERCLASS" GRADUATlON 28TH.
I'M SORRY THAT I WASN'T WITH YOU ALL ON THE LAST CABARET BUT I'M SURE IT WAS FUNTACULAR. TOMORROW THE FINAL DAY OF SCHOOL IS AS FOLLOWS.

S.O.S.
CALLING ALL CLOWNS, FOOLS AND STREET ARTISTS:
TODAY WE BEGIN THE BATTLE TO F.T.F.S. IN BARCELONA. YOUR INVITED TO JOIN US AND PARTICIPATE IN OUR NUMEROUS INVISIBLE THEATER MANEUVERS ON SUNDAY, MARCH 28TH BETWEEN 13:30 AND 17:00 HOURS.

13:30 MEETING AT THE TENT (LA CARPA) AT THE BOTTOM OF LA RAMBLA WHERE WE PERFORMED THE "DIANA-CABRON CABARET".

13:30-14:00 ANIMATION AND MANIFASTATION ORGANIZATION FOR "FREE THE F***ING STREETS" CLOWN MILITIA EVENT.

ITEMS REQUESTED FOR THE ACTIONS
TOOTHBRUSH
N.C.I. TEE SHIRT BASE WITH ADDITIONAL JACKET OR SHIRT TO COVER N.C.I. SHIRT.
STATUE ACCESSORY
SHOE BOX PET FOR "BOX ZOO"
RED NOSE (CLOWN CHI)

14:00- 17:00 ENSEMBLE AND TEAM STREET EVENTS.
18:00 GRADUATION ASSEMBLY AT CLOWNFISH, C/CROS
29 bx, 08014, BARCELONA, TEL. 93 432 2814.
DIPLOMAS AND GRADUATION FIESTA.
DON'T BE LATE AND COME WITH FRIENDS IF YOU LIKE.
SEE YOU AT THE TENT

WE ARE FAMILY
JANGO

Check out the wealth of photos on their Facebook Site.
Just follow the links and click away -- the "Pie In The Face Portraits" are pretty funny! AND DON'T FORGET (like I did) John Towsen's Blog with cross-over links and other fun stuff!

Webmaster Michael Created Another Blog!

Yes I did! I'm keeping THIS blog dedicated to Troupers and fellow-travelers.

I'm calling the other one Michael's Blog: To Beat The Devil -- Personal Musings & Items of Interest, but there's some images from the Mime Troupe Saga there, and totally-unrelated stuff as well!

At the moment, it is dedicated to Ada Lovelace Day 2010, with an essay entitled Radioactive Women and Lise Meitner, and you're all welcome to check it out by clicking on the link above.
(The blog for worldwide Ada Lovelace Day is HERE)

I wrote another essay about Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, for this occasion last year called Unnatural Cousins. It's on my "old blog" HERE

Lise Meitner, born in Austria, is the subject of this year's essay. She co-discovered nuclear fission along with her nephew Otto Frisch, and German scientist Otto Hahn in 1938. Being of Jewish lineage, Frisch and Meitner fled to neutral Sweden before WWII began. They received NO credit in the paper which secured Hahn the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944.

Lightening Up:
George Clinton famously said: Mankind is nuclear fishin’ — And the fish on his line is bigger in his mind than the reality of the reel he has to reel it in. You Shouldn’t Nuff Bit Fish!

Where's Katie? Somewhere on Planet Earth!

Katie returns to Dartington Hall in Devon, where she was a lecturer in the late 80's! Anybody know any jokes about Buckfastleigh or Totnes? Fawltey Towers was supposedly set in Torquay, but the venerable old school is closer to Plymouth.

April 3-4 workshops Manchester

April 10-11 workshop Devon England

April 12-17 workshop + performance Berlin Schwelle 7

April 23-May 2 Seoul, Korea, 10th Seoul International Dance Festival