Jade Heart

Am I writing? Am I painting? Am I watching a film? Am I laughing with friends?
No.
I'm beading.

Some of us become true hippies late.

The Home-Office...

The 'home-office' (studio/bedroom/meditation space), as is, without any tidying up! Yes, that's a thick plastic sheet on the desk for the painting that's not happening, and another one under the layers of dog blankets. See, I am like a "little ol' Italian lady in that way - with my plastic-covered furniture'! I buy it at Honest Ed's for $3./yard, what a great price - anyone'd go crazy with the stuff! Great for painters and pets. Hey, not tooo much knicker-knacker clitter-clatter on the desk; it could be cleaned up in minutes for a painting space, now couldn't it? :::Grins::: How about your workspace?

'Collision' of Dance and Disability

Beautiful, powerful, affirming, and, wow, can these folks dance!

A video of dance & disability, a mind-heart opening for the viewer who may be stunned to see the (im)/PERFECT body in ecstatic motion like this, yet we love the courage, energy, expansion of self, and feel, ourselves, joyful in our participatory watching...of an energetic release into what is a sophisticated aesthetics of dance and an accompanying joy.

'Collision' of Dance and Disability

Source: video.nytimes.com

A New York City dance company called Gimp turns a prevailing notion of physical handicaps on its head. Then comes a leap, a pirouette, a lift....

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(NYTimes doesn't give an option to share with Blogger, but I wanted an image of the video, so copied and pasted it. While the image seems to be an active link, please note that the titles are definitely active links, or click here.)

Tiled Discus Thrower

For days I have been trying to upload an image to tile like this on my home page at Twitter, but Twitter is hesitant, no, downright resistant.

Actually, there are currently issues with uploading background images and their technical department is 'working on it.'

Being impatient, I made a tiled image of my little discus thrower to see what it would look like!

(click on image for larger size)

Chinese zither:GuZheng 風雨 /古箏獨奏： 毛ㄚ

If you have 8 1/2 minutes, this is an amazing GuZheng, or Chinese zither, performance. Such musicianship!

This woman, who plays the GuZheng, and whose name I am not sure of, the Chinese is impossible for me, is a true virtuoso. A pure artist: a "living angel." Her performance is a dance, sensitive, powerful, and above all, graceful, with the Chinese zither, what an instrument, who is like her lover. A lover who sings to her. I've watched it over & over, transfixed.

direct url: here.

A day later, after reading the comments at YouTube I discover her name is 毛ㄚ Maoya, that she was born in Beijing in 1979, and that her latest album was issued 6 years ago in China. The piece that she plays was for a competition and is actually not Chinese, but Japanese (why I probably like it so much). As one commenter said, "Just found out that this is actually a Japanese piece that was written by a Japanese Master. Which was not meant to be played on a Chinese guzheng but rather a Japanese one. 毛ㄚtook it to another level and proved the master wrong and inspired us once again that nothing is impossible. Not only her dedication to this instrument but the way she carried herself while playing is truly masterful. Too bad she's not a performer but a music researcher. A true one-of-a-kind treasure."

'Frozen View Count' issue at You Tube

I do not make any money from my videos at YouTube, I am just an artist sharing my work. I recently posted this at a community board at YouTube:

I am wondering, since it's only one of my videos that has a view count frozen at 201, if it's because after I uploaded the video I sent links to all my friends through my private email (rather than YouTube's service since some people had complained about their addresses used for spam by YouTube).

If I sent a link to that video, which is a small 'dance/art film' piece of work to 50 people in Toronto, where I live, and they all dropped by to view it, would that appear as spammers?

Which they most definitely are not.

I spent some time writing and editing the comment in the editorial, and I've posted that video quite a few places and hence have started the viewer on it myself a number of times each time I go in to grab the code.

Meaning, is either of these two possibilities- a number of views in a short time span in one location, the city I live in, or personally going in to the site and starting the viewer each time -why that particular video's view counts has been inexplicably 'frozen'?

Or have I been targeted by actual spammers, and YouTube just hasn't informed me that my work has been hit by that kind of attack?

I'd personally like more information on what is going on with the frozen view count - re: telling us exactly what it is that's caused the lock down.

Thanks!

Brenda

Oh, the video in question is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Fgg1mx2sA&feature=channel_page

Can anyone at YouTube tell me exactly what the infringement on thisparticular video is? What exactly has caused the frozen view counts?

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Also, I earlier posted this query:

Besides the view count issue that I'm currently having with YouTube, and that hasn't been addressed, or even acknowledged, I am wondering why this site is able to post one of my videos when I have DIS-enabled embedding? Why is YouTube allowing this?

http://video.baamboo.com/watch/1/video/nOlfVVwa5BE/phim-video-clip-On-Butoh-based-Dance-A-Saturday-morning-amble-Brenda-.html

I am not happy with YouTube presently.

Problems. No response. Equals Unhappy YouTuber!

Addendum: YouTube suddenly released the view count on my video today, March 19th, 4 days later, without any explanation.

Addendum 2: YouTube froze the view count at 307 views on the same video, White, for 4 days about mid-April, and then resumed without explanation.

Why is YouTube picking on this small video?

Bruce Branit - World Builder (high quality)

A strange man uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves. This is a short by filmmaker Bruce Branit known also as the co-creator of 405.

Filming took one day, and post-production two years. A Michelangelo of our times? As creative as painting, writing, composing... the artist is using digital tools, creating worlds, merveilleux!

An architect's dream!

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Direct link: World Builder.


Update March 13th:

Awww, this is so sweet! This video has been viewed over half a million times, and he has time to send out these tiny batches of thank-you's...an amazing guy, clearly.

bbranit has sent you a message:

World Builder Thanks

To:[about 20 people, including me]

Thank you for your support and your kind comments. Really an overwhelming and amazing response. Now I am speechless. It's been a real pleasure to see everyone embrace this movie. The feedback has been tremendous!

If you are on Facebook please stop by and become an official fan of the short. I hope to be able to expand upon the story of the builder and his love in a larger feature film as many of you have asked about. Everyone here and their response may help make that happen. So check out....

http://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Builder/73936485659

...I hope to have some updates and inside info on there every now and then.

Bruce Branit

Celestial DancerIII

Terry Snow - Healing Music (6:13min)

There have been many difficulties in my life in the past few years that sometimes I forget to stop and breath. I was transfixed by this gentle piano solo this morning.

Terry Snow writes: "A contemplative piano piece, written at a time of needing balm and comfort. The music refers briefly to the rhythm of a funeral march in the central section before returning to the "healing" theme. The piece gains warmth from being written virtually all on the piano's black keys, in the key of C sharp major.."

Direct link to Terry Snow's piano solo. "Terry Snow is a New Zealander who enjoys composing for classical music ensembles such as string orchestra, piano trio, string quartet etc."

Sweet the pleasure of your friendship

Recently I had a birthday (on March 7th) and received many birthday wishes and so I composed this little video of thanks to accompany my thanks to each person...

Photographs from my collection: flower mandala on the sidewalk in the late Summer outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival, 2008; images from Lumiere, Trout Lake, Vancouver, 2004; photo of me taken by Oswald Phills on March 2, 2008 at Sublime Cafe in Kensington Market.

Snippet of music from the group, BEMS, album "Panspermia," track, 'Forme Troppo Perfette.' A group found on Jamendo with the Creative Commons License: give credit to the artist; distribute all derivative works under the same license.

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Direct link to this video at YouTube: Sweet the pleasure of your friendship...

White, a Butoh-inspired dance by Brenda Clews

A poetry in motion. I played with negatives. It reminds me of ice and snow, of liberation from constraint. Of imaging between being and non-being. Of the mother. Of the sorrow of the mother earth. Of disappearing into and emerging from. Of the continuous cacophony of the dance of life. Of the disjointed, an awkward grace. The film loses some of its quality in the uploaded video: the semi-opague layers appear more like faded images than the transparencies they are. Yet you let go of the white leaf and let it float out to the sea. I wanted to add a poem, and perhaps that's next. The flowers are from photographs I took last year of mandalas of fresh flowers in the street outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival. The increasing presence of the flowers behind the screen of the dance is a reminder of what is ever-present, profundita natura, the profundity of nature at its most beautiful, fragile, transitory, in the flower. I leave you with a screen of flowers, like a prayer.


Hi beautiful friends, Sharing 'White, a Butoh-inspired dance.'.. film clip from late last Summer, and then all last night editing (editing video I'm discovering is like that:-) ...layering... images, sounds, yet not wanting to disturb the vulnerability, perhaps strangeness, of this 'silent film'... Butoh can express the painful and beautiful paradoxes of life in an intimacy that is almost unbearable to watch, I don't know if this film has that, but it's in the intent.

Feedback is always wonderful as I stumble down the path of this art form.

If 'White' opens something out in you, even in resistance, or in a sense of discomfort, then that is the Butoh influence, and then I'll know your reaction is like mine. For I don't know who that woman is, something else takes hold, another energy flows through.

Many thanks for taking the time to look at this. Many thanks for the blessing you are in my life,

hugs, Brenda xo


direct link to the video at YouTube: White, a Butoh-inspired dance.

Erica's 'Dance Our Way Home'

The theme was Amaterasu, Japanese goddess of the sun, a retreat to and emergence from our caves. In the slivers of mirrors we saw ourselves and we enjoyed our shining. We mirrored each others' beauty. Did we become luminous beings by the end of the day of the dance of the shining?

Our sun-wings spread like sun beams caressing the air and we flew as angels of light, I am sure of it.

Everyone's skin was fragile, luminous. Didn't matter what age we were, or size, or what life has carved on us.

Did our eyes shine delicately lit radiating out to illumine the world?

I saw the women's eyes shining; I saw them enlightening the world with their woman-wisdom, their wily smiles, their open-flowered red hearts. I saw their curvaceous dances, their plunging depths, the way they flung themselves into ecstatic states from which they would never emerge, never, if life was composed of the harmonious flowing energies of the dancefloor.

The unwinding from the tight to the relaxed was like approaching an apex and once you reach it you fly. With your feet, your hands, your twirling torso, your wildly swinging hips.

We flaunt it. Our tulle and taffeta and silk and microfibre; pinks and greens and purples and blacks; yogic symbols and alpine wild flowers. Hot breath; luminous, damp and streaming.

In the dance we are embedded in the broad sweeping swaths of sun as she revolves around the planet illumining the world as she goes, spreading rays of wisdom like falling petals of light from the crown of the thousand-petaled lotus that she wears.

We are. In our quiet ways. Or exhibitionist. Or wildly celebrating. Deep. Rich in our sorrow. Visions. Glimmering. Sparkling. Bedazzled. Radiant. Luscious.

Dancing at Erica's Dance Our Way Home (DOWH) is very sweet.




Many thanks...





Beautiful Erica Ross leading a prayer for peace at a DOWH session.


A video created during a short post-DOWH dance at Summer Solstice where my voiceover was this poem:

Oz's Photo

Oz's photo of me yesterday. Oswald Phills is a powerful djembe drummer who I know from Tam Tam along with his beautiful partner, Eve. He used to send out a great newsletter, Drumcultures, on the drumming scene in Toronto as well as life around Kensington Market, where they live, and I think he might resurrect that project in the future as a website. I knew he also was a painter but did not know about his film-making abilities, which I've been discovering on Facebook. Yesterday, at Sublime Cafe in Kensington, Oz filmed a short film he wrote with Ordo and I acting in it. I love the script, Oz's filmic consciousness is very much the 'art film.' He's a brilliant guy, all in all.