Lodela and Pas de deux

Lodela by Philippe Baylaucq, 1996, 26 min 24 s. Direct link: Lodela.

Stark and Sublime Poetic Dance.

Mythic, primal, visionary. I watch Lodela over and over, each time finding more elements in the stark simplicity.

The film is in black and white. The camera lovingly caresses the shadows and planes of the dancers bodies. Camera angles change, from witnessing to being in the centre of their motion looking outward. The choreography is organic, flowing with the natural rhythms of the body. I feel the breeze on the reeds, the storm on the ocean, the planets in the sky. The music is ethereal, gentle. Human voices wake us, and we do not drown, but come to life, emerge. We are born.

The whole of a human life is here, in fetal form, our birth, growth, love, death. The Sisyphean task of our life. Longing, desire. The beauty of the body. Motion, its beauty.

The dancers, Jose Navas and Chi Long, are lithe, muscular, perfect specimens of us, and perfect if opposite reflections of each other, taut as dancers, graceful, expressive, minimalist. A slight reminiscence of Butoh in the expression of the dance - yet there is no horror here, rather a beauty of newness. They are soulmates. They are like strange flowers writhing and crawling and jumping and coiling on the white face of the moon. They are the life in the original amoeba of the planet. We watch the primal cell, the fusion of chromosomes, their dance.

They are at the beginning of everything. A film of the birth of rebirth. They are love.

The final image, where he closes his eyes to awaken as her is profound.

This film by Philippe Baylaucq is poetry. A masterpiece.



And then this, oh Duchamp! Especially the ending, exquisitely filmed and edited.



Pas de deux by Norman McLaren, 1968, 13 min 22 s. Direct link: Pas de deux.


                                                       

My Body Is A Word (2:23min)

direct link to SoundCloud: My Body Is A Word by Brenda Clews

Brenda Clews, poetry, voice, mix.
Music, Lena Selyanina's piano solo, 'Summer Morning,' from "Snowstorm Romance": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/73627 .

direct link to SoundClick: My Body Is A Word


The album of poetry recordings that I am working on seems to be on a theme of love. I don't have a whole lot of love poems, in the 'I and Thou' form. 'My Body Is A Word' is an older poem that I had up at my original and now defunct art website. It seems to work in context of the album, and also, hopefully, on its own.

A tiny chorus of voices, yes, positioned behind the main voice.






MY BODY IS A WORD

I

My body is a delta
awash with scripture
rivers of language flow over my tongue,
raw with salt.

My body is a delta
of waterways, signs,
inscribed, and gendered,
my body is tattooed
with the blue veins of roses.

II

I am rain falling on the edges of leaves;
I am earth, wet, a glistening emerald;
I am a breath of fire on the horizon at dawn;
I am a white orchid unlacing.

I am the succulence of the peeling of fresh fruit,
juice of mango, orange, kiwi, bloodred pomegranate;
the thorns of the pineapple rind fall into the sink.

Remember when
our bodies flowing
into the flowing warmth of each other,
paradise on the horizon of being.

Our bodies flowing, washing the world.

Our scripts intertwining the way
we endlessly write our lives.

I am the crimson space
in your heart.

You are the calyx of flowers reaching for the rain;
You are the sun ripening the fruit;
You are the awakening of the world;
You are the origin of the alphabet of love.

I read your body every day,
finding a script
like traces vanishing in the night
of light everywhere.


© 2003 by Brenda Clews
Recording, 2010

_____
(Note: Trying out different players - Sitemeter is my storage site for recordings, especially as how SC allows edited versions to be uploaded into the same url. Once the 'album' is finished, I'll upload it to Jamendo, where it will be available for free download. Any feedback now can aid help me in the creation of this collection of recordings - and I thank those of you who have offered responses and suggestions. It all really helps.)

                                                        

What Is Underground Is What Holds Us

I

You rise out of flat stone
the shield
of your heart.
The moon crosses the sun.
Do we
become light
when we dream?

The folds of your corduroy
like ridges and hollows
furrows where the Spring runoff
sculpts a geology
in a landscape of tundra.

"passageways and connections that
happen deep within us when in relation
to another..." Nancy Otto

In our Klondike, cross and beams
hold the tunnels we dig through
to find the gold in each other,
rich veins tracing through the rock
like sunlight.

II

Spring is a tendril
of green;
the leaves a papery mass of veins unfolding.

Cliffs of grass by the old mine ripple
in the wind.

We are like those two trees
ancient, weathered, yet
our roots thoroughly
intertwined.

What is
underground
is what holds us.

The deeper passageways
and connections.

III

I wear the crescent moon in my hair,
the cold northern air;
you are the sun buried in the land,
illumined from within.

The sharp edges
in each moment
bind us.

My Adoni, my Aholi,

even in this harsh typography
you are a landscape of love,
a cartography of desire.

©Brenda Clews 2006




>





Photographs were taken by me.

Poem and commentary written in April, 2006:


The title that I had thought of is a line from a poem by Hafiz, the 14th c Sufi master:
Our Destiny Is To Turn Into Light.

Here's the poem:

Faithful Lover

The moon came to me last night
With a sweet question.

She said,

"The sun has been my faithful lover
For millions of years.

Whenever I offer my body to him
Brilliant light pours from his heart.

Thousands then notice my happiness
And delight in pointing
Towards my beauty.

Hafiz,
Is it true that our destiny
Is to turn into Light
itself?"

Hafiz, The Gift, trans. Daniel Ladinsky (Toronto: Penguin, 1999), p.159.


While my poem is about light, it's really about roots, and works off Nancy Otto's lines (she's an artist who creates small, stunning glass sculptures where she explores our inner consciousnesses, our inner lives, the deep channels and underground ways that we connect).

Adoni and Aholi are both gods of nature: one ancient Phoenician; the other, ruler of the Pikya clan of Native Americans. Nature is usually imaged as a woman, but sometimes as a man - the dying & resurrected god.

Also I'm currently not just crazy about Hafiz, but also Pablo Neruda, his love poems, and Juan O'Neill's translation of Macchu Picchu.

An Antonio Servillo painting

I am moved deeply by this image. Antonio Servillo seems to paint my life as it often feels. Meaning his art speaks to me on deep levels of experience. Life is anything but a giddy, happy run-through. Though there is laughter, without which it would be impossible. The woman in Servillo's painting struggles. Such deep and abiding passion I see in her amidst many constraints.