It's Awards Time!

Quick! Before it is the New Year! The Vile Arts presents...

the vile arts awards for 2014.

Having got distracted and never completed my Fibonacci sequence listing of theatre events, I thought I would make up some specious categories and pretend that people might be able to use them on their funding applications.

The Ancient and Modern Award
goes to Matthew Whiteside, for his project to bring back the viola d'amore (spelling provided by M. Whiteside) and compose a work for the baroque favourite and electronics. The album will be released in 2015.

The Hot Guys in the Scud Award
And it's Slope that gets this one, specifically for the interlude in London. I still feel deeply insecure about my physicality now.

The Pantomime Award
For consistent breaking of the barrier between stage and audience: Dominic Hill for The Libertine, which had a stage upon the stage and the protagonist was back stage on stage. Beat that, Barrowman!

Butoh Award
Congratulations to Paul Michael Henry, who is on a crusade to bring back butoh to Glasgow. Workshops, solo performances, arranging a festival. He does the lot, and as a fan of the only art-form that cuts to the chase of the human condition, I approve.

The Mañana Award
Once again, this goes to Gareth K Vile, who may or may not do another list of awards, depending on his ability to get up before midday.

The Glasgow School MCM: the artists reply with Paul Michael Henry

If you had to describe Glaswegian performance in three sentences, or phrases, or even words... what would these be?

"Various. In Glasgow." (I will acknowledge a resistance to that question).

While I am reluctant to suggest that any one artist's answers can represent a large swathe of the artistic community (that is why I am bothering so many people with my survey), I think that Paul Michael Henry is articulating a common response to my questions. When I set out my carefully worded questionnaire, I did expect plenty of replies that called me out on the assumptions I am making. 

Paul Michael Henry is a musician, a thinker, a Butoh practitioner and a festival curator. Most recently, he arranged the Moving Bodies festival in the CCA, a wonderful compilation of Butoh artists from around the world. Apart from being one of the few working artists in Scotland, let alone Glasgow, who are seriously engaging with the Japanese form, Paul Michael Henry is a champion of the art. 

Moving Bodies is a clarion call for Butoh, a showcase of its excellence and a reminder that performance exists in forms beyond most definitions of theatre.

When asked about artists with whom he feels an affinity, his choices are telling. They are not necessarily working in the same area ('My perception of shared characteristics with them includes a sense of art as more than entertainment,' he explains. 'An integrity of excavation into human potentials, rawness and a search for what Hijikata (founder of Butoh dance) called the body that has not been robbed.'). 

Suitably, his list is diverse. 'The late Adrian Howells is my first touchstone here. F.K Alexander, Lea Cummings, Satya Dunning, Jer Reid and Iona Kewney.' Howells was a pioneer of 'intimate theatre,' the one-to-one with a spiritual resonance; Alexander, Cummings and Reid are musicians (and more), Kewney and Dunning are dancers but with very different approaches. 

Throughout his answers, Paul Michael Henry maintains an amiable ambiguity about his influences: willing to recognise himself as a Glasgow-based artist, he sees an international perspective and delights in the complexity of his position.

'I am at heart an internationalist (or more accurately, a universalist). That said, I'm writing this in a moment when my Scottishness is kicking harder than I can remember, triggered by the Referendum debates and also by study of disciplines such as Butoh dance which is Japanese in origin. I haven't felt very Scottish in the past but I'm certainly not Japanese, so where does that leave me?'

This questioning is reflected in his performances: at Moving Bodies, he took time to engage with every single audience member and essayed a piece that emerged from fragments of western dance and Butoh's eastern aesthetic. His belief in the power of art to move - to be political without being explicit or issue based - and his exquisite taste as a curator (Ken Mai blew my mind and confused my understanding of gender identity) might connect with other artists in Glasgow and around the world, but his actual performances make him unique. 

Five things better than the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony

Another blast of click-baiting negativity from the VileArts this morning. Please put it down to the fact that I wet myself laughing three times at the Opening Ceremony and have been forced to go commando this morning.

While the world of twitter kicked up a storm of hilarity during the games, I was watching Butoh at the CCA  - a reminder that performance can have the intensity of a short LSD trip, taking my mind for a wander through questions of spirituality and suffering, gender identity, aspirations and despair. And so, here are five things that would have given the Opening Ceremony a edge.

Franz Ferdinand
Admittedly, The Ferds have spent the latter part of their career being more experimental, shaking off the cheerful dynamism of their first album for more brooding and challenging tunes. But at their commercial heights, they could do a chorus like a boy band, while retaining a rough, rocking edge. Certainly, they would have trumped Susan Boyle singing a sentimental dirge written by a man from Liverpool (not that Paul 'Thumbs Up' McCartney ought to be excluded on grounds of nationality, just taste).

Claire Cunningham
Again, Claire's recent work has been less spectacular than intimate - Guide Gods grappled with her relationship to religion - but her grandstanding Mobile/Evolution wowed the Fringe as she swung through the air with the greatest of ease. Intelligent, technically impressive and based on Claire's personal responses to great art, balance and identity: it would have had more depth than a dancing tea-cake, anyway.

Glasgow Girls
Cora Bissett and David Greig rocked the house with this smart musical. A condemnation of the attitudes of the state towards refugees, GG had a swagger and wit that suggested musical theatre was about more than stringing together a bunch of chart hits with an excuse for a story. The tunes were sharply multicultural, too, fusing melodies and beats from the various communities found in Glasgow, from Bollywood to traditional folk.

Iona Kewney
Kewney's dance on massive screens, and Quimby's guitar through a huge sound system?

Scottish Ballet
I hear that they are adapting some of Dylan Thomas' poems for their next production. I would take one of these over Barrowman shouting the names of random locations in Glasgow, thank you.

(It has been pointed out that SB did have a bit in the Ceremony... could we have had a bit more?)



Bonus comment: I'll admit, Barrowman's cheeky kiss was a nice touch.