incidence

The other night we were at New Globe, the pub right outside the gates of the University, where all the students gather. Thursday nights are student nights, only QM students allowed, meaning anyone and everyone from QM comes and a bouncer shows up for intimidation and to stamp hands.

so, we're standing outside in the crowd of people on the sidewalk, having a merry time, when there is a slight crashing noise and people start yelling and pointing and the cars on one side of the street get all backed up in a matter of seconds. A car had just (don't ask me how) managed to hit the gate to the crosswalk, flip itself completely over the median crosswalk and was upside down on the opposite side of the street. !!!. yes, this happened on the very straight road called Mile End, right outside the gate to the QM campus. then two firetrucks, an ambulance, and other rescue vehicle came with sirens and lights while drunks of all kinds ran down the street in fascination. I'm hoping the person is alright, because it looked awful, the entire roof and windshield were crushed on the pavement. Some guy I recognized from orientation told me the driver was fine and was standing on the other side of the median, but who can trust someone who is slobbering and slurring away from all his mates? Needless to say, that was a night.

Next day, my flatmate Steven and I went to our second screening of the BFI London Film Festival. We had seen one on Thursday called Heartbeats, a French-Canadian film about two friends, Marie and Francis, who both fall in love with a new friend Nicolas. It was really beautiful, and lots of slow motion and just colors and blur and people, all of it beautiful and real and artistically excellent. Xavier Dolan directed and starred in this, his second film at age 21. His first film was also taken to some festival, I can't remember which, and it won. He's a genius. And looks adorable. I want him to be my friend.

Friday we saw a film from Chad, also in French, called The Screaming Man. It was good, but I was a bit sleepy and struggled to stay awake for some of it. But it was also pretty, and powerful, and gave me good memories of Tanzania. After the film, Steven and I met some other friends on Brick Lane and haggled for curry and wine (there are about 8 different curry restaurants along brick lane and each one has a man standing outside at dinner time telling everyone who passes by (You want curry! I make you a deal, 3 course meal and drink for 10 pound each!) So we found the cheapest one and bargained a bit since we had a group of people. Oh, but first while Steven and I waited for the others to get to brick lane, we were browsing the designers and the shops and we came to this record shop called Rough Trade. It was great, lots of albums and art books and magazines and things of all types. And then we realized some event was going on in the back of the store. There were cameramen ready to film something, and a little stage set up with a few chairs, but no one sitting in them yet. And..there was an open bar..? And a man walking around with a tray of bottled beer and glasses of champagne giving to customers for free! We were in the right place at the right time. I still don't know what they were getting ready to film, but we had a lovely time drinking free beer and listening to great music and feeling all important like we were at some special record label event for important people.

Later, we went to a hookah lounge, excitedly. but were disappointed because, although the name of the place is "Hookah Lounge," since smoking is banned indoors, customers have to take the hookah and hold it outside to use it.....lame. so we got drinks there instead and talked and watched the people walk by outside, laughed at the people carrying three huge red block sculptures spelling "NO!" i got tea and it was tasty. the people who worked there reminded me of minneapolis, of seward cafe. mmmm.

Today I went to this art festival with Lauren and Steven before going to see a film they had to see for a class. I tagged along because it was a documentary of this dance that was performed last year in a festival in Greenwich. At the art festival, we saw two exhibitions, both very weird. The first was in an old crypt beneath a church, where there are graves of important people dating from 1800s. A group of artists set up their work there. Some of it was paintings of monsters, mythological creatures or freaks from a freakshow. Some neat collages. A lot of sculptures using either junk and found objects or baby doll parts and pieces of mannequins. Everything was equally weird, cool, eerie, and creepy. If it wasn't well lit, I might have been really scared. Then we took turns walking through this installation that an art student had created for her graduate project. She had been working on how to express theatre to people who cannot hear or see, and working with ways of experiencing art through different senses, while depriving others. So we were blindfolded and had headphones reciting poetry from Shakespeare's The Tempest while we walked through sand, stones, wind, flashing lights, and materials of varying textures to resemble a beach and a rainstorm, all the while following a rope, never losing it or letting it go, following it up and down and around, even when it was stuck to the wall, until we reached the other side. I felt strange afterwards, being able to see again but having my ears and sense of touch being so unusually aware. I dug it.

We grabbed lunch and continued on to Greenwich to watch a film of Rosemary Lee's "Common Dance," as part of the Dance Umbrella festival. The piece was performed last year at the Dance Umbrella in the same room in which we viewed the documentary. And Rosemary Lee was there to introduce the film and explain her piece. Fifty dancers were involved, ages 8 to 80, and many of them were with us in the audience watching the film.

Here is a clip about it, if you're interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfWEWwrGJqA

And I bought a ticket to a performance of a UK dance company for this Wednesday! I feel I've been without dance for too long now, so I'm excited to see a performance. And even more, I'm having the urges to get into a class and move again. hmmmmm. I had forgotten about that world until I recently saw a clip of a UDT piece my friends in minneapolis are working on now, and then this film I saw today. Why am I not dancing. i neeeeed itt.