Yesterday was weird. After having taken that damned Claritin yesterday morning, all I wanted to do was go back to bed. I had trouble standing up because I would feel dizzy for the first five minutes or so. And goddamn it, my nose was still running a bit! I mean, less than before but still. If I’m going to feel that crappy I should at least be free of snot, right? God.
Also, on top of all of that I managed to do something the day before that made my legs hurt. It was painful going up and down stairs because the front of my thighs ached. I blame the Pompidou Center, although I would have to be extremely out of shape if walking around a freakin’ museum for a couple of hours was really going to cause my to have leg pain the next day. And I’m not all that out of shape all things considered.
So yeah. Between the legs muscle rebellion and the allergy/drug head all I wanted to do was nap. But I couldn’t because ‘les was giving a concert that night and she needed help with the last minute rushing around stuff. Wine and juice needed to be bought, programs copied and folded, ect. So I spend the afternoon running errands and trying to be helpful.
Being helpful also meant that I would need to carry stuff over to the performance space. This involved biking with a speaker on my back luggage rack, carrying a couple of bottles of wine and a few liters of juice in my bag, and carrying a mic stand strapped to the outside of my bag. ‘Les was carrying her mixing board, a speaker, all her wires, and her laptop on her bike. It’s amazing what all you can carry on a bike.
I have to tell you guys something – mic stands are surprisingly heavy.
The performance space was only about a mile away, but it was uphill and involved biking on a few fairly busy streets. I am rethinking my non-SF biking stance after this. I figure if I can make it up hills carrying mic stands and liters of wine in Paris traffic, I can probably manage in SF.
Did I mention that mic stands are heavy? Because they are.
‘les and Solène, the recorder player she was giving the concert with, were supposed to meet at around 5pm to set up and do a sound check. The day before they had gotten word that there was some kind of foul up involving the space being double booked and it was totally up in the air as to whether or not they were even going to be able to give the concert at all. The night before they had made a vague-at-best backup plan involving talking to other people who had rooms in the same building rented to see if they could just move the concert somewhere else. Apparently this is a totally reasonable workaround. Who knew?
So yeah. We were in the room that they thought they had rented, barely starting to set up when the landlord came storming in, yelling at them about how they couldn’t have the concert and they needed to leave RIGHT NOW. ‘Les had put up a flyer for the concert outside and dude came in with it balled up in a wad and tossed it at them. Good times.
There was a lot of back and forth wherein ‘les and Solène tried to compromise with the owner. When’s the other group coming? Could they maybe do the concert after they were done with the space? Could they play just part of it? Was there another free room that could be used? Nope. Not happening.
We gathered up our stuff and walked out into the hallway.
Now, at this point another space wasn’t secured so it wasn’t clear if the concert was going to happen at all. But luckily, there was a space upstairs being used by a group of dancers that night, a few of whom Solène knew. She went upstairs and asked them if they could preform while they danced. The dancers agreed.
Ok. People, this has to be one of the most amazing and random performances I have personally ever witnessed. The concert was already going to be a little weird. Solène plays recorder, she has a degree in renaissance music and was going to play a piece by Bach. ‘Les was going to be playing a few of her laptop pieces. And then they were going to do a few improv pieces with laptop and recorder. Now add to that modern dancers.
No, no. Just go ahead and think about all of that. I’ll wait.
…
Done? Ok.
It.was.awesome.
‘les and Solène have been working on music for this show for a month solid. I heard early versions of what they were doing and watched as they got used to playing with each other and listened to different versions of the software that ‘les was programming in order to do improvisation. I thought it came together well. Solène would play a bit and ‘les would record it, process it (sped it up, slow it down, ect.) and play it back. She threw in gong sounds and at one point, a sample of one of her friends giggling. I thought it sounded nice.
The dancers were having a Contact Improvisation “Jam”. Contact Improv seems to mostly involve dancers running around bouncing on each other and then doing other stuff and pounding again. But, you know, in a modern dance way.
Because the dancing is unusual and improvised, it actually worked pretty well with the music that was being played. The dancers were clearly having a lot of fun.
All in all it was a good night even with me being spaced out and dizzy and all the drama with the room.
