Stilts Denmark: The Big Show

The Big Field - pre 30,000 scouts

The culmination of our week was the pre-show show for 30,000 international scouts in a very large field on the outskirts of Holstebro; not far, as the crow flies, from OdinTeatret. We could hear the sound-check wafting across the flat Danish countryside every morning. The closer neighbors must have been livid.

Front of Stage, waiting for orders.

I admit that my interest in the project, apart from the stilts, was that it seemed rather outside the usual venue for the theatre and I was curious to see how it would be handled: a huge crowd with the trappings of commercial and military overtones  (TV cameras and the rigid scout structure).   Indeed, the project was frequently referred to as "my nightmare" by those in the know. We came to expect each rehearsal to start with a sigh, a roll of the eyes, and the words, "There's been a change". From the performers side, however, we generally felt good hanging out with cool, talented people, and we were used to challenges (we were, after all, stiltwalkers) so, okay, whatever. 
  

The Stick Figures at the top of the hill.

The stilters with the toughest job were the five "stick figures", so named because of five 15' flexible tubes strapped around their bodies. It took about an hour to dress them up and strap them in, after which it was nearly impossible for them to sit anywhere. They were positioned to appear on top of the only hill in all of Holstebro, from which they descended and walked the length of two football fields to the front of the stage where the rest of us were going through various bits and routines. 

Jay and Helen of Carpetbag Brigade. 
The odd rings were played with in
rehearsals, but not used in peformance.

I was pared with Helen A of England, who came along with a Victorian style costume. It was the general consensus of the group that my costume blended best with hers, particularly if you squinted your eyes to the point of closing them. 

We got to mix it up with Jay and Helen G of Carpetbag Brigade, creating a rather absurd-comic-drama that had three parts: me and Jay dancing a tango and generally harassing the audience, me and Helen G in a mad scientist power-struggle with electric hand jive and bondage, and me and Helen A with a proper circumspect adagio (I don't know what Jay and Helen A were up to while me and Helen G were zapping each other). Center in-front-of-stage were the four members of the Colombian group Nemcatacoa Teatro who pretzelled themselves into amazing tableaus and feats of counter-balance. In addition to our antics, Deborah Hunt's masks and giant puppeteers danced in the aisles while the Jasonites underscored the visuals with rousing song and percussion. 

Maskers and Giants created in Deborah Hunt's workshop.

The evening was cold and moist with the threat of rain, an uneven surface underfoot and the insane din of commercial television production all around us, with images projected on two large rock-concert screens left and right.  Our hard working directors were incensed that there were almost no projections of our work on the screens, nor thanks or acknowledgment of our work coming from the MC's on stage. Instead, advertisements were broadcast and camera shots of the crowd prevailed, prompting spontaneous "woo-hoo"'s whenever the scouts saw themselves. It was a performance for our times: live, passionate, community inspired artists vs. the cold modern technology of mass media. 

The Scouts arrive - pretty orderly, actually. 

We engaged and delighted the audience members who caught our acts without distraction; the battle was not lost, though we were out-gunned. I felt a little like the fly vs. the cannon; they may make the louder noise, but HA, they can't maneuver fast enough to kill us. We live to fight again.

Much love and many thanks to our fearless leaders, Julia, Tage, Donald and Deborah, the music of the Jasonites, the Odin staff, the puppeteers and maskers, and especially to my compatriots on the stilts. This was fun. I'd be happy to share the studio and the field with you all again anytime.
Michael

Stilts Day 6 - The Holstebro Pageant

First, a bit of history.   From what I've been told, Odin Theatre's amazing international performing arts center was founded via a letter from a nurse who saw their work in Copenhagen. Duly impressed by their performance, she wrote to her hometown mayor in Holstebro, suggesting that if he invited the company to relocate to their fine but sleepy town, it might boost tourism. Despite the fact that he never heard of the group (and rarely came to see their future shows) the mayor, a dedicated supporter of the arts, readily agreed and the rest, as they say, is History. When the nurse passed away some years ago, many of the beloved characters of Odin's productions accompanied her funeral procession.

Holstebro - empty, as usual.

I don't know anything about the ultimate economic impact of the theatre to Hostebro, a town of about 25,000 people. Where those people are, I have no idea. There are plenty of tidy houses around, and the businesses and shops are staffed with clerks. But in my few forays into the town's business sections I've been surprised by how empty the streets are. 

We were scheduled to perform a street pageant on Friday -- but for who?

 

But never fear, for if you beat a drum and flash some color, people will show up, and they did:


Pre-Pageant Assembly - Helen (on stilts) and Maskers




Street action and the gathering crowds.

The Colombian group Nemcatacoa Teatro on the church steps.

Stilts in Denmark, Days 4 and 5

My quip a few days ago about feeling great and in top form has come back to bite me as I now have a head cold and have lost my voice. But one of the kitchen saints has taken pity and supplied me with lemon and ginger for tea, and another has promised to bring me schnapps from home. Having already suspected my lack of essential vitamins may be playing a part in this malady, I stopped at the grocery store today to purchase some beer and chocolate to supplement the otherwise excellent meals.

My Danish Doctor administers an ancient
and effective cure for sore throats.

Work continues to develop, slowly and in fits and starts. in addition the big performance on Sunday there is a pageant to be done on the walk streets of Holstebro on Friday afternoon: we take city hall at noon. There are some 55 actors to coordinate, performing songs, dances, stilting and manipulating six giant paper mache animal totems. During these days we have achieved two full company walk-throughs in the spacious Red Studio, as well as outside in the nearby field. Typical of such events, a lot of material is worked on (costumes, props, acts) that ends up modified, rearranged and finally cut as the space and time restraints become more obvious. There has also been some injury to knees and backs that adds a level of anxiety. Still, I'm impressed by the work of the performers and directors and designers - this gig is not an easy assignment given the scale and unknowns - but I do feel it is coming together.

Though there hasn't been as much opportunity to exchange techniques and develop ideas among the stilters within the studio structure, it has been a boon just to see the work the others have brought and talk shop at meals. I had forgotten all the cool counterbalance moves that can be done, lifts and turns, tricks for getting up and down, techniques forgotten but still within reach.

It is also a joy to see the work demonstrations of Odin's Julia Varley, presented over the last nights; it is for me a reminder of the explorations of voice and physical gesture that informs their work and set us on our own course many years ago. She ended the voice demonstration with an improvisation that was a masterpiece painted with the colors of Bach, Coltrain, and Amazon Rainforest.

Pageant tomorrow. More to come. 

Ensemble assembled to get the marching orders for the Holstebro Pageant.

The Plan of attack.

Day 3 - Stilts in Denmark

Day Three of Stilts in Denmark

Since I only just arrived on day one this is really the second work day, and somehow (and this frequently seems to be the case) the end of the second workday feels like the end of the first work week, in that I've gotten to know some people, where I sleep, where the food is and the schedule to a practical degree. Suddenly all that was strange is now familiar: foreign tongues, eccentric behaviors, joyous sounds, giant puppets and wild stilt dancers. In other words, my favorite day at the office.

Of course, there are still great questions related to the performance on Sunday, which, to remind you, is for an international gathering of a whole lot of boy / girl scouts and their families (like, 50,000). We are the pre-show entertainment, a performance that was supposed to be two hours, then one hour, now 45 minutes long. Could be fifteen minutes by the end of the week; I'm guessing it's a big difficult negotiation with the scout committee. The actual big stage show is, I'm told, by famous comedians and rock stars. At the end of our big stilt-giant-puppet-wild-music pageant the stilters are supposed to hold up big letters that spell out W-E-L-C-O-M-E T-O H-O-L-S-T-E-B-R-O. We got the letters today. They are actually too big - they will completely hide the the stilters (and block our vision) and are guaranteed to act as dangerous billowing sails in the wind. And we're missing a "T" and an "L". Which is not too bad, because we actually don't have enough stilters anyway. Fortunately, I'm not in the decision making loop, just the talent loop, and everyone is game and open and ready to improvise.

As everyone is rehearsing with amazing agility and passion, the post-rehearsal studio floor was somewhat carpeted with stilters getting backs adjusted, limbs aligned and muscles massaged. To my egotistical delight, I myself feel great and in top shape despite being one of (if not the) oldest of participants. Of course, I'm also not doing any of the acrobatics and controlled falls my compatriots are doing, so I can't gloat too much.

Onward and upward.

Stilters - some up, some down

Rehearsing with cool costume elements (not me, though)

Stilting in Denmark - Day 2

Got a good amount of sleep last night - timed it well to actually be jet-lag tired at bedtime, so I woke up this morning pretty alert. Stepping back a second, on my arrival last night and after dropping bags in the room I went around and tried to get my positioning in the labyrinth which is the space here -- there are three (or four?) rehearsal studios and a video room and a resource room and scene shops and lots of offices all scattered around a number of building all connected by long hallways. As I walked about I met most of the stilters, a few of whom i know: Jay from Carpetbag Brigade and Nicholas Sinfuentes who stilted with us in two Halloween Parades; some new friends like Mike and Zita know of us through our dear friend Meghan Frank as they all were just at Del'Arte in CA.

9 am, following breakfast, we started off with an Odin based training session led by Tage, a long time company member (one of the founding members I believe, over 40 yrs ago). The word "training" is used here in the athletic sense, as in training a boxer; a lot of physical movement. We are not being 'taught" something per se, but the focus is on new discoveries, trying to come up with surprising and new physical ways of doing things. The exercise, which kept us running for like 45 minutes, is the kind of thing I've done for years and the rules are very simple... move around the room, jump, fall to the ground, freeze in various statue-like positions. The object is to surprise each other and imitate exactly what each other is doing. But it's really hard to do; you (well, I) tend use the same "usual" tempos and gestures. It's actually quite difficult to surprise yourself.

One great thing about it is you reeeeeaaally get to learn a lot about the strangers in the room. As I said, I went around last night and met people, but there is only so much you can learn about a person in conversation. You can learn names, home towns, likes and mutual friends, but you rarely learn who the ARE. Running around in one of these exercises, and you can immediately assess your neighbors - who is fluid, who looks you in the eye (or avoids contact), who steps with levity, conviction, who is creative, who reserved? Everyone's personalities are starkly apparent.

Among the stilters there are several Italians, Colombians, Canadians and USofA's - 16 of us in all. Following the training we put on stilts and strutted about and showed each other whatever we had to show. Some, like the Colombians - Nemcataco a Teatro - and Carpetbag Brigade had some very cool acro-choreography worked out. Others without routines did improvised movements and character studies. I showed off some staff and flag manipulation. Following lunch Tage and Donald (another Odin member) introduced us to various new "toys" they were building, great long lengths of PVC pipe attached to the body or bent into various size hoops. Between the considerable bouts of rain (when it would get magnificently sunny) we went out to a nearby field to play around, tossing the stuff about to see what we could do with them. Not everything was brilliant, but it was a great deal of fun.

I'll try to get some photos over the next few days. I have no idea what the performance on Sunday will look like (the details of that seem to change daily) but the process will be educational and entertaining, and new friends will be made.

More to come, watch this space.

Stilts in Denmark: Part 1

                                                         The Prince of Row 43

Hey Kids!

I'm heading off to Denmark to attend a week long "stilt council" at the Odin Theatre in Holstobro. As I happen to be a professional stilt walker, my interest was piqued by the email I received several months ago. The work of Odin Theatre has greatly inspired our work at Bond Street Theatre, and as I always wanted to spend some time at their fabulous performing arts complex, I figured the experience will be well worth the travel costs.

       
Despite being a professional, I'm not exactly sure what a "stilt council" is supposed to be. What I understand from the email correspondence: for the price of an airline ticket to Copenhagen and a four hour train ride to Holstobro, I will be treated with room and board and the opportunity to rehearse and perform with other like minded stilters in a single outdoor pageant performance. The audience will be thirty to fifty thousand "European scouts" and their families. Boy scouts? Girls Scouts? Co-ed? The email is not specific. It does say we will be rehearsing routines that"should consist of opposing moments of Butho, like slow motion and moments of short explosive behavior and things in between." The email continued:

"We believe our show will consist of about 2 hours, in a big open field, the size of a football field, using 5 corridors (wide enough to let an ambulance pass through). Each corridor will be bordered with ropes and balloons attached. Our presence should end with a small scene in front of the main stage... We will have to improvise and adapt to the unforeseen circumstances."

Oh. Okay. Cool.

In the month previous to my arrival another workshop has been underway at Odin, Crossing 2, lead  by Deborah Hunt in giant puppetry and  mask making, and The Jasonites leading music and dance.  The fruits of their labors will be the centerpiece of the performance (I gather). Additionally, "there will be The European Caravan in the far end with tractors and a horse."

I am happy to participate because about a zillion years ago in the early days of my involvement with Bond Street Theater, Swedish director Ingeman Lindh showed us a film called "The Two Banks of the River", about the adventures of the young Odin Theatre in South America. With eccentric characters, detailed choreography and open air rehearsals the European ensemble challenged cultural norms, dodged the military junta, and delighted the locals with a variety of highly physical performances.

It blew our minds. From that moment forward, the idea of traveling the world and mixing it up with international artists and audiences became the goal. Oh, and one of the coolest tools in Odin's performative arsenal? Stilts!

So thats the background. So far the best part of the trip is that I am the only passenger to command an entire four-seat row on the night flight over the Atlantic, so I should sleep relatively well. The worst part is that I am without my love and regular traveling companion Joanna, who remains behind in NYC handling the details of our upcoming Afghanistan projects. As she recently had her own personal Odin week, there was less incentive on her part for this adventure. Still, I would happily give up three of my four seats for her presence.

More to come.