a weekend in nyc

5 performances in three days. Last weekend was the latest installment of Sxip's Hour of Charm at Joe's Pub with many stand out performances and the thrilling contortion butoh of Johnathan Nosan. Who pretty much freaked the whole audience out by completely bending his body into unreal shapes all the while keeping himself from bursting into laughter or tears. You couldn't tell and the effect was very exhilarating and disturbing.

But this last weekend I find myself with the Luminescent Orchestrii one hour north of NYC, with the traffic it took two hours, sweating in the heat of a grade school auditorium. 30 children are dressed as mermaids, sea monsters and fisherman doing a play about a mermaid and her human husband, their multitude of children, a lost tail, and here we are playing the music, making sound effects and ending the whole event with "Neptune's Daughter" one of our current "hits" and the reason partially we got the gig. That was a rehearsal on Friday and two shows on Sunday.

On Saturday I trudged up to 28th street and 6th to watch the rehearsal of of a modern dance piece by Heidi Latsky featuring a Lawrence Carter-Long who is disabled and walks with difficulty but runs easier than we walks. The piece is tricky because you don't want it to be overly sentimental, it need to convey the strength and individual nature of the performer and not "Oh look at the crippled guy". It's been interesting and in order to ready myself Heidi introduced me to a piece of music I now love Gavin Bryars's The Sinking of the Titanic. Wonderful, smart, deep and wonderful.

Then I am at NYC's last regular and expansive underground party RUBULAD. The place has never looked better, art hangs everywhere, hanging from the ceilings like origami vines...actually some of it may have been origami vines. Ververitsi a new Balkan brass band plays and they are just lovely. Then Adam Matta and I hit the stage and proceed to do the best dance set of my life. For those of you who don't know, Adam Matta is an incredible human beat box that I love playing with. We did a deep house number with me playing double harmonicas through bull horns and Adam just laid it down hard. People loved it..and THEN after wandering about the party for a bit. WHY ARE WE BUILDING SUCH A BIG SHIP? hit the stage. my god I love this band. From New Orleans. Accordion, a ton of horns, stand up bass and back up singers, great song writing. orchestral, punk and New Orleans all at the same time. fun fun fun. good good good good. find these folks on myspace. Go find them playing you will be so happy.

I also performed twice in a puppet show the Saint Annes Warehouse with my friend and one of my favorite puppeteers Erin Orr working on a puppet show that she and Rima Fand, friend and band member have been working on. The show is based on the poetry of Spanish poet Lorca, which Rima is rather obsessed with. The show is wonderful, the music is divine, really. I am making the sound effects, when Don Cristaballs heart gets shoved back into his chest I make a sound that sounds like bone being drilled by a bit with an actual drill grinding into a plastic bottle. We all go to eat afterwards at Superfine under the bridge. So that is NYC in a weekend. 5 performances (two at the school, two at saint annes, one at rubulad) and two rehearsals.