Walking in Wet Silk

March 28, 2002

Much of this afternoon was taken up with walking around the city in wet silk. At noon, I taught one of my final dance classes for the term, so I dressed up in a costume for my students. I wore purple silk harem pants with slashed sides, a white silk skirt, a hot pink and gold silk hip scarf, and a purple, pink, and gold bedleh (bra and belt set). Unfortunately, it's really, really wet out, and although I held my skirt indecently high (good thing I was wearing pants!), I still ended up with slushy hems.

After the class, I developed the urge to research training/development grants for dancers, so I sloshed my way through puddles and slush drifts to the Arts bureau. Although they do supply dance grants, they do not cover martial arts, so I got to shloosh my way across town to a Sports office. Apparently, there may be some sort of travel grants available for karate training (but not for kung fu or t'ai chi chu'an, for some reason). I'll have to look into it some more. I then waded around town some more, and put an order in for a much-needed pair of dance shoes. Although my dance sandals are great in most scenarios, they are no good on a highly polished or slippery floor. I'm getting a pair of slip-on shoes with rubber soles. I may need them for the next Electrobash.

By the time I got home, my silks were sodden and slapping against the sides of my legs: thwacka thwacka thwacka.... I have one more last class to teach tonight (I teach three sections), and I was hoping to wear the same costume, but that might not be a comfortable option, now. I'll have to see how quickly silk dries when hanging up....

Getting back to Electrobash II, here's what happened last weekend in Saint John:

DJs Jenn and Jef arrived far too early in the morning for coherence and drove f00 and I off to Saint John, a port city and land of bad smells and Reversing Falls. They brought a couple of swords with them which I was theoretically going to dance with that evening. However, the swords are very sharp, and I wasn't comfortable dancing with weapons I've never even held before and which have questionable legality. Some day, I'll have my own dance swords. Some day....

We arrived in Saint John and checked out the venue. The Deep End is situated on the second floor of an old building in downtown Saint John. It's a great space, and is used as a generic arts centre, with music performances, visual art shows, and craft classes as basic events. Electrobash II was to be one of the last events held there, as the centre is closing for good soon.

The floor is very, very slippery. I put on my dance sandals, took a few tentative steps and spins, and decided that I'd rather risk dancing barefoot on a freshly swept floor than risk skidding out in my suede-bottomed sandals (yes, this was when I realized I need another pair of dance shoes). f00 and I then took off to explore Saint John.

Saint John seems to be quite a bit bigger and rather less picturesque than Fredericton. It has the typical port city look, with brightly-coloured square houses with peeling paint perched on cliffs and steep hills. There are also lots of big-ass ships in the harbour, and the stink of industry. In Saint John, the typical smells seem to be produced by a pulp mill. When I was a little girl and lived in Saint John, I had a yellow dog named Shep. When my family drove toward Saint John with the dog in the truck, the dog would always barf on the floor every time we drove into the city limits. The smell just has that effect on some critters. Fortunately, I neither barfed nor suffered an asthma attack.

f00 and I ate a very underwhelming meal at a downtown mall, then caught a bus out to McAllister Place. McAllister Place is a nice, big, Canadian-style shopping centre further uptown. It's situated in a dreary-looking area filled with nothing but other shopping centres and fastfood joints. Ironically enough (or not), it's located on Consumer Drive. I shit you not....

The trip to the mall was almost a total waste of time. I did get to do some good people-watching, though, while sitting down at a Tim Horton's and chuffing down a muffin and a cup of crappaccino. A very tall, very manly-looking woman with a poodle perm stood in line for coffee. She had a bandage on her neck in just the right spot to make her look like she'd been bitten by a vampire. Immediately in front of her stood a tiny man who looked like he'd been bitten on the forehead.

(That evening, during Electrobash II, Gary Flanagan performed a song called something like "McAllister Place Has Been Taken Over By Vampires." Hmmm....)

I reached across my table for something, and that's when I noticed my plastic butter knife was levitating in front of me. Normally, when something immediately strange like this happens, I'll say something like, "Ah! Ah! Magic!" This time, however, I could see that the knife was actually caught on my sweater, and only appeared to be levitating. That's when I said, "Ah! Ah! Science!" which almost made f00 splurt coffee through his nose.

It also amused the man sitting next to us. This man didn't look particularly noteworthy. He was just your typical 50-something balding man with a bit of a paunch. However, I did get to overhear some snippets of his conversation. He was talking about "pediophiles." Yes, that's how he said it. I overheard, "And now the chickens are coming home to roost. Being what they're asked to preach is damned near impossible.

The nondescript woman with him kept rubbing his face with a napkin. When he reached up to touch his face, she said, "Don't put your finger on it."

People are pretty fucking weird.

f00 and I got back on a bus and began the journey back downtown. At each stop, the bus was getting more and more overcrowded. I began to feel like I had somehow journeyed to a third world country. I almost expected to see someone with a couple of chickens and goats in the back, but it didn't happen. What did happen was this: the bus was so crowded and heavy, that every time the bus went over a bump, the shocks bottomed out and the bus made a terrible crashing sound. This sound was punctuated by screaming women. We'd hit a bump, hear a crash, a chorus of shrieks, and then a cascade of giggles as everyone laughed at the screamers. But then something even weirder happened--we went around a turn and the emergency pop-out window popped out. The bus driver had to stop the bus and put the window back in place. I'm glad no one was leaning on the window during the turn.

Somehow, we made it back to the Deep End in one piece. I attempted to get some much-needed rest in before the performance, but it was all for naught. While I laid back on the floor on top of a few jackets, the sound system was being tested, and Rod (from Drums & Machines) was warming up on his drum kit. With earbud headphones wedged firmly in place, I tried listening to the music I'd be performing to that night. I could only vaguely make out the melody. What I could hear was utter cacophony. I could also feel the thrud of the bass drum rumbling through the floor and into my body. I did some Pranayama yogic breathing (very soothing stuff), and somehow managed to tune most of the distractions out.

It was now time to get into costume.

There was only one washroom at the venue, so more than a few surprised-looking men roamed in while I was putting my makeup on in the mirror. I've come to the realization that approximately 50% of men spit in the toilet before unzipping and doing the piss thang. Why is this? I dunno. I don't feel compelled to spit wherever I'm going to pee. Do you?

The costume I ended up wearing was this: silver crop top with cutout back, silver spandex pants, and crazy, braided hair. I had a spider head, with eight tentacle braids. I needed to put my hair up, because I'd be performing a candle dance at the finale, and my hair is now long enough that had I left it down, I might have ended up doing the Michael Jackson flaming head dance. You see, my hair is all the way down to my pelvic bones, now. It won't be too long before I'll be sitting on it, but I digress....

I didn't see much of the first acts because I was in the bathroom tarting up. I was putting on my face, as well as my clothes. When I do full stage makeup, it usually takes me about thirty minutes. Because I had to share the one working sink and only mirror, it probably took me a full hour to get ready. That's a lot of makeup! I go from the zit-faced, vaguely-foreign-looking girl to a freaky diva with a flawless complexion. I had some serious Egyptian eye makeup going on, with dramatic silver and copper metallic eye shadow, contoured blush, and blood-red lips. I also had to take a fair amount of time to hide my karate bruises. My forearms often make me look like a battered wife, so I have to lay on the coverup so that people don't get distracted from the performance by conjecturing how I got so beat up. Then I tied a black scarf around my hair and threw on a giant black caftan with multi-coloured stripes, and made my way out to the show. Apparently, I looked like a nun on crack.

The performance was gruelling. Rod did a great job on the drums, and I danced solo for thirty minutes out of a thirty-three minute set. The first dance was slow and performed in the caftan, then I rushed backstage for a sudden costume change. I ripped off the caftan and scarf, and showed off my tentacle head. I had my circular silver veil wrapped around me, black side up, and danced around with a coy, flirty attitude. The song was about a coquette, after all. Then the veil came off for lots of fluid fabric movements.

I was pacing myself pretty well at this point, because I knew the high-energy pieces were yet to come. When the veil dance ended, a reggae-influenced song came on, and I went into martial arts mode. My movements became much more militant, with lots of kicks, blocks, spins, and punches. I also threw in some tumbling manoeuvres, which got a few gasps out of the audience. I think they thought I was about to break my neck. Danger is always a crowd-pleaser.

The next, and most difficult, song was "Sugar." Basically, I performed to this song with the image of a heroin user overdosing in mind. It started off slowly, then gradually built in intensity. I went from soft, fluid movements to Zaar-influenced head tossing to what essentially looked like a grand mal seizure on the floor. Every muscle in my body was tensed and clenched here, and I'm still sore in my shoulders.

This is where I finally got my break, and I went backstage and guzzled a bottle and a half of Powerade while furiously dabbing the sweat out of my eyes. "Sugar" left me the most sweat-drenched I've been in about five years. My eyes were filled with fiery, stinging perspiration. It hurt like hell, and I was partially blinded in my left eye from the pain. All too soon, the break was over. I tied the black scarf around my hips and rushed out to do a spirited shimmy routine before ending with the candle dance.

As soon as I was through, I rushed off to the washroom and clawed my sweat-filled eyes out. Well, not exactly, but I sure wanted to. I drenched them with saline, then removed my contact lenses. My makeup held up well throughout the performance, but the saline did it in. I now looked like Tammy Faye Bakker on a crying jag. Despite the lack of paper towel and cold water (I only had scorching hot water and linty, cheap toilet paper), I was able to wash the scary makeup off and my arm bruises back on.

By the time I got home, it was after two in the morning, and I had a karate belt testing coming up later that morning. I think the only reason I did so well with my kata was because I was still in performance mode. I guess I'll have to remember to perform the night before again when I go for my green belt.

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Onward to Look What the Kids Drug to School....