So What?

My "authorial genealogies" never cease popping up. Wanted to share this postcard and image (both have been added to my 'inspiring images' folder) from an article published in the Observer today, 'Angela Carter: A portrait in postcards', available here. I've been glued to Bram Stokers Dracula, after which I'll be revisiting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, then I'll be picking up Carter's Heroes and Villains. Dracula has almost got my full attention but usually I like to read several books at once, those currently including: S. Reed Brett: Modern Europe 1789-1914 and After, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English: Witches, midwives, and nurses: A history of women healers, The World's Most Notourious Women (collection of short biographies) and Living Food for Health by Gillian McKeith (more studying than reading). I'm scouring second-hand book stores for good finds and wanted materials - on the look out for a good muscular anatomy reference book too. Many more on the list so... not writing much, but certainly reading much and it suits me fine.  

Fidget Feet

Some images of Lee Claydon and Chantal McCormick of Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Company performing 'Hang On' in Merrion Square, Dublin.

I saw 'Hang On' for the fifth time on Friday evening in An Grianán Theatre, Letterkenny as part of the Irish Aerial Dance Festival, which Fidget Feet organise every year for the past three years. The piece gets more exciting and intense every time I see it. The score is entirely composed and played live by Jym Daly, the other part of the Fidget Feet company and who took this wonderful shot of me during an impromptu photoshoot. I do believe he took the images I have included here.

I was also very thrilled to see Fidget Feet's new production, 'Catch Me', a take on Little Red Riding Hood - one of my favourites! It's a very sexy, clever, funny and visceral interpretation and performance, with serious aerial doubles-skills on display. Human hybrids fascinate me, so I particularly enjoyed the robust wolf man played by Lee Claydon. Jym Daly wrote and directed this piece and composed the music too and it's an interesting take on the tale. My favourite version Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves" featured in 'The Bloody Chamber' book of short stories where Little Red Riding Hood seduces the wolf after he's eaten her Granny.

In 'Catch Me', Red Riding Hood is much more vulnerable, mesmerized and eventually raped by the wolf. The transvestism of the original tale is also reinvented, with familiar consequences. No powerful trannys in this production I'm afraid! The tranny wolf is both subhuman (quite literally, being a wolf man), mentally ill and a menace to society. There's no woodsman however; Red comes up trumps and perhaps emerges wiser in the aftermath. Exciting, visually excellent, fun, spectacular. Definitely one to see.

BEASTS

The Company of Wolves (that year again!: 1984) film still:

Sychronicity in Berlin: Two Books

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