Padma Bilawal -- the blog

The Gentle Reader is gently directed to a newly-hatched blog, wherein I'll focus on Padma Bilawal (about which film, one post has appeared on the present blog, below; whereas future elaborations will appear in the film blog) -- to wit:
Padma Bilawal -- a film blog

At the moment, I've only put up text there. But in future I'll post still images, plus (still later) links to video clips.

And I'll report on screenings / responses / relevant ruminations / whatnot.

d.i.
in Bhopal

ghazal ("Courage")

Every hawker sells   a different kind of courage
every street compells   a different kind of courage

if you voyage east   is it true you'll reach the west?
in the ocean swells   a different kind of courage

when you leave the nest   will the sky become your mother?
apprehension gells   a different kind of courage

it's distressing   to proceed without perception
yet each glimpse propells   a different kind of courage

every temple bell   desires to sound your secret
every breath expells   a different kind of courage

every house is built in hope   every lie's in earnest
every woodsman fells   a different kind of courage

in the marketplace   did you coax a hundred smiles?
every tear impells   a different kind of courage

all the colors strive to paint   the true condition
every inkling spells   a different kind of courage

honkikng horns resemble birdcry   in the city
urban fortune tells   a different kind of courage

must the seeker wander blind   without direction
till compassion quells   a different kind of courage?

many visions prove confusing   to the dreamer
only dawn dispells   a different kind of courage

did Ardeo run to greet you   in the morning?
now his evening knells   a different kind of courage



(written 23 June 2007, in Bangalore; begun with jottings in a 3-wheeler departing the Jayanagar market)

PADMA BILAWAL -- "debut preview" screening

Happy to post this announcement of an event planned for tomorrow evening.

cheers,
d.i.



"PADMA BILAWAL -- a dhrupad master class" (85 minutes), a digital cinema innovation by David Raphael Israel, will receive its world debut "preview (work-still-in-progress) screening" at Bangalore's Suchitra Film Society on the evening of Monday, 25 June 2007 (6:45 PM). All are welcome.

Shot at Dhrupad Sansthan -- a music institute established by the Gundecha Brothers in the countryside near Bhopal -- this film focuses on a single session of Indian classical-music improvisation: an extended musical colloquy between Amita Sinha (an advanced student of dhrupad-style vocal music) and her teacher, Ramakant Gundecha. The vocalists exchange notes and phrases of a mellifluous morning raga, Alhaiya Bilawal. The filmmaker gradually adds many complex layers of visual commentary, in the form of exterior footage derived from another Bhopal location: the lotus-rife lake adjacent Professors' Colony (where the Gundeacha family make their home). There exists no such raga as "Padma Bilawal" -- unless one may allow that this film, through an audio-visual synthesis, manages to achieve this new thing.

In recent years, David Raphael Israel has investigated innovative video-editing techniques (through his 60-second "digital haiku" pieces as well as larger presentations of dance and theatre on camera) -- methods here deployed so as to create a visual language imaginatively corresponding with the highly nuanced musical language under study in this session of alap-jodh-jhala.

Born in California in 1956, Mr. Israel recently settled in Bhopal, where he studies music with the Gundecha Brothers. He soon began a video documentation project focusing on their teaching methods -- work that finds Padma Bilawal as a first public fruit.

In addition to work in experimental cinema, he is also noted as a poet and painter -- arts that (with music) he views as mutually illuminating. He studied classical Chinese poetry at UC Berkeley, and worked as a writer and editor for the late EAR Magazine (New York City). His paintings have been seen in Washington, DC and Santa Barbara, California.

ghazal impromptu

happiness comes to me   with the rain in Bangalore
tandava drums to me   with the rain in Bangalore

I arrived   intending to leave in a few days' time
juggle the sums for me   with the rain in Bangalore

I smoke a 2-rupee cheroot   in a 3-wheel auto
maya soft-numbs to me   with the rain in Bangalore

perchance my film   will at last emerge from gestation?
polish wry plums for me   with the rain in Bangalore

Ardeo went south amid summer   and toured Byramangala
handful of chums to me   with the rain in Bangalore

21 June postscript:
. . . and special happiness that (the morning after having dashed off the above poem in a little 15-rupee-per-hour upstairs internet cafe, a block from where I'm staying now in the Maleshwaram neighborhood), my little always-should-be-with-me pocket notebook (including train tickets) was still present & accounted for . . . I having absent-mindedly left said item after having typed out (here) the initial 3-4 lines from said volume. Jai sri raam . . .

notes:
tandava is the drum of Siva, or perhaps it's the name of what he plays on that drum; (scholars can sort this out) :-)

2-rupee cheroot: it's not easy to find a cigar in Bangalore. After many cigarless days, I opted for a Ganesh beedee. Another morning, I dutifully asked a shopkeeper if he had any cigars. No, he allowed. But his quiet assistant quietly handed him a long-lost-from-memory jar of ancient, folkstyle cigars (hence, "cheroot"), which he offered me for the noted reasonable price (equal to $0.12).

3-wheel auto: the ubiquitous mode of affordable taxi in India, in some regions called "auto" in others called "riksha" in yet others called "auto riksha". Akin to Bangkok's slightly more stylish tuk tuk. The auto riksha is a motoscooter with cabin, and can comfortably seat 2 or 3 (plus driver in front).

Lee Nagrin's obit (NY Times) / Padma Bilawal (in prog)

-- suitably enough, written by the longtime dance critic.

June 12, 2007

Lee Nagrin, 78, Innovator in Performance Art, Dies

By JENNIFER DUNNING

Lee Nagrin, a noted Off Broadway performance artist, director and member of Meredith Monk’s theater company, The House, died Thursday in Manhattan. She was 78.

The cause was colon cancer, said Barbara Busackino, a colleague.

Ms. Nagrin performed with Ms. Monk from 1971 to 1981, appearing in “Vessel,” “Education of a Girl Child,” “Quarry,” “Ellis Island” and other works.

She formed her own company, the Sky Fish Ensemble, in 1979 and presented performance-art pieces that tended to unspool like fairy tales, filled with mysterious, archetypal imagery. Her own presence was mysterious, too, both on and off the stage, often conjuring up the sense of a keen-eyed, all-seeing, benign witch.

She created some of those images midperformance, as when she traced a landscape along brown paper that ringed the stage space of Silver Whale Gallery, where much of her work was performed.

For her last piece, “Behind the Lid,” she collaborated with the puppeteer Basil Twist on a story in which a woman looks back on her life through a dream. Performances are this month at the Silver Whale.

Ms. Nagrin grew up in Seattle, where she worked with the Seattle Repertory Playhouse. She moved to New York in 1950 and produced, directed or performed in 10 Off Broadway production over the next 13 years, including work by Eugene Ionesco, then little known in the United States. She trained with Kathleen Lawler, a Metropolitan Opera voice coach, and developed a style influenced by the vocal work of Alfred Wolfsohn. In 1958 she was offered a four-year studio contract by Paramount after appearing in the cult film “The Blob.”

Ms. Nagrin also collaborated with the performance artist Margaret Beals and had long associations with La MaMa and the Women’s Interart Center. Her “Bird/Bear” (1986) won an Obie Award for best new American play.

Ms. Nagrin’s survivors include her companion, Bruce Hutchinson.

blogo-cross-ref:
see my item remembering Lee Nagrin



(photo of Lee Nagrin, via the Listen to Women blog)

==============

And (following my own tradition), here's posting an email I sent just now to a friend (Janet Fine) elaborating on some current activities.

Thanks for pointing to the NYTimes obit for Lee. I'm very glad she was able to do and wrap up so much in her last couple years. I think she was satisfied by that, and must have been happy that her final theatre piece went into performance.

Lee is one of the first people I met in New York -- I went to a dinner-party for Thanksgiving at her place on Bleeker Street (1987). I think I met you in 1990, -- first we spoke on the street, when you (and some companions) were asking the way to the theatre (Symphony Space, or somewhere else?) where Salamat Ali was going to be performing. I sat on the stage -- and some days later, via Emily Mayne, I invited you to a dinner-party at my MacDougal Street apartment. Or that's how I recall it. I believe I also had Lee at one of my dinner parties -- not sure it was the same one you were at, possibly. I gave a few such dinners (maybe 3 or 4) in those days.

I'm still in Bangalore -- making good progress with editing a film. Its title now is this: "PADMA BILAWAL -- a dhrupad master class" I interfuse footage from two sources: a Hindustani vocal teaching session (mainly alap -- also jodh & jjhala) involving a long "musical conversation" between a talented student (Amita Sinha) and her dhrupadiya guru Ramakant Gundecha, plus footage shot early in the morning on the lotus-rife lake, beside Professors' Colony in Bhopal. The way I've done this, the lotus images serve as a form of visual interpretation to the musical notes and phrases . . . in a manner that develops as the work unfolds. Am happy with how the edit is going, inshallah will be finished (and Fedexed, albeit late, to Yamagata) this weekend. I'm today couriering a CD with a couple minutes of Hindi dialogue to my Hindi-language guru in Bhopal (Sangeeta Gundecha) with request for translation. The film is 98% no words (all music), but I think I'll go ahead and offer subtitles for the few parts where words do intrude.

There exists no such raag as Padma Bilawal. The raag they are elaborating is, rather, Alhaiya Bilawal. The "Padma" [lotus] part is visual. But by my theory, the film serves to create "a new raag" as an audiovisual experience (interfusing the visual padma with the audio alhaiya bilawal). Kindly wish me luck with completion of this -- which may be my "first serious, feature-length film" (other than the At The Hawk's Well that you've seen -- which in some respects was not perhaps so well-finished a work as this may prove to be). The music is exquisite, and the footage of the morning-blooming flowers in May dawn light -- thanks to the expert navigation skills of a local boatman (who slowly glided the rowboat amid the lilypads and lotuses for an hour of shooting) -- is likewise exquisite. The fusion of the two is done in a range of ways that I've developed over the years (mainly involving so-called alpha channels -- with partial transparency in one scene, with another scene bleeding through and blending in . . . ) Once this is finished, I have in mind to send it to a good handful of international festivals. This curator chap in Bangalore, Akumal Ramachander, also said he wants to arrange a screening for me in Calcutta, so his group of painters can see it. But first things first . . . I was so lucky that the project survived a harddrive crash. I had get a new computer built, to complete the editing -- also got a nice high-def monitor. And my frirends' house, here in the south, has proven a haven for this phase of work.

Went yesterday to a noted local Hanuman temple -- his image carved out of black stone that seems to be in its original place; the stone is then "clothed" with metal-work for crown and raiment. An arresting sculpture. It was under lock & key till 6 PM, then they open it up for view, and one hears recorded "Aum"ing to complete the audiovisual darshan.

I think not so far from this temple is another where Nandi (the bull) is said to have done his austerities! -- in mythic antiquity. This is a famous temple (found in tourist info); but I was more drawn to see Hanumanji.

Now better get back (from cybercafe) and see if / when my computer expert shows up with new copy of Norton Antivirus.