Loom Ensemble brings Art Monastery performance to Dubai

Loom Ensemble's Dubai-based cohort returned to the city this month after half a year away, to begin a residency of performance and workshops at thejamjar. The fruits of their Art Monastery residency in Italy during their time away, which they refined over an international tour, premiered at thejamjar this weekend as a contemporary theatre performance they call "Prime".

The central theme of the performance is a relationship that becomes increasingly tempestuous as one of the two characters, played by Neva Cockrell, finds herself unable to relate to her partner, played by Raphael Sacks. The tension and lack of meaningful communication in their relationship is portrayed using an array of visual, verbal, physical and vocal metaphors -- some with more than one dimension of allusion.

The play features beautiful choreography and appropriate pacing, with some particularly interesting motifs expressed through color and clothing. A keen observer will notice a few internal cross-references in the narrative, and see aspects of the broader themes in seemingly mundane actions or words. Much is also added by the tactical lighting and playback sound, which were technically executed very well.

The many questions and interpretations from audience members were addressed during the short discussion session that followed, in which the inspirations and process behind the project were also described.

Looming large in Dubai theatre

Visiting Loom Ensemble members Sasha Bogdanowitsch and Michael Bauer joined their now Dubai-based fellow members Raphael Sacks and Neva Cockrell at thejamjar, staging their experimental play Say I Am You for the first time here. While the Dubai-based members have been running workshops and short public performances at the same venue for some time now, this marks their debut feature play in the UAE, and is a testament to the potential of online collaboration in theatre production.

We have had plays in the genre in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, including ones featuring dance, but the ensemble brought in something fresh with laudable integration of excellent synchronized singing, and live music performance by actors who often made use of unconventional instruments like panpipes.

Multiple stories taking place in different times and places took turns onstage as they interwove on approach to a shared conclusion. Some of the cast play roles in different stories, so there had to be a lot of quick costume changes. I think the play's greatest strength is the colorful and well-written characters, along with some memorable bits of dialogue for those paying close attention. Michael's performance was especially commendable. I also liked the light use of props (which included visual projection, symbolic objects and found objects), and the use of lighting. A new semi-stepped seating arrangement greatly helped with the visibility of lower parts of stage space. After the show, the Q&A session with the cast and director answered many of our burning questions.

A couple of days later, performing as the Loom Vocal Trio at The Fridge's Fridge Concert Series, Sasha and Raphael sang together with Kate Hamilton, who also directed Say I Am You, and is herself a rather talented singer. Much of the music that night was composed by Sasha too, with cryptic and elemental lyrics sung in forms somewhere between monastic chanting and communal tribal song. Some of the instruments from the play were used in this concert, including a jaw harp in a mesmerizing solo by Sasha.

Youth talent at the GYEM Open Mic Nite

It's the kind of talent you won't see at your neighborhood bar's open mic -- primarily because most of these kids would not be allowed in. And there is plenty of talent, given a public platform once in a while thanks to the Global Youth Empowerment (GYEM), one of the city's culture hubs for young 'uns.

The event at thejamjar went over half an hour beyond its planned closing time, as act after act took turns on the stage to entertain several dozen attendees with usually great music and positive messages. One could witness a diverse range of instrumental and vocal abilities in multiple genres, from the likes of Scott Attew, Physical Graffiti and David Beats Goliath. There was also a little beatboxing and a lot of rap, including some Arabic rap, a bit of rap theatre, and a stunning rap-off near the end. It was a serious display of talent, and a testament to the drive of those too young to drive, impressing even a borderline fogey like me.

Burning Fresh with Loom Ensemble at thejamjar

After my third foiled attempt at attending the monthly "Theatre-making" workshops by Dubai performing arts newcomers, Loom Ensemble, I was determined to not miss the post-workshop performance. I saw a little snippet of it at thejamjar at the end of one of 3rd Mondays' August event, so I was curious to see how it was progressing. Chart course to Dubai, warp 9.

The performance is, after all, an evolving work, and the first I've seen in Dubai to follow a prototyping model with public participation. And we did have an open chat right after with the Ensemble's Raphael Sacks and Neva Cockrell, who were also the sole performers of the piece.

The contemporary play, titled Burning Fresh began with a preview of a song segment and dance segment from later in the play. Moving along, it incorporated a lot of mime, dance and physical theatre around the lines, punctuated by haunting a capella singing, occasionally with sometimes-awkward audience participation. The latter, along with the extent to which the performance should or should not develop its story (yes, it has one) were debated after the performance, among other topics. The play is not due to be staged for a few more months, so it will surely see some more moulding and whittling before then.

Dubai Drama Group stages Steven Berkoff's Metamorphosis at thejamjar

Dubai Drama Group's production of Metamorphosis premiered yesterday at thejamjar. A Steven Berkoff adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, it's a tight staging that runs about an uninterrupted hour in length, at a pace that swung between frenetic and placid.

Faraz Javed, Beariz Browne and Lucasta Cummings

Mostly stage right, the characters of Mr, Mrs and Greta Samsa locked horns or wrung hands about their insect problem. Lucasta Cummings as Mrs Samsa was my favorite among them; I felt a very convincing portrayal of maternal concern, confusion and inner torment from her.

Yasmin Altas, Daniel Wakefield and Hani Yakan

Mostly stage left, Yasmin Altas and Hani Yakan had minor speaking roles as a boarder and a chief clerk, respectively, but played very important parts as the drives and emotional state of Gregor Samsa. Gregor's dejection, loneliness and resignation as a dutiful workaholic, and later, a "bug with a heart", were portrayed brilliantly by Daniel Wakefield, who was able to do this in sometimes challenging positions. Combining his powerful monologues with the physical expressions of Yakan and Altas, the three made for a compelling and visually dominating Gregor.

Directors: Emma Kay and Aimée Hedley

Overall, I found it a fairly enjoyable play, with some interesting use of theatrical techniques. The stage area was bereft of walls or backdrops, and featured minimal props, relying mainly on movement and mime to imply the existence of rooms (and transitions among them) and objects. The cast also broke fourth wall to indicate shifts across time, and the available lighting was put to creative use. We see too little of this form of theatre in Dubai, so I hope there's more of it to come.

thejamjar 3rd Mondays on public art

Can malls be considered a "public space" in Dubai? This and other fascinating questions were discussed at thejamjar's 3rd Mondays event in September. Public art in the UAE, as many artists here will testify, is rare (especially for what is supposed to be a regional art hub), and and fraught with complications in implementation. We watched a short documentary about a Brick Lane public art project, which provided some food for thought about potential locations for placing public art (the idea of using rooftops for the purpose in a city of skyscrapers was intriguing).

As a slideshow of various public art installations from around the world ran on the projects, we discussed the issues surrounding "graffiti permits", cultural/religious influences on the kinds of art that can be displayed in public, commercialization of public art, and the concept of public space in Dubai in light of the climate and mall culture in Dubai.

Talin Hazber and Alina Gallo thejamjar residency exhibition

During their residencies at thejamjar this summer, Talin Hazber and Alina Gallo have been producing art incorporating the local physical and cultural environment, and running workshops on working with their respective media. Today, the jamjar exhibited the fruits of the residencies, along with making-of videos and slideshows.

Gallo's murals were, unfortunately, not on display, but her very interesting miniature paintings of egg tempera on wood were. They included many details in local settings, seen from a cutaway bird's eye view that rendered elements from different locations in space and time visible in a single panoramic scene.

Given the sandy landscape of much of the UAE, this country would have been a vast, grainy buffet for Hazber acquiring the raw materials for her sand formation art. Some of the mystery of how these were made was lost in the sand formation workshop in which I participated, but seeing how those techniques are extended and applied by an experienced artist was still impressive.

My workshop piece was also on display with its bi-color altitude gradient intact (thankfully). Looks like the glue held up.

Booza night by The Carton at thejamjar

A rather large number of people skipped dessert at last evening's iftars, because it was "booza" night at thejamjar.

The gallery-studio was hosting an event with The Carton, a food-centric art/photography/culture quarterly. There, The Carton was promoting their sixth issue, a special on ice cream ("booza" is Arabic for ice cream). I had no idea that this magazine existed until now, but I bought three back issues. See, apart from great articles about, and pictures of food, they also feature recipes. As my readers would have guessed by now, I love experimenting in the kitchen, and I look forward to trying some of them.

Attendees could engage with the ice cream theme by customizing a cone or cup on the open drawing wall, using the colored markers provided. I designed a mango and lemon twist, poured into a cup of berry syrup.

The Ice Cream Shop UAE provided us with scoops of free fresh ice creams and sorbets before we settled down to watch the hour-long documentary An Ice Cream Show, the educational and entertainment value of which quite made up for having to endure the cringe-provoking '90s hairstyles it featured.

Sand formation art workshop with thejamjar resident Talin Hazber

One of the resident artists at thejamjar, Talin Hazber, led a workshop on sand formation art in the studio space on Saturday. Sand art involves a good deal of science, so it particularly piqued my interest. Besides, who didn't have fun playing with sand, growing up?

The workshop started with a short slideshow presentation by Hazber, describing various applications of sand art, as well as the history of sand microscopy and taxonomy.

Our first hands-on task was assembling and sealing a control sieve. It's like an hourglass, but cuboid, and with multiple holes.

Using styrofoam plugs, we implemented our intended topographies by permitting or blocking the escape of sand through each hole in the sieve, and further individualized our pieces using sands of different colors. When done, spraying water and adhesive set the surfaces of our pieces into firm crusts, after which the plugs were removed or dissolved to let out the loose sand beneath.

Although I ended up with my amateur hands coated in dried glue, and the crumbled remains of one failed attempt, I managed to get one decent piece set and removed from its mold. I shall title it "Guanzhong".

Drawing in thejamjar at the third 3rd Mondays

Dubai gallery and art space thejamjar has been hosting a new series of art-focus fora and workshops by The Domino, called 3rd Mondays, for a couple of months now. The have been taking place on - surprise, surprise - the third Monday of each month, and I attended the third this week, titled "Why draw?". As I have a little experience in cartooning, this was a topic on which I was particularly keen.

My own "drawings" (hey, some of these had time limits in seconds)

I arrived in time to catch the latter part of a documentary about drawing, following which I participated in a series of drawing exercises.

Drawings by people who had a better idea of what they were doing

We were given instruments of our choice and sheets of paper on which to try out a number of different challenges, such as drawing oneself or an object within view, in spans of time ranging from 5 minutes to 5 seconds.

A large collaborative work at the end

At the end of the event, we all got an opportunity to draw together on a single, large space, which was a lot of fun. Right before that, though, we had an interesting and informal round table chat about our own experiences with drawing. Many of the attendees were indeed very experienced (evident in what they produced during the exercises), so there was a lot of productive knowledge-sharing regarding materials, technologies and practices.

Pop-up Painting in Safa Park

I had an hour on the last day of thejamjar's Pop-up Studio, an open walk-in painting studio near The Archive in Safa Park. Cut me some slack; it's the first time I painted since primary school.