A Magazine by Miho Ishizuka

A Magazine Culture | Art | Life May 2009

May 2009

FEATURES: # 8 | Merce Cunnigham at 90 - The 90th birthday of the legendary pioneer of modern dance. # |13 Follow your mind and your spine will follow Ohad Naharin from Batsheva Dance Company. # | 16 The Body and Eros - Japanese contemporary dancer Kaiji Moriyama reveals his new project.

# |18 A House Dances - The Dancing House by Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunic.

COMMONS:

MONTHLY: # #| #| #|

A+ A+ A+ A+

News Books Music Goods

# | Sexuality and Yoga - Make your sex life better with yoga. # | Meeting the Spirit - Written by a guest writer Daniel Pinchbeck from Reality Sandwich.

ISSUE 1

DANCE& MOVEMENTS Cover photo: A move of One of the dancers from Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Photograph by Mike Siegley. May 2009

May 2009

This month’s

+ News

DANCE NIKE DANCE by Martina Randles

he brains at Nike have blurred the boundaries between function and fashion to create one of the hottest street dance shoes on offer. The hi-top trainer manages to simultaneously rep classic b boy style whilst encompassing clever design features, these include an innovative sweatband rear ankle collar giving the freedom and flexibility of movement whilst providing crucial support for those killer moves. The soles have been designed to withstand a multitude of surfaces, allowing smooth rotation and glide for locking and breaking.

The Let’s-JustParty-Boy by David Amsden

On a Sunday night last month, as a foot of snow begins blanketing the city, Andrew is in the downstairs D.J. booth at Santos preparing to host a party called What the Fuck!? Wearing his trademark white jeans and white T-shirt with fake blood dripping from the collar, he is in full Andrew W.K. mode, no longer the quiet impresario in the lighting booth but the nucleus around which the party orbits. “Tonight is an experiment,I want this club to be a safe haven for fringe performers. When I started performing, I played in all sort of places.” read this more on our web .. amag.com

YOUTH CULTURE by Martina Randles

Might one say that Sonic Youth are the masters of poetic thrash? Yes, considering they invented it. Their sixteenth studio album, “The Eternal,” comes out this summer; over the years they have taken their justly famous improvisatory style to a new sprawl—not heights, since Sonic Youth are aural artists who reach out, not up. No album can contain them, or their endless curiosity about sound, which is part of the appeal in listening to what they have to say: they wreck meaning while reinventing it. No wonder they’re collaborating with another great dissembler of form—the choreographer Merce Cunningham—for “Nearly Ninety,” a commission for Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s tenth season at BAM, April 16-19. The show celebrates Cunningham’s ninetieth birthday (on April 16) and also features appearances by Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and the composer Takehisa Kosugi. May 2009

Merce Cunningham, who made a revolution out of ordinary movement, celebrates his 90th birthday with the new work called

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y Decade Written By Rebecca Milzoff, Photograph By Mark Seliger May 2009

May 2009

hen Merce Cunningoperate independently. Trained like or not that is his goal. ham was a young every dancer to follow the music, He attracts people man, time was a even Cunningham found his new apwho almost expect to pesky element he proach challenging. He remembers be exposed to somecould seemingly one early rehearsal when he and Cage thing previously bend to his will. Suscame together in the studio with unknown to them.” pended in the air in a stag leap—one their respective parts. “I did what leg crooked forward, the other kicked I thought was a very strong moveCunningham is, of his back, torso erect, arm defiantly ment,” says Cunningham, “and there generation of choreraised—he looked capable of hangwas no sound at all. A moment later, ographers, just about ing in space for as long as he wished. John made this thunderous sound on the last man standWith his penetrating, otherworldly the piano which didn’t fit to what ing. Most of his great gaze, halo of dark curls, and fierce I had done, but emphasized it very friends and collaboraelegance, he quite literally transmuch. It was a way of thinking about tors are gone (includfixed audiences. A story goes that in the connection between sound and ing Robert Rauschenhis early days with Martha Graham’s vision like the way thunder and lightberg, who designed company, one of her assistants pointning are.” some of his sets). ed to Cunningham and complained, And he can no longer In Cunningham’s world, danc“Martha, he’s doing it all wrong!” To dance his own work which Graham replied, “Leave him ers are not characters but spatial (he uses a computer alone. He’s beautiful.” objects moving in time. And though tool called DanceForms they may not follow a melody, they that allows him to see Cunningham—who, like Graham, ride waves of physical rhythm in a how a combination found his greatest fame as a chosimilar way. Karole Armitage, now a might work before he reographer—turns 90 this week. His seminal modern choreographer and gives it to dancers). face has relaxed into folds, his hair a five-year veteran of the company, But his inspiration, now sits in tufts of gray on his great says the Cunningham technique was apparently, remains balding head, and his voice has soft“totally natural. Merce figured it out; undiminished. “Mostly ened considerably. But he continues it’s just so deeply right with the laws it comes from looking to teach class twice a week, and his of physics and our natural selves. As at birds and animals,” counts remain insistent and direct. he pointed out, everything is dance says Cunningham. On Thursday, Nearly Ninety—a new movement—walking is dance—it’s “Anytime I see moveevening-length work and his lonjust how you incorporate it into the ment, even someone gest in a while—opens at BAM, with bigger picture. And we all walk within the street who has a score composed by Sonic Youth, out music.” an odd walk, I try to John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, and figure out, ‘What is mixed-media sound artist Takehisa At once liberating and maddeningly this?’ ” It’s an example Kosugi. The artists will be approxicontrolled (“There’s no improvisaof how, as Carlson mating, as much as possible, the tion in the movement; it’s all very says, Cunningham philosophy of Cunningham’s creative clearly defined,” says Trevor Carlson, continues to live in the and life partner, composer John executive director of Cunningham’s present, unconcerned Cage, who died in 1992. And as with company), Cunningham’s choreogwith what the future every performance since Cunningraphy is defined by a focus on the might hold, or how he ham teamed with Cage, he and shifting of weight, the centrality survived to this point. his dancers will first hear the music of the torso, and an almost balletic “It just happened,” at dress rehearsal. cleanness of line. Pure and efficient, Cunningham says. “You the dancers’ movements belie the keep thinking, ‘Well, I Right page, In the fifties, great exertion required. Such sparguess I’ll do that.’ And Merce’s Cunningham and tan elegance extends to his stage, here you are.” danceing Cage developed a which he keeps clean and open installa(any set usually comes in the form tion, 1971, revolutionary apof a flat backdrop), and the simple at the age proach to modern dance that escostumes, nearly always unitards of 52. chewed traditional (by Romeo Gigli’s design firm for collaboration. the BAM show). Mikhail Baryshnikov, Photo by Inspired by the I who photographed the company for Terry Ching and its emhis forthcoming book Merce My Way, Stevenson. phasis on chance, says Cunningham told him he does the choreography is based on the this “because he wants to ‘see it.’ ” simple idea that music and dance— Adds Baryshnikov: “Merce always both arts that move in time—should seems to be ahead of others, whether May 2009

May 2009

“The movements are just so deeply right with the laws of physics an d our natural selv es. Everything is dance moveme nt. Walking is da nce. it’s just how you incorporate it into the bigger pic ture. And we all walk without m usic.”

Merce Cunningham and his company’s dancers in lesson, in 2008. Photograph courtesy of MCDC.

May 2009

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May 2009

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May 2009

Ohad Naharin, resident choreographer of the Batsheva Dance Company, told me as we crouched together on wooden stools in the semi darkness, backstage at the Théatre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. It was about ten minutes before the start of the performance and a deluge of rippling notes punctuated our conversation every ten seconds as stagehands tested the recorded music, and dancers warmed up alongside us. “My new dance language began after I had a serious back injury and I started relating to my body differently,” he continued imperturbably. “That, plus what was learned from other people, enabled me to put together a way of working now used by the whole company which,” he pointed out, “I have completely changed. There is absolutely nothing left of the original troupe except the name.” The splendid Israeli company, founded in Tel Aviv in 1964, brought the Martha Graham style, technique and tradition to Israel, and over the years works by such people as Robbins, Tetley, and Cranko enriched the repertoire. In the 1980’s, more contemporary choreographers including Mark Morris and Ohad Naharin, a former student of the company, were invited to create works for them, the latter finally being appointed artistic director in 1990, a post he only left two months ago. From the beginning, Naharin, born in 1952, was brought up in an artistic atmosphere, but although his mother was a dance teacher and his father, a doctor in psychology who had been an actor, he did not begin dance until the age of twenty-two, at the Batsheva Company. He left Israel soon after to work both at the Graham school and the School of American ballet, but after a short spell with Maurice Béjart, the need to create himself took over. “From early childhood I made things up. I wrote music, invented stories and painted and I remember the very moment I created my first choreography. Dance is an illusion, and creation a lie, but lying as I see it isn’t negative. I distort reality in order to create my own world. I don’t want to reflect the reality around me.” What is important to Ohad Naharin? “Love,” he replies, “forgiveness, and the joy of movement; dance which means going beyond limits, and working with talented designers, collaborating with composers, and recycling ideas to find a new angle.” “There are no new concepts. Everything has already been done. What is left is reorganisation. I re-work my ballets constantly, and questions on my work are best answered by simply watching my dancers, eighteen of them, chosen from all over the world for their musicality, virtuosity, and sheer love of dance.” Be that as it may, answers were not that obvious in Deca Dance, the programme presented recently at the Theatre of Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines. Although the company possesses works by Kylian, Vandekeybus, Preljocaj and Forsythe in the repertoire, a range of Naharin’s works from the past ten years were shown, May 2009

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extracts from eight of his best pieces being adroitly crafted into a coherent whole. Classical, contemporary and rock, for the most part easy on the eye despite the underlying violence of the second half, entertained for two hours. However, works of distinction rubbed shoulders with the inexplicable. Too obviously theatrical, it was a little difficult to grasp the significance of the aggressively

made-up woman on stilts striding around or the monks washing themselves with mud. Although the women in general didn’t get many chances to shine, twenty-two year old Gili Navot, a native of Tel Aviv told me that she loved working in the company. A dark-haired pretty girl, with delicately stretched feet betraying her classical training, destined more for Juliet in luminous white rather than a mere number in frumpy brown, Navot spoke of her feeling of fulfilment, physically and emotionally, and of the troupe’s devotion to its chief choreographer. He says “I’ve created a movment language.”

May 2009

Japanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best-known contemporary dancer, Kaiji Moriyama, unveils his new piece.

Text by By Dan Grunebaum Photographed by Tadaaki Omori

May 2009

ontemporary dance is a rarified world, but thanks to his starring role in NHK’s morning children’s program Karada De Asobou (“Play with the Body”), Kaiji Moriyama is beloved of parents and kids nationwide. In the program, Moriyama utilizes his lithe physique and supple, confident movements to evoke animals, objects (including a stunning impersonation of a rocking chair) and other actions that kids can relate to. But the program isn’t simply children’s entertainment. As a role model to kids and with a young daughter of his own, Moriyama, 34, feels a sense of responsibility. “To express the joy of dancing, and to communicate that, even if you don’t become a professional dancer, you can use your body, is important,” he says in a recent interview at a Shibuya café. “Especially for Japanese who aren’t confident about their bodies. When I was small, it was difficult for me to communicate, but dancing helped. As my body became healthier, I became more open.” Coming to dance rather late in life at 21, and without undergoing classical ballet training, Moriyama has a unique style. He combines the grace of a ballet soloist with the precise muscular control of a butoh dancer, but has a mime-like ability to evoke a range of actions, emotions and objects that far exceeds the vocabulary of either. Launching his career with a musical theater company, he then worked with a number of leading contemporary choreographers, including Kota Yamazaki, before going solo. In January 2005, the US debut of his piece Katana (“sword”) was praised by Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times as “a dance of amazing concentration by an amazing dancer.” Moriyama is instantly recognizable by the long tuft of dyed hair that flows from the top of his head past his shoulders. He says it’s not merely a fashion statement. “As a child, I was quite introverted. Dyeing my hair allowed me to overcome a wall within myself—even Moriyama Kaiji is a stage name [Kaiji is an original con-

May 2009

struction that means “open to the next”]. It was like flipping a switch: it brought a new me into the open.” Now something of a poster boy for the Japanese contemporary dance world, Moriyama recognizes the irony of his hair. “Even if the exterior of our lives has become Westernized, we continue to think like Japanese,” he observes in his quiet but assured manner. “The reason for dyeing my hair wasn’t that I wanted to imitate Westerners, but that I wanted to create a character; as in kabuki, I wanted to transform myself.”

at the Biennale, but they insisted on the ‘Body and Eros’ theme. At the time, I was staying at a German place called the Velvet Hotel. I had to come up with something, so I just chose to name it after a room there. The name set me wondering: what kind of room could it be? It gave me erotic imaginings.” With music by Yasuhiro Kasamatsu, who is known for writing music for productions by renowned stage director Yukio Ninagawa, The Velvet Suite sees Moriyama joined onstage by violinist Koichiro Muroya on a set that features objects—a heart, a uterus and a spherical ball made with over 1,000 red flowers—made by Moriyama himself. “Maybe 95 percent of the productions created for the Biennale involved nudity, beds—obvious sexual references,” explains Moriyama’s manager Namiko Hashizume. “The Velvet Suite makes no overt references to sexuality. He wanted to express an interior Eros.”

“Dance has become a worldwide language. Within that, there are some elements that may be specifically Japanese, and we should try to bring these out. We Japanese have taken in a lot of Western influences in all areas, and we’re now mixing them with our own experiences. Our responsibility as creators is to invent our own forms that have something to say about our present lives.” Moriyama’s new piece, The Velvet Suite, was created to fit the theme of last year’s Venice Biennale: “Body and Eros.” “At first I planned to do Katana

“There are so many ways to interpret Eros,” Moriyama expands. “What first came to mind were the bestial aspects, the idea of something that tries to propagate itself; I tried to approach Eros from the viewpoint of a beast. But I also wanted the audience to wonder what it is I’m trying to represent: there are various mythical beasts, like the unicorn, that I try to evoke. I want my audience to be filled with a sense of wonder, to feel the life force but also the violence of beasts, and to understand that the same motivations are in them.” Moriyama agrees with the observation that Japanese contemporary dance is in a ruddy state of health these days. “There are a lot of dancers, but we need to expand the audience from art lovers to a more general audience. In Japan, TV is the dominating influence and dictates what becomes culture. I’d like to see performances become a larger part of the cultural experience. It’s an information society, but I’d like more people to use their bodies rather than just information technology to express themselves.”

May 2009

T Ho Da 22

May 2009

The ouse ances A build ing in Prague design , ed by C archite zech ct Vlad o Milun ic and Ca nad Frank G aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ehry.

May 2009

The history of the site now occupied by Frank Gehry’s NationaleNederlanden Building on the edge of Prague’s Vitava river, is as Byzantine as any plot devised by Kafka. In 1945 an American bomb devastated a handsome Neo-Classical apartment block on the corner of two streets (Jiraskovo namesti and Rasinovo nabrezi) narrowly missing the neighbouring Art Nouveau house of Vaclav Havel, the distinguished writer and future president of the Czech Republic. During the post-war Communist era, the site where the bombed apartment block stood remained vacant and attempts to find a use for it only gained ground after Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution of 1989. Havel, now president, expressed a wish to redevelop the plot to house an altruistic mixture of cultural and social functions, including a bookshop, gallery, multi-purpose hall and rooftop cafe. He discussed his ideas with Viado Milunic, a Croatian architect living in Prague, who along with two other architects (Jan Linek and Vit Maslo) was informally invited to put forward development proposals. Of the three designs, Milunic’s witty, symbolist creation perhaps best epitomised the carnival character of the Velvet Revolution. His sketches show an angular building, crowned by a high glass cupola, containing allusions to the Tatlin Tower and the neighbouring Art Nouveau house, built by Havel’s grandfather. Inevitably, perhaps, Havel and Milunic’s philanthropic notions were trumped by the power of market forces, when in 1992 the site was acquired by the Dutch insurance company Nationale-Nederlanden, for development as an office block. Yet vestiges of the original concept remained, with the inclusion of shops at ground level, a basement cafe and a rooftop bar and restaurant. Seeking a suitably high-profile international architect for this important project in the new Eastern Europe, Nationale-Nederlanden eventually alighted on Frank Gehry, but Viado Milunic was retained in a collaborative

May 2009

capacity, acknowledging both his familiarity with Prague and his initial work on the site. During meetings in Switzerland and California, Gehry and Milunic established a close working rapport, and although the main design role fell to Gehry, the evolution of the scheme was informed by Milunic’s original proposals. In early sketches, Gehry envisaged the building as a scrummage of boxy and pillow-like forms, to which Milunic added a geysershaped tower. The site turns the corner, so a pivotal tower was a logical point of departure; corner towers are also characteristic of Prague’s rich urban texture. However, Gehry apparently considered a single tower too overtly masculine, so the idea of a feminine counterpart evolved, a female yin balancing the male yang, giving rise to the analogy of a dancing couple, whimsically described by Gehry as ‘Ginger and Fred’. In reality, the analogy has become more abstract (and Gehry has since played down the Hollywood overtones), but the effect of the two towers poised in a fluid embrace is still extraordinarily lyrical, a show-stopping performance in a city full of ancient, sensuous and disturbing architecture. Each of the two towers is essentially a distorted cylinder; the diameter of the dominant, solid male tower expands as it extends upwards, while its glazed female partner is dramatically cinched at the waist like a melting hour-glass. A small forest of columns peeks out of Ginger’s wispy transparent skirts, a fizzy froth of metaphorical legs and petticoats suddenly tumbling on to the street below, marking the entrance to the building on Jiraskovo namesti. Fred’s more robust contours are clad in neutral stucco, animated by a wavy bas-relief pattern and undulating lines of windows that extrude slightly

from the curving wall planes. A fractured mesh bauble resembling a traditional onion dome crowns the top of the tower. The syncopated external vocabulary of stucco and windows is carried around the corner into the Rasinovo nabrezi elevation overlooking the river; it also buttresses the gap between the ethereal hour-glass tower and Havel’s Art Nouveau building on Jiraskovo namesti. Behind the swirling facade is a relatively simple plan form based on a conventional relationship of lettable space organised around a compact, L-shaped circulation core. The generous protuberances of the towers provide convenient enclaves for meetings or conferences. Six floors of offices are topped by a bar and restaurant with stunning views of Prague. There are shops on the ground and lower ground floors, and a small cafe at pavement level, set back under the fat circular legs of the larger tower. By providing a degree of animation and public interaction at ground level, the building is much less insular than many traditional office developments, which consciously exclude the public. Despite its undeniable panache and presence, the overall effect of Gehry’s anthropomorphic collage is slightly disorientating. You half expect the two towers to burst out of their exaggeratedly dynamic clinch and go waltzing off down Rasinovo nabrezi. On the banks of the Vitava, the Nationale-Nederlanden building is within sight of the National Theatre and the Gormenghast silhouette of Prague Castle. Yet in its brazen synthesis of historical precedents- bustling baroque, sinuous Art Nouveau, even suggestions of Czech Cubism - it trips a decidedly light fantastic.

May 2009

Sexuality

and Yoga

Written by Michelle Barge

May 2009

Many of you might think I’m on a sexual tear or afflicted with spring fever after writing on the Orgasmic Diet and now how yoga can benefit your sex life, but the book on the market, Better Sex Through Yoga by Jacquie Noelle really got me thinking seriously about the topic, and after Googling the phrase, “better sex through yoga” I’m not the only one thinking about it. But I had to take things a little deeper with some historical reference. From a literary and historic standpoint, to get that out of the way first, according to the Kama Sutra, sex is a divine, sacred act. In this ancient Indian text, that many a yogi has read, owns and refers to, there are 10 chapters/ stanzas dedicated solely to sexual union. Tired of the “same old, same old” refer to some of those chapters… We also hear about Tantra or tantric sex as part of the yoga space quite a bit. But, tantra is a Sanskrit word meaning “to expand” or “tools for expansion…” (I know - keep it clean, not THAT expansion.) These tools are designed to increase our energy and the energy around us. The goal of Tantric sex is to allow us to experience more depth and breadth in our sexuality. The goal is not necessarily an orgam, but rather enriching the whole sexual experience. Again — exploring the entire process and creating heightened moments to enhance each moment. And of course, yoga is all about the breath. Yoga means to yoke/union of mind and body

Eka pada ragakapotasana (pigeon pose)

May 2009

Baddha konsasa (seated pose)

with the breath. By focusing deeply on our breath or incorporating ujjayi breathing into our sexual practice, the focus moves deeper within and allows you and your partner to regulate your response and slow down the process. Asanas in yoga are all designed to strengthen, lengthen and open up the body physically and emotionally. In general yoga also makes us more comfortable with our bodies and others as well. Yoga is very freeing and grounding at the same time. But there are specific poses that help with overall flexibility especially in the hips and creates overall comfort of the body. Give these a try: * * * *

Malasana (garland or squat pose) Eka pada ragakapotasana (pigeon pose) Baddha konsasa (seated pose) Balasana (child’s pose)

Also, engaging the root lock, mulabandha, by lifting the pelvic floor to develop deep inner core strength is key for greater sensation. So if we look at sex as a divine sacred act (and even if you don’t) that focuses on being in the present and mindful, and on the breath to deepen the sexual experience while practicing certain asanas to increase strength, flexibility and pleasure - than yoga does do more than make a body good - it can make your sex life good.

May 2009

Meeting

The

Spirits

Written by

a guest writer from

Reality Sandwich

Daniel Pinchbeck.

May 2009

All through my childhood, I felt certain that something extraordinary – absolutely amazing and out of the ordinary – was going to happen to me. The world seemed bursting with a secret that nobody would divulge, and someday this tremendous mystery would be revealed. Simply because they were older, I assumed that all adults had passed through this portal into the miraculous essence of existence, although they never spoke about it. As I approached adolescence, I began to suspect that my deepest hopes were going to be unfulfilled. By the time I went to college, I had realized, to my horror, that “maturity” meant accepting contraints and being bound to a limited career path, rather than blossoming into a deeper dimension of possibility and wonder. This was a painful shock. I now suspect that what I felt is a nearly universal disappointment for young people in our world: I was yearning for initiation in a culture that had abandoned it. Initiatory techniques and rituals have been an essential part of human cultures for tens of thousands of years. In tribal and aboriginal societies, initiations serve a number of different purposes. On one level, rites of passage create a threshold between childhood and adulthood, marking a major life boundary. They are also a time when the elders pass on oral traditions and knowledge to the young. But most importantly, the traditional process of initiation involves a disciplined training in extrasensory perception and nonordinary states of consciousness – learning to communicate with the spirit worlds that lie beyond the limits of our physical senses. While our modern secular culture denies the existence of a spiritual dimension to life, many of our popular post-secular movements of mysticism still refuse to address the question of spirits. Philosophers such as Ken Wilber tend to reduce them to psychological tropes or delusions. Based

on my own experiences, I strongly suspect we need to attain a more sophisticated understanding of how spirits may operate, as well as a set of techniques for dealing with them, before we can approach higher states and stages of development. We cannot have “Spirit” without spirits. For many indigenous cultures, it is a high priority to stay on good terms with the ancestor spirits, who can wreak havoc if they are not given respect. The living and the dead maintain a reciprocal relationship. For the indigenous Maya, if the dead are not handled properly, their ghosts hang around, inflicting neuroses, addictive patterns and depressions upon their descendants. Such a perspective does not conflict with modern psychology, but adds a deeper dimension to it. As Amit Goswami explores in The SelfAware Universe, quantum physics offers the possibility that incorporeal patterns of thinking, feeling and action might continue and have effects in the world, even without a physical reference point in a living organism. One way we could consider our current situation in the US, perhaps, is as a case of spirit possession on a mass scale. Since we dismiss spirits as nonexistent, we have no defenses against the forces that prey upon us. When a college student guns down his classmates, when a soldier tortures a defenseless victim, when corporate officers avoid facing the environmental consequences of their profit-making, we might be looking at situations in which unappeased demons and aggrieved ancestor spirits are overtaking people, entering their psyches in states of detachment and disconnection. Such a situation cannot be solved through rational means alone, but calls for shamanic techniques such as soul retrieval and banishment.

discovered shamanic practices as an adult, and explored visionary states of consciousness in traditional ceremonies in South America, West Africa and the US. Through this work, I restored the primordial connection to the sacred that I had lost after my childhood, as well as my original sense of wonder, and this was tremendously healing and empowering. Through my own shamanic journeys, I realized that modern culture was facing an initiatory crisis on a global scale. We have created a planet of “kidults,” perpetual adolescents trapped by material desires, with no access to higher realms and little sense of purpose or moral responsibility. Despite the best efforts of people like Robert Bly and Malidoma Some, we are not going to institute a new culture of initiation in the next few years. As Westerners, each of us has to follow a personal path to recover the numinous for ourselves, shedding our selflimiting beliefs and narcissistic complexes in the process. In tribal cultures, initiation is ultimately a public process that requires an act of witnessing from the collective before it is complete. The visionary knowledge gained through initiatory discipline only becomes meaningful when it is integrated into the community through storytelling, dance and pageant. In our post-modern world, those who undergo initiation may need to create a shared cultural context to impart the wisdom they have gained from their ordeals. Such knowledge is both a gift and a responsibility: Indeed, if frenzied spirits and sneaky demons are attacking us from beyond the margins of our interpreted world, we may require a revival of shamanic practices to reveal and release them.

Personally, my youthful sense of being cheated of some deeper potential melted away once I May 2009

May 2009

This month’s

+ Books BOWERY BOYS Keiichi Nitta To any run of the mill naysayer, it might seem as if Keiichi Nitta isn’t doing anything different than what Terry Richardson has always done. Don’t believe me? Consider the sophistication of their snapshot aesthetics. Or perhaps the fact that both photographers enjoy producing humorous portraiture with their subjects. Sure, it seems a little bit fishy. Maybe even borderline biting, but Nitta is, in fact, Terry Richardon’s protege. So, expectedly, he learns his antics from the best. His book, “Bowery Boys” is a collective production between him and O.H.W.O.W. and will most prove to be an entertaining-yetthoughtful testament to hipster photography that is notoriously raw and debaucherous.

The book will come out April 15th.

THE CURIOUS WORLD OF DRUGS AND THEIR FRIENDS Ingo Niermann & Adriano Sack

RUSSIAN CRIMINAL TATTOO ENCYCLOPEDIA VOLUME III Danzig Baldaev FUEL

This is similar to one of those books your gran got you for your birthday when you were 13. She thought you were “an inquisitive little soldier” and that you’d be fiending for a book stuffed with “500 facts about nature” or something like that. This is one of those books, but for bigger boys who are interested in drugs and need to be able to reel off obscure facts about the mind-altering effects of fasting. This is the new Profanisaurus, as far as toilet reading goes. Who knew mixing poppers and Viagra can kill you? Wow, this book is literally a lifesaver.

You know the drill. As with everything FUEL produce, this looks perfect. You might think a third volume of photos and drawings of Russian prison tats may be getting a little tired, but it isn’t. I think I could gaze forever at tattoos of busty prostitutes riding on a hairy devil’s back with a four-foot-long sausage stuck in their vaginas. Why is it that British criminals can only muster a shitty swallow or a wobbly W.H.U.F.C. on their podgy hamfists? They should get more creative and design Ian Blair as a comedy devil being crushed under a tank surrounded by acronyms about going to the pub and throwing bottles. May 2009

May 2009

This month’s

+ Disks SERGE GAINSBOURG Histoire de Melody Nelson Light in the Attic Gainsbourg’s 1971 concept album has never been released in the US until now due to people’s hangups over the story, which is basically: Serge hits a young girl in his Rolls-Royce and then rapes her back to health. Here’s what’s always bothered me: Who do they think is going around this country speaking French who DOESN’T want to listen to a 43-year-old Jew gurgling about pedophilia over music that sounds like early Soft Machine?

BLACK DICE Repo Paw Tracks Why do I feel obliged to give this band a smiley, anyway? Because they’re “cool”? Because they’ve been the accepted “gold standard” of experimental electronic-y art-noise music for like eight years? I’ve listened to this album twice now and I see no reason for it to exist. It sounds a whole lot like their last one—distorted, chaotic, pointy, herky-jerky, carnivalian, clowny, blorchy, gleepish, brain-poking, etc.—and I can’t think of one occasion when it would be pleasant to listen to.

CHAIN AND THE GANG Down With Liberty… Up With Chains! K Why do I feel obliged to give this band a smiley, anyway? Because they’re “cool”? Because they’ve been the accepted “gold standard” of experimental electronic-y art-noise music for like eight years? I’ve listened to this album twice now and I see no reason for it to exist. It sounds a whole lot like their last one—distorted, chaotic, pointy, herky-jerky, carnivalian, clowny, blorchy, gleepish, brain-poking, etc.—and I can’t think of one occasion when it would be pleasant to listen to.

May 2009

This month’s

+ Goods Asparagus in season! By Robin Raisfeld & Rob Patronite Plug in your microwave oven and stand back, it’s asparagus season. That’s right. One of the best ways to cook the fleeting springtime delicacy is not unlike the method used for heating up an Amy’s burrito. If you don’t believe us, just ask Andrew Carmellini. He learned the technique not from Daniel Boulud, whom he faithfully served at Café Boulud, but from an even greater culinary authority: his mother.

Illustrations by John Burgoyne Photo: Hannah Whitaker

Andrew Carmellini’s Microwaved Asparagus FOR THE ASPARAGUS: 1 bunch thick asparagus 2 tbs. extra-virgin olive oil Zest of 1 orange FOR THE DRESSING: 2 oranges 4 tbs. extra-virgin olive oil 2 scallions, finely chopped 1 tsp. dried oregano, preferably on the branch (at BuonItalia) Juice of 1 lemon Salt and coarsely ground black pepper to taste Sea salt for sprinkling

NEWLY PACKAGED! By Robin Raisfeld & Rob Patronite The small brewery company located in Portland, Maine leaked the information about this new organic beer just recently. Peak Organic Beer is now introducing organic beer to the nation this fall. Being organic is not just about purchasing organic fruits and vegetables; it goes much deeper and straight to the keg. I actually have friends who will resolve to not eating at a restaurant if the prepared food was not naturally taken from organic farmers. To my amazement though, these same friends will drink beer because there is no other choice. Now, I am not that strict on the food I eat, everyone has to have energy, however I am tickled pink to know that there is an alternative to the traditional beer that many loyal beer drinkers consume weekly.

May 2009

FOR THE ASPARAGUS: (1) Cut off an inch from the bottom of each spear and discard. Place the asparagus in a microwave-safe dish with high sides. Add the olive oil and ¼ cup water. (2) Using a Microplane, grate the orange zest over the top. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and (3) put it in the microwave for 2 minutes on high. Rotate the dish and cook for approximately 2 more minutes. FOR THE DRESSING: Segment the oranges by slicing off the top and bottom of each, removing the peel and pith, and cutting the segments out from between the dividing membranes. Place segments or “suprêmes” in a bowl and squeeze the juice from the orange membranes over them. Add the olive oil, scallion, oregano, and lemon juice. Combine with a spoon. Season with salt and pepper. Remove plastic wrap from dish and drain any water. Spoon dressing over asparagus and sprinkle with sea salt. Serves 4 to 6.

This month’s

A+

PEOPLE

May 2009