Enough to Drive Anyone Mad

Every now and then something, or rather some things, happen which are sent to try you. These things are usually out of your control, extremely irritating and costly. In the past few weeks it's been car trouble all round at our house. Starting with my car and the suspicious engine grumbles quickly followed by warning lights and lots of stalling. Turns out my engine has been consuming oil like it's about to go out of fashion which has resulted in parts of the engine burning out and having to be replaced, I'm sure you can feel my pain.

While my car was off the road, my parents very kindly offered me the use of their lovely (very expensive) motor to make my life easier trying to get heavy equipment to and from Dundee. To repay them I decided to replace the petrol I'd used before they asked.

Big mistake.

Instead of replacing half a tank of petrol I should have replaced half a tank of diesel!

Make that 2 cars off the road. To add insult to injury we had to be towed home by the second roadside recovery man who came out to us (although the first one was the voice of doom so I was quite glad to see the back of him - lot's of sucking in air and quotes of £4000-5000! not very helpful at all).

Thankfully the voice of doom was precisely that and the car was drained, cleaned and back on the road within a day. My car took slightly longer, however. Seven days in total and a hefty bill at the end of it just for fun. Add that to my public transport bill for the last week and it's been an expensive week all round.

DISI Rascals

At the beginning of 2005 I was involved in a pilot programme for YDance's Dance In Schools Initiative. The plan was that throughout the course of 3 years, 12 full time dancers would deliver dance to every local authority in Scotland which basically involved lots of early mornings (it has been known for tutors to leave at 4am!), lots of staff rooms and lots of carry on.

As the project has now come to an end, and 12 dancers are now looking for work, YDance decided to soften the blow by throwing a party for everyone involved.

I can't remember laughing so much in all my life. A room full of dancers, some of whom don't see one another from one year to the next, all having too much to drink and dancing like lunatics. At the start of the night everyone was on their best behaviour and looking amazing - we're an attractive bunch, you know - and by the end of it I was being lifted by Dan, the skinniest man in the world, being told I was the coolest person ever by Dan and my new GBF, Allan, (and people wonder why I'm such a fag hag) and dancing like a dafty to Windowlicker. Sarah almost had a fit when Wallace put that track on and ordered him to play it in full or risk getting all his records scratched.

The night ended with me, Sarah and Alasdair continuing the party back at his flat, much to the amusement of his (sober) flatmate who decided he might as well just get up and join us.

Me and Allan strike a pose!

Colour Lover

Ok, so you may not be able to tell from my rather minimal blog but I love colourful things. I wear lots of colours and have lots of nice bright things (usually worn with shades of grey but I'm happy leaving the full on technicolour to Blue Peter presenters). Anyway, I've just stumbled upon a site specifically for Colour Lovers... called, wait for it ColourLovers.com

You can browse colours, palettes and patterns, spot trends and if you're brave enough, even submit your own colourful creations. I haven't got round to that yet but I have found inspiration for a website I'm designing for Annie and am now on the hunt for more.

Comedians, Coincidences and Copping Off

The weekend started with a trip to Oban for work before driving to Ardrishaig near Lochgilphead for an overnight stay ready for more work on Saturday morning. Lisa and I had been to the same place the previous week and had caused chaos chatting to the locals and managing to offend one man by asking if he had paid for this new wife from Thailand. With that in mind we were quite glad that there was a comedy night planned, entertainment and something to distract the locals from our big gobs.

The comedians were really good actually with only one exception - a local woman who thought a parody of Flower of Scotland would be a good idea, hmm. Wouldn't have been so bad if it was any good but it was rank rotten. Anyway, the rest of them were really good, particularly a duet who did a whole set of improvised sketches based on audience suggestions. The whole thing reminded me of the Neo-Futurists show I saw in Chicago and when I mentioned this to one of the comedians he told me I was spot on. Not only that but he went to see the Neo-Futurists a few years ago and was only disappointed by the fact that John Jughead Pierson, the man whose music introduced him to Neo-Futurists in the first place, wasn't there. He was on tour. In Glasgow. At a gig my brother organised and I designed flyers for.

Very small world.

And now onto the 'Copping Off' part of the blog. Perhaps a bit of a misleading title as it's probably a lesson in how not to cop off. To the young man from Bothwell in the Sub Club on Saturday night... when trying to charm a young lady with the intention of a kiss and a cuddle at the end of the night, it's probably an idea to establish whether or not she has a boyfriend before kissing her hand and maybe try to learn her name as well and, most importantly, the line 'if worst comes to worst I've got a hotel room booked, hen' is highly unlikely to result in anything more than a slap on the face.

Funniest thing was, about half an hour after I managed to shake him off I walked past him hassling some other girl and overheard him shouting 'HOTEL ROOM' at her face.

Smooth!

Burning and Burning

What a week it's been. In uni I've been busy editing the multi-camera shoot for Scottish Dance Theatre's latest piece DOG which is actually a lot of fun. In one viewer you have the choice of footage from the four different cameras and in the other you see your current selection. It's very tactile and very similar to choreography in that you pick the best view of each section to show the audience. Anyway, it's all good fun but not when you only have two days to learn it, do it and get it onto DVD for Scottish Dance Theatre to show to a festival in Athens. And even less fun when you're left to your own devices to do it. To say I was feeling a little un-supported is putting it mildly. Anyway thanks to Derrick's Linton and Blackie and a marathon DVD burning session today it's all done and they better like it!

Back to my own stuff next week learning Isadora. Woo hoo!

Other burning news. My pee is on fire again. Not funny at all. Back to the doc's tomorrow to get it sorted. I'm getting really fed up with it now, it seems like every few months I have cystitis. It used to go away after a few hours and a dose of Cystopurin but not it lasts at least a week and medicine only takes the sting out of it slightly.

After that pleasant news... I also finished a new film this week (yes, that's how busy I've been!). These Things Happen was filmed at Angus Balbernie's creative lab a few weeks ago and at first I was struggling with all the footage of very different improvisations and trying to figure out how to put them all together but I had a lightbulb moment at the start of the week and decided to do the minimum amount of editing. The footage I decided to work with was filmed on my mobile and the only thing I did to it was to rotate some of the scenes that were filmed in portrait so the film feels like it's rotating but the dancers stay standing. It's going to be screened at The Dance House's Re:Surface event next Wednesday evening. If you'd like to come along, get in touch and I'll send you an invite.

That's all for now.

Dark Matter at Montage

I've just found out that Dark Matter will be screened at Montage Video Dance Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa this weekend. I applied to the festival a few weeks ago and had actually forgotten it was this weekend so it was quite a surprise to receive the email. I'm hoping lots of other film dance festival organisers will see it, fall in love and demand it to be shown at their festivals too.

Fingers crossed!

Is it Just Me?

Or does Neighbours look different now it's moved to Channel 5? It's as if it's been filmed on a different format but that can't be the case as it's always been filmed by the same production company so I can only guess that 5 adds a filter to alter the feel of the programmes to make them grittier.

Or something like that.

News of the Moves

All last week I was involved in dancing and filming for Angus Balbernie's research week. It was great to get back to dancing every day and I got some great footage from filming while dancing which I'm going to edit into a new dance film piece.

I've also been experimenting dancing in the dark with lights and slow shutter speeds to create cool images. I have a few ideas for new pieces and can't wait to get into the studio to try them out.

Then there was the Dog Walker Cafe film shoot this week. Jarprocess asked me to choreograph a piece for a dream sequence to be included in their latest film. We shot the scene in a frosty car park in Clydebank using car headlights for lighting - ooh the glamour!

Other titbits from this week include...

Tapping on Jonny
Clearing out my sock drawer
Flapping arms from La, La, La Human Steps
Deciding to have a HAG do
Re-living the wonders of MC Hammer
and
Planning my Spring/Summer look

Time for Another Shameless Plug

No, not about Shameless the TV programme which I'm sticking with despite the fact I am sorely disappointed with this series. No, this shameless plug is about the new block of classes and our end of term party.

Contemporary, Street and Tap will all be on Wednesdays as of 20th Feb. The block runs for 7 weeks and will cost £42 but there will be savings if you book more than one class, a fiver saved for 2 classes and a tenner saved for 3.

Contemporary 6pm-7pm
Street 7pm-8pm
Tap 8pm-9pm

There will also be a special block of classes for complete beginners to Tap. Learn the lingo, sort out your shuffles and brush up on your brushes. Mondays in March from 3rd to the 31st 7pm-8pm in Hyndland Primary. No class on the 24th as it's Easter Monday. The block is 4 weeks long and costs £24. This block may not run again so if you want to get to grips with the basics of Tap, this is your chance.

Finally, we're having a party. Saturday 5th April, 8pm-1am, Bar Bacchus, Glassford Street, £4. Dance, DJs and drinks. Don't miss it.

Painting by Keywords

I was pointed in the direction of net.art generator by Dan, a tutor at uni, and spent ages on it last night creating images from keywords. The idea is that you stipulate keywords, net.art generator searches google images for matches and collages those images into a new image.

I restricted myself to 'firebox', 'dance' and 'theatre' and was quite pleased that the majority of images included were my own (my meta tagging must be pretty accurate). Some of them are really interesting and some are awful but that's part of the fun. It seemed to me like painting by numbers but with even less skill involved but I'm sure it won't be long before someone convinces a gallery to exhibit this as their work.

The Demon Barber who's Devilishly Barbaric

I went to see Sweeney Todd yesterday with my brother and it was amazing. Really smooth musical numbers, amazing visuals and soooooo much blood. Plus, of course, the delectable Mr Depp. That Helena bird wasn't too bad either.

Worryingly though my brother bears a passing resemblance to the aforementioned Johnny D, especially his hands...

The Big Clear Out

After being moaned at by my friends, boyfriend and parents about the amount of clothes and stuff I have I've decided to take the bull by the horns and get rid of a whole load of it. I keep my clothes in great condition so I'm only getting rid of things that I don't wear anymore either because it doesn't fit me or I've just gone off the style of it.

I don't really have time to put it all on ebay but I don't want to just give it away either (look, I'm skint ok!) so I'm looking for an alternative... what other options do I have to earn some cash out of my old clothes? Does anyone know of any vintage shops that buy not-that-vintage clothing? Would anyone recommend a car boot sale? Does anyone fancy doing my ebay dirty work for me? Or are there other options?

A few skirts and some dresses

And Another Thing!

I'm sick to the back teeth of fat being on telly. After a long day at work and uni I quite like to veg out in front of no brain, dumbed down, easy on the eye tv and it's not happening at the moment. Every time I turn around there's super size, morbidly obese, high bmi, chip eating, thigh chaffing oafs with a full programme all for themselves warning other people about the dangers of turning into them and I've had enough.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows when they are eating healthily and when they aren't. No excuses. Stop shoving reconstituted crap into your gub, do some exercise, get off my telly and let me enjoy my well deserved little veg out in peace.

Thank you.

Since last time...

It suddenly dawned on me today that I'd started a wee item in the sidebar about my day to day activities and not updated it for a week. So since last time I've been going to Death Disco, partying until the next day at John's, recovering all day, learning fancy DVD stuff, getting feedback from my PG Cert assessment, teaching dance, driving in the snow, watching dance films and planning lots of projects for the year ahead.

So you see, I have been busy.

The Results Are In...

And they're good. Very Good.

I finally picked up my PG Cert results today and I've done not too badly at all. I've managed to get a B2 which comes under the bracket of 'Very Good', an A would be 'Excellent' but I'm happy with being 'Very Good'. My mum, however, had a different reaction. Upon hearing my good news, her first question was, "so what do you have to do to improve on that?".

Typical.