Audio Visual Animation
Entering The Stronghold
From Matthias Müller - http://matthiasm.de/shop
Music: Entering The Stronghold by Denny Schneidemesser
The Space We Live In
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Men Dancing Tango 🕺🕺 With Men
The impetus for this article arose from stumbling across one of
the most beautiful tango videos I have ever come across - containing two
men (brothers no less). The fact that it is tango milonga is already a
big plus, as that genre is my favorite... but I digress. Before this
topic is discussed, I attach the said video for your viewing pleasure.
Enrique and Guillermo De Fazio
dancing to the Reliquia Portenas
dancing to the Reliquia Portenas
World renowned tango dancers "Los Hermanos Macana" Though only in their twenties, the Argentine brothers Enrique and Guillermo De Fazio have become a famous dance couple.
They are known worldwide for their breathtaking and witty tango interpretations. With their two-man shows they thrill their audiences at venues from the Americas, Europe and Australia.
They are known worldwide for their breathtaking and witty tango interpretations. With their two-man shows they thrill their audiences at venues from the Americas, Europe and Australia.
The Myth
The myth of how men started dancing tango with men has
two variations; both around the theme of bordellos - aka 'prostibulos' -
most likely because this theme sounds so damn good.
The first variation relies on the boredom factor, a la whilst men were waiting to be 'serviced' they had nothing else to do other than to refine their dancing skills.
The second variation (only slightly less fanciful) has bordellos providing the waiting men with tango bands for their casual dancing amusement, while they waited.
The first variation relies on the boredom factor, a la whilst men were waiting to be 'serviced' they had nothing else to do other than to refine their dancing skills.
The second variation (only slightly less fanciful) has bordellos providing the waiting men with tango bands for their casual dancing amusement, while they waited.
The truth is that whilst both variations undoubtedly did happen,
it does not account for the large numbers of men who danced together,
nor for the wide-scale acceptance of same-sex dancing, which is quite
rare in other dancing cultures.
Nicholas Bros - Dance Day Bunny Jumping
-
🕺🕺 The Origin of Him-and-Him🕺🕺
🕺🕺 The Origin of Him-and-Him🕺🕺
So indeed, what is the principle origin of men dancing tango with each other?
In fact there are three completely separate reasons - which interestingly worked together.
Reason 1: No Access To Women
The first reason derives from where tango was initially
danced. It must be remembered that tango, foremost, was the dance of the
poor, the underprivileged - the 'lower class'. This group of people had
less access to venues where tango was danced, and furthermore had less
cultural 'finesses' or boundaries. As a result of these influences there
evolved a culture in which it was acceptable for tango to be danced in
the streets. Hence even before tango was danced between men, we must
imagine in our minds a culture where it was quite common for couples to dance out in the open. In fact a specific style, Tango Orillero, was even evolved out of outdoor suburban tango dancing.
But in the early 1900s, tango was changed forever by the advent
of European immigration. One of the outcomes of this cultural shift was
that it became unacceptable for women to dance on the streets. The
proximity of men and women in public was considered to be a scandal -
even touching slightly, let alone embracing. Many women, especially the
young, were not allowed to go to practicas or milongas, except if
accompanied with their parents. However men being men, they still wanted
do what they men wanted to do - dance! A certain percentage of the men
went to venues where it was acceptable to dance, but many others - due
to limited means or access - had no option other than to continue
dancing in the streets. At that point, if a man wanted to dance in the
street, there was not much choice; his only option was to dance with
other men, which is precisely what occurred.
Reason 2: Courting
The second reason for same-sex dancing is the fact that dancing
was seen as a means to a woman's heart. This was further exacerbated by
the fact that men outnumbered women in Buenos Aires in the early 1900s,
so competition was fierce, and every edge counted. From this
perspective, the fact that men could dance with men away from women was
actually an advantage: young men could tune their skills for a
long time by going to men-only prácticas, until they were ready and
confident to enter the floor of couples - where inevitably only very
good dancers were accepted. This further reinforced the need for
male-only dancing. It should be noted that the process for a man to
learn tango would first start with the man going to a practica, and
watching. Eventually one of the older men would teach him how to follow.
Then when he was proficient, he would be promoted to leading another
young man. Normally it would take about a year until a man was promoted
to start leading. Then, when the man was ready - and this took often 3
years! - he would finally be escorted with another more experienced man
to a milonga for an arranged dance with a woman.
Reason 3: Suppression of Tango
The third reason for men dancing tango with men is that tango
was considered immoral by the upper class and the authorities. So much
so that there was a formal initiative to close all cafes and ban tango
music from being played on the streets. For example, in 1916 a law was
passed in Buenos Aires that banned dancing between men in dance
establishments.
An attempt was made to slowly eradicate it from Argentina, and we find an account in 1919 by Joaquin Belda, who in his visit to Buenos Aires for 6 months wrote that most of the cafes were either closed or empty.
An attempt was made to slowly eradicate it from Argentina, and we find an account in 1919 by Joaquin Belda, who in his visit to Buenos Aires for 6 months wrote that most of the cafes were either closed or empty.
This of course resulted in even further reduced access to
couples dancing tango, so to dance tango, men had to to dance with each
other.
Videos
Rudolpho Valentino
and
Vaslav Nijinsky
Rudolph Nureyev as Valentino - biographical drama film very loosely
based on the life of Rudolph Valentino and as Nijinsky Anthony Dowell (English ballet dancer and former Artistic Director of The Royal Ballet) directed by Ken Russel, 1977.
Valentino
is a 1977 American biographical film directed by Ken Russell and
starring Rudolf Nureyev as Rudolph Valentino. The film is very loosely
based on the life of Valentino as recounted in the book Valentino, an
Intimate Exposé of the Sheik, written by Chaw Mank and Brad Steiger. The
film also stars Michelle Phillips as Natacha Rambova, Leslie Caron as
Alla Nazimova, and Carol Kane as Jean Acker.
Music is Liebeszweifel Tango, Adalbert Lutter~Telefunken - 1935
El Internado
Lalo and Luis
at Tokyo
(Tango Brothers)
En tus Brazos
Directed by Fx Goby, Matthieu Landour, Edouard Jouret
MULTI AWARDED including Award of excellence Siggraph, and over 50 selections in film festivals worldwide!
Tango Macho
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Truth, Lies, and Magic
Truth, Lies, and Magic
Marco Tempest
The magic of truth and lies
and iPods
What if deception is in the eye of the beholder? And what if lies can help us tell the truth? Enter into the multimedia world of magician Marco Tempest and decide for yourself.
Using three iPods like magical props, Marco Tempest spins a clever, surprisingly heartfelt meditation on truth and lies, art and emotion.
Ideas are not set in stone. When exposed to thoughtful people, they morph and adapt into their most potent form. TEDWeekends will highlight some of today's most intriguing ideas and allow them to develop in real time through your voice!
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Best Time To Book A Plane ✈️ Ticket
According To New Study
by Suzy Strutner Posted: 03/01/2014
Finally, there’s a scientific answer to that magic number of days before a flight when tickets are at their cheapest.
The answer?
Are you ready?
Are you reeeally ready?
Are you ready?
Are you reeeally ready?
Fifty-four days
before takeoff is, on average, when domestic airline tickets are at
their absolute lowest price. And if you don’t hit 54 days on the head,
you should usually book between 104 to 29 days before your trip --
within the “prime booking window” -- for the lowest possible prices. In this window, ticket prices typically hover within $10 of the lowest price they’ll ever reach.
At least that’s what the data from 2013 tells us.
The folks at CheapOair spent the last year analyzing over four million airline trips.
They tracked ticket prices from 320 days before takeoff all the way up
until the day before, calculating precisely which day each one hit its
lowest point.
Air travelers tend to believe they’ll find the
lowest of low prices when they book “at the last minute.”
The researchers found that, on average, a ticket was at its highest price
on the day before the flight. The second-highest price was two days
before the flight, the third-highest was three days before… and so on,
all the way to 13 days before the flight.
This pretty much solidifies the rule that you should NEVER book your ticket within two weeks of a flight… a mistake that 36 percent of CheapOair users made when planning their trips.
While the researchers found that 54 days was indeed the magic number for booking on average, they’re quick to point out that this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule: your flight’s “best price” window depends a lot on the specific trip you’re taking.
If
you’re going somewhere incredibly popular at an incredibly popular time
-- like spring break in Florida, for example -- you should book well
before the “prime booking window” begins. When there’s constant, strong
demand for a flight, the researchers explain,
airlines have no incentive to lower ticket prices as time goes on. The
same principle holds true for flights to hard-to-reach airports in small
cities: there’s little airline competition here, so ticket prices don’t
drop nearly as much over their lifespan.
Foreign countries are
incredibly popular destinations with hard-to-reach airports, so the
researchers suggest booking much earlier than the 54 days recommended
for domestic flights.
Here are the “magic numbers” for some common international destinations:
- Europe: 151 days before your flight
- Asia: 129 days before your flight
- The Caribbean: 101 days before your flight
- Mexico: 89 days before your flight
- Latin America: 80 days before your flight
Happy booking, travelers!
This goes against everything airline analysts have said the last few
years. I think probably because the only type of flight included in the
study were non-stops. Think about how often you get to fly non-stop.
It's probably almost never, and those flights are more expensive
anyways. Everything that airfare watchdogs say is that Tuesday
afternoon through Thursday morning are when fares are at their lowest
due to competing airlines releasing discounted fares to undercut each
other. And, weekends are by far the most expensive time to purchase
tickets because demand has driven the prices back up.
When to Buy Plane Tickets
Turns Out There Is A Magical Day To Book Your Plane Ticket
The Huffington Post
|
Suzy Strutner
|
Posted 03.01.2014
|
Travel
Huffington Post
|
Posted 09.17.2013
|
Travel
While it may be too late to book your Memorial Day weekend travel,
it's always good to know how to travel on a smart budget. According to a
recent study
Thursday, March 6, 2014
If you Stay in Hotels, You MUST Watch !!
If you Stay in Hotels
This is a MUST Watch !!
Expose of Blatant Disregard
for Hygiene Practices
in the Hotel Industry
As a
physician and pathologist, I have a pretty strong stomach. But even I
was overcome with a wave of nausea when I watched a hidden camera expose
of hotel hygiene practices by investigative reporters. In brief,
for the report I saw, teams of journalists placed hidden cameras in
hotel rooms in a range of randomly-chosen hotels in the Atlanta, Georgia
area (the study, and similar observations, have also been carried out
in other locations). Hotels ranged from the mid-priced business hotels
to the top of the line luxury establishments (5 star). A blatant
disregard for hygienic practices that could lead to serious infection
was observed in numerous hotels when housekeeping staff cleaned (or
didn't clean, as the case may be) the drinking glasses in the hotel
room.
Housekeeping staff was caught on film either rinsing the drinking glasses (in preparation for a new guest) with water only, or washing them with industrial cleaner labeled "do not drink." In other cases, dirty bath towels - from the previous guest - were used to dry the glasses after their perfunctory rinse in tap water. Another film clip showed a woman wearing latex gloves cleaning the guest toilet and then proceeding to rinse the drinking glasses, without removing or changing the gloves.
We all know that some of the principal routes for spread of infections include contact with infected persons or contact with articles of bedding or clothing that have been contaminated by an infected source. Numerous infections are spread by respiratory secretions, like those that may contaminate a drinking glass. Other serious diseases are spread by the fecal-oral route, in which contaminated fecal matter (think about the toilet-cleaning gloves or drying the glasses with bath towels) comes in contact with something (for example, a glass) that enters the mouth.
While not all viruses and bacteria are hardy enough to live for extended periods of time on contaminated surfaces such as glass, many of them - including those that can cause serious or even deadly infections - are. A limited list of common infections that could be spread by these incorrect hygiene practices includes: Cold viruses (common cold) Influenza (flu) Rotavirus Norovirus Diphtheria E. coli Hepatitis A Staphylococcus (staph infection) Streptococcus (for example, skin infections, sore throat, strep throat, cellulitis, impetigo, scarlet fever) Hemophilus influenzae (H. flu, Hib)
It's important to keep in mind that this is a limited list of infections that might reasonably be found in the U.S. population. Consider the infections that may be brought in by foreign, including third-world travelers, and the scenario is even scarier; and we haven't even mentioned bedbugs!
While on vacation, cleaning expert, Melissa Maker, stopped into a
hotel in Miami and made a quick video to show us the areas she checks to
determine whether or not a hotel room is 'reasonably' clean.
Comments:
* Excellent!! I would advise to never place your clothes, suit
case, travel bags etc. on the bed even if the bed has been well made and
clean. Place all your used clothing, pajamas etc. in a plastic bag and
seal it well before repacking and launder it as soon as you get home
directly from the bag.
Inspect all suit cases and travel bags and wipe
them down well. This will avoid any kind of bugs or anything else that
may have sneaked into your clothing, pajamas, etc.
* Don't blame housekeepers blame the hotel owners they give you 7 hours to
clean 14 to 16 rooms. They don't have enough time to do it right and
until someone has the sense to give less room so the room attendant has
more time things like this will keep happening.
Try cleaning 14 rooms
in a short time with pressure from management, plus these ladies are
afraid to lose their jobs.
* I am probably OCD, But I use Lysol wipes on every light switch, door
handle, phone, remote, etc in a hotel room.
I also bring my own pillow
and washcloths. They wash the pillowcase, but how often do they change
the pillow? And how many people have drooled, or worse on it. And I
don't want to use a washcloth on my face that's washed someone butt.
lol
Monday, February 24, 2014
Chinese Artist 🎨Does Something Incredible With Paper
A Chinese Artist🎨
Has Done Something Incredible
With Paper
The
line of pure white busts sitting amongst the dust in Li Hongbo's
Beijing studio could be found in any art classroom around the world.
That
is until the 38-year-old Chinese artist places his hands on one, lifts
gently, and what had seemed like solid plaster transforms into a live,
amorphous mass.
A
roman soldier stretches like elastic, a pretty English maid suddenly
rises like a terrible phantasm. They are neither plaster nor clay, but
concertinas of thousands of fine pieces of paper."At the beginning, I
discovered the flexible nature of paper through Chinese paper toys and
paper lanterns. Later, I used this to make a gun. A gun is solid, used
for killing, but I turned it into a tool for play or for decoration. In
this way, it lost both the form of a gun, and the culture inherent to a
gun. It became a game," he said.
FLEXIBLE PAPER SCULPTURES
To
make his sculptures Li uses a stencil to paste glue in narrow strips
across large pieces of paper that he then sticks together to form blocks
of 500.
He
stacks the blocks to the desired height -- an average bust is over ten
blocks or 5,000 sheets of paper high -- then cuts, chisels and sands the
large block just as if it were a piece of soft stone. Born into a
simple farming family, Li said he has always loved paper, first invented
in ancient China. He has spent six years producing a collection of
books recording more than 1,000 years of Buddhist art on paper.
Art
to Another Level
-
Chinese Paper Sculptures
Stretch Imaginations
in New York
In
his recent works, Li has consciously produced only perfect replicas of
classical busts and shapes he used to sketch at university. The
denatured human forms may make some people squirm, but Li says he uses
the archetypal figures to make audiences concentrate on the material,
not to shock.
"'Strange'
and 'unsettling' are just adjectives used by some individuals. In fact,
people have a fixed understanding of what a human is, and think that a
human cannot be physically manipulated, so when you transform a person,
people will reconsider the nature of objects and the motivation behind
the creation. This is what I care about," he said. His exhibition 'Tools
of Study' at the Klein Sun gallery in New York has earned him plenty of
attention across the Pacific since it opened on January 9th.
Chinese Paper Sculptures
Stretch Imaginations
in New York
Gallery assistants pull the twenty pieces around on their plinths for visitors, but not being allowed to touch pieces themselves leaves some feeling unfulfilled.
"You know, when you can open it, there's movement, there's mobility, it becomes a dynamic thing versus a very static thing. You know, but it's like, of course, as an observer, it's like, I can only enjoy that momentum or that movement of the object if someone opens it for me. It's so funny, because it's like, enticing. You kind of want to play with it but you can't," said one visitor, Lydia Chrisman, on Tuesday (January 21).
Li is aware of this irony, and at a show in Sydney provided small models for the audience to play with. But it could be for the best. Though he refused to disclose prices, growing demand for his works means the cost of a real one would probably stretch your wallet.
The Making
of Paper Art
of Paper Art
by
Li Hongbo
Li Hongbo is a widely-acclaimed
artist who plays with the appearances and connotations paper. Many
viewers who came across his works are intrigued by the amazing
flexbility, resilience and strength of the paper material, and startled
by the artist's craftsmanship. In this video, Li Hongbo shows us how he
did it. Step by step, he guides us in a magical journey in the making of
paper art.
*
To learn more about the artist and his works, please visit: http://www.schoeniartgallery.com/arti...
This
video is brought to you by Schoeni Art Gallery. Like us on Facebook for
latest updates on our exhibition openings, workshops and other
programmes:
*
*
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)