So, I went to see "The End of Cinematics" at the St. Lawrence Centre, one of three of Mickel Rouse's works to be presented at Luminato. ( I'd heard him the evening before at the "Canadian Song Book" concert and was impressed.) The orchestra section of the Bluma Appel Theatre was, at best, half-filled...and then the performance started. It began with trailers from up coming summer action-movies that set the context for Rouse's work, a context that he was to distort and turn inside out. Film he shot in Paris several years earlier, was superimposed over live singers, or was it the live singers who were superimposed on the film? It moved so seamlessly from live performance to filmed that in minutes what was live and what was not didn’t matter ;my brain stopped registering the difference. Confusing? Yes, to a great many, some of whom began to sneak out if the intermission-less performance. This is the purest work of art if I’ve seen at Luminato so far ;seeing and hearing are the only way to believe. It was like being immersed in an surrealist canvas, that sang and played musical instruments. A linear plot? Forget it. He has screwed over what we think movies can be, mixing inseparably, live, with pre-recorded video, live-action video, special effects and some very wonderful, trance-like music and voices. The man is gifted and I want to thank him for the gift he gave me last night, although so many people wanted an exchange/return. I hope they kept the sales slip.
Then I walked up to Dundas Square for “Disco†night. Perfect weather, under the balloons and the half –moon, to listen to the music of my misspent youth. A great crowd and a great time and a good way to rest my aching, multi-media attacked brain.