Culture Vulture: Miles Davis, Passenger Side and Exchange/Échange

We were so wrapped up in, well, wrapping up our May issue here at NIGHTLIFE that we somehow missed the boat on that impromptu slush storm that dampened our spirits on Tuesday. Seeing a snow-covered Mount-Royal from our offices just killed my appetite for all those anticipated outdoor summer happenings – Shakespeare in the Park, Piss in the Pool, Under Pressure, free film screenings on the Place des arts esplanade, Piknics and the priceless sight of film geeks galore lining up around Concordia’s Hall building for Fantasia tickets. No, sorry, not ready for it yet. I’ll be clutching that wool sweater of mine as if my life depended on it for a few more weeks time. If you plan on doing the same, here are a few choice cultural cuts to be safely appreciated indoors, irrespective of Montreal’s erratic weather ways.

Swingin’ history
The International Jazz Fest we host each year is in many ways the natural dénouement to our long-standing tradition of musical improvisation. During the Prohibition in the 1920s, tons of black musicians would flock north to our "city of 1001 clubs", which quickly led to Montreal becoming a North American capital of jazz. Among those who paid us frequent visits, the late legendary bluesman Miles Davis ranks pretty high on the list. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee – listen to 1959’s Kind of Blue if you need a refresher as to Davis’ stamp on the history of jazz – never stopped reinventing himself throughout his career, driven by a pure, unadulterated love for jazz.

Twenty years after Davis’ last performance in town, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Director Nathalie Bondil naturally jumped on the opportunity to be the only city other than Paris to host We Want Miles: Miles Davis vs. Jazz, a wide-ranging exhibit featuring more than 350 works including his instruments, personal memorabilia and portraits taken by renowned photogs like Anton Corbijn (Control) and Annie Leibovitz. I doubt there’ll be a better way to brush up on your bebop and jazz fusion history prior to the monster Spectra festivities in July.
mbam.qc.ca

Giving the road a good name
Road movies are a dime a dozen these days. I won’t bother listing all the contrived "character hits the road on a journey towards self-discovery" scenarios both Hollywood and indie filmmakers have hatched up over the years, but suffice it to say that Matt Bissonnette, a former NDG resident who packed everything up and resettled in L.A.’s Echo Park, has managed to write and direct one of the most sharply-written and beautifully paced day-long cinematic journeys I’ve seen on the big screen.

Passenger Side, his Telefilm-funded road movie, follows two brothers (actor Adam Scott and the director’s real-life sibling Joel Bissonnette as a recovering drug addict) as they wrestle with both brotherly issues and a slew of unforeseen relationship pitfalls along the way. Bissonnette sets his slacker tale of ennui in an L.A. we’re not accustomed to seeing, and beefs it up with a star-studded indie soundtrack – other than the obvious Wilco reference in the film’s title, you’ll be treated to Leonard Cohen, Dinosaur Jr. and Evan Dando, among others. If Reality Bites, Clerks, Chasing Amy, Québec-Montréal or the more recent One Week are personal faves, this will be right up your alley.
passengersidemovie.com

Andrew Turner revels in serendipity
Did you know Thursday, April 29 was International Dance Day? One of the city’s best spaces for independent contemporary dance production, Studio 303 is inviting dance fans and professional artists alike to a dance-a-thon weekend to mark the occasion. Their Saturday night show Exchange/Échange (both at 7 and 9 p.m.) promises to dazzle with excerpts of works by local choreographers Anne Thériault and Andrew Turner, as well as New York choreographers Cori Olinghouse and Mana Kawamura.

I had the opportunity to chat with Turner a few months ago leading up to the local premiere of his new show Now I Got Worry. Below you’ll find some of the discussion that didn’t make it into the final piece (300-word articles aren’t that extensive, I’ll have you know.) Happy art binge!

NIGHTLIFE: Contemporary dance can be so competitive and gruelling, that I find a lot of dancers and choreographers tend to be a little too self-serious. You like to goof around with line dances, the  »dance of the orange bag », things that are more accessible to the layman. Do you know if these kind of shows alienate some contemporary dance purists? Do you care?
Andrew Turner: Being a jackass is very important to me both personally and artistically; however I try not to be gratuitous. I see humour as a way to pull an audience into the work, as well as a healthy tool for analysis and critique. But it’s very possible that some might think my work is too doofusy and no I don’t care.
 

Duet for One plus Digressions introduced the public to your interactive ways and inclination to break down that fourth wall. Would you say that improvisation is a big part of your dance philosophy?
Well, I’m very interested in the dialogue of performance, and the transformation that work undergoes when it’s shown, due to the simple fact that someone is there to watch it. For that reason, I love it when unforeseen things happen when I’m onstage, bringing this exchange to life. I love being heckled when I’m performing.

Your upcoming show Now I got worry tackles happenstance head-on. A fitting theme given that your foray into dance itself was very much an ‘‘absurdly implausible occurrence’’, as you put it in your artist statement. Was that the inspiration behind it?
Not really. I found myself fascinated with the fact that everything is so frigging implausible if you look at all the things that have had to happen for us to be living this moment, and yet we go around like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

studio303.ca