Attention all artists, writers, dancers, poets, painters, and anyone with a claim on creative talent. CJAM (clinique juridique des artistes de Montréal/ Montreal Artists' Legal Clinic) is getting ready for its much anticipated launch. On Friday, November 27th Cagibi will host CJAM's launch party. Doors open at 6:30 pm. The event will feature performances by Patrick Pleau (from Plajia), Chasing Bright Lights, Athena Holmes and musicfirm, as well as video appearances by Sara Johnston of Bran Van 3000, Kaveh Nabatian of Belle Orchestre; film makers, including Shannon Walsh - H2Oil; visual artists, including Omen and Carlos Sanchez; and authors, including Esther Bourdages and Oana Avasilichioael. Tickets are only $7, and proceeds will go to covering the clinic's costs.

Writing about ballet is like dancing to the gentle hum of old people quietly triumphing over death. Or something like that. The crowd, composed primarily of aging monuments to better days, was as artfully cast as the performers. Many a stern gaze (designed to convey thoughtfulness and gravitas) was fixed, and many a pearl necklace un-ironically adorned the shoulders that bore the weight of another era. Strewn among these botox laden masses, the occasional young person could be spotted. I saw sideburns and plastic rimmed glasses that would have made Elvis Costello (who, incidentally, was in the building watching his wife perform next door) proud. This pattern of old juxtaposed somewhat uncomfortably against new was mirrored in the modern reimagination of Sleeping Beauty. Given the theme and tone of the evening's production, I left convinced that choreographer Mats Ek aimed to reach the pre-Buick and prune juice set. The production's ultimately conservative message, however, remained palatable to the regulars.

The other night I dreamed that an unnervingly bronzed, much younger version of me was inaudibly mouthing something that, presumably, was quite moving. I strained, deep in my own reverie, to give audience to this late-90s apparition, but fared no better than the conviction that whatever I was telling myself, it was Worth Hearing. In fact, I am beguiled enough by the concept of self to suspect that whatever my thirteen-year old iteration wished to impart could, with a measure of unimpeachable validity, stand in for a truer representation of me. It’s more plausible that he simply wanted to remind me that I used to think punk rock was awesome, and that I shouldn’t take the opportunity to see and interview a one-time favorite band for granted.

There’s something about representations of university professors that make the project of post-secondary learning appear childish and banal. What seems like gripping insight the first time you hear it is transformed into trivia when it becomes apparent that, year after year, hundreds of bored students hear the same tired voice retell the same cocktail party anecdote about some neglected theory, scholar, or event. Similarly, if it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all, it is unclear whether this applies when love checks out and the relationship is stuck with the bill. Playwright Ann Lambert connects the twin disappointments of learning and love in her carefully written and well-directed offering, The Assumption of Empire.

If Boris Eifman, founder and director of the Eifman Ballet Theatre of St. Petersburg, were to go bowling, would he bring his own monogrammed ball? What, we may wonder, tops Mr. Eifman’s Polish sausage, provided of course that he can afford the meat in the first place? Just how many of his dancers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Note the naivety of this last question, as it assumes that there is electricity in Eastern Europe... And so on, ad naseum, until someone makes a Russian inversion. Indeed, a treasure trove of caricatures exists to belittle and cast aside anyone and anything hailing from the wrong side of the tattered, but persistently relevant Iron Curtain. Yet whatever inept image of the Slavic world one adopts, it is bound to be rendered moot against the crushing beauty and powerful grace of Tchaikovski et son double. Can North Americans accept mastery from so maligned a people and place?

Its amalgam of working class and pseudo-European charm notwithstanding, for many Montrealers this town revolves around the student life. Fortunately, for every evening ruined by marauding popped-collar types ineffectually broadcasting their masculinity along the Main, a careful eye can identify something worth salvaging from the tuition-paying set. Student theatre is one such thing, even among the bookish McGill-types more likely to be caught practicing for their future role as policy wonks than contributing to the art world. Written and directed by Anna Roth Trowbridge, "A One Man Show For My Brother" is a poetic and cerebral trip through the New Mexican desert. It explores troubling themes of mental health against the backdrop of local mythologies and familial narratives, and addresses the all too human desire to find reason in ostensibly irrational acts.

Feb 5-7, 12-14 @ 8pm
Feb 7, 14 @ 2pm

$6 students/seniors
$8 adults
Reservations 514-398-6813

Players' Theatre
SSMU Building
3480 McTavish St, 3rd Floor

Photo courtesy of "A One Man Show For My Brother".

Controversial author, thinker, essayist, and husband of ex-Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, John Ralston Saul will be speaking at McGill's Faculty of Law on Tuesday February 3rd. The title of his lecture is "The Roots of Canadian Law in Canada". Despite the theme and setting, the talk promises to be accessible and engaging. Note: that's not meant to be backhanded.

Tuesday 3 February 2009
5pm
Moot Court
Chancellor Day Hall
McGill Faculty of Law
3644 Peel Street

Lady Macbeth, it turns out, is a pussycat. Whereas she summoned fury only to channel it through her middling husband, Clytemnestra made a corpse of Agamemnon with her tempestuous pick axe. Hamlet too is not the ruminating dilly-dallier you thought he was. He dragged his heels for days, maybe weeks. Orestes, on the other hand, waited seventeen years before emerging from his solitude to avenge his father’s death. And if South African director Yael Farber is to be believed, Shylock, for all his woe, is but a pretender to the throne of oppression; others have suffered before, and unless the cycle of violence is deliberately shattered, they will continue to do so without reprieve. Molora, her adaptation of the Ancient Greek Oresteia trilogy, imagines the possibility of that very occurrence. By juxtaposing antiquity’s bloody determinism against post-Apartheid South Africa’s remarkably reconciliatory emergence, Farber’s vision casts the significance of her country’s victory in its stark historical context.

Gregg Gillis should have been a boring man. He’s from Pittsburgh, he studied engineering, and he did so in Ohio of all places. He evidently spends a lot of time alone on his computer. The phrase “avant-garde” seems to spill out of him with unabashed earnestness. With a fan base consisting primarily of self-conscious undergrads, recovering hipsters, and the kind of people interested in the limits of proprietarianism, it’s a wonder that anyone bothers to dance at his shows (n.b. everyone does). The techie rag Wired, which features articles such as “Parallels 4 Offers Mac Fans Blazing-Fast Windows Virtualization” and “How to Edit Wikipedia”, recently recognized him with an award. I strongly suspect that I will learn about him in my class on "Industrial and Intellectual Property". In other words, shit’s kinda whack, prima facie.

Given the number of years that these guys have been cranking out records and touring (and the demographic to which they appeal), it is both biologically (and socially) possible that some of their earliest fans are now grandparents. When NOFX began building their minor empire back in 1983, Barack Obama wasn't quite finished his undergraduate degree, and John McCain had just been elected for his first of many terms in the Senate. The band's longevity is difficult to reconcile with their ostensible ethos. Blistering tempos, moderately accessible sound, and a mix of naive political ranting/references to bestiality aren't supposed to have a long shelf life.

Despite the harmonious insistence of awesomely named Reggie Youngblood, frontman of the awesomely named Black Kids, that he would not teach your boyfriend how to dance (lamenting the other party's two left feet, and propensity to "bite moves"), I sensed a suppressed urge to in fact do just that, as he positively reinforced the bumpin', grindin', and steely-eyed resolution to keep an erect torso while stompin', with an earnest smile and lots of bouncin' of his own. Do as I do, not as I say?

Less Than Jake wrote the soundtrack to my adolescence. In the diluted realm of the Greater Toronto Area’s suburban sprawl, where the GO Train offered cruise control to freedom and defining yourself against the mainstream was as simple as donning a band shirt, their snarling intensity and infectious ska sound provided hours of distraction and release. In retrospect, most of their three-minute anthems sound pretty much the same, and their modest talents probably retarded my musical education. How could I know at the time that after I left the suburbs my knowledge of punk music would expose me to mild ridicule in the illustrious pages of The McGill Daily? At the time, however, you couldn’t find a record that could make me feel more alive than Losing Streak.