Jarkko Lehmus Diary

"Don't Tap It... Whack It!"

Too many things to talk about and too little time. What follows is a condensed summary of of a month in a life of a dancing beast. You can feel free to ignore the next five paragraphs and start reading after the second picture if you can't be bothered with the random rant.

Need I say more? ©

I regularly refer to the company as the zoo, long for going out to play, hate talking shop and do it anyway, try to better myself while self-destructing, cry during lonely nights while driving away any possibility of companionship, prepare wise words for others to adhere to and generally just mess things up myself.

Today was a Tuesday. It was a mellow day at work with a minor shocker and some assorted tantrums of the management kind due to finding out that the projector situated behind the set for Ashley's Pennies From Heaven will eat up two meters of our stage space at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. It'll be bloody tight, but we'll sort ourselves out because we have to. That's also something we do on a regular basis anyway... The autumn tour kicked off in Glasgow a couple of weeks back, morphed into something else on the vastly bigger Edinburgh stage and will be something totally else again in London, Inverness and Aberdeen. All the stages are very different and every entry schedule is equally tight. It all reminds me of my commercial days in a larger scale: you've got a show to put on and we just get on with it and give the audience the best we can while trying to work out the spacing and dodging each other or adapting the choreography on the go. What ever the company's efficiency drives or shortfalls in organisation are always fall on the dancers, because we are ultimately what the audience pays for to see and we do our best to deliver them, you, the best we can. All help is appreciated and all hindrance is bitched about, but ultimately ignored for the sake of the end product. You pay your money and we'll bleed for it even if the shows we perform only properly work in one of the venues we end up performing in.

Let's see what happens when the company gets it's new building, a new financial leaf is turned, more commissions roll in facilitating more networking and possibly finally the longed-for foreign touring. For us touring south of the border is included under the umbrella of "foreign touring." A pile of political rubbish, if you ask me. There's been more than a fair bit of talk about the big boys torpedoing our prospective touring efforts on various fronts, but, since I don't have much of concrete proof, I can't say more than: "What a load of utter shite."

I'm a mess of a Creationist-Darwinist, so a possibly blasphemous on all fronts, to boot and believe in healthy competition and critical thought even among well-established institutions that have a tendency of curtailing such practices for the sake of maintaining the status quo. Clearly my viewpoint is propelled by the relationship of the company I have dedicated the past five years of my life, but I also do my best to test and challenge the establishment in my immediate environment as best as I see fit. Open confrontation is seldom the best way forward in any situation. For me to realise that has taken a fair amount of bashing against shut doors. Instead of looking into the internal workings of locks, I'm currently educating myself on the construction of hinges in the hope of working my way through those doors in a more lasting manner and possibly showing the inhabitants of those closed rooms that fresh air isn't such a bad thing after all. In practice that includes me actually training properly, drinking less and, hopefully, communicating in a more productive manner.

What a bucket load of metaphorical gobshite... On another note: if anyone's got any decent guidelines about English grammar especially regarding when and how to combine words and when not to, please do not hesitate to email me. If you lot don't set me right, I'll just keep applying my bastard child of Finnish grammar and English weirdness.

A funky Pennies rehearsal shot sans the obligatory cowboy outfits and coconuts. © Michael Scott

So after the pretty picture we can conclude that yesterday was a fine Tuesday wrapped up with a rather entertaining Douglas Laing tasting courtesy of the Whisky Club and put to bed with a few choice drams an a cigar. It is now 1am and I'm still yet to tell you what's actually going on in plain words, so here goes: After the holiday we've pulled the autumn program together, got the second cast on for the most part, had the season's first meetings to pull together a workable updated house contract and terms and conditions of employment, got lovely physio Louise from the National Sports Injury Clinic observing and assessing us, done a couple of weeks of shows, nailed down the Christmas, New Year and the winter holiday dates and times and even got a few confirmed Saturdays off over the course of the autumn and some pencilled-in Mondays off during the Christmas season of Sleeping Beauty. We've also had a minor drama about the transportation of the company on the wider UK tours resulting in possibly better communication and forward planning in the future. At this moment I'd like to add a little dig about the unworkable nature of the state of the rail network, unsustainability of short haul flights and the detrimental effect that prolonged coach journeys have on the performance capability of a highly strung dance company. In any case the positive things that have emerged are all issues that I've been going on about for a long time now. They might finally be bearing fruit, but only after several of the dancers have come back from the summer holiday still carrying the same injuries that we went on the holiday with. Is it too late and will it all explode on our collective thighs still remains to be seen.

She might certainly hope for some action. ©

To keep me off the streets the company has graciously allowed me to do a guest project with David Hughes Dance to dance a part of in the Red Room based on Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of the Red Death. In my view it's good for the company to let it's dancers to roam a little to gather some wider influences to bring back home on their return. (Clearly this would be my view due to the fact that I was originally brought in to bring a different approach to movement, rather than just being a crap ballet dancer.) Maybe this collaboration will open more doors in the future. Personally I'd like to be in the position of having my base here with the company while being allowed to go out to explore and further myself through outside collaborations, so I could feed the sides of me that the company doesn't particularly provide for as a performer and as a person. I have created all the anchoring male parts in the narrative repertoire of the company with pretty much free hand and would like to be able to develop the characters and any future creations with an expanded toolkit.

As I've told you before my philosophy in life is to try and find the balance by exploring the extremities. As any of you chess or poker players out there would appreciate, studying the mistakes and the strategies of the generations past will give you a vast artillery over the uneducated opponent, I have also decided to finally stick the gator clips on my neglected brain and embark on converting the practice based Diploma in Performance that I acquired from Millennium Dance 2000 into a more intellectually challenging BA in Theatre. After that is in the bag I'd like to translate my professional experience into another BA through the course in Modern Ballet that the company is about to launch in collaboration with the RSAMD. I'd also like to make sure that the latter possibility is made available for who ever likes to take it up within the company to ease their passage into the world beyond the insular existence of a professional dancer. During all that artistic laying of foundation I'll also try to stretch my intellectual wings in the directions of social psychology and management and possibly even get myself registered and insured as an alternative therapist due to the increasing demand of treating my fellow dancers.

It's safe to say that the focus of my life is shifting from pissing the days away to looking into the future as a place that I have to live in for the rest of my life. Working with guys like Paul Liburd and David Hughes gives me some indication of what to expect of myself as a performer in a decade's time, if I take care of myself. If...

Condensed my arse...

There are topics I've thought about while writing my entries over the years that I haven't even had the courage to touch upon, but the time comes for everything. You know that I like to travel. My mother told me that I'd reeled off a list of countries I'd like to go to while sitting on the potty and reading the day's paper upside down... The imminent global warming is taking it's toll and air travel for pleasure is reaching it's critical mass. When ever I've travelled to another country and immersed myself to the local culture, and people, I've come back feeling that I'd like to have contributed more. There was one night in particular that I was writing a whole travel story while Al Gore's Live Earth was going on and my silly antics around Europe seemed truly pointless in the context of the greater picture. It's taken a long time to sink into my thick head, but I've finally decided to sell my second motorbike, buy myself a pushbike for the town and do my best to find alternatives for excessive air travel.

This all raises the question of my ultimate interest to you, my reader. Am I just a knuckle-headed curiosity or do my writings actually make you think? I don't get much feedback, but I know that someone occasionally, possibly accidentally, wades through the marshes of the literary swamp I regurgitate. I've written this blog for nearly five years now and it would certainly be alarming if there wouldn't be any progress with me as a person. Sod knows...

All I know is that an increasing amount of my friends are turning forty, Limor has left the company to move back to Israel due to frustration and toe pain (La-La-La-Boom) and that one can be told off for smoking a cigar in a Hellfire Club, be utterly lost or profoundly stylish during a soaked music festival, that bowling can be a hoot at least the first time around and that hungry broken bodies need quality treatment and guidance on fishing.

You decide... ©

My long-time wife and nemesis at her best. © Andrew Ross

To round off a night of running circles in the woods of my mind I'll spark up another one, suck down the dregs in the glass and leave you with another testament of the state of Glasgow.

A notice on the door of an up market city centre development. ©