Well, school has been out for an entire week and I can honestly say that I have reached new depths of laziness. I finally turned on my aircon Thursday - I didn't feel like I needed it til then, but a leaving teacher delivered her futon* and I realized it was too darn hot to put it away unless the apartment was about 5 degrees cooler. It's just gone downhill from there. Friday I decided would be a great day to finally watch Deadpool 2 (awesome family film), since that would give me something to do that didn't involve being outside, and I tried to follow it up on Saturday with a less-successful trip to the National Museum to work on art (hint: drawing in a museum in Japan is impossible and I'm about to give up on it). Today I just gave up on leaving the apartment until the sun was going down, and you might justify my strategy of sleeping through the afternoon and being awake when it cools down as a preemptive strike against jet lag, but it's not. I just felt like spending an entire day cycling through napping, reading, and watching anime.
But before I dedicated myself to the cult of laziness, I made it to a couple of things, which nicely round out my first year in Japan. The first was The Director's idea. She'd seen the big top being erected on Odaiba and decided that it would be fun to initiate Hornblower and myself into her own special fandom - that of Cirque du Soleil. Being a theater nerd and a former circus employee herself (no, I'm not making that up), she regaled us with stories of how amazing a performance it was. I scoffed at least a little - after the circuses (both good and bad) that I've seen at the National Tsirk in Mongolia, it was going to take a lot to impress me - but she insisted it wasn't a circus...it was Cirque. An artistic extravaganza designed to engage your senses and dazzle your mind.
And it was dazzling. There is no denying the fact that they put a lot of thought into telling a story through each act. My problem was that the skills themselves were just okay. I felt like the skills were undermined by the showmanship, rather than enhanced. The contortionists had these really beautiful undersea costumes, but Mongolia's got the best damn contortionists in the world. The watery theme was continued by a group jumping on a trampoline at the start of the second act, in cheeky fish costumes with little fins that they fluttered at us. This act was as good as any I've ever seen, but the costumes were so cheesy that I had to cringe a little. It was nothing, though, compared to the awkwardness of the clown act. A female audience member was led out of the stands to pretend to be his date, only then he started acting like a cat. It made me really, really glad we hadn't sprung for the better seats. Turns out Cirque just really isn't my thing.
Notable exception - the two acrobats swinging around on straps. Male acrobats, without shirts. Okay, so it smacked of yaoi at least a little, as they gazed fondly at each other from across the ring as they swung back and forth, but I'm sure there were plenty of fujoshi in the audience members wishing it would go on forever. I, for one, will never complain about half naked men (even if they DO seem more interested in each other than in me).
At least, that's what I thought on Monday. By Wednesday night I may have changed my mind. One of the art events I've been meaning to get to for a while is Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School. It takes place on the last Wednesday of each month, and I hadn't been able to convince myself that it was worth it to be out that late on a school night. Now that it's officially summer there ARE no school nights, so it seemed about time. The basic premise behind Dr. Sketchy is that your models are burlesque dancers and your studio is a bar, which makes everything a lot more fun. The deciding factor in me finally taking the plunge and checking it out last week was that they finally had a male model. I mean, don't get me wrong - I love naked chicks. I'd just rather draw dudes.
Or so I thought. Here's a funny thing. You'd think a dude who gets paid to take his clothes off would be stacked. Barring that (given that we're in Japan here), you might expect a slender bishounen. Sergei was neither. Since belly dancers can come in all shapes and sizes, I suppose so can burlesque (or boylesque, as is, apparently, the term) dancers. It just came as a bit of a shock.
As did the tassles. Yes, you read me correctly, tassles. So the night was set up similarly to class with Gosnell, back in the good old days. We started with five short, two minute poses, and then he did four five-minute ones, and finally three ten-minute ones. The last of those was a contest to see who could do the best drawing, as judged by the model. When that was finished, he performed for us. Admittedly I'm uninitiated in the ways of burlesque, although I have a healthy respect for it, but I didn't really feel he had them moves like Jagger. He kind of bounced around the stage for a long time before losing everything on top - no teasing really - to reveal that he was wearing nipple tassles. I was so confused. Maybe it's a Japanese thing, like how you can't go too far with nudity in anime, but the drummers in Tao** had their nipples showing, so... Anyways, his act progressed, and off went his pants (I'm not even going to touch the fact that his outfit was gold and kind of pimpish), and then off went his boxer shorts, leaving him with a red thong, which, when he turned around, revealed that he had tassles on his butt.....
It's been four days and I still haven't come up with an explanation of that one. Maybe I'm just too innocent, or maybe I missed the point (because in actual fact, I'm not innocent at all). Maybe the idea of boylesque is so inherently cheesy that if you take it too seriously you come off as a parody of yourself? Maybe the point was just to be funny and have a good time? Awkward dancing aside, I did have a good time, and enjoyed talking to the other artists who came to draw, so chances are I'll be back. School night or not, Shibuya's not that far.
*So now I have a futon. This means that I'm willing to entertain guests from distant lands who are too cheap to get a hotel. Not that any of my friends (notable exception, Azhaar, and that's why she's my favorite) have visited in the last three countries, but hey, in the event that hell DOES freeze over, I'll be prepared.
**Now THAT'S who they should get in the future.
Notable exception - the two acrobats swinging around on straps. Male acrobats, without shirts. Okay, so it smacked of yaoi at least a little, as they gazed fondly at each other from across the ring as they swung back and forth, but I'm sure there were plenty of fujoshi in the audience members wishing it would go on forever. I, for one, will never complain about half naked men (even if they DO seem more interested in each other than in me).
As did the tassles. Yes, you read me correctly, tassles. So the night was set up similarly to class with Gosnell, back in the good old days. We started with five short, two minute poses, and then he did four five-minute ones, and finally three ten-minute ones. The last of those was a contest to see who could do the best drawing, as judged by the model. When that was finished, he performed for us. Admittedly I'm uninitiated in the ways of burlesque, although I have a healthy respect for it, but I didn't really feel he had them moves like Jagger. He kind of bounced around the stage for a long time before losing everything on top - no teasing really - to reveal that he was wearing nipple tassles. I was so confused. Maybe it's a Japanese thing, like how you can't go too far with nudity in anime, but the drummers in Tao** had their nipples showing, so... Anyways, his act progressed, and off went his pants (I'm not even going to touch the fact that his outfit was gold and kind of pimpish), and then off went his boxer shorts, leaving him with a red thong, which, when he turned around, revealed that he had tassles on his butt.....
It's been four days and I still haven't come up with an explanation of that one. Maybe I'm just too innocent, or maybe I missed the point (because in actual fact, I'm not innocent at all). Maybe the idea of boylesque is so inherently cheesy that if you take it too seriously you come off as a parody of yourself? Maybe the point was just to be funny and have a good time? Awkward dancing aside, I did have a good time, and enjoyed talking to the other artists who came to draw, so chances are I'll be back. School night or not, Shibuya's not that far.
*So now I have a futon. This means that I'm willing to entertain guests from distant lands who are too cheap to get a hotel. Not that any of my friends (notable exception, Azhaar, and that's why she's my favorite) have visited in the last three countries, but hey, in the event that hell DOES freeze over, I'll be prepared.
**Now THAT'S who they should get in the future.
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