Beautiful people, the beautiful people

I love artists. I love the creative types more than I love the ocean, chocolate and wine. I love the creative types who CREATE. In this society, creating is brave. It can be risky, it can be terrifying. But it is the prime example of authenticity – the act of living your passion. It is envied, it is frowned upon. I’d love to say that authenticity is encouraged, but it’s just not popular enough. Sadly, there’s just nothing mainstream about living honestly and artists fall into that rare category of people who reject what everyone else expects of them. Any effort we have made as a society to encourage creativity has been pretty lame so far. We love to tell people “you’re unique!” until they announce that they’d rather be juggling than working as an accountant, a plumber or a police officer. “You’re out of your mind!”

I took a huge leap this year and decided that I want to surround myself with the arts. I’m not yet confident enough to forge my own artistic career (because I am still working on my skills). It will come – I’m learning, I’m studying, I’m growing. And it’s a beautiful process! But I know business. I know that there’s a huge gap between what artists do and the public who is craving art. And that gap is filled with misunderstandings about how to reach out to people who aren’t in the artsy circles, how to use social media, how to react to bad reviews. I opened a publicity business not to make artists rich but to bring more art to the public. Artists will make a better living as a simple side effect of getting larger audiences, more feedback, more attention. But what really matters to me is to make art more accessible. I’ll be writing an article about my new business later this week.

This weekend, I attended the Lumiere Festival. I met up with a good friend of mine Jessica Ruano (check out her blog).  Jessica was organizing the spoken word feature at the festival.  Since the weather was cold and windy, a lot of the performers gathered in the artist-only building (which I’ll refer to as the ‘green room’).  I accompanied her on several occasions as she went into the green room to meet up with the poets – and I could use a heated washroom instead of the porta potties which was sneaky on my part.

In the green room, there were magicians and poets and circus performers and dancers and actors.  And they were all rehearsing or pacing back and forth or taking off costumes, putting them back on, checking their props… sitting down to breathe.  And I know it sounds silly, but that was by far the most exciting part of the festival for me.  A brief look inside the world of performers… what beauty.  I was the luckiest girl at the festival.

So, I met a few of them and took out my video camera.  First off, we have the butoh performer, Annie Lefebvre (she is one of my clients…. wheeee!).  I asked her if her butoh performance at the Lumiere Festival was the same as the one she’d just performed outside at the Remic rapids a few days ago.  She explains to us that it was similar but that there’s a whole other vibe because the interaction (or lack of) water changes the mood and movement.  Though the interview is in French and the audio is poor, just look at her expressions.  Can you tell she’s a natural performer? 

Next, I asked Jessica if there were any French poets at the festival.  And that’s when she introduced me to Mehdi Hamdad.  I asked him to perform one of his poems for me and loved it so much that I asked him if I could videotape it and share it with all of you.  He reminds me of a young Jacques Brel – full of life and enthusiasm.  Words of love, life and joy.  It’s in French only.  You can learn more about Mehdi Hamdad by going to his MySpace profile.

Lastly, I went out for drinks and food with some of the performers after the festival ended.  Just as we were leaving, I ran across a group of performers who broke into song.  I absolutely had to share this with you.  I wish I had their names so if you know who they are (or if you want to be identified), contact me!  This one’s in English – enjoy!  It’ll make you want to snap your fingers and move your head and close your eyes and smile along with them.

So the next time I’m at a festival, I’m going to ask one of the performers or organizers for a sneak peek into their ‘green room’.  Sometimes, a lot of the magic is found behind the scenes. 

Related posts:

1. …of the day: The voices of artists