Dances with Kevin

                                                          Crazy Horse by Diana Plater

The world is divided into those who love Kevin Costner and those who don’t.

One friend describes him as “an archetypal spunk” but then she admits to a partiality to honey-hued hair on boys.

Others think he is a super dag and a bad actor.

I’m somewhere in between on this one.

While researching a recent story I watched Dances with Wolves again and I loved it.

A film adaptation of the 1988 book of the same name by Michael Blake, it tells of a Union Army lieutenant assigned to an abandoned army post who finds himself alone and beyond civilization. Only a wolf and some roving Lakota Indians provide distractions, as the back of the DVD cover puts it.

Winning  an Oscar for best picture, apparently it was responsible for reigniting the western genre in films when it came out in 1990. Three hours long it was also pretty entertaining, funny, sad and moving. And I liked the way Lieutenant Dunbar danced around the fire and rode his trusty horse.

At least he attempted to make it a bilingual movie – with much of the movie in  Lakota.

But one Native American activist and actor described it as Lawrence of the Plains.

He said a woman taught the actors the Lakota language, which was a problem because Lakota has a male-gendered language and a female-gendered language. So some of the Indians and Costner were speaking in the feminine way.

 This brought on a flood of giggles by male Lakotans everytime they saw the movie in local cinemas.

Really, you can’t win.

Well old Two Socks, the wolf, loved him.

But Kev’s $100 million Dunbar Resort in Deadwood has also been surrounded with controversy since the early 90s when he and his brother Dan first proposed it.

The project hinged on a change in state gaming laws. The state of South Dakota voted to raise the betting limit at Deadwood casinos from $5 to $100 and reportedly gave the brothers $14 million to develop their plan.

It was to be built on land next to the Black Hills National Forest and would have had a golf course and a railroad right of way. But Native American groups view the Black Hills as sacred, the resort as desecration, and said the land was deeded to the Lakota in treaties.

Also previously in these states only Indian reservations had had the rights to run casinos - a way to boost the local economy.

Despite spending millions, Costner's resort has never materialised.

Still he does have his small casino, Midnight Star, in Deadwood and the staff  think he’s a good guy and pretty laid back, despite all the troubles and bad reviews over the years..

All over the walls of his casino are memorabilia, costumes and props from his movies including the one I loved because it was just SO kitsch – The Bodyguard. Oh Whitney, how far have you fallen since then?

The night we visit it’s quiet with only a table of card players - probably playing the Dead Man's Hand, I think to myself. Upstairs a barmaid tells me Costner comes “about twice a year”.

“He’s kinda mellow and down to earth,” she says.

And you could tell that was all she wanted to say on the subject of Kevin Costner.

Writing, Cooking and Eating

There's still a couple of vacancies for my next LANDSCAPES Travel Writing Workshop on Sunday November 13.

10.30am to 3.30pm.

$150 per person including lunch.

 

Held at my home in Sydney's eastern suburbs the class is small and friendly with plenty of time to write and also get feedback.  You take home a kit of articles and tips for successful travel writing.

While we're writing and talking my husband, Budi, cooks a great Balinese lunch for us to enjoy after our short excursion. The class is all about "making something from nothing". 

Past participants have described it as inspiring and fun. So you should go home full of ideas and great food! 

Another class will be held in early December. And more are planned for upcoming months in Bali.

 More information/bookings: plater@optusnet.com.au

Powwow Posts - greetings from North Dakota

EAT, LOVE and PRAY TO GET OUT OF THE TRAFFIC

I saw something that I really wished I hadn’t seen as I walked the beach of Kuta yesterday.

Yes it was a woman lying in the sun reading Eat, Love, Pray.

As everybody in the world knows the book and film of the same name was partly set in Bali.

And floods of divorced and single women have rushed to Ubud, the “cultured” and “spiritual” town in the mountains, ever since to have their fortunes told and their problems solved by the toothless healer also depicted in the book and film.

They are probably hoping to meet a Balinese prince who will dress them in a sarong and kebaya and marry them in his local temple. Why is it that every second foreign woman you meet here is married to a prince? There’s so many princes there’s no room for the commoners.

Julia Roberts might have ridden around on a bicycle in the movie but I wouldn’t recommend it in the bumper to bumper traffic that now besets the island of the Gods.

Sitting on a bike drinking in truck fumes is not my idea of Paradise. And how many Maccas, circle Ks and Starbucks does Bali really need? Let alone giant hotels and shopping malls.

Yet only a few metres away you can enjoy the late afternoon sun at a warung right on the beach, drinking Bintangs and eating tipat cantok while watching the fishermen come in from the sea loaded with fish they throw straight on the coals.

We’re heading to the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival tomorrow. Hope we don’t run into too many princes, healers or women looking for luuuuve there. But I’m looking forward to the babi gulung.

Bali is a land of contrasts – and that’s the beauty of it.

Whatever happened to theatre etiquette?

Once when going to the theatre in San Francisco I read a booklet that had a guide to theatre etiquette.

It was full of sound advice, such as suggesting patrons not wear heavy perfume or beehive hairstyles.

I wish I had a copy of this booklet as I believe it should be given out as compulsory reading to all theatre and concert-goers.

You often get the impression when you go to the theatre these days that most of the audience have never been before.

Why would they talk to each other throughout a performance if they knew that it was extremely rude and unthoughtful?

I went to a dance performance recently and the couple in front of me blocked the view the whole time as they kept moving their heads towards each other to whisper sweet nothings or something.

Another night at the opera a man near me was commenting and talking the whole way through. Now opera goers do not like to be disturbed. They’ve paid up to $200 or more for their ticket and they want to hear the damn music. So this man was very loudly and forcefully asked: “Are you going to talk the whole way through this opera?”

That shut him up for awhile. But then he got the noisy lolly wrappers out and continued to non stop unravel lollies and eat them.

Others may not mean to disturb their fellow audience members – but why do they have to clap whenever they think they should and so ruin the aria for somebody else?

Leave the applause to the end. It goes on for long enough then anyway.

A friend told me that she once sat behind a woman with extremely thick hair that was left out and therefore also blocked her view. She eventually had to ask this person to tie her hair up, which obligingly she did.

What are your pet hates? And what should be done to improve the situation?

Pass laws for a paseo

The world should follow the Spanish paseo.

This is what is defined as a slow, easy stroll or walk outdoors. It’s also the street, series of streets, or walkway along which such a walk is taken.

I believe it’s the same word for the bullfighting expression: the formal procession into the ring of the players, including the matadors, banderilleros, and horses, that occurs just before the first bull is fought.

And people out walking on a summer’s evening in Barcelona or Malaga or Madrid can take on the look of a bullfighter. A walker checking out which bar to sit at and take an aperitif can be a little like a matador looking over the bull. Is it good enough? Is it worth his time? Will the enjoyment of the kill (or the drink and tapas) be worth the wait at the bar or table? Will the conversation be as good as the blood-letting?

Perhaps I’m taking the metaphor too far.

Issues are probably as innocent as, should we stop for an ice-cream this time?

But to walk out in a European town and join the hundreds of others – from babies to grandmothers – is refreshing and fun and makes you feel glad to be alive.

I come from a country where the paseo is not a national pastime. Even in good weather people lock themselves behind doors and watch TV and conversation is a dying art, apart from “where’s the remote?” and “what’s for dinner?”. It might expand to, “when will dinner be ready?” but rarely to the politics of the day or the logistics of the next protest march.

We’re dying in the southern, apathetic climes, especially in winter.

Even in winter in Europe the paseo is not neglected – window shopping, stopping for hot coffee,

watching buskers, sipping on wine. All ages enjoy getting out of the house and into the life of the town. Bars are full and tapas are still, in many, included in the price, although sadly that is changing.

The next government who brings in a compulsory paseo should win. I vote for an international paseo.

Somewhere over the rainbow

                                                          Photo by: Michelle Day

Somewhere over the Rainbow was the joke of the night on Saturday at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.

A very popular Mark Nadler was doing his thing in the Piano Bar at the Festival Centre, "menacing the keyboards" in Broadway Hootenanny and introducing special guests. He explained that the night before after the "gala performance" one of his guests had sung Somewhere over the Rainbow and then maybe not aware of this 2012 artistic director Kate Ceberano dressed up to look like Princess Leia or maybe a Grecian goddess sang the same classic number from The Wizard of Oz.

So on Saturday night Nadler begged his guests to pick another tune.

"Even Olivia sang it during her show tonight," he said, referring of course to Our Livvie (or Olivia Newton John) and pointing out that being a pop singer she only sang the chorus and not the verses.

Nadler's guests were formidable - for example Simon Burke in town for a show and a bevy of women singers including a lesbian (as he put it) he'd seen in a Fringe Cabaret act called  Libby O'Donovan. Sporting a white Mohawk she threw off her mock fur coat to reveal a tightly-fitting plastic nurse's uniform and sang about being on a slut walk for love.

And then came the Magnets, a British boy band, who are a six-man sound machine - making all their music with their mouths alone. After a couple of songs they burst forth with a jammed uptempo version, with the outrageous Nadler on the piano, of you guessed it - that rainbow song.

Meanwhile a very sparkly Olivia performed all the old favourites to an adoring audience- standing and clapping away with her and her American backing band and the Adelaide Art Orchestra. She can still "get physical" and shake her beautiful body better than people half her age. Must be all that tea she drinks on stage - no bourbon and coke for her.

The night  before at the gala she'd done the final number - Xanadu - surrounded by drag queens covered in yellow feathers.

After the show it was a bit hard to tell who were the drags and who were Adelaide matrons decked out in their 70s sparkly numbers they obviously keep in the back of the cupboard for such occasions. The fashion was not the high point of the night. At one stage, I wondered if a wedding party had got lost and wandered into the bar. Some people seemed to be dressed in their bridesmaids outfits.

Changing the mood somewhat, for an hour on Saturday afternoon I was mesmerised by the performance of Ansuya Nathan, in her show Long Live the King, telling the story of her Indian parents' arrival in Adelaide on the day of the death of Elvis, her mother's idol. Weaving in and out of their past and 70s present, she told a moving tale that linked Elvis intimately with her mother. Both Ansuya's mother and Elvis's lost one of their twins at birth. And she can sing Elvis songs too. Beautiful.

For David Campbell this is his last cabaret festival as artistic director - he made the most of it by getting up on stage and singing You're the One that I Want with a leather-jacketed Olivia in her show.

Ceberano was asked on opening night what she plans to do for next year and she said she would just make sure she had good acts. Doesn't look like it will be hard.

Adelaide can be rather dreary at times - I know I have lived there and also spent two long weeks there last year - but during cabaret festival time it shines.