Man Meets Machine

A sculpture comes to life in the North American premiere of Connected by the Australian dance company Chunky Move.

Kicking off the White Bird Uncaged series at Portland State University, Connected is a study in precision. Chunky Move choreographer Gideon Obarzanek collaborated with California sculptor Reuben Margolin to find the connection, quite literally, between dance and visual art.

At the centerpiece of Connected is a lightweight, kinetic sculpture containing dozens of waxy strings dangling from the ceiling and hooked to a loom anchored on the floor. The first third of the performance focuses on the assembly of the sculpture, with the company’s five dancers taking turns to add magnetic segments on the tip of each wire, eventually forming a vast checkerboard pattern. It’s a bewildering introduction that pays off in a big way: The dancers then take control of the sculpture by connecting the strings to their arms and legs, creating a ripple effect across the stage with each subtle move.

In the final third of Connected, the dancers unhook from the sculpture and transform into museum security guards, sharing random stories from the people who are observing you while you are observing art. (The quotes are taken from actual interviews for an aborted film project.) It’s a clever meta twist to close Chunky Move’s sly analysis of the construction—and deconstruction—of a work of art.

Chunky Move presents Connected 8 p.m. Oct. 22 at Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall, 1620 S.W. Park Ave. For tickets click here.

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Folk-pop musician Michael Mirlas aims for balance

Michael Mirlas is drawn to contradictions.

Optimistic melancholy. Ambitious modesty. Independent popularity.

The Portland-based musician has completed his first full-length recording, Soul Riot, which combines elements of folk and pop music. It’s this unique blend of oppositional forces that sets the 37-year-old apart from the rest.

“I wanted to make the album about joy,” he says. “My last album was moody and gut-wrenched. I thought that it was time to live.”

Mirlas admits that he learned a lot about himself during the recording process for Soul Riot. After writing the songs, he says he now views the world through “very authentic rose-colored glasses…to be happy amidst real-life things.”

Mirlas (rhymes with “peerless”) has always taken a nontraditional approach to life. He was born in Ukraine back when it was a Soviet republic. When he was 5, his family immigrated to New York City, where his father made a living as a musician in Russian nightclubs.

“I spent my entire childhood falling asleep at 4 o’clock in the morning at my father’s nightclubs listening to Russian music,” he says, “so music was always a huge part of my life.”

Mirlas says his experience as an immigrant has affected both his politics and his art.

“I consider myself a socialist,” he explains. “I’m drawn to the nuances of the regular person; that’s what I find interesting. To me, part of being an immigrant is writing about people trying to reach their full potential.”

Mirlas is also gay, having come out at the age of 19. He says that his sexual orientation informs many of his lyrics.

“One of the first songs I ever wrote is called ‘The Love Religion,’” he recalls. “The chorus is ‘Come inside my mouth, see inside my eyes, enter the love religion.’ The song isn’t really about sex; the song is about ‘Give me all of you, and see all of me.’”

Mirlas earned a bachelor’s degree in poetry from Baruch College and a master’s degree in philosophy from Brooklyn College. It wasn’t until he met a friend in a musical theater workshop class that he decided to take a beginning guitar class at the age of 22 and try his hand at songwriting.

“I remember her telling me, ‘This is your first real song.’ I called it ‘Dagaz,’ which means ‘breakthrough,’” he says. “It was a real transition in my life of coming into my own passion.”

Mirlas went on to record several collections of demos: Audio Memoirs, Intimate Revolt and First the Garden, Then the Rose. He also performed at legendary New York clubs like The Bitter End and CBGB and toured in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Provincetown, Mass.

“Live performance brings up all of my vulnerabilities,” he says. “The goal is to connect with people and make music for people that I love.”

After moving to Portland in 2008, he got his first big break when his song “Puppy Dog Eyes,” featuring Decemberists bassist Jesse Emerson, appeared in the 2010 film BearCity. The video for “Puppy Dog Eyes” was featured on the DVD release for BearCity, and Mirlas attended five gay film festivals to help promote the song.

“It’s been an amazing experience,” he says. “I wrote that song after a relationship had ended. The song was about emotional bondage—that it’s not what it seems like.”

Mirlas says Soul Riot was inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (“I wanted to make a meaningful pop record”), and his favorite musicians include PJ Harvey, Björk and Tom Waits. But his top influences are a pair of women who are rarely mentioned in the same breath.

“To me, Madonna and Ani DiFranco describe the two things in me, which is the folky, completely independent, I-do-not-want-to-work-with-anybody-business-minded mentality and the I-really-want-my-music-to-be-heard mentality,” he says. “It’s not that I don’t love money, but I would never compromise my work for it.”

The songs on Soul Riot—written with collaborator Sam Densmore, who produced the record—find hope even amid sadness. The closing track of the album is titled “Happiness Loves Company.”

Mirlas is already working on his next album, Disarmed, which he describes as “lean and mean danceable folk” music. He looks forward to taking Soul Riot on the road, with a theatrical twist.

“I like to bring the visual element to the material,” he says. “I think that’s the place where my musical-theater background creeps in.”

In the end, Mirlas says he enjoys using the power of music to reflect on the world around him. Songwriting gives him the opportunity to continue—both literally and figuratively—beating to his own drum.

“I’m a folk writer, and I write what I experience or what I need to work through within myself,” he says. “I’m interested in alternative cultures. I always wanted for us to feel like we can see ourselves in art, because that’s what further our understanding about ourselves. It’s makes us feel like we’re not alone. It gives us value.”

For more information about Michael Mirlas, click here.

Four Men and a Deer

Northeast Portland has a new dance venue, at least for the rest of this week.

Alberta Rose Theatre, a moviehouse from 1927 to 1978 that reopened last year as a performance space, is the short-term home for White Bird's Uncaged series, which brings contemporary dance out of downtown and into nontraditional spaces throughout Portland. After all of the hubbub surrounding Last Thursday's degradation from gallery walk to late-night douchefest, it's refreshing to see some actual "art" in the Alberta Arts District for a change.

White Bird consistently draws cutting-edge dance companies from around the world, while keeping an eye out for performers who particularly appeal to gay audiences. (It doesn't hurt that White Bird co-founders Paul King and Walter Jaffe are a longtime couple.) For this round of Uncaged, White Bird presents choreographers Yossi Berg and Oded Graf, a gay couple from Tel Aviv who started collaborating in 2005.

4 Men, Alice, Bach and the Deer is described as "a humorous dark fantasy performed to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach about four men trying to find the ultimate 'man' and daring to doubt his existence." Berg and Graf are joined by dancers Hillel Kogan and Irad Mazliah in portraying the titular horndogs, who enter the stage sporting loud shirts that could've been stolen from the wardrobe of Cosmo Kramer, their faces initially hidden behind Mexican wrestler masks. What follows is a swift and electrifying 50-minute performance that combines extremely physical dance with a cheeky spoken-word interlude that borrows from Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." There also are strobe lights, a decapitated deer and hot, sweaty men panting in exhaustion. An unpredictable, exhilarating ride that suits this funky new venue.

Yossi Berg / Oded Graf present 4 Men, Alice, Bach and the Deer through April 16 at Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St. For tickets click here. Photo by Pedro Arnay.

What’s Your Type?: Personality system helps couples understand each other

In any long-term relationship, most couples can remember disagreeing about something seemingly insignificant. Maybe one of them was having a bad day. Perhaps it was the result of miscommunication. But oftentimes a minor spat can spiral into a major conflict without deeper exploration.

For Vicki Reitenauer, it happened in the kitchen. She and her wife, Carol Gabrielli, share an interest in cooking, but they don’t always adhere to the same standards.

“I’ll chop the peppers, and then she’ll come back and re-chop them at the size that she wants,” Reitenauer recalls. Before long, she’d find herself feeling: “Wow, you’re betraying me on some fundamental level. You’re abandoning me.”

The couple, who met at college in 1985 and have been together since 1997, eventually figured out what was causing such an extreme reaction. They accomplished this by studying the Enneagram, a personality system that details nine universal perspectives on seeing the world. For example, “The Protector” tends to be a bossy person who confronts injustice, while “The Mediator” would rather avoid drama. “The Performer” enjoys the spotlight, while “The Observer” prefers privacy. In essence, each personality type has a specific “lens” through which it filters the world, and the Enneagram aims to bring everything into focus.

Gabrielli discovered that her Enneagram type is “The Perfectionist.” This means that she consistently fixates on errors, which can lead to anger and resentment. “I think things through with great rigor,” Gabrielli says before jokingly busting into an exaggerated German accent: “It’s about discipline and consequence!”

Reitenauer, meanwhile, identifies as “The Romantic,” an idealistic type who frequently notices what’s missing. “I believe in feeling things deeply. I’m drawn to the highest highs and the lowest lows.”

By learning more about their distinct points of view, the couple were able to develop a keen awareness that not everyone perceives those chopped veggies in the same way. As a result, they stopped taking everything so personally.

“Because of who Carol is, there is this sense of doing everything in the right way,” Reitenauer says. “But that intersects with my deep shame around being exposed for being wrong. That would be a driver for conflict in our relationship.”

The goal, she explains, is for people to express affection in a way that will resonate with their partner.

“The Enneagram has helped me to recognize how Carol shows love to me,” Reitenauer says. “Sometimes in a couple, either person can be acting in ways that they believe are loving and which are expressions of love. But the other person can’t see it, because it’s not what that person typically has recognized as love.”

Israel Sostrin and Susan Schmitt have also experienced how the Enneagram can help couples understand each other better. As the busy parents of an infant daughter, they have a strong desire to connect during their limited free time—albeit with different approaches.

Sostrin’s personality type is “The Giver,” so he instinctually places the needs of others ahead of his own and can suffer from “a lack of awareness of myself and my basic needs.” He prefers to connect on an emotional level.

Schmitt, however, finds connection intellectually. As “The Epicure,” she can easily get lost in thought. Schmitt describes the optimistic mindset of people who share her personality type: “If something’s not working out, we move on. We tend to have a lot of great ideas but not necessarily always follow through.”

Schmitt says the Enneagram is a powerful method to help get to the heart of the matter “more quickly and gracefully. It gave us a tool to look inside so we don’t have to blame the other person. It’s not you, it’s not me, it’s the nature of who we are.”

According to Sostrin, the Enneagram gave him an eye-opening awareness of his “blind spots.” He adds that frustration subsided once he accepted that he and his wife have inherently distinct outlooks: “You wouldn’t expect a raccoon to act like a giraffe.”

Couples will have the opportunity to learn more about the Enneagram at an upcoming workshop. Cathy Hitchcock, who has 25 years of experience as a psychotherapist, will be facilitating the session along with mentor and spiritual counselor Dale Rhodes. Both are certified professional trainers of the Enneagram.

“So much about where growth happens is just awareness. People can spend a really long time in therapy to develop awareness that can come quite quickly with the Enneagram,” Hitchcock says. “To me, the Enneagram is a system of self-understanding and understanding others in your life. It seems like automatically what comes with that is compassion—compassion for each other and compassion for ourselves.”

Gabrielli agrees. These days, she can more readily sense when her perfectionism is getting the best of her.

“I value any tool that helps me see how I’m wired,” she says. “Once one practices the Enneagram more and more, he or she can not only see the train coming, but hear the whistle of it and get off the track, so that you’re not just standing there and getting run over by the moment.”

“Introduction to the Enneagram for Couples” features guidance on identifying the couple’s types, as well as professional videos of experienced students speaking about their personality style and how it affects relationships, from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. June 19 at HealthQuest, 1330 S.E. 39th Ave. in Portland. Admission is $180 a couple, which includes all materials and two books. Register here.

Making Peace: Experts help reduce conflict through self-awareness

Like it or not, conflict is an unavoidable daily reality. It comes up on the job, within relationships, at school and in international relations. If not handled properly, it can lead to stress, divorce, alienation or, in extreme cases, war.

But before people can learn how to reduce conflict, according to Stanford psychiatry professor David Daniels, they need to learn how to understand themselves. Daniels is a renowned expert on the Enneagram, an ancient personality system exploring nine types of thinking that influence how folks view the world.

"The brain is literally a pattern machine, and the Enneagram is about nine fundamental styles of adapting to the world to have a satisfying life," Daniels explains. "These are adaptive patterns that go all the way back to early childhood, so we believe in them."

Daniels identifies as a Type Six, also known as "The Loyal Skeptic," which means that he pays particular attention to avoiding potential hazards. This point of view, established at a young age, creates adults who are trustworthy and inquisitive but can also be overly doubtful and fearful.

"Lots of times, it's just my magnification of things," Daniels says. "I can really count on you, but I'm taking some little incident, I'm magnifying it, I'm blowing it up, and then I can get accusatory toward you. That'll take me right into conflict."

The Enneagram makes people more aware of how their personality type deals with embedded beliefs and behaviors that might keep them in repeated circles of conflict. Daniels says you need to notice when you "start to get upset and reactive" and how to "befriend your reactivity."

Daniels, who co-wrote the best-selling book "The Essential Enneagram," is coming to Portland to teach a two-day workshop about how the Enneagram can bring harmony to people's lives. He will be joined by Curt Micka, a former attorney who has worked as a professional mediator for more than 20 years.

Because each Enneagram personality type has a different "lens" through which it views the world, Daniels explains, it's important to acknowledge what biases each party brings to the table. For example, Type Two, also known as "The Giver," notices the needs of others, but Type Seven, also known as "The Epicure," is more self-centered. Meanwhile, Type Three, also known as "The Performer," demands attention, but Type Five, also known as "The Observer," requires privacy.

However, Daniels adds, this doesn't mean that a couple who share the same personality type will necessarily get along. Say, if two people both identify as Type One, also known as "The Perfectionist," they still might disagree about how to raise children, how to be intimate or even how to clean the house.

"It's a mistake to think that all Type Ones are neat freaks, so to speak," Daniels says. "They both can have high internal standards about what's the one right way, but the content of those standards can be hugely different."

According to the Enneagram, some of the more emotional personality types — such as Type Eight, also known as "The Protector," and Type Four, also known as "The Romantic" — tend to attract conflict. Others tend to avoid conflict altogether, which Micka emphasizes is not a sustainable solution.

"Avoiding conflict is a very common strategy for dealing with conflict," he says. "The reality is that it doesn't make the conflict go away. You simply end up burying and suppressing a whole lot of stuff, including emotions, that usually leaks out one way or another."

The workshop will focus on what Daniels calls "The Four A's" that are essential for mastering conflict:

1. Awareness. Get more grounded and receptive.
2. Acceptance. Approach the situation without judgment.
3. Action. Pause for self-inquiry, which can lead to conscious conduct.
4. Adherence. Practice these methods every day.

Daniels says conflict resolution requires people to know the difference between the position-based approach, where each side digs into its trench, and the more efficient interest-based approach, which seeks common solutions, shared interests and mutual prosperity. "When you don't get reactive and you can just be there in the present working with these adversaries, it's hard for them to stay in an adversarial position."

Micka says the workshop will be ideal for therapists, spiritual directors, mediators and attorneys. However, he notes, nonprofessionals will get just as much out of the experience.

"We all encounter conflict on a day-to-day basis," Micka says. "Differences are a part of life, and learning how to deal with them more constructively is valuable for anybody."

"The Enneagram's Gift to Mastering Conflict Constructively and Compassionately" features panels, lectures and small-group exercises from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 6 and 7 in Room 238 at Portland State University's Smith Memorial Student Union, 1825 S.W. Broadway. The registration fee is $150 before Feb. 28 and $175 after. For more information click here.

Neverland, Nevermore: Michael Jackson and human nature

When TMZ announced the demise of Michael Jackson on June 25, my immediate sense of disbelief and denial felt familiar. The unexpected, premature deaths of River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain and Heath Ledger prompted similar reactions.

But then it became clear what would be different this time: how quickly people would start making light of the tragedy. “He’s with Bubbles now in the great Neverland Ranch in the sky,” a friend commented on Facebook at 2:51 p.m.—less than an hour after Michael was pronounced dead.

Others were already busy playing the ridiculous “celebrities die in threes” game. “First Farrah Fawcett, now MJ, who’s next? Don Rickles?” one person speculated. (For the record: As any astute gossip hound knows, the third celeb in this particular “deathfecta” was Ed McMahon. Duh.)

It’s easy to understand why folks felt comfortable cracking jokes about Michael; after all, he set up so many punch lines with song titles like “Pretty Young Thing,” “Black or White” and “In the Closet.” The oxygen chamber, the pet python, the Elephant Man—they all appeared to be harmless quirks until more disturbing questions began to emerge.

The plastic surgery, the bleached skin, the towhead children—was he ashamed to be black?

The prepubescent voice, the absence of body hair, the asexuality—was he ashamed to be gay? It certainly didn’t help that two of his biggest hits were woman-hating diatribes about an opportunistic babymama (“Billie Jean”) and an opportunistic groupie (“Dirty Diana”).

And then there were the beard brides and the questionable prescriptions. Was it merely a coincidence that two of his best buds—Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli—are renowned pill-poppers who don’t seem particularly concerned about the sanctity of marriage?

His political views were also a mystery. Michael performed at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inaugural gala, but he also was fond of the Republicans. “He consorts with Ronnie and Nancy, the Reagans, ostensibly to launch a campaign against drunken driving but, by association, giving tacit support to the U.S. president’s re-election campaign,” British journalist Geoff Brown wrote in 1984. “His punishment was to be hounded by White House staff, avid Jackson fans all, until even there he had to seek sanctuary by locking himself in a White House loo. This is, indeed, a superstar who has no escape from his fame.”

Michael eventually found relief from all this adoration when child molestation charges resulted in a rapidly shrinking fanbase. The media frenzy peaked in 1995 with the release of HIStory: Past, Present and Future Book 1, which coincided with an ABC special where Michael was interviewed alongside newlywed wife Lisa Marie Presley. I remember grabbing a copy of the double disc while at Tower Records, where a TV reporter was standing by to ask fans why they remained loyal to Michael despite the controversy. “He’s quite a showman,” I stammered before the camera, “but I don’t pay attention to his personal life.”

This was a total lie; in fact, I still have the Diane Sawyer interview preserved on videotape. But like so many others, I didn’t want to be associated with the freak Michael had become.

What I was unable to see at the time was that Michael was a freak of my creation. And yours. And anyone else who scrutinized his life for the past 40-plus years. We are Frankenstein, and Michael is our monster.

In short, this is what happens when one person is thrust before cameras for 40-plus years. Consider how Princess Diana’s life was destroyed from 15 years in the spotlight. Or how it made Britney Spears go nuts after only 10 years. Or how it ruined Jon and Kate Gosselin’s marriage in only 5 years.

It’s curious when people mock Michael for being eccentric. How could anyone be expected to develop a sense of what’s “normal” after experiencing nothing but abnormal talent, abnormal success and abnormal public curiosity? As the Rev. Al Sharpton told Michael’s children at today’s memorial: “There wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with!”

So it’s all the more impressive that, despite being radically different from the rest of us, Michael always aimed to please the mainstream. (This is a guy who was so concerned about offending anyone, he needlessly placed a disclaimer before the “Thriller” video to clarify that he does not endorse zombies.) And somehow he managed to entertain a cynical world by composing earnest, uplifting songs with universal themes like self-improvement (“Man in the Mirror”) and nonconformity (“Off the Wall”).

My personal favorite is “Can You Feel It,” an overlooked gem by The Jacksons that didn’t even crack the Top 40. The 1980 video features Michael and his brothers superimposed along a skyline, sprinkling fairy dust over a city while singing the praises of racial harmony. It’s the way I want to remember Michael: Before he mangled his face. Before he went from famous to infamous. Before his sound became dated. Before we became jaded.

Flesh and Blood

It should come as no surprise that when the economy is shitty and national malaise runs rampant, people gravitate toward entertainment that will help them forget their troubles.

“The success of comedies in troubled times was demonstrated during the Great Depression of the 1930s,” Reuters reports, “when families flocked to madcap movies by Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges.”

So you’ve got to hand it to Miracle Theatre for staging the heavy drama El Grito del Bronx at a time like this. My companion, who just got downsized the same week that she was moving into her new house, excused herself at intermission because the subject matter was such a downer.

But that’s not to say it’s an unworthy production. Bronx-bred playwright Migdalia Cruz brings a street-smart realism to a story that takes place on a young Puerto Rican woman’s wedding day with flashbacks to the rocky road that brought her there: Lulu (Cristi Miles) remembers the abusive relationship between her mother María (Marjorie Tatum) and father José (Stephen Lisk) that led her brother Papo (Matthew Dieckman) to commit patricide, go on a killing spree and land on death row. All of this darkness is countered by the warm relationship she forms with a Jewish journalist (Spencer Conway) as he works on an article involving a black woman named Sarah (Ithica Tell) whose son was electrocuted in a freak accident. But even as Lulu’s life moves in a positive direction, memories of her imprisoned brother hang like a shadow—quite literally, as the intense prison scenes unfold directly behind the tender love scenes, creating a vivid juxtaposition of the siblings’ divergent lives.

It’s not an easy play to watch, especially during the violent acts of Papo, and I sometimes had trouble following Cruz’s ornate, poetic structure. Still, the cast effectively brings to life these vivid, damaged characters as they struggle toward redemption. Particularly moving is a musical sequence in which three grieving mothers—María, Sarah and a woman (Lisamarie Harrison) whose son (Kurt Conroyd) was murdered by Papo—use the power of song to express their sorrow.

El Grito del Bronx runs through April 25 at 525 S.E. Stark St. For tickets click here.