La Gente Es La Gente is a monthly performance by Aera, an aerial dance company based in Brooklyn. Aera quote Oscar Wilde in their publicity for the show: "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

Because the last show at Casa Mezcal was on April 20^th, the theme was 420, and each dancer created a performance about drug or alcohol use inspired by a character from popular media that has influenced them.

Casa Mezcal is a basement room with an alligator on one wall, a bison head on another, a stage with tasseled red curtains and space for about 100 people. The red curtains closed and opened music hall style between each act, while the dancers cleaned the pole themselves.

The first performer, Stella Fink, skipped on in a summer dress, followed shortly afterwards by a man dressed as a cannabis leaf. They then smoked a herbal cigarette, and Stella stripped down to a cannabis leaf-decorated bikini to do some amazing moves on the pole while the cannabis leaf man relaxed.

Jessica Linick at La Gente es La Gente 420

The next performer, Jessica Linick, came on in a striped shirt and wasted-looking make-up. She put on a fantastically desperate and creative performance, throwing herself around the pole as if she wanted to choke the life out of it.

Next came NYPD instructor, Caitlin Goddard, who slinked on in a black dress, taking swigs from a bottle of whiskey. The character she chose was Meg Ryan in the movie, When A Man Loves A Woman. At the end of her performance, she threw a glass of whisky at the pole and lolled against the back curtain.

Kelly McLaughlin strolled onstage wearing a floral dress with a man dressed as some kind of animal on a leash. A psilocybin mushroom poked in from the side and after she took a bite, she started indulging in shenanigans with the animal man, and I think she might have killed him at the end, but I’m not sure.

Jessica Mari at La Gente es La Gente 420

Jessica Mari followed, doing a sultry dance around the pole with a black bob and black leotard. She brought to mind Louise Brooks or Liz Taylor.

The elegant Nasty Canasta, came on and drank from a bottle while washing herself in a tin bath. This was not pole dancing, but the audience seemed to love it.

Steven Retchless danced to Johnny Cash’s "Hurt." Steven emerged to screams, removed his g-string to more screams, (he was wearing underpants underneath) and revealed a pair of plastic breasts to even more screams. Steven’s dancing is fierce and fluid, and I admired the strength with which he handled the pole.

Danielle Romano's bucket hat and khakis made me think of 70’s tv series Gilligan’s Island. She did a funny pole walk while suspended on the pole, and combined some very creative and strong moves.

What I love about Aera is that they combine dance, props and performance to create something artistic, surprising and often very funny. I look forward to seeing what they do next.

Aera photo by Christopher Butt, Golconda.org

Kerry Henderson of Book Culture, one of the organizers of Open Mic Night

National Poetry Month was inaugurated in 1996 by the American Academy of Poets. Book Culture’s Open Mic on April 19^th showcased 19 poets, many from Columbia University and a few more established poets, such as George Spencer and Moira T, Smith. One of the readers was an editor of Columbia New Poetry and another works for the Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism.

Andy Nicole Bowers, "Learned languages of stone."

I was the second person to read. This is fortunate because I had less time to feel nervous. I plugged Beyond Belief, Cami Ostman and Susan Tive’s anthology in which I have a story, Swan Sister. My first poem, Full Moon, which I wrote about my brother when I was 18, is related to this story. The other poem, which I wrote more recently when I cried on my computer and the mouse got stuck, is not.

Moira T. Smith, "Why do all men want to be whipped and belittled?"

The funniest poet of the night was Moira Smith. Dressed in bright red and yellow, she spun through pages of truisms, such as, Every man’s wish is to be guided and corrected by the right woman.

Then she started shuffling through her sheaf of papers.

“I’m looking for the one,” she said.

“Aren’t we all?” said someone in the audience.

George Spencer, reading from Unpious Pilgrim

And maybe we were all looking for the one, except perhaps for poet George Spencer who held hands with his partner, Anoek, also a poet. George Spencer’s poem moved me tremendously, although I didn’t really understand it.

“It’s a sestina,” he said. “I can read this here because you’re all from Columbia and you know what a sestina is.”

“I don’t,” I said.

Becca of Columbia New Poetry, "My body is a dusky polyp."

As I learned later, a sestina is a 39-line poetic form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, followed by a three-line stanza. Poets.org lists 34 different forms of poetry, the most popular of which were pantoums and prose poems at this reading. I learned that found poems are like word collages of things seen and heard. I put together some bits and pieces I remembered from the reading to make a found poem of sorts, all words written by the poets at the event.

Catherine demonstrating her brother with a rack of lamb

Hands that trace the blue path of her nerves

With dark arithmetic

Pink rose petals put in my mouth

My voice is maroon,

He had a squid tattoo on his left shoulder

A million atoms of dark blue

Illuminated flowers

The womanly showcase as expected as breath,

Like solving an equation.

"Something is stable. I waver and the ferry does not."

With ereaders dominating the market, bookstores like Book Culture are becoming fewer. This event provided something one can’t find when shopping for books online: a sense of community and living words.