Moment After Moment After Moment, an Era Fades

Scott Kelman, 1936�2007

Comments (0) By Steven Leigh Morris Tuesday, Mar 6 2007

“The show is a funny, pensive evening that tickles and provokes. In six chapters, five barefoot performers march, swoop and wander across a naked apron, repeating sounds and mantras in unison, or issuing aphoristic imperatives (‘Learn to see emptiness’); a whorl of pain and laughter is probed while examining conformity, eroticism and even the dangers of pursuing personal growth to extremes.”

In Portland and L.A., the show sold out, prompting Kelman to remark that he must be doing something wrong. “My God, this is practically a commercial show,” his sister remembers him saying with amazement and apprehension.

(Photo by by filmmaker Ace Wonderstar and graphic artist Ernest W. Neal)

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When Kelman was planning to move to Portland, he met his second wife, dancer Anet Ris-Kelman. (He was also married briefly in his 20s.) Ris-Kelman was with him to the end.

“He wasn’t easy, but he was real,” she remembers. “He spoke his mind, he followed his vision. Everyone can tell you about his cantankerous side — he could drive us crazy. But the fact that so many people loved him so much, even with that, is a tribute to how much we all learned from his relentless pursuit of a way to live and to create, being mindfully present, moment after moment after moment.”

An open-house memorial for Scott Kelman will be held at Electric Lodge Theater, 1416 Electric Ave., Venice, on Sun., ?April 1, 4-9 p.m. For more information, visitwww.electric lodge.org.