Since 2000, the Pompidou Center has hosted these 2 to 3-week-long screenings of dance videos, open to the public at no cost. The Vidéodanse trend is to show a marathon of dance videos, although they aren’t so much dance videos as they are video recordings of the proscenium stage. I was hoping for more “dances for the camera”, which is dance made specifically for the video medium. In any case, it was good to see them all, for you could catch recordings of live performances that you missed in the past years. I caught as many screenings as I could this year, often camping out in the Center’s lower level makeshift theater. (I was the one lying on the floor in the back right corner.) Here are just a few highlights: (the ones with links have video content)
Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) - Vaslav Nijinsky. At long last. The Rite of Spring as it was meant to be performed. With what seems like three (mediocre) contemporary Rite of Springs coming out every year, I was happy to finally see what Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Stravinsky and Roerich had originally intended. In 1994, the National Opera Ballet of Paris recreated the original choreography and costumes (as accurately as they could), and it was a fantastic experience -both for its historical significance and for its musical and choreographic genius. Haunting.
Entr’acte (1924) - René Clair & Francis Picabia, with Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Auric and music by Erik Satie. Perhaps the first “dance for the camera” ever made, a surrealistic concoction of images and visual effects originally made for the intermission of Picabia’s ballet Relâche at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. Though not actually “dance”, it was programmed in a dance context and occasionally frames a dancing ballerina from creative angles. (Which is why I call it “dance for the camera”: using film or video to showcase movement from a new perspective) Balloon-headed dolls, a funeral cortège chasing a runaway coffin, peeking underneath a ballerina’s skirt… Cynical, playful and irreverential -all you’d expect knowing its auteurs…
Le Ballet Triadique (1922) - Oskar Schlemmer. Made for the stage in 1922 by the multidisciplinary Bauhaus artist, then reconstructed and filmed in 1970. Dancers are masked and stuffed into abstract geometrical costumes, made with materials such as copper, plexiglass, aluminum and rubber. (A new use for these materials at the time) A very colorful, architectural and innovative study of movement in space.
Variations V (1965) - Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Stan Vanderbeek, Arne Arnborn and Nam June Paik. Does this image of a multimedia dance performance sound familiar to you: the projection of video images everywhere, motion-capturing sound devices, sound-producing light devices, laptops and speakers, gadgets and wires littered across the stage, blips and bleeps and blips and bleeps, etc., etc., etc.? Merce Cunningham can probably say that he did it first, in 1965, with this powerful video project. Again, a true “dance for the camera”, this version having been made specifically for film. The image and sound engineers are all shown in the film, sitting behind the controls in their horn-rimmed glasses, coats and ties, or maneuvering a device, which reinforces the work’s unpretentious and honest nature. A truly collaborative and successful project that bypasses empty experimentation with the goal of rejecting any imagery, movement or sound that is taken for granted. (Even the graphic design of the opening credits was stunning.)
Quad I & II (1981) - Samuel Beckett. If you can believe it, Beckett was a choreographer too. Hypnotic and unsettling, the 15-minute “teleplay” consists of four cloaked dancers methodically shuffling around a square stage in a tight, geometric canon. A well-crafted commentary on the monotony of life. (The video excerpt in the link is of poor quality; in a better quality video, you can hear the metronomic swishing of the steps and see the swift, eerie movement of the dancers much better.)
Blanche Neige Episode #1 (2005) - Catherine Bäy. As a part of a series of performances and installations using five women dressed as Snow White (who often tote assault rifles), Catherine Bäy messes with codes of representation, often critiquing male political systems with a subtle ferocity. I think this series is fantastic. I love it. Visually striking and fiercely critical, not without a dark sense of humor.
Other viewings included Returning Home, a interview/documentary on Anna Halprin’s artistic bond with nature, a documentary on Isadora Duncan’s life by Elisabeth Kapnist, and a video presentation hosted by Mark Tompkins celebrating his company, I.D.A.’s 25th anniversary. There was a lot that I would have liked to see but just didn’t get to. Maybe next year.
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