Just a few thoughts on Miller Theater’s production of Oresteia: With all due respect for Luca Veggetti’s direction and choreography, does Iannis Xenakis’ highly contemporary and thrilling score call for dance in a balletic jazz idiom? In fact, why bring in dancers at all? Why not elaborate the most successful bits of choreography, those in [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Uncategorized’
September 9, 2008
Interview with Olivier Dubois
It seems that Vaslav Nijinsky is making himself manifest to me lately. I just finished reading Journal de Nijinsky, the diary he furtively kept during his later years under psychiatric observation; MoMA screened a documentary on the Ballets Russes a few weekends ago; and I came across an interview with French choreographer Olivier Dubois in [...]
June 14, 2008
Matthieu Hocquemiller, J’arrive plus à mourir
We are going to throw a huge party.
We will want grandiose and pathetic beings.
We will be anecdotal and essential.
We will explain seriously what dance is, the inscription of the intimate and of the collective, the complex articulation of meat and of immediacy.
We will talk about politics, we will say really big words, enormous words, we [...]
June 14, 2008
Mains d’Oeuvres: le cousin de Chez Bushwick?
Mains d’Oeuvres is a fantastic venue and resource for fledgling artists. Located just north of Paris in the suburb of Saint Ouen, it could be likened to the alternative creative spaces for interdisciplinary arts in Brooklyn. It caters specifically to young companies, helping them get on their feet through various residencies and administrative aid. Here is [...]
June 1, 2008
Catherine Baÿ, Blanche Neige
A testament to the fact that performance art needn’t employ a megaphone or other ostentatious devices to get its message across. Catherine Bay’s project of gun-toting Snow Whites is cunning, decisive and wonderfully subtle. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen anything so powerful in the realm of both performance and choreography.
On Friday night [...]
May 4, 2008
Interview with Jérôme Bel and Daniel Buren
This year’s Vidéodanse program at the Centre Pompidou contains a great interview with choreographer Jérôme Bel and visual/installation artist Daniel Buren. I have translated it here for those interested in reading it. Interview conducted by Jean-Max Colard in Paris, Feb. 2008.
Everything Depends on its Context
A meeting between two prestigious regulars of the Pompidou Center: Daniel [...]
May 1, 2008
Vidéodanse 2008
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 [...]
February 16, 2008
Saburo Teshigawara, the theater technicians will never forgive you.
Two thoughts came to mind when watching Saburo Teshigawara dance over a huge bed of broken glass last night:
1) Self-expression, no matter how passionate, does not guarantee artistry;
2) Set design, no matter how sharp (pun woefully intended), has the danger of being a total gimmick.
Both of these conclusions apply to Glass Tooth, being presented by his company [...]
January 19, 2008
Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Zeitung
That feisty maven from Brussels is at it again. Even though I have found Keersmaeker’s recent works to be so-so, her world premiere of Zeitung at Théâtre de la Ville last night left me surprisingly appreciative. Given her intent to set movement to Bach, Webern and Schoenberg, I have a hard time dismissing an evening of [...]
December 21, 2007
Alain Buffard, (Not) a love song
Alain Buffard restored my faith in singing and dancing on stage. With (Not) a love song, he serves us the fancy cocktail we secretly desire (pure, shameless spectacle) mixed with its antidote (wry, off-beat humor). In doing so, he avoids all the labels one normally tags on the musical comedy: cheesy, cheeky, corny, cliché… and [...]
