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la vie viennoise

Last winter when I was living in Paris, I went regularly to the cultural evenings and exhibitions at the Centre Culturel Irlandais on rue des Irlandais just behind rue Mouffetard.

At one of the exhibitions I was introduced to a pair of tall and imposing Serbians with the incredible project of mounting a for free cultural satellite channel. The two Serbians were the brothers Atanasković and their channel was called Art Channel.

Art Channel is now broadcasting 21h to 05h CET, free to air, via satellites HOT BIRD and W2 (EUTELSAT) over Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa to more than 120 million households.

You can preview the programming on the web. It's not bad. I particularly liked the simplicity of Laurent Mazar's Carte Bleue. But there are lots of other more baroque and/or experimental works.

Congratulations Milan and Slobodan!

If you see anything you like feel free to leave a note below. Video artists don't neglect to visit Art Channel's submission page to see if it might suit some of your works.

Here's what Casanova has to say about Catholic girls back in 1768 during his sejour in Madrid.

Rien d'ailleurs n'est plus certain que ceci: une fille dévote ressent, quand elle fait avec son amant l'oeuvre de chair, cent fois plus de plaisir qu'une autre exempte du préjugé. Cette vérité est trop dans la nature pour que je croie nécessaire de la démontrer à mon lecteur. [III, p. 649]

Detailed translation:

There nothing more certain than this: when a religious girl yields to temptations of the flesh, she feels a hundred times more pleasure than one who doesn't believe in God. This truth is so evident I hope it isn't necessary to prove it to my readers.

Short translation. Catholic girls are the best. I always knew that.

Russian/Greek/Ukrainian Orthodox girls are pretty hot as well.

Protestants and even atheists are just not in the running.

Without belief in something and without sin, earthly temptations lose their sacred allure.

As the whole world knows by now, France has been buffeted by nightly riots for the last two weeks.

American mainstream media coverage began with one of the most stupid editorials I have ever seen. Mark Steyn suggests that what was happening in the Parisian suburbs was akin to war and that should be addressed as such with troops.

After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois...For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc....Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.

From what I can understand of this preposterous rant, is that Steyn considers that in the best of cases the French should regard these citizens (almost all of these young people are French) as the Israelis regard the Palestinians.

They should deprive them of their rights, terrorise them, attack them in their homes and put them behind checkpoints.

Given the success of Israeli policies in bringing peace and prosperity to Israel, this is a very intelligent suggesion. Then the French too could live under constant threat of suicide bombing in their churches, schools and markets in perpetuity.

As France is the number one tourist destination in the world with 75 million visitors/year representing 34.5€ billion euros, destroying the entire tourist sector with internecine violence would be a great first step to bankrupting the country.

This would set the stage for an Iraq-like situation with widescale ethnic violence and regular military action.

While this may suit the American neocon/PNAC cheerleaders like Steyn, happily the French have a great deal more sense than this.

Indeed, they understand the grievances of these young men. Basically it is next to impossible for them to get decent jobs. First there is a dearth of jobs to be had - in general one has to have connections to get a job (pistonner is the word in French) - whether French or not. As the parents of these young men are for the most part working in menial service jobs, they don't have a lot of pull to push their children into good careers.

There is another social concept in France - it's called chasse gardée (the English historical equivalent would be royal forest). What this means is that all good jobs in France belong to the French. And in this context, French means born French and born part of the French elite.

The school system in France is quite unique. While there is a large university system, the universities actually represent a second-tier education. Anyone who aspires to high office in either industry or government must study in something called a grande école. The elite of government, politics and business have almost all studied in one grand école or another. In the case of politics, most of them studied at the Ecole Nationale d'Aministration in Paris.

After the second world war, fifty percent of those admitted into the grandes écoles had to come from a worker or popular background as a matter of state policy. With time that figure has slipped to five per cent of those admitted. All the rest of the students are either children of the elite or of the bourgeoisie. I don't know if exact figures exist for the division between these two categories.

One's fate is more or less decided by twenty with one's admittance into a grande école or not.

And these young men in the Paris suburbs have definitely been left out of the game. But even for normal employment, the unemployment rate for people in their twenties is as high as 25% - a figure in itself kept down by the high number of young people studying for higher degrees.

As the grievances of these young men in the Paris suburbs are real, there are very few in France who would like to see an attempt to crush these youths. Far from being some kind of Islamist terrorists, these are disadvantaged young people legitimately expressing grievance.

Since the police have kept their heads and the French have not shed large quantities of blood, these riots will probably pass without leaving much trace or doing much damage to the economy.

Were Paris to go up in flames as a consequence of punitive and murderous assaults by police and/or military units on these youths, the immediate damage would be enormous.

Moreover, the French have no desire to have an incarceration system like the United States with two million behind bars, half of them from the black underclass. It's less expensive (and far kinder) to provide state aid and work training programs and welfare than to keep people in penitentiaries.

There is strong evidence that the inflammatory comments of Interior Minister (and would-be presidential candidate) Nikolai Sarkozy made the situation much worse. That had someone else intervened in a more conciliatory way earlier that the rioting would have just stopped, as it seems to be petering out now.

Keeping level heads and the redressing injustice seems to a good plan.

Further commentary on the historical background with emphasis on the Algerian colonisation from Juan Cole.

Over at the moral cesspool of Little Green Footballs, the rhetoric is incredible. Here is a contribution from longtime LGFer savage_nation:

ENOUGH TALK! When are we going to see some ACTION? Every second spent flapping your lips means the Islamists are gaining ground! Crush these cockroaches once and for all. Declare martial law! Fuel up every Mirage and unleash HELL on the rioters. Western Civilization is at stake, you morons!

For more of the same visit - http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=18137#comments.

For a long time, I've been mildly contemptuous of Claude Lelouche's films. Eminently français, these tired tales of bourgeois hypocrisy and venality, had lost all optimism, all beauty.

While Lelouche may have the pulse of the French elite and a great facility with camerra and word, blackness alone does not a world make.

In Le courage d'aimer, Lelouche finally puts his cinematic gifts to good use.

The Courage to Love is a bold exploration of the consequences of passion. It is also a picture within a picture within a picture. Truffaut's Jour de nuit in a mirror funhouse.

We begin with an out of work Italian singer, a pretty shoplifter and identical twins who work as waitress in a jazz bar and maid in a château.

We pass by a ring of jewellery thieves, Comédie Française actors and a pizza magnate in this cardinal work crowned by a suicide.

Many of the moments - the young singer forced to choose between her success and the love of her life - leave hearts in throats. Lelouche is manipulating us, but with the masterly touch of a man whom life has manipulated endlessly throughout his own existence. We are left with a deeper understanding of the world and ourselves.

Pizza magnate Gorkini tells his mistress shortly before she becomes a murderess, "The motto of France should have been libery, equality and infidelity."

My experience of France would tell me the same thing. Never has the beautiful been more perfidious. Nowhere does one suffer more from the consequences of inconsequence.

On Air France, Le courage d'aimer et la vie du château. A good meal. Good wine. Poire William. The benevolent and dangerous smile of the devil. The devil of pleasure.

Contrast Konsequenz - a bold Germanic intention to take the world to its logical conclusion and construct a reality within which one can live and one's descendents also. Hopeless Gauls. Happy flight.

Bare black stage. A girl stands. A fallen chair. The girl rolls on to her back.

A single overhead light allumes. Girl rises. Dressed in in plain white t-shirt and very blue jeans.

Silence.

She turns on the chair. A vicious attention. Kicks the chair melodically across the stage.

Intimacy and hatred in an inanimate object.

Strong projection of personality. Not a typical dancer's body, but beautiful, flexible and powerful. Somehow very true.

Claire Croizé in Skéné

Unfortunately these first five minutes were the high point of the show.

The rest of the mercifully short piece (less than one hour) involved a lot of arm twisting to very loud Mozart.

Only the charisma and physical presence of Clara Croizé kept the audience in the theatre. At some point Etienne Guilloteau wandered out himself. He was wearing the same white t-shirt and plain blue jeans as Croizé. He gave himself mainly the same movements as Croizé to execute. This only highlighted the obvious - that he is not nearly the dancer she is.

Guilloteau's pointy little beard and sloppy pony tail only added a focal point to our discontent. His head did not seem to be fully in his performance, at least beside the almost otherworldly concentration of Croizé.

Never did we get as lively an interaction between the human pair, as we saw between Croizé and the chair.

Croizé does get one more peculiar and transfixing solo. She wanders the stage in a circle throwing her arms forward violently and repeatedly to the chords of Symphony No. 25 in G-Minor . Eventually Guilloteau joins her, spoiling a promising moment.

Guilloteau's choreography is simply not at the hauteur of his musical ambitions (Mozart chefs-d'oeuvres).

Nice dancer. Lousy show.

Clare Croizé and Etienne Guilloteau

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Twenty-five year old Croizé is a French born, Belgian-trained (P.A.R.T.S.) dancer who is a choreographer in her own right (Give me something that doesn't die). She has performed for Carlotta Sagna (Public Relation) among others.

Four years Croizé's senior, Guilloteau is also French and a P.A.R.T.S. alumnus who has performed for for Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker (Kassandra), Charlotte Vanden Eynde (Beginning Endings) and Mar Vanrunxt (Deutsche Angst). Skéné appears to be his first professional work as a choreographer. Let's hope for the best.

Photos © Raymond Mallentjer

After a week of rain and flooding, the sun broke out on Thursday at last to coincide with the opening of the Impulstanz festival. The Opéra de Paris were the opening guest company and brought an extremely diverse programme to the Burgtheater.

O zlotony / O composite - Legris, Dupont, Le Riche

I had seen some of these pieces in Paris when I was there and even reviewed them. But to see them in the Burgtheater was very different. While the Burgtheater is a substantial traditional theater, it is about half the size of the Palais Garnier, the principal residence of the Opéra de Paris. For some of the pieces, they worked much better in the closer quarters. For other pieces the smaller venue didn't work as well.

Impulstanz: Ballet de l'Opera de Paris à Vienne - Baroque, Bel, Balanchine, Brown Continues »

L'anglaise aux beaux yeux au Jardin des Plantes.

L'anglaise aux beaux yeux au Jardin des Plantes Continues »

Just after I finished Lapinthrope, I took some time out to go to some shows and had planned to write some reviews of some new shows. By a curious coincidence one of those shows was Thomas Hauert's Modify that I had just seen in Vienna at the start of December.

In Paris, Hauert's show was playing at Théâtre de la Ville, one of the world's great modern dance stages. In Vienna, they had danced in Hall G of the Museumsquartier and the basement stage of the Tanzquartier. Hall G is used for most Tanzquartier shows apart from the really large scale productions like Jan Fabre's monumental Je suis sang.

I was very curious to see Modify which I quite well-liked in a very different environment. And indeed it showed entirely differently. At Théâtre de la Ville, I was at the premiere while in Vienna I had been at one of the quiet midweek shows, either the Thursday or the Sunday. The audience was sparse if engaged.

At Théâtre de la Ville the huge hall was packed for the premiere. There wasn't a free seat anywhere before the rafters.

At the end of the show I felt like I had seen some great performances from the artists. They were full of vigor and dance quite passionately.

On the other hand, the stagecraft itself fell flat. The giant photograph of the apartment seemed quaint and diminutive in the expanses of the Théâtre de la Ville stage. The lights which seemed to capture every movement of the dancers and so full of mood in Vienna, rather flat.

The large audience was enthusiastic, if not as excessive as I've seen the Parisians at Amélia of La La Human Steps.

By happy chance, I was able to join Thomas Hauert and the dancers afterwards to talk about the show and to compare how they felt.

Ursula Robb mentioned that they felt really alive, like it had been one of their best shows.

While being diplomatic, she hinted that the smaller audiences at the Tanzquartier might have had something to with how they danced.

Not that I didn't know it before but I am still astonished at how important the audience and the context is to a live performance.

My general positive impression of Thomas Hauert's Modify remains, but in Vienna I loved the concept and cared less for the performance. At Théâtre de la Ville, I thought the dancing and performance were exciting but was underwhelmed by concept/decor.

Photos from T.Lewyllie. Provided by Théâtre de la Ville, Paris

French is such a beautiful language that as much pleasure as it creates to hear it spoken well, so much pain it creates to hear it spoken badly. Travelling home to Austria - strangely the journey does feel like going home - I am sequestered with my bicycle next to a compartment where the general tone and quality of speech is so vile that I feel like I am back in Toronto, listening to the kids there.

I would move but there is nothing to be done as I must stay near my bike and my belongings.

Whenever I have relaxed about my personal property in Paris, I have been warned to be careful by friends and girlfriends.\

I've had so many things stolen myself - and I was born here and try to be careful, said one friend.

It's a strange state of mind to have to live with.

Could they not organise themselves to stop stealing? It seems to permeate the state from the government all the way through society.

As great an advocate as I am of the welfare state (either you give the idle bread and booze or they'll steal it - in any society it is twenty per cent of the people who do three quarters of the work) - when you have people who work three months of the year top collect unemployment (les assidiques, as opposed to welfare which is RMI, révenue minimum d'insertion), you have a problem.

Even in the more privileged classes, high performers in the advertising industry will better struggle for two years to get exactly the position they want, than return to work sooner with a position they don't like.

So home to Austria, a little more space, a more cogent work environment.

Strangely, the Austrians are supposed to be very idle in comparison to the Germans. I wonder what it must be like to live in Germany. The Austrian way seems to be more like France used to be - which is to say, very intelligent about work. To analyse the work and be done with it as quickly as possible in order to enjoy the rest of life.

Ah more abominable French and the stench of tobacco avec. Reminds me of the trip to the peniche with Marion and Stuart. Not so much dancing as standing on a dance floor and smoking.

I couldn't quite understand it. One could stay home and smoke.

Anna Hein, Valèrie Simphal, Xavier Perrez - rue Mouffetard.

Paris La Nuit - Hein, Simphal, Perrez Continues »