August 10th, 2007 §
When watching Edouard Lock's work, one leaves the ordinary world behind.
There are no dishes to wash, no cellphones, no laundry no bills to pay except dues of the heart.
This otherworldliness can be disconcerting. Suddenly we have walked into a nineteenth century romantic poem. Only beauty and overwhelming sentiment.
The dancing in Amjad is exceptional. It is quick and lithe. Expressive and mysterious at the same time.
The lighting of Amjad is high contrast spots against an entirely darkened stage. Pools of light in shadows. Each dancer is clad in strict black, their costumes as elegant as if they came from a Dior Haute Couture collection. The astringent black and white costumes did recall in a curious way Marie Chouinard's bODY_rEMIX from 2005 - credit in both cases to Vulcan who gave up fashion to serve dance instead.
We are seeing properly schooled dancers, with enormous natural talent, working at the peak of their abilities in original choreography. With La La Human Steps, we are a long, long way from the youngsters who have decided to stop taking class and boycott movement on the dance stages of Vienna and Paris. The road up Parnassus is long and hard - and Edouard Lock and La La Human Steps have made that long trek.
Amjad is what they have brought back for us.
A frames from the Amjad film (Lock and Turpin)
ImPulsTanz: Amjad - La La Human Steps Continues »
August 5th, 2007 §
Ann Liv Young is back in town.
And she's just as dissatisfied as ever with whatever it is that bothers her.
What has she brought with her?
A bellyful - literally - of surprises.
Where to start?
Somewhere in the middle.
Snow White (ceramic mask) sings Beyoncé naked, pregnant, with an untended bramblelike snatch and unshaved armpits to match, while wearing golfing gloves to hold her wireless mike. The Black Queen accompanies her on a tin drum while flaunting and gyrating her uncut dark cock.
Enormous flying boobs from the back up vocalist dancing go-go. All enclosed in a hermetic great white box. Red ribbons fly everywhere.
This is Ann Liv Young's world - one of full of the absurdity and emptiness of pop culture.
She drops in and out of character, stopping the show to rant about the audio, blue eyes flashing Celtic rage:
"I don't hear her. Not again. All night, last night I couldn't hear her."
Her prima donna swagger and complaining voice remind one of the outtakes of the Madonna backstage films. Deliberate, I think.
Ann-Liv-Young-As-Snow-White
When the show starts Ann Liv Young is in a white leotard with her dark nipples visible through the white cloth and with an enormous pregnant belly. I was sure it was a prosthetic cushion to simulate pregnancy. Until she takes off the leotard and the belly is still there, larger than every. The woman is eight months pregnant if a day pregnant.
The show makes much of her pregnant form.
Was the show made for a woman in at least the sixth month of pregnancy to the eight month of pregnancy? Pretty narrow casting/performance criteria. No. The show was conceived before Ann Liv Young got pregnant. The show I saw in Vienna was very different from the shows three months ago or six months ago. In the earlier versions, there was a lot more dancing. But the show has adapted and changed with Ann Liv Young's physical state.
There are a lot of choices throughout the show of which voices to take or which songs to play. Ann Liv Young seems to play her Snow White environment like a jazz score. She knows where it's going, but the riffs can be different each night.
What else did you miss if you weren't at Snow White in the week of August 3, 4 or 5 in Vienna?
Someone singing singing "Babe I'm leaving" from Styx in a Barry Manilow mask. Marquis de Sade like dialogues between Snow White and the prince in French about sex. He intent on violating the garce, Snow White intent on claiming his love. Apparently Ann Liv Young wrote the French herself while on an extended séjour in Montpellier. Snow White is stark naked doggy style on the stage while the Prince takes her from behind.
You missed an eight month pregnant woman lathering a huge yellow strap on dildo with baby oil and penetrating herself against it (really!). You missed plastic horses
You missed a Christian radio show bestrewn with live musical performance and obscene call ins.
You missed small plastic horses across the stage with a wooden toy castle - the world of fairy tales.
Once again I wasn't bored for one moment of Ann Liv Young's Snow White. But again I struggle to make sense of it. What does Ann Liv Young want to say with all the wanton, unhappy sexuality, casual perversion and upside down pop culture?
I'm back to my review of Melissa is a bitch - her work has something in common with the organised senselessness of Da-Da.
Snow White is a truly horrid experience. But fascinating.
What will you see if you go to Snow White? I don't know. Snow White changes all the time.
One could argue that the whole construction only holds together on the insane charisma of Ann Liv Young.
Ann-Liv-Young-Snow-White-Portrait
But I will still be back in the audience next time she comes to town. And I recommend the same to you if Ann Liv Young comes anywhere near your city on one of her extended tours.
My Polish dancer friend was also left speechless by Snow White. She couldn't find anything bad to say about it.
There's a must read interview with Ann Liv Young about Snow White in Timeout New York. I found it after I wrote this review. She's even worse (better) than you thought.
There's a rather crappy video of Ann Liv Young's Snow White on the ImPulsTanz site. This video shot from the side does not to the performance any justice, but does give some idea of the set. I wish I had had picture permission for Saturday night as Sania and I were on stage front cushions in the center with my Canon 20D with me and could have done a fantastic set of Snow White pictures.
August 1st, 2007 §
The premise of Cat in a deep freeze is simple enough. A person lays down in the ice and fades away to death. Saskia Hölbling would like to take us on this journey. The piece opens and closes with beautifully spoken texts on mortality written by the artist inciting us to "melt the ice of power".
In the cold, one’s head finally clears. Peace at last. The body contracts into what is most necessary. The heart beats tangibly. The breath is short and shallow. Something starts to move and leaves the body behind to its pleasant paralysis.
Cat in a deep freeze - Saskia Hölbling/Dans.Kias
Hölbling's own interest in death by freezing arose when she learned last year that its eponym: "the sweet death". Apparently one gradually fades away with no pain, just feeling slowly disappearing from the body and the breath growing fainter. Having spent a lot of time snowshoeing in cold climates like Manitoba, I'll agree that this is probably how it happens. The real danger with death by freezing is belated rescue. If you don't finish the job, you'll end up with hands and feet cut off on account of the frost bite.
A full fading away in the cold is what Cat in a deep freeze investigates. It's a curious enough premise for a dance piece. It has nothing to do with human interaction. The piece mirrors a biological transformation. Cold is the opposite of dance. One is generally moved to dance by the heat.
People dance more in summer. People dance more in hot climates. People dance more in hot night clubs.
Unsurprisingly given the chill theme, movement in Cat in a deep freeze is minimalist, at least for the first two thirds of the piece. For minutes at a time, a single foot circumscribes the air. Yet there is a tension in the movement. Saskia Hölbling describes the movement throughout the piece as intense. And so it is.
ImPulsTanz: Cat in a deep freeze - Saskia Hölbling/Dans.Kias Continues »
July 23rd, 2007 §
Curiously, after Sister, the retrospective piece from Belgian choreographic legend Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker, her countryman Wim Vandekeybus has also come with a retrospective collage to ImPulsTanz. One could say that Vandekeybus and De Keersmaeker are the two most influential Belgian choreographers (Jan Fabre is missing from this list, but for much of his career Fabre has been more a theater director than a choreographer).
Mala-Kline-Thi-Mai-Nguyen-Laura-Aris-Jps
Vandekeybus and De Keersmaeker share a long standing collaboration with composer Thierry de May but otherwise have little in common. Vandekeybus’s approach to choreography is completely the opposite of De Keersmaeker. Vandekeybus does not seek subtle fluid moment or emotional nuance - but rather places his dancers in collision. The movement is almost always violent, even dangerous.
Ultima-Vez-Spiegel-Jps
More Ultima Vez dancers have been severely injured on a per head basis than any other company - many dancers refuse an Ultima Vez invitation out of concern for their well-being. In the end, Vandekeybus has dealt with the health issue responsibly: Ultima Vez has a comprehensive insurance policy. Injured dancers remain with the company and on full salary until they heal.
Ultima-Vez-Throw-Jps
Still, a year long injury does more damage than just the lost salary. A dancer’s career is short and dance form is fragile so losing a year of training and development and performance is a great risk. The rewards are substantial. Dancing in Ultima Vez is the ultimate performance high. You are working at maximum speed, in direct opposition to other bodies, in perfect timing. You will pay for your mistakes with at least bruises, so you don’t make any if you can help it.
Ultima-Vez-Ensemble-Jps
And that is what we saw last night. Bodies moving at full speed. The approach to retrospective in Spiegel is very traditional. Spiegel is a greatest hits of Ultima Vez. We see the chairs from Wishing and Wanting.
We see the bricks from What the Body does not Remember. The stamping and chairs from Les Porteuses de Mauvaises Nouvelles. The slaughterhouse hooks from Inasmuch as Life is Borrowed.
Mala-Kline-Flies-Wv
The horse from In Spite of Wishing and Wanting played by Vandekeybus himself. Somewhat ironic in his own self-presentation. Not the clear unbridled passion of the original creation. At 43 one tends to do develop some perspective on the self. Clarity of passion wanes in favour of wisdom and irony. While wisdom and irony probably make a man easier to live with, they diminish purity of performance.
But the rest of the troupe are the long-haired sinewy European guys for which Ultima Vez is famous, along with a few amazing women dancers. Several are holdovers from Vandekeybus’s moody film Blush.
Mala-Kline-And-Ultima-Vez-Men-Wv
Ultima Vez dancers come from the most diverse backgrounds possible, whether French, Spanish or American. Imagine my astonishment when intellectual Slovenian choreographer Mala Kline turned up on stage in a small red dress, leading Ultima Vez through a large section of Spiegel. Her stage presence was always remarkable but in Kline’s year with Ultima Vez she has developed an astonishing physical side to her dancing which will hopefully turn up in some of her own projects (she is leaving Ultima Vez at the end of the Spiegel tour to return to her own work).
Mala-Kline-Red-Dress-Jps
Kline brought a thoughtfulness and depth to her own performance which is sometimes missing in the physicality of long time Ultima Vez dancers. Kline never moves without thought behind the gesture.
But the most striking dancer in the company is the tiny Thi-Mai Nguyen who moves like a possessed fury throughout Spiegel.
The traditional Ultima Vez garb for women are ankle high boots and these strange mid-length dresses which hang tight on their figures but allow a full range of movement. The strength of their own performance - they regularly have to lift the men - is combined with a very feminine fragility.
The Ultima Vez women are thrown around the stage and against the floor like rag dolls. The violence is shocking and disturbing. But for all its explicity misogyny, Vandekeybus’s work is implicity feminist. Vandekeybus’s female protagonists strike back, giving as good as they get. They lift and even throw the men themselves. Vandekeybus’s subject matter is the psychological violence of relationships - the conflict between man and woman becomes physical. The usual subtext of the strained dialogues of modern love become corporeal. At the end of the day, this is a substantial contribution, moving women a long way from Sylphs in the Scottish moors or melancholy Willis.
Elena-Fokina-Laura-Aris
Overall the costumes along with the men’s long hair and beards gave a strange feel as though one were walking into the late seventies or the middle eighties. As a whole the music took us on the same journey - it was kind of ambient stadium art rock - think Pink Floyd - complete with thundering sound effects.
A welcome change was a short excerpt from the middle of Spiegel where the men and the women came out in formal attire and went through the ritual of coupling. Against the formal look, some of the men ended up with other men, some of the women with other women - creating a cross-gendered stage.
In contrast to De Keersmaeker, Vandekeybus is not a choreographer of emotion and subtle divagations of feeling. His genius lies in his stagecraft and in ingenuity of movement. From just a bare stage, lights and a few props, he is able to create whole psychological worlds. At the end of the Spiegel, six meat hooks descend from above the stage. The dancers fill them in various poses of death, as a blood red back cloth waves its rich burgundy tone over the slaughterhouse atmosphere.
Any single section of Spiegel was astonishing and wonderful, whether the brick throwing or the stamping, whether the formal dance or the slaughterhouse scenes. But together one had the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Elena-Fokine-Robert-Hayden-Jps
The ninety minutes was too much. The volume of movment was at full almost all the time. By feeding us non-stop highlights of the violent Ultima Vez repertoire, the audience was quickly worn out. We had little chance to take a breath, no chance to recover between episodes. It was like nine portions of dessert, or of just the violent highlights from thriller films back to back.
Mala-Kliine-Wv
In the end, Spiegel is like a Greatest Hits album for one of the iconic rock groups like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin. The Greatest Hits are too much on their own - taken out of context, they lose much of their original significance.
More even than with music, Greatest Hits collections are always a problem for dance. Juri Grigorovich tried something similar with the Grigorovich suites, which provided cut down versions of Spartacus, Ivan the Terrible, The Stone Flower, Romeo and Juliette. Each was so much feebler than the original ballet, one always felt like one would prefer to see the original work with its full staging and not the highlights. Those endless ballet galas with the wretched Don Quixote pas de deux’s, gaudily interrupting a parade of dying swans and Indian hand maidens are built on the same principle and completely insupportable to a sentient being. Dance is an art and like other arts needs to be seen in proper emotional context - not turned into a silly and senseless highlight reel.
Elena-Fokina
On the other hand, at Spiegel we were never bored. Vandekeybus has built a smoothly transitioning if somewhat overwhelming edifice. At the end, the audience went absolutely wild, in stark contrast to the muted reaction to Sister, the retrospective deconstruction of Rosas work. Volsktheater shook like the end of a rock concert for nearly ten minutes. Vandekeybus certainly knows how to play and thrill an audience. Spiegel is an exciting event.
Initially, I felt more critically towards Spiegel - it was just too much. But with a couple of days to live with my impressions, I feel much better about the experience. Vandekeybus’s repertoire, like any contemporary choreographer, is always in danger of disappearing. By presenting us with what he considers the choreographic highlights of his career, Vandekeyus is giving us a canonic piece to go into repertoire and lead future audiences further into his work.
As a choreographer of movement and invention, Vandekeybus’s technical innovations will perhaps be yet more important in the work of a future and yet unknown dancemaker.
Vandekeybus has unlocked the violence of the human spirit and body for European dance (some African dance captures that violence, albeit with a different vocabulary). Thanks to Vandekeybus, we now have a choreographic language for those extreme emotions, for open and hidden conflict between men and women. Vandekeybus has neatly condensed those innovations for us in Spiegel. It’s up to us and future generations what we want to do with that gift.
Still go to Spiegel prepared. My critical Polish dancer friend complained again after Spiegel (she is not easily satisfied), it’s too many orgasms in a row.
Photos Jean-Pierre Stoop, Wim Vandekeybus. Full cast: Laura Arís, Elena Fokina, Piotr Giro, Robert M. Hayden, Germán Jauregui, Allue, Jorge Jauregui Allue, Mala Kline, Thi-Mai Nguyen, Manuel Ronda.
July 16th, 2007 §
The first premiere of the ImPulsTanz season was a new co-creation from renowned Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and French performer and choreographer Vincent Dunoyer at the classic Volkstheater in Vienna.
Sister is Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker's walk on the wild side of French deconstruction of dance. Her P.A.R.T.S. school graduates do occasionally get drawn into this Belesque (as in Jerome) world. But with the main company, Rosas, De Keersmaeker has largely avoided semiotic dance, in favour of evening length movement and music based productions.
Why would Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker choose to go in this direction now?
She likes to try new things. She is very good at everything she does. She may have wearied of having her new productions called old hat by that tiresome breed of dance theoreticians, focused on driving people out of the theater with concepts of authentic stillness and conceptual purity.
Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker's entrance in Sister
Concretely, I believe Vincent Dunoyer approached De Keersmaeker with the concept. Dunoyer’s own pedigree includes stints with Ultima Vez and Raimund Hoghes, as well as an extended sejour as a Rosas dancer in the early nineties, so the two know one another well.
The underlying idea of Sister was that Dunoyer would speak to a bunch of Rosas ex-dancers and have them show him what they remembered of their time with Rosas and Anna Teresa in movement. He would then assemble these fragments into a coherent dance. Afterwards, Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker would work with the pieces he gave her to remake her own dance.
Frankly, not a bad idea on paper. How did it turn out in practice?
The ex-Rosas showed him some amazing steps.
Dunoyer put them together in a collage interspersed with short videos of the ex-Rosas dancers either dancing or singing.
The video screen filled up about half the stage. When it wasn't serving as a white screen it also functioned lit up from the back showing either Dunoyer or De Keersmaeker in silhouette. The brief moments in silhouettte looked rather good.
The second and primary lighting set up was a series of flourescent lights on the right hand side of the stage. The flat side lighting was rather disappointing.
The site of the premiere, Volkstheater, is one of the historic theaters of Vienna. The neoclassical exterior hides a Baroque interior. For me, the dissonance between the stark minimalist staging and the ornate interior made it more difficult to enter the Dunoyer's conceptualist world.
The first videos for some reason were handheld. Perhaps the intention was reality TV. The result was the impression of sloppy unfinished work. The exact opposite of Rosas polished and precision work.
When Dunoyer danced his collage, his movement was correct but uninspired. And rather in some kind of slow motion.
Until Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker herself appeared, the structure was unfocused and haphasard.
Her first entrance in silhouette was astonishing and powerful. She began in high heels and a thigh-length dress with a high front slit.
Anna De Keersmaeker solo
The first routine included a handstand. De Keermaker once again demonstrated astonishing form. Her legs are strong and slim, her stomach like a 20 year old. She still moves better than ninety percent of dancers in their twenties. Like Maya Plissetskaya, as a performer Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker is an incredible phenomenon.
For a while the power of her dancing and her presence grabbed the audience like the show had finally begun.
But then the flat lighting and absence of structure took its toll even on De Keersmaeker's performance.
Sisters as a whole showed us that the parts are less than the sum. In the end, Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker is not primarily a choreographer of movement (i.e. George Balanchine). This is not to say De Keersmaeker's language of movement is not expressive - it is.
But De Keersmaeker real genius lies in her sense of emotion, her theatricality, her musicality. There is nothing so wonderful as how she can build and rebuild small threads of movement through a performance into world changing poignancy, as she did in the astonishing Raga for the Rainy Season (ImPulsTanz 2005).
At a certain point in Sister, De Keersmaeker stops dancing and addresses the audience:
I don't remember.
Ich weiss nicht.
I know you from somewhere.
You changed, I changed.
Unfortunately her voice is not strong enough to fill the theater so it was difficult to hear the individual phrases. In the context, it was difficult to decide if they were trite or portentuous.
Finally the short show just fizzled out at the end.
Another video of a dancer repeating Rosas steps. At least the camera wasn't bouncing this time. "Have fun," he laughs at the end.
Dunoyer reappears on the left of the stage and waves his hand coyly. Lights out.
When the lights came up, a surprised audience collected themselves enough to clap half-heartedly. But I've never heard such unenthusiastic applause for a Rosas performance in my life. Normally, after a De Keersmaeker creation, let alone premiere, the theater almost roars like at the end of a rock concert. Not tonight.
Another dull deconstructed show, antithetical to dance.
The young Austrian woman I sat with - not a dancer but a long time theater and dance attendee - was even more categorical in German. "Fad," she said.
Later, speaking with a young Polish dancer, I was surprised to hear in no uncertain terms that she hated the show and had never been more disappointed by any show. One must make allowances for the Polish tendency to emotional overstatement and living in the moment, but even so I've never heard or seen a De Keersmaeker creation which dancers themselves don't like.
Still Sister was far, far better than the vogue of conceptualism (genre Philip Gehmacher). There was dance. There was video. There was economy of expression - Sister did not drag out for unnecessary hour, unlike much of the conceptualist work.
There are a few positive things to come out of this premiere. Sister provides a clear enough demonstration that a movement-based and established choreographer Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker can do deconstructionist and conceptual dance as well or better than those making a career of those genres.
Sister also conclusively demonstrates that no matter how talented the participants and creators, the paths of deconstruction and conceptual dance lead to nought but unhappy and diminishing dance audiences. Alas it is a self-reinforcing process, within a diminished public the more esoteric and obscure voices become ever louder.
I would take an evening of De Keersmaeker deconstruction over Vienna conceptualism. But I hope that is not a choice I'll have to make often.
ImPulsTanz moves with the cycles in dance. And this is 2007 - not a particularly rich year - dance is wandering far from its base in movement and life.
Photos © ImPulsTanz and Mirjam Devriendt, 2007
December 18th, 2006 §
As Mozart Year comes to a close, a final great paean to the Austrian composer is taking place this week at Theater an Der Wien. World renowned choreographer Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and her Rosas troupe have brought to Vienna a restaging of her Un moto di gioia, based on the arias of Mozart.
Un-Moto-Di-Gioia
First and foremost, Un moto di gioia is about the music. We face gorgeous and tragic aria after gorgeous and tragic aria. Love, jealousy, fury, passion are all the text to these short lyrics. Fourteen of them.
The way Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker has assembled all these disparate pieces of Mozart is very modern, much like a rock or pop album. Of course the quality of the text and the music is exceptional - this is Mozart - but Un moto di gioia really is a greatest hits album. Think Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits. A greatest hits of arias accompanied by dance is a splendid conceit.
Rather than articulating the development of love, Keersmaeker chose to focus on the desire for love, in its unrealised form.
Taka-Shamato
As a musical evening, the Vienna performance are irreproachable and likely the best performances of Un moto di gioia ever. The Vienna Symphoniker was faultless - at least to these ears. They were led by guest conductor Alessandro de Marchi, flamboyant in a blue velvet coat. The orchestra was supported by Claire Chevallier on the piano. Chevallier’s playing was measured and light - a perfect reflection of Mozart’s spirit. The singing was wonderful, it would be difficult to pick a favorite among Patrizia Bicciré, Olga Pasichnyk and Iwona Sobotka. Each was perfectly in tone and resonant, totally at home among the dancers.
As a whole Un moto di gioia ends up a curious hybrid, with the singers so much time on center stage. At various times the dancers threaten to interact with the singers and bring them right into the action. But in the end the dancers leave the singers to their own devices and return to the other dancers, before a real crossover happens and the singer becomes an integral part of the movement.
As a ballet one should say Un moto di gioia is an unqualified success. It is pretty much exactly what Louis XIV had in mind when he developed the ballet in the 18th century: a musical evening with steps, arranged in sequential diversions, supported by costume and decoration.
Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker’s work has always been extraordinarily detailed and aesthetically consistent. Music, dance, costums and stagecraft are all given adequate attention. Here the special circular parquet floor as well as the varied costumes show her attention to detail.
Yet as a dance evening, Un moto di gioia is very complicated, in spite of the fabulous musical assembly. The underlying problem with Un moto di gioia is its unique fixation on unrealised love. Coming fourteen times to the same theme of frustrated and unrealised love is an arduous emotional journey. The human spirit cries out for development in its story telling and there is little change to be had here. Two and a quarter hours of emotional repetition is a long time.
When she created Un moto di gioia, Keersmaeker stated her first concern is with music and movement: “For me, the key question is always the same: ‘Which movements for which music?’ And the hardest part of my task is to find, and then cultivate, the right body language for the work I am tackling.”
On the level of movement and action, Un moto di gioiai never slows down. We see many different scenes, each aria getting its own distinct sketch. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, the stageplay never ends.
We begin with women in ballgowns and men in frock coats, Mozartian period pieces. Keersmaeker allows us to slip into a costumed evening of courtly dance before repeatedly subverting the notions of civilisation courtly love. Later a woman comes on stage in leopard skin crawling like a dog. Behind the refinement of clothes, humankind’s animal nature is not far off. This single image demolishes the differences between man and the animal kingdom. In another sequence, the dancers become birds in a mating ritual, the cock preening himself for the hen. Again and again, Keersmaeker suggests we are still part of the animal kingdom, despite the pretty words and fine clothes we wear over our instincts. Love and desire are instinctual attitudes rather than something metaphysical or ethereal.
Taka-Shamato-Nordine-Benchorf
Sometime later we get a chorus line of men in semitransparent nightshirts in what appears to be a celebration of lovemaking. Each male dancer finishes the next sketch carrying a grotesque set of Baroque slippers each seeking a woman’s foot to slip fit his slippers. Every man a prince, every woman a Cinderella, implies Keersmaeker very archly.
Full-Cast-Un-Moto-Di-Gioia
This was the first Rosas piece with an extensive male cast. One wonders if Keersmaeker knew what to do with them then. For some reason when the men dance mainly they look at the floor rarely at audience. This has the unsettling effect of building a barrier between the audience and the men and leaves our sympathies strongly with the women.
There are strong comic moments in Un moto di gioia. At one point the full female cast lies down in a diagonal line across the stage, each feigning to asleep. Vincent Dunoyer goes from the back of the stage to the front seeking solace in each of their arms. One after another, each of the sleepers push him away and leave the stage. Dunoyer acts first the part of a rejected man but quickly becomes a bawling toddler. Elizaveta Penkóva does his childlike crying voice allowing Dunoyer to unreservedly pantomime without worrying about control of voice. Yet our laughter here is in support of a serious point. It is highly discomfiting to see the border between romantic love and childish egoism erased before one’s eyes.
There is a another fine moment later in the evening when the lights are brought down to an artificial candlight with a ring of small bulbs at stage height. We witness a long slow and repetitive dance which seems to mimic sleeping but in motion.
Un moto di gioia was the first Rosas piece to feature male dancers so prominently. Until this pieces, Rosas was primarily a woman’s company. One can see Keersmaeker’s struggle to integrate the male dancers into her work. The roles are not so outstanding, the movement not so powerful, as what the women have. The characterisation of the male roles is not so subtle.
Of the men, Bostjan Antoncic’s diffident charm and Nordine Benchorf’s earthy intensity leave the strongest impression.
Bruce Campbell-Clinton-Stringer-Vincent-Dunoyer-Igor -Hyshko
As ever with Rosas, all of the women are very good. Both Marta Coronada Ayarra and Elizaveta Penkóva are particularly compelling artists, lighting up the stage with their presence whenever they appeared, quintessential Rosas.
Unidentified-Samantha-Van-Wissen-Marta-Coronado-Ayarra-Fumiyo Ikeda
According to the dancers who performed in one or both of the previous stagings of Un moto di gioia, apparently the ostensible emotional texture has intensified in this latest version. Keersmaeker has encouraged each of them to push further in their expression of emotion and leave irony behind. But irony remains the underlying idiom of Un moto di gioia.
In the program, we are warned that Un morto di gioia is two and one quarter hours without intermission. Yet at one and a half hours the lights went up. This is the first Un morto di gioia was performed with intermission, in a special concession to Vienna audiences. Strange this intermission, for while in the the first hour and a quarter there is some heavy going, in the last twenty minutes before the pause the pace picks up. One is finally just losing oneself in the piece when the intermission comes. The last fifty minutes after the intermission race by like nothing.
Frankly the intermission ends up like some kind of coitus interruptus. Of course it’s fine to start over again and one does (with any luck) reach a satisfactory end, but it’s not quite the same thing. Vienna audiences won’t be denied their sekt and socialising - part of the theatre tradition here. and I hardly feel inclined to fight it - Vienna audiences do come to the theatre, they do talk about theatre, they do care.* And if they want their theatre with intermissions let them have them. But I would have preferred to have gone without.
Un moto di gioia was the first piece Keersmaeker put on the la Monnaie stage - which subsequently became her own to this date. As it was her first opera house piece, perhaps Keersmaeker was excessive in putting her singers in the middle of the stage, building a special floor, endlessly recostuming her dancers. But when a creator hasn’t had those opportunities before and does not know when he or she will get the chance again to enjoy those resources, there is a hunger to take one’s chance, to use everything. One feels that when Keersmaeker staged Un moto di gioia, she did not yet have full control of the large scale opera house medium. Keersmaeker’s later works like Raga for the Rainy Season have much more coherent and stronger dance lines and a far tighter aesthetic. Keersmaeker now takes her time choreographically coming to a single point. Her themes develop slowly and powerfully, the staging does not seem so contrived.
Rosas-Un-Moto-Di-Gioia
Some will find the above too harsh a criticism of a master choreographer. But a surfeit of technique in early work is not unusual for great artists. The dialogue of Shakespeare’s early comedy Love’s Labours Lost is too brilliant - so scintillating that it is difficult for an audience to follow. In his later plays, Shakespeare learned to tame his language to move audiences rather than outwit them. And so it is with Un moto di gioia. Keersmaeker outwits the audience but in the end leaves us holding a bouquet of exquisitely dried roses.
In spite of the emotional limitations of Un moto di gioia, one should not miss the opportunity to see this seminal work live and in such good musical circumstances. We owe a debt of gratitude to Karl Regensburger and Theater an der Wien for arranging this coproduction.** Un moto di gioia is one of the high points of Mozart year in Vienna and a splendid way to send off it off. Many of the other productions in honour of the Mozart celebration seemed contrived or forced. Un moto di gioia is intrinsically Mozartian. No doubt he would take less issue with the irony and detachment of Keersmaeker’s play on his works than does this reviewer.
* I’ll never forget Jan Ritsema’s remarks two years ago at ImPulsTanz about the disgusting bourgeois Vienna audiences for whom it is a shame to perform. What a foolish notion. Ritsema should just be glad that in Vienna people still come to the theater at all after everything he and his ilk done to empty the theatres or force audiences to the cinema instead.
** Thanks to ImPulsTanz (the great summer dance festival founded by Mr. Regensburger’s creation) we’ve seen at least one and sometims as many as three Rosas productions every year for the last ten years. Raga for the Rainy Season is one of the greatest pieces of dance I’ve ever seen, the work of a master at the peak of her powers. It’s wonderful to have the chance to see the historic work. Rosas will be back again this summer in Vienna.
July 24th, 2006 §
For those who still don't know or might be reading this sometime in the future and have forgotten, 2006 is Mozart Year in Austria.
We've been deluged with dance performances centered around Wolfgang Amadeus's music since the New Year, starting with the Christmas concert at TanzQuartier Wien and following through with Tanz Company Gervasi and others. What we saw tonight at ImPulsTanz may be the last round.
And it's a good thing. For some reason, dancers and even more so, choreographers have a lot of difficulty dancing to Mozart. This surprises me as Mozart has always been famous for his musicality. I talked to Leoni Wahl and Esther Koller of Tanz Company Gervasi about Mozart in February.
"Mozart is very difficult. The music is so well known for so many other things, you have no feeling of freedom or freshness. The music imposes itself on your dance."
The Gervasi Company is by far the most musical of any of the companies I have seen in Austria and arguably as musical as any in the world.
So if Elio Gervasi and his company had trouble managing Mozart, you can imagine the difficulties that three young choreographers would have.
ImPulsTanz offered Salva Sanchis (Spanish dancer well-known for his collaboration with Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker), Philipp Gehmacher (Austrian choreographer) and Joanne Saunier (Belgian choreographer, ten year Rosas veteran) the occasion to work on the Mozart theme.
What united the evening is that all three choreographers were obliged to work with a single pianist, the well-known German conductor and pianist Alexander Lonquich. Curiously enough Mr. Lonquich has both a standard concert piano and a harpsichord. All of the choreographers made him play both.
Salva Sanchis - "Ten Variations on G"
Highest hopes were for Salva Sanchis. As anybody who saw Sanchis dance in last year's Desh or A Love Supreme, Salva breathes musicality. His ideal reshaping of John Coltrane's convoluted jazz score through his body had to be seen to be believed.
Alas, "Ten Variations in G" was not as well conceived. Sanchis came out in red track top and black pyjama bottoms, accompanied by Manon Santkin in jeans and a square white top with the cut of a garbage bag. Alexander Lonquich joined them in a black t-shirt, black jeans and bare feet.
The opening stark poses and first sensitive small gestures of Sanchis's hands had the audience rife with anticipation. But it was not to be - the casual attire carried through the whole show.
Sanchis and Santkin wandered rather pointlessly around the stage, occasionally dancing a little bit. The musical performance was rather indifferent. Even when Lonquich switched to the harpsichord, there was no discernable difference in the dance.
Finally towards the end, some contact between Santkin and Sanchis livened the stage up some little. But even that contact was disinvolved and disaffecting.
Sanchis is a difficult partner. With such stage presence and perfection of gesture, he can easily show the inadequacies of his partner. In Desh and A Love Supreme there was no issue as the dancers - from Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and the Rosas dancers - were a suitable match.
Santkin was not. While she can move, she is not nearly as fluid as Sanchis. But more importantly, Santkin suffers from negative charisma. Her stage presence in "Ten Variations in G" was self-satisfied and disinvolved. None of this was helped by the prison style crewcut she sported.
Santkin's form was that of the new style female modern dancer, pear-shaped. I've spoken against the emaciated style North American ballerinas, but here I am going to take the opposite tact. There is no excuse for someone who calls him or herself a dancer not to eat and train properly. It's one of the disciplines of dance. Those who don't bother to do so, show an enormous disrespect to both audience and art form.
For some reason Emma Zune received a credit for the costumes. In which case the audience should receive a credit for the set design as we turned up in our clothes too and decorated the theater with our presence.
Philipp Gehmacher - "das überkreuzen beyder hände"
Initially Philipp Gehmacher's piece was programmed to be first in the program. There was a last minute change to move it to second after the opening night. Given that a dozen people walked out of the Gehmacher piece when second (even though there was unrelated work to come from a third choreographer) in a half full theatre, I suspect the losses were too great on opening night.
So what did Mr. Gehmacher do this year to drive dance fans from the theatre?
Blackness. Gehmacher and Lonquich appear on stage. Silence and grim looks. Now back to the audience. The pain of the theatre. Very 1930's, alienation. Berthold Brecht. Why we have to face these tired ideas recycled on the dance stage almost a hundred years later is a mystery to me.
In praise of Mr. Gehmacher, this year he did go to the trouble of getting a good haircut, his white t-shirt was clean and trim and his black trousers were very well-cut.
Just as in last year's incubator, the primary choreographic gestures was a single raised arm and a pained facial expression.
Cleverly, Gehmacher had Alexander Lonquich fix him with an intense stare which forced the audience's attention to him.
Nevertheless, at a certain point, significant snickering began.
Unlike incubator which had been shown to Tanzquartier Wien audiences who are more polite in the face of having theirr time wasted or last year's Arsenal audiences who are more discreet as they are dancers in the Vienna scene or guests at ImPulsTanz, "das überkreuzen beyder hände" was shown in Akademietheater. Akademietheater brings in a main stream ImPulsTanz audience for the most behoven to noone and with high aesthetic standards. They also pay a pretty penny for the privilege - the best tickets were at €45 euros/head.
So if a choreographer has nothing to offer, they will snicker and complain.
Fifteen minutes of silence (Mozart night) and grimaces later, the lights went down very low and Alexander Lonquich settled into Fantasie in C Major.
At this point, Gehmacher is lurking in almost blackness in the far back right hand side of the stage, just standing there. We wait for him to move for two or three minutes. Then we understand. The lazy dog doesn't intend to actually move to the Mozart. Those who came for dance become impatient and some of them leave.
Alexander Lonquich did a much better job on Fantasie in C Major in the dark than he had with the Ten Variations for Piano, so I just enjoyed the concert. Especially as there was no need to cope with Philipp Gehmacher's pained grimaces in the near dark.
After about twenty minutes, Alexander Lonquich had finished his playing the piano and the lights came up again. In three further minutes of silence and pained expression, Philipp Gehmacher manages to stumble up to the front of the stage. Intermittently he hides his face from the audience in his armpit. To be honest, I started to feel sorry for him now. If this is all the dance he has to offer and all the rhythm he feels in life, no wonder he is so perpetually ashamed and sad.
Alexander Lonquich sat down now at the harpsichord, the lights went down and Mr. Gehmacher threw himself face down on the floor, his arms behind his back as if in handcuffs (a gesture we saw in incubator as well). Alexander Lonquich plays for another fifteen minutes, Philipp Gehmacherr doesn't move a muscle, his unhappy face hard against the floor.
Many more patrons leave - those who came for an evening of dance and not a Mozart concert. I can only imagine the numbers who would have fled had this been a single Gehmacher evening. Philipp Gehmacher risks opening to a second night of empty seats if he carries on like this (there is a hard core contingency in Vienna determined to remove all movement from dance who approve - there are about enough of them to fill a five hundred seat theatre one night) - if he ever does an evening length work again.
Strangely, Mr. Gehmacher keeps himself in reasonable shape, considering that he seems to have no intention of ever dancing himself or allowing dance in any of his shows. At the end of the harpsichord solo, Gehmacher offers us another couple of minutes of dreary face and spasms.
For the first time in my experience, an ImPulsTanz let go a considerable amount of hissing and booing at the end of Philipp Gehmacher's "das überkreuzen beyder hände". There are enough mischievous programmers out there who live to piss off the audiences in their state-sponsored theatres who will likely be pleased and impressed with how well Philipp Gehmacher mocked and annoyed his audience. Perhaps a successful European tour awaits "das überkreuzen beyder hände" and Mr. Gehmacher can successfully continue his quest to permanently alienate audiences from dance theatre throughout Europe.
For those of us who dream of a larger audience for modern dance and the opportunity to present work to an extended public, this is anathema. If Gehmacher and his ilk continue to be given the stage, soon no one will actually be able to make any kind of living from dance. There will be no audience left.
Joanne Saunier - "Urban Bubbles - A study in old and new listening technics"
Finally some fun. We begin with three characters - as they are clearly characters from the beginning - all plugged into the same video iPod and speaking among themselves.
One is a hip young guy in blue sportsclothes (Beniamin Boar), another is a beautiful young woman in black sportsclothes (Julie Verbinnen) and the third is a more mature young woman in black tights (Joanne Saunier herself).
The video is projected on the back wall so we can see it to. It's not quite clear what's going on but the three react to it and start to move, each in his or her way to the action.
The notion that everyone (even if plugged into the same video iPod) has different reactions to identical stimuli is an interesting one.
At some point, Beniamin Boar breaks off into some lively solos of his own. Charisma and energy go a long way in the theatre. The atmosphere in Akademietheater improved immensely after the first two dreary numbers.
No Mozart yet and we're still wondering if we are going to get any Mozart this time around but finally Alexander Lonquich sits down and breaks into Sonata for Piano in A Minor.
The three characters carry on living their lives and dancing around. The steps are very modern initially but then take on something of the baroque. Truly half in Mozart's world, half out.
The extraordinarily radiant and quite beautiful Julie Verbinnen sits down at the front of the stage sideways and lets down her hair. We see her in cameo as Boar continues to prance energetically behind her. The classical poses of Verbinnen - like a 19th century locket of Natalia Goncharova or Jane Austen - are a stark contrast to Boar's energy.
Some exceptionally blue lights have come up now and we are somewhere in Mozart-land with beautiful women posing and funky moves grooving. This is a world Mozart would understand of beauty and energy.
Joanne Saunier got it, the Mozart spirit.
The audience was thoroughly appreciative as well with a heartfelt round of applause. I'm not sure if it's significant work or not but I'd like to see it again and decide. There is a lot of dialogue and I'd like a closer look at the video.
July 24th, 2006 §
ImPulstTanz 2006 is fantastic. The limited coverage you see here has nothing to do with the programme. I've missed wonderful things, like the opening night with Anna Teresa de Keersmaekerr which I have from reliable sources as unbelievably wonderful.
My apologies for the limited ImPulsTanz coverage this year. My commercial business is growing by leaps and bounds. We have new employees and new offices and new clients and there is only one of me. I've also spent a lot of my discretionary time in the last few months more or less successfully learning German.
Finally truly learning that the only capital we only really have is time.
One of my projects for 2006 and 2007 is to make myself replaceable in my own business so that I will be able to spend most of the month at ImPulsTanz next year.
August 14th, 2005 §
One of the great curiousities of the ImPulsTanz festival was the
Choreographer's Venture of Frans Poelstra and Robert Stein. Their four week journey began with travel to Salzbourg and sequestring in the mountains for a week.
They had taken their venture participants afield to seek inspiration, away from the madness of the city, an antique tradition revived by Wordsworth and Coleridge for the romantics.
The final result of their artistic investigation were three twelve hour shows in Vienna's Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz, the same venue used by the Bürgtheater for their monthly experimental one-off productions and site of many of the after performance parties for shows in Akademietheater. The shows were appropriately named Alternative Dream Asylum. I was there the night of 11 August.
My first direct contact with this project was at one of the aftershow parties. One table over there was a very large table of Austrians I hadn't seen before behaving strangely. One of the women kept looking at me with glazed and slow eyes. She seemed to be trying to attract my attention, but there was no way I wanted to get into a conversation with somebody as far gone on drugs as she was.
She wasn't on drugs as I found out two days later in my night excursion into the Alternative Dream Asylum. A trip as it turned out, into total darkness.
At the top of the stairs, venture participant Lieve de Pourq was sprawled out in a sleeping bag in front of experimental films made in their time in the mountains. But beyond her all was black.
There was no artificial light used. There were three Apple powerbooks set up on desks along with an elaborate sound system. The entire lighting for the 500 m2 Kasino was what came off of those notebook screens or slipped in via the huge windows.
Really dark - that's an F 1.4 lens wide open
Somewhere in the pitch black, I found that same young woman, but this night her eyes were normal.
"We were being cows," she explained.
In the hills and dales of Western Austria our young artists found not the Valkyries of Wagner but cows. So the cow became an emblem of their inspiration. Her stolidity and solidity. Her peace with the earth.
Outside of small conversations like this, there was very little happening. Venture participants wandering aimlessly. Many people slumped up in corners resting.
I had gone to the Alternative Dream Asylum in the company of choreographer Mala Kline who sat down at one of the computer stations and commenced a wonderful impromptu reading from the screen of the free verse concocted by the Choreographer' Venture participants. Her sense of meter in English was quite wonderful as the poetry was made better for her rendering than when read coldly on the screen.
After a time, I joined her and we shared the microphone and the reading. As it was two thirty in the morning, we couldn't blame the venture participants for flagging and falling to pieces.
Alternative Dream Asylum with Flash
But a process had been set in motion and the venture participants (there were twelve of them not including leaders Robert Steijn and Franc Poelstra) and they huddled together and called out to one another "karoake". Our soft and lyrical reading was at an end. Foreigner or some other 80's rock was played at full volume, Cold as ice, you gotta make the sacrifice. I'd been sitting around in theatres for days, or at my desk writing so I welcomed the occasion to move.
And so they danced around the room like banshees and I joined them. Ultima Vez dancer Raul Maia slow danced even through the fastest music with his girlfriend. In the general anachronistic delirium, venture participant Brigitte Wilfing span with me as fast and long as anybody had in the festival .
What is Foreigner or Pat Benatar or any of this doing in the Kasino am Schwarzenberplatz in Vienna in the year 2005?
Finally the music was turned off and it was pancake hour. Frank Poelstra sat cross legged on the floor before two hot plates and made an entire enormous vat of pancake batter into hot pancakes which were whisked away faster than he could make them.
The pancakes inexplicably were very good, better than many crepes I have had in Paris.
Mala and I ate the pancakes and talked awhile.
Finally we were getting tired and thinking of leaving. But first we quarreled over her show Campo de Fiori. I wanted to know why she was so interested in Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno. She said something about an affinity with his religious and philosophical thought. I asked her what his beliefs were and what were hers.
It was a bit late for debating philosophy and theology (four in the morning at this point) in anything but one's native language, so Mala wasn't inclined to tell me. I joked that I would find out, just as surely as the Inquisitors ripped the beliefs from Giordano Bruno. Did she want to perish for her beliefs twice in one night?
We began a dance of interrogation which went on for some time. I won't tell you. No you must, back and forth. We wrestled with one another as I asked her persistently if she believes in god.
The workshop participants gathered in the great hall of the Kasino to watch this desperate struggle which had started as just a lark but had taken on an intensity of its own. Much as I feigned to restrain my partner, she feigned to kick me. She didn't end up with fingermarks and I didn't end up with bootmarks. But to the external observer this ten minute wrestle must have looked very real.
But no one lifted a hand to stop it, instead they rather enjoyed the show.
Mala and I were like bad children, fighting pointlessly and on principle. In daylight or in a bar, she and I would never go down such a road together. Our discourse is always most civil, no matter how strongly we may disagree.
But in the Alternative Dream Asylum, no. The conventional rules of society no longer applied.
One woman shouted at me in German while I was inside sitting in front a computer screen reading. Later when I was unlocking my bike outside, she shouted at me again ever more ferociously. Project members observed us cooly from the windows. While I found her acting too agressive, I thought she was part of the project. So I was calm and relatively indifferent to her admonishments. It was only two days later that I found out that she was actually a passerby - totally mad - and had terrorised the entire project that evening.
So that was my subjective experience of the Alternative Dream Asylum.
It was very intense and strange.
Everyone's voyage into the darkness and the night must be unique.
Was there any artistic value in such a Choreographer's Venture?
Quite a bit, I would think. The participants were compelled to return to basics. It was extended voyage into a childlike state of wonder and emotion. A voyage into liberty. It meets its own description as opening new horizons for its participants.
As the Alternative Dream Asylum production was participatory and open-ended, they were able to bring that sense of liberty and play to visitors they had learned to their visitors. There was none of the foppish pretence that existed in some of the other so-called natural shows.
What was the difference? Unlike others of these shows (Jan Ritsema's Blindspot, Philipp Gehmacher's incubator, Paz Rojo's Basic Dance), the audience was free to come and go as they please. Instead of talking endlessly about freedom, Poelstra and Steijn offered it in almost absolute terms.
I hope some of Choreographers' Venture participants will share their voyage, as they travelled for four weeks while my own fragment was just part of one night.
We invite you to the moon side of the festival. We do not use any theatre lighting and we avoid the glamourous glitter of legendary stage personalities, no, we celebrate the night with being who have learned or want to learn to dance, dream, destroy, develop, dramaturgize desires, detach and dine into the do-not..., relaxing beyond expectation.
The story of the dragonfly who chases the mouse (or vice verse) and other stories appearing in darkness.
We want to be different so please do not project your phantasies on us.
Other participants include Stau Herrala, Sarah Manya, Andrea Salzmann, Kyung-Sun Beck Satu Herrala, Valerie Primost, Martin Tomann, Ariel Uziga, Sarah Manya, Andrea Salzmann, Gloria Dürnberger, Christina Medina, Paul Neuninger.
August 12th, 2005 §
For the PONI performance, I have some authentic pictures of the event. PONI is a Brussels based international performance band.
We saw PONI the night before as part of the We are all Marlene Dietrich FOR show at Akademietheater. I preferred their performance in the context of the larger show.
Left to their own devices, PONI has no shortage of entertaining tricks. Many different kinds of masks, body painting, bondage with electric cords, hysteria.
As a group they have tremendous energy.
But musically it felt too much like a direct assault on our sensibilities rather than a complex voyage. Their roots are deep in punk. If you are missing punk from the eighties dressed up in a modern sensibility PONI is not to be missed.
Here are the pictures:
Main PONI front man Rodolphe Coster, Belgium
PONI - Erna Ómarsdóttir, Iceland
Julie Andrée T, Montréal
Kate McIntosh, New Zealand
Kate McIntosh in bondage
Applause in Casino am Schwarzenbergplatz
The concert and the closing concert took place in the Casino on Schwarzenbergplatz. Many of the parties have been here and it has been a good location with its baroque elegeance, high ceilings but a certain casual energy. The Casino is also one of the second stages for the Bürgtheater. Every last Friday during the theatre season, the Bürgtheater actors put on a small show on this stage as part of an internal program of artistic development.
The party itself didn't have quite energy of the opening party as at the end of a month of festival and workshops, people are a little bit tired. There are another five days of performances to go and three days of workshop. I was warned at the start of Impulstanz to take it slowly. It was good advice. I will follow it next year.
If you get the chance to come to Vienna and participate in Impulstanz it is not to be missed. It is the best organised and most enjoyable festival in the world with the possible exception of TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) which is many times the size. Great dance, great parties, great staff, great city.
Photos - Alec Kinnear
