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la vie viennoise

There's something marvelous about well written descriptive prose.

I've just finished Luke Jenning's Breach Candy in a single sitting by noon. I woke up early and had the urge to furnish my mind with travel instead of poisoning it with the usual news and internet marketing gunk which clogs my inbox.

As the Israelis give it to the Palestinians again for no particularly good reason apart from intrinsic viciousness and selfishness - and we the Western world stand by and watch (kudos to Sarkozy for actually standing up and seeking to do the right thing just once, tomatoes to Blair for blame and bullying the victim yet again for his American masters), it's difficult to read the news.

Anyway back to Breach Candy, it's the story of a film producer in search of a story and love and a ballet dancer in search of herself and love, both lost in Bombay. But the book is far more than the sum of the two stories, between which Jennings jumps back and forth. It is a slightly gritty look at the world of Bombay.

Of course, the view is from the top down, but that seems to be the only vantage point in Bombay from which anything is visible apart from filth and scrabbling. When our protagonists intersect with the real world in short sordid episodes it highlights the hypocrisy of the social caste system in far brighter bursts.

While credibility is stretched when the hero ends up in the arms of a fifteen year old prostitute while the heroine ends up in the arms of the Indian actress it doesn't crack. The Lesbian affair doesn't have a particularly genuine edge or truth to it. But it is not unusual with romantic comedies that the ending cannot match the pace.

Another shortfall might be in differentiation of narrative voice. At first it is very difficult to tell the difference between June Webster's voice and that of Stanley Collinson between the chapters all written in the first person in the voice of one or the other. It surprises me that both June and Stanley write and describe scenes so similarly.

Some of the most powerful stories happen in flashback, often cunningly narrated to new acquaintances in present time. How Stanley left his live-in girlfriend after seeing her in the arms of a film director. Why did he leave without a fight or without clarification?

June asks Stanley the same question. But is there any point to fighting or struggling after that point of betrayal. Still the reader wonders, was there any betrayal before Stanley just disappears. Perhaps had he put his foot down about the issue faster, what he perceived as betrayal was a harmless flirtation.

When I eventually got around there, about two o'clock, I found a note from Emilia. They'd finished shooting very late, she hadn't got in until the early morning, where had I been, another night edit? The good news, the note went on, was that her contract had been extended, she now had a featured part, there was some location shooting, she'd had to leave early, it would probably be another late night, she would ring me, she missed me.

'Another late night, I thought, sure. She missed me. Again, sure. The worst part was the whole thing corresponded to the edge-of-consciousness nightmares I had had ever since I met her. The only course of action open to me was to cut myself away. Cauterise. Leave no trace.' 

If you won't stand and fight there, when will you stand and fight?

Never is the answer. Stanley ends up starting a film about the wrong actress, as he is put off the trail by others manipulating circumstances around him.

Stanley persists on hopelessly romanticising and idealising the rest of the women, all busy leading their lives around him.

In good fiction, one is forced to examine others lives in close up for at least a few hours. Seeing others' lives should be enough to remind us how much remains to be done within our own.

A splendid mixture of music, choreography and light.

Salvatore La Ferla Kenia Bernal Gonzalez Tiffany Watson

The piece opens in near darkness. The steps develop slowly. Strange metal shades adorn the dancers' heads.

Individual bulbs hang down from overhead. The dancers push these pools of light and then dance solos underneath.

Salvatore La Ferla Tiffany Watson Kenia Bernal Gonzalez

For the rest of the piece, the dancers form and reform in pairs and groups and solos under these lamps. Occasionally, some of the dancers actually sing with Lars Stigler's splendid to score - they sing in an incomprehensible language (certainly not English or German).

Salvatore La Ferla Kenia Bernal Gonzalez

I didn't quite understand the how or the why of when they broke into song but they sang well. The program notes mention something about Dadaistic - singing in tongues and Dadaism go together.

Leonie Wahl Salvatore La Ferla

Each of the dancers has quite different technique and attributes, but all are excellent. Each dancer is beautiful in his or her own way, whether the long limbed speed of Leonie Wahl or the concentrated intensity of Kenia Bernal Gonzalez or the cool grace of Tiffany Watson or the incredibly flexibility of Salvatore La Ferla.

dancer Salvatore La Ferla

Gervasi's success in Seikes is again making the quotidien magic. Gervasi takes one ordinary object and makes it extraordinary. This allows us to see the wonderful in daily life. As daily life is the only life we have besides fantasy life - whatever will allow us to see the magic is welcome. It is something like the eye of a child. Remember how incredible a microscope or a crystal ball could be? Elio Gervasi does and he lets us see it.

Tanz Company Gervasi: Seikes Continues »

Rather amazingly the New York Times, David Brooks manages to argue from both sides of his mouth.

He is against the bailout of the big three auto companies, but he is for the bailout of the banks:

Democrats from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi want to grant immortality to General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. They have decided to follow an earlier $25 billion loan with a $50 billion bailout, which would inevitably be followed by more billions later, because if these companies are not permitted to go bankrupt now, they never will be.

This is a different sort of endeavor than the $750 billion bailout of Wall Street. That money was used to save the financial system itself. It was used to save the capital markets on which the process of creative destruction depends.

This just doesn't make any sense.

Bailouts for whom? Capitalist hypocrisy stumbles Continues »

I've just shot quite a brilliant show - Nikolaus Adler's Oedipus is Complex. I got some good shots but I missed a lot of the most powerful sections while shooting. Was I not paying attention? No, I was paying very close attention and watching my shots go by while withholding fire.

Boris Nebyla lets loose in Nikolaus Adler's Oedipus is complex
Shot with Canon 20D and Canon 50mm 1.4 1/160 sec f2.2 ISO800

What happened then?

Shutter noise. Oedipus is Complex was a live event and my friend Jörg was shooting a film version. So what we agreed with producer Nicolaus Selimov was:

• no shooting in quiet spots
• no rapid fire bursts (not something I'm inclined to do anyway - I pick my moments)
• minimal number of photos except in very high volume sections

And following this prescription:

• the performance was not disrupted by my shooting
• the photographs are quite good

But I did miss a lot of the strongest emotional moments with the performer alone on stage. And some of the sections which I do have could be even better (but I had a choice of three images instead of ten).

So both inspired and frustrated by this evening I went camera browsing for the first time in a couple of years (I've been very happy with my 20D, particularly since I put the Canon 50 MM F1.4 on it). I started by making a checklist for the perfect camera for dance photography:

Here are the camera requirements for dance (or classical concert) photography in order of priority:

Seven Features of the Perfect Camera for Dance Photography Continues »

Oedipus is Complex begins like Blade Runner with a dramatic voiceover - full of darkness and light.

From a crashed and cutup Volvo on the right hand side of the stage runs a red carpet across the full stage. Three austere single beds each under a single flourescent long hospital bulb. The bare brick walls of the Odeon distant in the dim light. A ruin of time.

A rich and jaded male voice intones a monologue scattered full of such phrases:

"I am a rat"
"The filth of the city"

In the distance, the sound of black rain.

Homunculus Theater 2008 Oedipus is Complex: opening dance

A beautiful young woman in a white blouse and black skirt drifts on and stares at the audience. A sixties Rolling Stones type song - think Paint it Black - starts to play and the woman begins to fling herself to the rhythms. She is gradually joined by another six dancers all convulsing with equal force.

At the end a blond man (Karl Schreiner) with the dangerous looks of Billy Idol at his prime remains alone with the young woman. The narrator tells the story of their love, as Laius bends Jocasta over the bed to take her crassly from behind. An ironic contrast to the narrator's beautiful final phrase "the earth moved" - a moment full of truth concerning the origin of children and the nature of love.

Oedipus is born from between Hein's legs as she sits on the right front bed with Schreiner. Plop, Kun-Chen Shih flops to the ground. A prophetic voice intones about how he will kill his father.

Kun Chen Shih born as Oedipus with mother Anna Hein

Two of the dancers (Karin Steinbrugger and Amadeus Berauer who alternate between dancing and observing, like a miniature Greek chorus) take the young Oedipus away and raise him.

When Oedipus returns, quickly enough a mass fight between the full cast starts to a soundtrack of soaring 80's pop. The fight ends in a head butt from Kun-Chen Shih to Schreiner, with Schreiner sprawled dead at the front of the stage.

Homunculus golden girls Martina Haager,
Anna Hein and Karin Steinbrugger mourn the fallen Laius

Oedipus is Complex - Nikolaus Adler Continues »

Man or beast. Where is the boundary between us? This is a theme that Damien Jalet often explores on the boundary of his larger pieces with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

On stage Damien Jalet live on the boundary between man and beast. His contortions on stage have a sinister aspect. He rolls and crawls, often ending in a fierce growl.

Tonight he took this theme and devoted the evening to transmutation between animal and human.

Damien-Jalet-Three-Spells

The opening piece began with two mythical creatures with grasping mouths doing some strange dance of love and combat, kissing and biting one another. The movement was front lit throwing up macabre shadows on the wall behind.

Eventually one of the white furry animals perished and the remaining animal attacked a supine young woman, who gradually struggled back against the beast and stood up. She was wearing a black veil and jewellery. Her translucent black silk top revealed a gorgeously proportioned body.

Three Spells - an enchantment by Damien Jalet (TQW Vienna) Continues »

Jörg Haider was the first person I met in Austria outside of my girlfriend's family.

Anna was dancing at the opening of the Carinthian Summer Musical Festival in July 2003. I had been in Austria for about two days before the festival. We'd had time to go swimming once and then it was off to the lake and Anna's performance there.

We were both thinking about the dance - the choreography was in order, but we were still concerned about her costume and Anna's hair. Anna had to get her head shaved for the asylum scenes in Lapinthrope just a week before. Wigs, scarves, hats were all proposed to make hide her shaved head. In the end the bare head prevailed (it's a lot easier to dance modern without something precarious glued to your head). With a woman as beautiful as Anna that summer and a dancer as talented as Anna, the audience is unlikely to pay too much attention to the length of her hair. And so it was.

The dance went very well.

On the way there, I heard Haider would be there, in his role of Landeshauptmann to open the festival.

Of course, I'd heard of Jörg Haider before. Even in Canada we got news of the Austrian politician who was supposed to be a new Hitler, threatening the rise of a fourth Reich.

Based on what I'd read in the press, I expected to find a brute - either foaming at the mouth and shrieking like Hitler or a portly sadist like Goering.

Instead, an elegantly attired fortyish and athletic man in an immaculately tailored Italian suit rose and spoke for over half an hour. If Haider had notes, he didn't need or use them much. It was the first time I'd heard a long speech in German, outside of the vituperative extracts from Hitler's rallies.

jorg haider speaks

Haider's voice was resonant and clear, the structure of his sentences as well tailored as his suit. Little acquainted with the German language at that time, I was only able to follow the phonetic balance of Haider's rhetoric.

The audience was as rapt as I'd ever seen at the speech of a politician. From Haider's end there appeared to be little grandstanding - none of the whipping up of the crowd that so cheapens many politician's public speaking. Just an engaging speech.

Like most young Carinthian women living in Vienna, Anna had an obligatory loathing of Haider. Later I learned why from Astrid. If you didn't profess anti-Haider sentiment, you would instantly be blackballed back in Vienna. You would be ghettoized as an undesirable Carinthian.

Margaret Wallman had a strange and wonderful life. Where others would have seen curses, she found blessings. In 1938 where she was the very popular ballet director, the Direction of the Vienna Staatsoper summarily dismissed Wallman on the grounds of her Jewish origins.

Wallman hardly missed a beat. She emigrated to America but ended up in South America running her own dance company for some of the happiest days of her life. When Europe had stabilised after the war, Wallman returned in 1948 to Milan. Her prolific career as an opera director took Wallman regularly to Salzburg and Vienna.

Between times she found time to choreograph Greta Garbo's dance scenes in Anna Karenina.

For the Berührungen festival, choreographer Renato Zanella, another former Staatsoper ballet director, decided to tackle Wallman's not uncomplicated life story. Zanella's path through Wallman's life is impressionistic, sketching out what Zanella believes are the key moments of her spiritual and creative path.

Margarete Wallmann in her days as a dancer

Wallfrau - a new work from Renato Zanella Continues »

A long hagiographic proflle of Alexei Ratmansky, mainly about his tenure as Artistic Director of the ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre, appeared in the New York Times last month: Russian Revolutionary.

Alexei Ratmansky at Bolshoi rehearsal

I remember seeing one of Ratmansky's early choreographic works in Canada. He was an independent at the time. I wasn't all that impressed. It was a small piece with just a few dancers, and somewhat pretentious.

A few years later, almost out of the blue, Ratmanksy got the call to join the Bolshoi as Artistic Director. The post had become musical chairs for grownups. I was there for the end of Yuri Nikovlaevich Grigorovich, Vladimir Vasilyev and Vyacheslav Gordeev. Alexei Ratmansky has brought a certain stability to the post, remaining there for five years. Curiously the main stage of the Bolshoi has been closed most of that time

And during his time in Moscow, some of the dancers have lambasted Ratmansky in the press.

Older Bolshoi stars didn’t sympathize with Ratmansky’s desire to introduce new work or update fossilized 19th-century classics. (“ ‘Swan Lake’ is dead,” Ratmansky told me one day, shaking his head. “I wish I could change it, but it would be suicide.”) The popular principal dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze, whose picture was in the Samsung ad on the front of the theater, was widely quoted as saying that none of the Bolshoi stars respected the artistic director. Ballerinas made faces behind his back.

I can just see Kolya (I remember the year Nikolai joined the Bolshoi Theatre and I remember the first two seasons when he had his first small solo roles) hitting back. Nikolai lives for the great classics.

Moreover, there is nothing fossilized about the Bolshoi versions of Swan Lake. The version current when I was in Moscow as Yuri Grigorovich's strong restaging. Even if they have gone back to a more traditional version, Swan Lake has not been stagnant, but regularly renewed.

The lack of respect makes a certain amount of sense. Ratmansky admits himself that "Russians always need strong leaders" and that this isn't his style:

It will be five years of running the company. From the outside it seems like everything was good, we got really good reviews, the tours were very successful, but I’m not sure the rebuilding of the company will last. Big companies are very complicated. And I know I’ll be losing something of myself if I keep doing this job. I have no time for my own work. As a public person I always have to be perfect, I have to pretend I know the answers. I can’t pretend I know all the answers anymore. The Russians always need strong leaders, but to be an honest artist you have to have doubt, or be willing to entertain doubts.

I'd like very much to see some of the work Ratmansky created while in Moscow. Created might be the wrong word, as many of the works seem to be recreations of lost works, like the "Flames of Paris". Ratmansky in the end - even in the short piece I saw - was always about deconstruction. Rather than the matter itself, Ratmansky wanted to look at the illusion: Meta-choreography.

To my mind, the whole meta and deconstructionist trope is the most worn out and the most cliché of all the subjects. Who doesn't know that art is an illusion by now? Or heard a thousand times that all matters are relative. Better passion and truth or truth and beauty, some values beyond deconstructing the form itself. Too easy.

Even if Chip Brown's article is almost Soviet in its heroic and reverent tones, it's great to see substantial and in-depth dance writing in the main stream press.

We need more of this.

Fortunately I don't have to live in Texas and get emails like this young woman:

It seems like every day I am inundated with email forwards, usually from church members, extolling the virtues of our nation's leaders and the current war.

Dead Iraqi Civilians

The hypocrisy of it is not lost on her:

What really gets under my skin is that these emails are, nine times out of ten, from the holier-than-thou types who go to church six times a week and spend all of their spare time there as well. The type that won't let their kids watch the Disney channel because it's too violent. The type that scold adults for saying "shoot" or "darn" because it's just a substitute for a "bad" word....They're the ones that are always sending me these emails about how wonderful it is to bomb cities full of women and children because of a lie. They're the ones talking about how wonderful the leaders telling us those lies are. And they're the ones that are blindly supporting a candidate who openly advocates more of both.

Hopefully more Americans and more Christians are awaking to the catastrophic consequences for an entire people. It is incredible that this blatant land grab - frankly akin to the Third Reich's bloody occupation of Poland - is taking place every day as we speak.

My post about Palestinians and Indians remains as valid today as it was then. One can now make the parallel to Iraqis and Indians, with Americans as themselves, a century later.

It's a good thing that there is finally hope that the American military will be back in safe hands next year. But there's a ways to go before Barrack Obama is elected.