August 5th, 2009 §
The Love Piece is one of the more unique pieces in the 2009 ImPulsTanz festival: it is entirely experiential and completely different every time it is played and for every participant.
The creators and cast of The Love Piece provide an environment and a context and the rest is up to you.
The Love Piece: Where it all happens
The experience for the most part is positive, but as I wrote the quality of your experience depends mainly on you and what you bring to that evening.
Here's what the program says about the piece. This much is public knowledge:
The Love Piece unfolds along a loose score that can described as: there as many audience members as performers. As they come in, audience members are each taken by the ahand by a performer, who for the duration of the show 'give love' to his/her audience. What such a love can be, is the stake of the piece. Love songs are playing the whole time.
There are just 10 performers - so very few people had the opportunity to experience The Love Piece. I was one of that fortunate 100 and will reveal the details to you about my own visit.
*** SPOILERS FOLLOW - PLEASE DO not read farther ***
*** if you expect to attend The Love piece personally ***
ImPulsTanz 2009: Alice Chauchat - The Love Piece Continues »
August 5th, 2009 §
One of the curiosities at ImPulsTanz this week was the stage performance of Transformers, the culmination of two weeks of rehearsals and workshop led by Eszter Salamon and Christine de Smedt.
This is one of three or four professional level two week programs, mainly populated by the DanceWeb dancers. For those not familiar with DanceWeb, it is a program run by ImPulsTanz which brings about forty dancers from around the world to Vienna to study dance at the ImPulsTanz workshops and at the performances as well for free. DanceWeb is one of those great initiatives which changes the world by providing a conduit for international exchange. Often DanceWebbers end up visiting one another across the globe. I have been the guest in Venezuala on a road trip with one of my friends from DanceWeb. This is not untypical. So that is the context of this two week intensive: working professionals from around the world, but with no prior experience dancing with one another.
Some will argue that Transformers should not be critiqued as it is just the results of a workshop. Not so. It is deliberately presented as a stage work and not in laboratory format.
Salamon & De Smedt & Pro Series - Transformers
© Alec Kinnear
Black box stage. Stage environment not accented, more black curtains and shadows than raw backstage. All the dancers are in everyday clothes: blues, reds, yellows, browns. Nothing remarkable.
A curiosity are the wires going into each dancers left ear. More on them later.
The show starts off slowly with heavy breathing moving to amplified shch whispering noises and lot of meandering around the stage. The whispering slowly accelerates to quiet howls over the course of twenty minutes. Frankly this warmup session is pretty painful.
We have cute little hobbit "hee hee" noises. Let your inner voice out, seventies kind of primal scream warmup. Definitely useful for ungluing uptight dancers from stiff cultures. Not so entertaining.
accelerating Transformers voices © Alec Kinnear
They now turn it up a notch and go into spasms and fits and real primal screams. Particularly amazing is a guy who looks like one of Ghenghis Khan's lieutenants with long dark hair and high cheekbones. You fear for his life and yours as he screams and thrashes.
Particularly effective is Chris Haring's dancer Alexander Gottfarb who doesn't let the spasms go through his whole body but confines it to one part of his body at a time in a controlled rotation, focusing your attention much better on the nuance. Alexander has an unfair advantage here though as Chris uses spasms as well as part of his stage vocabulary (albeit a small part rather than the whole enchilada as here).
This thrashing and screaming goes on for at least a quarter of an hour.
Somehow it turns into a love-in with dancers merging together and blending with other groups. At first it seems heterosexual but over time same sex couples and mixed threesomes appear. The dancers keep their clothes on but otherwise with the passionate breathing and screams you are witness to a full on orgy. Somehow it is unclear if this is meant to be sensual or off-putting.
When it quiets down the stage goes dark and you think the purgatory is over. Not at all.
The lights slowly come back up and the dancers begin to assault the audience verbally.
contact audience © Alec Kinnear
"Do you know what standing by means while the government kills your fellow man?"
"What about La Hacienda?"
"It is time for a revolution."
"Stop the injustice. Just wake up and stop it."
The dancers come right up to the first row and look in the eyes and shout in the face of the audience. Most of them believe in their revolutionary text and pronounce it with fervour. Quite effective.
They then move up the staircases of Halle G shouting at audience members higher up.
Sho Ikushima © Alec Kinnear
I thought they were all going to leave the theater as in Delgado or The Love Piece, leaving the audience alone to muse on what we just saw. It would have been quite effective.
But no, they made it back down to the stage.
Fairly robust applause when the lights went up, but the audience is mainly fellow dancers and friends - hardly impartial.
One could argue that Transformer is a workshop and not a performance to be critiqued. On the other hand, Eszter Salamon and Christine de Smedt made a conscious decision to present on mainstage and not in a laboratory session.
My neighbour Keith Hennesy complains about these white European kids appropriating the text from the Civil Rights movement (The Last Poets). This critique doesn't seem particularly relevant to me. The issue is with revolution and injustice, not with colour and civil rights. Colour is a very narrow view of injustice which has become as much as an economic issue as one of race.
I could live without the half hour of painful buildup as the young dancers build their nerve up to explode on stage and then do their love-in.
But the peak moments did have a genuine character, enough to make one reflect on what humanity means and the differences between man and beast. Apparently not a lot. A fair enough conclusion. Beasts do less damage to the earth as we do.
I do have issues with the technology used. Apparently the wire into the left ear is actually an earphone attached to an iPod shuffle. Each dancer has a soundtrack with both noises and instructions on it, to guide him or her through the performance. For me, giving them a constant hidden soundtrack to perform to is the equivalent of cheating on exams. Almost all of the sound the audience gets is from the dancers.
The dancers should have learned how to generate these noises unselfconsciously without doping themselves with dialogue in their ears. If the dancers need a conductor or fluffer, that should be provided from the first row.
However, Christine de Smedt says the title Transformers is about transforming those sounds and those instructions from the iPod shuffle into performance. Okay, but this is not really preparing the students for the true internal work on themselves. As a prep exercise okay, but I'm not convinced.
Technology should be used to enhance, not as a crutch. I'd like to ask the participants about how they feel. If any of them read this, feel free to leave a comment about the experience of performing to recorded instructions and audio.
© Alec Kinnear
It should be noted there is scant little dancing in Transformers, but given the sparsity of dancing in the entire ImPulsTanz festival, there appears to be scant need for contemporary dancer performers to be able to dance. If all pro dance workshops go in this direction, we are bringing up a generation of dancer cripples who will be able to do little else than howl and writhe.
Despite that caveat, Transformers is far from the dullest show among this year's mainstage performances. There is movement, there is emotion, there is excitement, there is a point.
Performers:
Sandro Amaral, Tim Darbyshire, Kathryn Enright, Elisabete Finger, Alexander Gottfarb, Arianne Hoffmann, Tahni Holt, Sho Ikushima, Lenio Kaklea, Benjamin Kamino, Igor Koruga, Karen Lambaek, Enora Riviere, Bert Roman, Salka Rosengren, Liz Santoro
July 27th, 2009 §
July 27th, 2009 §
The Bagwell in me begins with a man in drag in a bathtub with his/her feet up.
performance begins - man in a bathtub
"Hi my name is Sherry, feel free to stop the show and ask us any questions as we go."
The audience for the most part is quiet throughout the evening despite Young's attempt to knock us out of our stupour.
Ann Liv Young is hiding behind a white plastic bead curtain at a table with a Macbook Pro on it.
Her opening question kicks us all in the crotch, men and women. "Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who can't get it up?" The voice is steely and male coming through a distortion filter like the one they use in horror films.
Ann Liv Young
"Have you ever lived with someone you can't fuck?"
A girl titters. She seems like a plant but promises she isn't after the show. Young comes after her: "Why are you laughing? What is so funny? There is nothing funny about being horny and not being able to fuck. It's very frustrating."
This was just the prologue.
Ann Liv Young is a phenomenon unto herself. The Bagwell in Me is the third production I have seen and reviewed. Each year Young takes her on stage shock therapy further. The first year, for Melissa is a bitch it was just fat girls naked dancing to pop songs and a lot of dirty talk. For her last visit two years ago with Snow White it was penetration while Young was seven months and very visibly pregnant.
Ann Liv Young & Michael & Jaguar
In The Bagwell in Me, Young manages to take matters even further. To get our attention and to play out her own peculiar fantasies, this year Young brings a pen camera on stage which is hooked up to a video monitor. That way there can be no mistake about the open legged masturbation, cuninlingus, fellatio, golden showers and full on penetration which takes place on stage. They are not simulating, this is live sex.
Beyond her joy in shocking and disturbing people, what seems to concern Young is hypocrisy and injustice. At a deep level, Young feels life is unfair and she and her friends are getting the short end of the stick. And she will make society pay for her suffering. Here Young is attacking blind American patriotism and its foolish jingoist ideas. George Washington is known as the greatest American president and a freer of slaves. But as Young points out, Washington's slaves were freed upon his death when he no longer needed them. Which makes Washington first and foremost a slave owner. Young asserts that Washington was the father of one of his slave maids children. Naturally his wife Martha objects. Young's vision is very dark indeed: the story ends with the maid in prison and George Washington sexually mutilated.
Michael with towel over his head & Ms Young as Martha
The two strongest moments in "The Bagwell in me" are the dialogue between Washington and his wife Martha and the dialogue between Martha and Oney Washington's slave mistress. Young plays both parts most of the time, switching frenetically between voices. Apparently there is a version of The Bagwell in me with another female performer, who perhaps handles the second role sometimes.
To manage all these impersonations Young has rubber masks, white wigs, black wigs, blackface, frocks and little black baby dolls.
On Sunday night a videographer Jaguar in a zipped up purple jumpsuit filmed the entire performance. Her prim suit and hairdo was a striking contrast to Young's open legs and wild flying hair. Young told us that Jaguar was only there that night - but an integral part of the performance. Young's work seems to follow a rough scenario but with episodes which can change as it strikes Young's fancy. She plays off her own mood and that of the audience.
Ann Liv The Bagwell in me
The contrast between her controlled reasonableness when she comes out of character and her frenzy in character is exceptionally Brechtian. Young lets us lose ourselves in her experiential world and then knocks us out of it and asks us to consider seriously her ideas on subjugation of races and women.
Someone at the end of the show asked why so much sex?
The show is about an illegitimate child, Young explained. Contempt and quiet rage slips into her voice as she explains the obvious. "How do you get a child? Only by fucking, so if that's what my show is about, why should I hide the fucking? Of course there is sex. You would have to be really stupid or really naive to make a show about an affair and hide the sex."
When I asked her why she wanted to treat this particular theme, Young went into the ramble you can read in the program about her forefathers being slave owners and visiting distant aunts living in southern estates in Virginia with what are now called black maids instead of slaves. Hogwash, I say. There are deeper reasons Young is obsessed with sexual hierarchy and legitimacy. I'd like to know what they are. Young also seems obsessed with infidelity and the pain of women reluctantly sharing a man both want.
While to retell it all of this sounds merely sordid, Ann Liv Young is a consummate showman now and the show rarely flags. She skips from one hysteria and pop song to another bringing out the voyeur in all of us. You don't want to watch but you must as she commits one effrontery after another and orders Michael her common-law husband and father of her child around with despotic nonchalance.
The show alters between explication and explicit sex to karaoke numbers as varied as "Billie Jean" to "Slip Sliding Away" to disco to strange cute pop songs from the 1920's. Young doesn't sing too badly considering the limited attention she pays to her singing.
But after The Bagwell in me what is there left for Ann Liv Young to do on stage? This time we had bondage, urination, fellation, cuninlingus, full penetration with a dildo, genital organ mutilation. All that remains are anal sex, rape, eating of feces.
While The Bagwell in me didn't perturb me much, I'm not sure I will be able to handle Young's next show.
At the end, Ann Liv Young seemed very concerned that we felt we got our money's worth. Her question set me thinking on what terms? I once heard live sex acts in the New York area run about a $100/head admission so at 25 euros perhaps The Bagwell in me is excellent value. On the other hand, there was scant little dance or much uplifting. Ann Liv Young is a sexual enigma wrapped in scatological mystery. Be glad that she is selling visitors passes to her world and not one way tickets.
May 28th, 2009 §
After a slow spell in 2007 Choreolab is back with a vengeance, just short months ago we all trekked out to St Polten to see the Choreolab 2008 and we've just been to Baden and back twice this week. I'm dreaming of not having to lug all my camera gear to the ends of the earth again, but the stage in Baden is very good and well-suited to the scale of Choreolab. The town is also very pretty.
town of Baden
Jubilaums Stadttheater Baden
This year is the ten year anniversary of what has become a marvelous tradition in the Vienna State Opera Ballet. Choreolab for the uninitiated is an annual event at which dancers from the Staatsoper can put on their own choreography. Other dancers volunteer to fill the parts and the Balletclub of Vienna under the direction of Ingeborg Tichy-Luger organises the venue and marketing. It is difficult to say enough about the dedication and inspiriation of choreolab founder Tichy-Luger. Let no one underestimate the work and will involved in bringing such an event to life once, let alone to its ten year anniversery.
Ingeborg Tichy Luger
This year, choreolab featured nine choreographers. I suspect ten were planned and one got lost on the way. No matter. The nine young choreographers together put on a substantial evening, divided into two acts and lasting almost two hours with intermission. Some brought major works and some minor works, but all were under fifteen minutes.
Let's approach the works in order.
To Ella - Choreographer Samuel Columbo
Samuel Columbet to ella 2
The Ella in question is Ella Fitzgerald to whose music the choreography is composed. Here we see several couples flirt and love in elegant cocktail ambience. The dancers are dressed in extraordinarily simple and attractive costumes, like the dresses from an Alfred Hitchcock film. Blue with white buttons and belts.
Bernhard Blauel Iliana Chivarova
The feeling is casual and light. While one would be hard pressed to find much depth here, like Sunday brunch, To Ella charms and delights. The dancers enjoy the occasion to flaunt their good looks and some high kicks and everyone enjoys him and herself both on stage and in the audience.
To Ella could become a longer piece with a story between the couples. But it's just fine as it is.
Elena Li in to Ella
Samuel Columbo is French and has been in Vienna for five years.
...and then she looked up - Choreographer Marie-Claire D'Lyse
Rafaella Santanna
Mademoiselle D'Lyse must win the prize for the most exquisite name in Australia. She has the charm to match. This is her first creation for the stage since her arrival in Austria nine years ago.
Ketevan Papava Flavia Soares
d'Lyse's piece is almost too easy to watch - four beautiful girls seeking themselves in grey and blue bodysuits, under dramatic lighting and to the dulcet tones of Imogen Heap. Even a little bit precious until one reads the program notes, it's a dancer's own biography:
the story is about a girl who...is completely oblivious and blind to the political, religious and all global issues that are facing us today. Three wise ones represent the collective conscience of society telling her, almost begging her to lookup and realise what's going on in the world while she is dancing around and looking down all the time.
Fine, somewhat Lermontovian, even maudlin you say. Well I say, at least she's telling a real story which is important to her about the awakening of conscience. The story is told with simplicity and elegance.
Rafaella Santanna Ketevan Papava
Her casting is spectacular, with three Brazilian beauties, Rafaella Sant'anna, Taina Ferreira and Flavia Soares perfect in the role of the three graces of wisdom. Ketevan Papava sensitively handles the protagonist's spiritual growth in cool and measured dance.
Rafaella Santanna Ketevan Papava Flavia Soares Taina Ferreira
I'm very curious to see what Marie-Claire D'Lyse creates next. Will she be able to push her boundaries harder or will she remain lost in the beautiful? I could live with either result. Stay tuned for more news....
kuda - Choreographer Tin Kos
Tin Kos
"a lost type doesn't know is what direction he should go."
Well, Tin Kos is all of nineteen years old and clearly is wondering what he should do. Probably dance. Here he jumps around, does some break dance moves and runs away to the music of the saian supa crew. If any single item didn't belong in the program this was it. For all his charm and his ready smile, Tin Kos is just not ready to share the stage with the other choreographers. kuda is nothing more than a romp around the stage.
Tin Kos leaps
I'm no great fan of child prodigies, especially if they are not prodigies. I hope this is not a direction which will be developed at Choreolab (ballet school pupils as choreographers).
It looks like with dedication and work, Tin Kos will be a good enough dancer. In spite of his inexperience, he did not offend in a role in Samuel Colombo's To Ella.
Everlasting Pictures - Choreographer Dan Datcu
Rebecca Horner Kiyoko Hashimoto Kimoto Masayu
Alice Firenze Alexis Forabasco
At choreolab 08, the revelation was Romanian choreographer Dan Datcu who danced a striking duet with the powerful Rebecca Horner. This year, Dan Datcu took himself out of the production and added four other dancers to his reflective and moving work with Ms. Horner.
Kimoto Masayu Rebecca Horner Alexis Forabasco
The longer and more involved piece included even more ambitious lifts and between meandering couplings and triplings. His dancers seemed to put themselves into the work. Alice Firenze was fire and Rebecca Horner was ice, to whom the others gravitate and fall away.
Alice Firenze Alexis Forabasco flight
Alexis Forabasco struck a particularly strong note with his dramatic and craggy features.
arabesque Alexis Forabasco
The choice of music was powerful. Giovanni Solima's ambient melodic thoughts. The lighting was low and subtle as well, with muted tones to match the deep emotions.
Alexis Forabasco Kimoto Masayu Kimoto Masayu
Dan Datcu has a way with movement which goes beyond facile or pretty. He can directly communicate emotion through movement. He was the only one of the choreographers to work extensively with both air and ground.
Kiyoko Hashimoto Alexis Forabasco Kimoto Masayu Alice Firenze
"facing life and knowing what it is - loving it for what it is and giving it away at the end." Same tagline as last year, but this year filled out with some depth.
Dan Datcu everlasting pictures
drei unbekannte (three strangers) - Choreographer Valery Kaydanovsky
Alexis Forabasco 2
Very stylish. Black clad men with white face and dark clown makeup. In the end,Three Strangers seemed more an exercise in style than an attempt to solve a substantial problem. As I spend a lot of time lambasting the choreographers at Tanzquartier for trying to solve substantial problems without any style (or horrible style), perhaps I should Valery Kaydanovsky some slack here.
Richard Szabo Alexis Forabasco Valeriy Kaydanovskiy 3
Basically, Kaydanovsky's piece survives on the very strong stage presence of Alexis Forabasco here. Forabasco breathes as if born for the role as the mean stranger, holding the audience in his hand the entire time. We dread his next cruel gesture, wonder what he will do next. At some level Forabasco's charisma here is camped up. He should consider harnessing this power for more traditional roles as well.
Richard Szabo Alexis Forabasco Valeriy Kaydanovskiy mooning
This is Valery Kaydanovsky's first work as a choreographer. I am curious to see where his next work. Choreolab has a tradition of developing stylistic choreographers. Nicki Adler created many of his early works here.
Broken Wings - Choreographer Vesna Orlic
broken wings Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet 2
Vesna Orlic's Broken Wings is a strange bird. Orlic reprises with Russian Ekaterina Davydova who was so good as the cool younger woman in Buenos Aires Hora Cero in Choreolab 06. Orlic pairs Volksoper dancer Davydova with Samuel Columbet, choreographer of the first piece tonight.
broken wings Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet 6
Columbet is expected to wear a tutu here and is a strangely androgynous swan. A very difficult role for a man to carry off credibly - broken wings is deadly serious, no silly version of Swan Lake for men. But Columbet surprises with the power, consistency and focus of his dancing. He doesn't struggle with the Orlic's difficult lifts. Davydova is not much smaller than he is - the benefits of upper body training while you are in the corps-de-ballet hopefully will not be lost on the other men in Staatsoper. Be ready when your time comes.
broken wings Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet 4
The piece is more difficult to evaluate. I saw it twice. The first evening it didn't seem to work, the second evening better. The biggest issue was the cold performance of Davydova. She just doesn't seem to give much emotionally on stage. There are parts where her icy princess persona is an asset this isn't one of them.
Orlic was trying to tackle big issues here:
In the beginning was Paradise. Clear water, green trees and the song of love birds. Then came the fifth and more dangerous rider of the Apocalypse and laid waste to civilisation. The birds wings were broken and love was banne from their thoughts.
A piece not lightly conceived nor lightly made. But what we saw on stage was not at the majesty of the conception.
broken wings Samuel Columbet Ekaterina Davydov 2
I had a chance to hear from the choreographer some of the story behind the piece. The all black background was not at all what she wanted. She was looking for a white floor and sky blue walls. This was supposed to be heaven and not dying swans. In a vote among the choreographers for a dark or light stage and floor, Orlic and Columbet, d'Lyse were voted down by the other choreographers.
Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet Vesna Orlic
In Baden, broken wings was deeply flawed - like a broken Dying Swan. With an emotionally resonant ballerina and with a lighter décor I could imagine the piece as very powerful.
Tea for Two - choreographer Florian Hurler
Josefine Tyler lies languid waiting for life to start
Florian Hurler's Tea for Two felts more than a little self-indulgent. A bored girl lies in her bedroom waiting for life to happen: the sugar sweet Josefine Tyler in white. An older woman dances sophisticated steps at the back: charismatic Gabriele Haslinger. Sweet Josephine spies Gabriele, they shadow dance a little and then sit down to enjoy a luscious (post-coital) cigarette.
Josefine Tyler Gabriele Haslinger discover
Josefine Tyler Gabriele Haslinger in love
I am trying to think of something more to say about Tea for Two. A poignant story of sexual awakening and friendship with an older person who opened the world to the young lover. Frankly the story would fly better on two men than on two women. Even then there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the story. Alas the staging was maudlin, the dancing facile, the cigarette smoking cliché and superfluous (if you need cigarettes for effect on stage you are on crutches before you start).
Gabriele Haslinger Josefine Tyler smoke together
The older woman has symbolically passed on the gift of tobacco
to her young friend: mentors like that we can live without
As a life-long antismoker, perhaps I am not the best person to judge Tea for Two. Unlike most of the work this evening, Tea for Two did not benefit from a second viewing.
Cut - choreographer Eno Peci
Eno Peci cut
Like Kaydanovsky's Three Strangers, Cut is exercise in style. Eno Peci is one of the stronger male dancers in Staatsoper and just hitting his prime. This year Staatoper ballet director Harangozo named Peci a lead dancer after his fine work in Roman Petit's Die Fledermaus.
Mihail Sosnovschi Eno Peci
Peci's Cut begins with eight spot lights turned on the audience half blinding us. The dancers dance among the spots, leaving us to detect silhouettes and poses but not to be able to clearly register the individual dancers. The photos you see here are clearer than what the naked eye saw.
kimoto masayu mihail sosnovschi kioyoka hashimoto
Peci gathered a strong group of dancers around himself. Mihail Sosnovschi and Kiyoka Hashimoto particularly shine here. At first is Cut all seems somewhat casual and improvised. But a second viewing revealed that for the most part Cut is tightly choreographed. The music is also a strange collage of Johann Sebastian Back and Thomas Newman.
Kiyoka Hashimoto Eno Peci 2
Unlike the preceding piece, Cut is professional work. Peci seems to be relying on the strength of his dancers - including himself - to communicate. He says the piece is "without words: abstract and modern". As a proof of concept it works.
Kimoto Masayu Kiyoka Hashimoto
Peci here shows his professionalism and showmanship. You could rely on him to choreography your music video or a piece of your opera. He'd find a way to make you and the dancers you choose look good. Whether the creative flame in him is strong enough for richly imagined productions remains to be seen. Cut is Peci's first work. As an étude, there is little to criticise.
Mihail Sosnovschi
Iguazu - choreographer Karina Sarkissova
Karina Sarkissova's Iguazu
Choreolab veteran Karina Sarkissova's piece iguazu was chosen to close the evening. If she doesn't hold the title yet, Ms. Sarkissova is certainly about to become the most prolific choreolab choreographer of all time. This is her fourth piece in three choreolabs. But art is more about quality and not quantity.
Karina Sarkissova walking on men
Sarkissova continues to commit the same transgressions over and over again:
- overpowering the dance with music
- grandiloquence without depth, i.e. empty showiness
- trafficking in cliché without remorse
- selling nudity with a curious American prurience and prudery
Let's take her sins one by one. Musical grandiloquence: times three with fragments from Gustavo Santaolalla, Gaetano Donizetti and Inva Mulla-Tchako. To that potent mix, she added her own voice over beginning with a religious prayer addresses to "Our father". It turns out that Sarkissova meant her own father but that I would think she meant god gives an idea of the grandeur she is reaching for. Only in the film Titanic have I seen music to match Sarkissova's tendency to overwhelm her art with the soundtrack.
Irina Tsymbal carried like princess
Lack of depth. Here we have a woman on stage with a guitar with four men to do her every bidding, dance for her, carry her around on their hands, worship her and put her back on top of her alter. This very silly fantasy of a world enslaved to one's self was all set to fall flat on its narcissistic face. Then Irina Tsymbal showed up in the lead role. Sarkissova is getting better at both casting and coaching her dancers. Irina Tsymbal single handedly rescued Iguazu with her intensity and her evident pleasure in her male slaves. Absolutely compelling on stage and drop dead beautiful in the role.
Denys Chervychko Marat Davletshin Irina Tysmbal
The cliché. Tagline for Iguazu:
no one can predict the next moment. you can turn from hopeless to ecstatic just in one second because of one glance, when someone's eyes are talking to you...
How Sarkissova manages to live her entire life as an ecstatic fifteen year old girl is a miracle. It's dangerous living like that. It ends in broken hearts and broken lives. What exactly this tagline has to do with what we saw on stage in Baden remains a mystery to me. Apart than it sounds good. Calculated effect again, but it does not seem reflected in the art.
Irina Tsymbal hits her stride in Iguazu
Nudity. Sarkissova has the strangest relationship to the female body. Once again she has her dancer nude, but with a flesh bra on. On one hand Sarkissova is almost entirely aesthetically dependent on the music and near nudity. On the other hand, she is unwilling to actually revel in the human form and show us what she is selling.
Particularly offensive this time (for those who are comfortable with the human body and take joy in its forms and don't find anything prurient about it) is that there was no reason for false nudity. Sarkissova could very easily have made just as sexy a costume without the heavy handed flesh bra. She just needed to put a little red bikini top on Tsymbal and she was off to the races.
Irina Tsymbal Marat Davletshin
In conversation with Ms. Sarkissova she has told me pretending to show us the human body is her explicit wish and nothing else will satisfy her than fake nudity. This prurient puritanism is so American and provincial and so very, very out of place in the middle of old Europe.
Irina Tsymbal surrounded on her own two feet
Basically iguazu for better or worse - perhaps better, I like the film myself - is like outtakes from Conan the Barbarian (the original with Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones). I can imagine Sarkissova on a good day choreographing the witch scene with the amazing Cassandra Gava.
Karina Sarkissova iguazu men
You can take the girl out of Moscow but you can't take Las Vegas out of the girl.
Irina Tsymbal - Conan Triumphant
Bathing in applause, her slaves before her
A resplendent Karina Sarkissova
bathes in applause of her own
In the end Iguazu is an undermanned Las Vegas number. Ending on iguazu is not an accurate reflection of the overall character and strength of the evening. On the other hand, where else would one put Sarkissova's work?
In fairness, I see quite a bit of development in Karina Sarkissova's work here. Iguaza is well cast. Working with a larger group this time which at least gives Sarkissova's grandiloquent and melodramatic conceptions a fighting chance at credibility. There is great commercial demand for choreographers who can put together solid flashy shows which pack houses, whether in Las Vegas revues or Paris's Folies Bergère. Much more than for subtle and complex and innovative leading edge dance, whether contemporary or classical.
Conclusion
So for those keeping track, overall score Choreolab 09:
- one masterpiece in progress: everlasting pictures, Dan Datcu
- two fine if not mainstage works by returning choreographers: Samuel Columbet, Vesna Orlic
- three promising debuts: Marie-Claire d'Lyse, Valery Kaydanovsky, Eno Peci
- some juvenilia not worth mentioning
- one Vegas revue fragment: Karina Sarkissova
Six out of nine for laboratory work is a very good score. Overall, the varied lengths is much better than the flat ten minute cap we had in Choreolab 2008. I still miss the one or two masterwork style pieces at twenty or twenty five minutes of the early choreolabs. This could work well with some five minute miniatures from debutants.
Choreolab is a fabulous initiative.* Something similar be part of every major classical company around the world. Some are already doing it, but those who aren't should. A very happy tenth anniversary and I for one look forward to another ten years of Choreolab.
* On an organisational note, I would also like to praise Ingeborg Tichy-Luger's choice in wine for her dance events. It's always the same and always very good. Longer parties with less food and better wine is a potent combination for joie de vivre. Life is so short - and it's nice to see someone getting the small touches right.
All photographs copyright Alec Kinnear. The stage crew are to be highly praised for the speed of the transitions between pieces. The lighting crew should be damned for making the whites far too hot all night.
More photos can be seen and prints can be purchased online in the full Choreolab 09 gallery.
April 13th, 2009 §
Vienna is a beautiful city. When you spend time in the central districts or in the north of the city, you might think it is the greenest place on earth, hardly a city at all.
The city's most prestigious districts are all to the north: Döbling, the 19th district.
But if you go south it's another story. Here are some photographs from the south of Vienna. Wien Sud is all railway tracks, ports, canals and airports. Even electrical plants and oil tanks (no pictures of the oil tanks this time).
wien energie
wien docks crane
The two photos above are not strange crops but enormous panoramas. More info, including large files.
There is a sort of strange beauty in industrial landscape so this post should not be seen as a condemnation but an investigation into the Vienna's industrial look.
Wien Sud - Vienna's Industrial South End Continues »
April 6th, 2009 §
Tomasz Stanko is a legend of Jazz trumpet. He's won more prizes than you or I could forget. So what has he done with his later years?
Instead of getting toasty around the couch playing old standbys (often what happens to older jazz musicians and even more so with rockers), boring himself and us, Stanko puts together a new collective every two or three years with hand-picked younger recruits.
With fresh blood in his veins (Stanko refers to himself as a vampire), he infects his young with his talent and musical ingenuity. The result tonight is called the Tomasz Stanko Nordic Quintet.
The music was langorous and melodic. An easy to degust, but complex pleasure.
Alexi Tuomarila's work on the piano was understated but overwhelming. Olavi Louhivuori showed more flash on drums but equal power. While less scintillating themselves, Jakob Bro and Anders Christensen on electric guitar and electric bass solidly held up the foundation under Stanko, Tuomarila and Louhivuori.
Not to be missed if you get the chance.
Here are some pictures of Tomasz Stanko Nordic Quintet in action at Porgy & Bess - I recommend clicking an image for the slideshow as that houndstooth jacket wreaks havoc with the ImageMagick thumbnail algorithms.
Alexi Tuomarila Tomasz Stanko (Leica 90mm 2.8)
Alexi Tuomarila Tomasz Stanko Jakob Bro (Leica 90mm 2.8)
Tomasz Stanko Nordic Quintet at Porgy & Bess Continues »
March 27th, 2009 §
On Monday, I thought I was dropping in on a young composers concert at Porgy and Bess. Something about the Konservatorium Wien. To my surprise, there turned out to be as much dance and performance as music.
MIR geht es gut - Petra Straussová
The best dance piece which I saw was called MIR geht es gut. It's about two girlfriends who meet repeatedly in the underground or at a joga class or via a quick handy call. If you've lived in Vienna any period of time, you are familiar with the persistenty shallow "Mir geht's gut und dir?" At first you think they really want to know. But not at all. It's equivalent of the empty North American. "How are you?" for which there is only one acceptable answer. "I'm great and how are you?"
MIR geht es gut - Petra Straussová
It's an absurd situation. Why do people speak at all if they have nothing to say. Both Petra Staussová and Simone Kühle managed to catch the inflection and frantic feel-good vibe of the modern urban woman perfectly.
MIR geht es gut at the Fidelio-Wettbewerb Konservatorium Wien Continues »
March 5th, 2009 §
It had been a long time since my good friend Kathi (now Dr. Kathi Kastner - congratulations!) and I sat down for a Viennese coffee and chat. Back at home in Prückel, one of the first Viennese cafés I visited and perhaps my favorite is Café Prückel, next to Statdtpark on the edge of the first district.
Winter in Cafe Pruckel Vienna 3
Winter in Cafe Pruckel Vienna 4
Portrait of Kathi
For a time I even tried to work in Café Prückel as it is wonderfully bright during the day. But it is just too smoky for more than an hour or two.
The goulash soup is classic.
February 24th, 2009 §
Sunday night in Vienna, fluffy snow floated throughout the city. Gorgeous.
Some of my friends (including the Viennese occasionally) wonder what it is about Vienna that I love so much. I wouldn't trade life in Vienna for any city on earth. So there will be a few photos to show you the magic of the city.
Here are the bikes outside my place.
Bikes in the snow
On the way across Stadtpark there was a lady in the park with a camera and an umbrella. I like how the traffic lights turned Stadtpark into a late February Christmas tree.
Traffic light
Crossing Statpark one passes by the old canal which flows into the main Donaukanal down by the Urania Kino, home of the Viennale. I have tried to photograph these lamps before but the snow really takes the whole scene back to the eighteen hundreds, one sees gas lamps and expects the sounds of carriages.
Licht Stadtpark
At Porgy and Bess it was the opening of the Austrian Accordeon Festival (next time you might want to order a website from Foliovision - we'll give you a special offer - and some photos from Max or I). I had come along to see child wonder Paul Schuberth play his orginal compositions but the fourteen year old was long gone replaced by some crazy raucous Polish accordionists, The Motion Trio.
Snow in Vienna | Motion Trio Accordeons | Oscar Night Continues »
