Americans are very worked up about a family friendly nudist swimming event in the Canadian city of Calgary.

An American, Frank (who for some reason feels the need to keep his comments private) equated the event to a “kiddie porn palace”.

” the Calgary Nude Recreation group released a statement saying: “There are no nude beaches anywhere near Calgary”. WOW! THAT took some real rocket science to figure out. I doubt there are many kiddie porn palaces in Calgary either. So, is the solution to create one, open to the public? I doubt there are many kiddie porn palaces in Calgary either. So, is the solution unto create one, open to the pubic?

It’s a private event held by committed nudists. Nudists approach is to de-sexualise the human body via familiarity. It works. Nudist beaches run pretty well throughout most of Northern Europe and as pointed out in Vancouver. Most are family friendly.

Uncomfortable with nudism?

The only people who would have real reason to be uncomfortable in a nudist environment are pubescent girls (they are very uncomfortable with their bodies at that age due to change, with or without clothes it’s just part of nature) or stunningly beautiful women. A really beautiful woman will often attract excessive attention in a traditional nudist environment. All that attention is less of a problem with the clothes on (a beautiful woman either gets used to it or has to sit at home) but can be a bit disturbing without any clothes. Even with the clothes on, many beautiful women deliberately underdress, wear almost no makeup and hide their long hair to try to get away from the attention. Radiant pulchritude is not just a nudism issue.

Everyone else gets along just fine (i.e. about 85% of adults, teenagers and children) with no clothes on, as if normal. Adolescent girls are probably better to avoid nudist events and stunning beauties generally have better things to do. Nude or thong swimming off of expensive yachts or on Costa Brava, the Côte d’Azur, the Italian Riviera, Croatia, Greece or the Caribbean. Auditions or acting classes. Theatre rehearsals. Modelling gigs. University libraries and parties.

Young and Beautiful Nudists Don’t Really Exist

When you are young and beautiful there are a lot of places to be and family friendly nudist events are not high on the list. In time, our hypothetical young beauty will be able to enjoy these events again (as a mature woman/mother).

A real pervert couldn’t go to a naturist event anyway as he’d be showing wood all the time and have trouble controlling him/herself. A nudist event is the last place most perverts would want to show up.

As Michael Petch of 2/35Infantry correctly notes the cancelled swimming event is far from the most significant nudist manifestation in Canada:

Canada has the longest public all age family friendly nudist beach in North America coming in at around 45 miles in length. That is Wreck Beach in BC. Thousands of people in the buff with their children are all along the beach.

We seem to be able to handle it just fine. If there’s a weirdo around, he’s warned off. If a group of weirdos turn up, they’ll be sent packing by a larger group of nudist males. If that’s not enough, nudists in Canada are free to call the cops. Unlike in the US, the Canadian cops in large cities are not going to come in guns blazing, randomly shooting nudists and weirdos. Enough cops will turn up to make the weirdos move on and warn them off for the future.

This is the great thing about the rule of law, the absence of legal handguns (turning up with a firearm on either side would be a crime) and a working police force. In Canada we struggle to keep our police honest and sober, as the example south of the border is so totally out of control. By and large we succeed, though sometimes we fail.

Some of these misinformed Americans made the argument that people are born to wear clothing. A kind of immaculate clothed conception.

There is a reason people wear clothing. It’s to protect against the elements. It’s to protect against predators. These stupid people must live in a bizarre make believe world where everyone is innocent and pure. It boggles my mind. It’s like every day I read something where it further challenges the question, how stupid can people be?

Anti-Nudism Often Has A Religious Angle: Nordic Nudism

When challenged by Michael Petch that opposition to nudity is more a religious issue than a health one, Crash suggested that in northern Europe (apparently some kind of gold standard for appropriate human behaviour) people must go clothed.

LOL. Yea okay. You’re telling me that people from Nordic countries used to wander around in the cold without clothing?

Strangely enough the Nordic countries (along with Germany and Austria) are probably the centre of family friendly nudity. Moreover this part of the world has warm summers with very long days (white nights).

Akseli Gallen-Kallela, In the Sauna, 1889, Oil on canvas, 120 x 81 cm, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

In particular Finland has a huge tradition of nudism, including family friendly naturism. You can see it even in their art work in the national gallery in Helsinki. Not sure about Sweden (pre-Muslim invasion, i.e. Ingmar Bergman heyday – fifties to eighties) but think the culture is similar there. Keep in mind Finns are a separate language group and culture from the rest of the Scandinavians so what’s true of one is not true of another.

Based on their reaction to nudity, it appears unsafe to let Americans out of the United States.

With his first rate credentials there as a dancer, hopes are high that Legris will be as fine a director in Vienna. Until last year, the preceding artistic director Gyula Harangozo had been building a very good classical company with a strong Russian accent in Vienna.

Curiously Legris has kept most of the Harangozo dancers while shuffling around the designations with a new étoile designation to which only two ballerinas have been elevated, Olga Esina and Maria Yakovleva and two dancers, Vladmir Shishov and Roman Lazik. The dance world is dying to know what he has made of them in his first premiere Jewels of the New World.

Quite sensibly, Legris has brought the repertoire of the Paris Opera with him. In Jewels of the New World, we saw Balanchine, Twyla Tharp, William Forsythe and more Balanchine. All of these choreographers and all of these works have been staples of the Paris Opera repertoire since at least the eighties. No brave experimentation here, but it is high time these modern classic names returned to Vienna’s main stage.

The theme of the evening was New World as Twyla Tharp and William Forsythe are both American born, while George Balanchine after stints at the Marinsky Theater and Serghei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes founded the finest and most influential dance company in the United States, New York City Ballet.

With the magic of Legris can the Vienna State Opera compete with the Paris Opera on the same repertoire? The short answer is no. The longer answer is not yet. Despite some exceptional highlights to the evening from Elisabeth Golibina and Kirill Kourlaev, Nina Polakává and Maria Yakovleva, the Vienna company does not yet have the same depth or consistency of schooling as Paris. Comparative inconsistency is not unexpected as Paris has its own school supplying most of the Opera dancers while Vienna’s ballet school has offered just a half dozen dancers good enough to last at the state opera in the last ten years.

Theme and Variations opened the evening on the Tschaikovsky’s Orchentral Suite 3 in G Major and with costumes from Christian Lacroix. The look was ornamental and bombastic, Parisian frippery at its best. To carry off as flamboyant a piece, the corps-de-ballet has to be perfect and the soloists should be spectacular. Alas night they were not. The corps-de-ballet was constantly out of sync, while Vladimir Shishov and Olga Esina sometimes seemed uncertain and on several occasions made flagrant mistakes. With a little bit more rehearsal, both they and the corps should be able to make amends. Apparently Esina and Shishov indeed had little time to rehearse as until another dancer’s illness Shishov was to partner Nina Polakova in the second cast.

Balanchine Thema und Variationen Olga Esina Vladimir Shishov

The two do suit Theme and Variations as danseurs nobles. Esina is a classic Marinsky ballerina with long arms and legs and neck. Shishov has grown into manhood in his time in Vienna and appears to be working harder at either the gym or the rehearsal room. Although the women looked quite good, the men of the corps-de-ballet looked more like boys than the jaded rakes of the Paris Opera, to the detriment of Balanchine’s work.

Twyla Tharp’s choreography of Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn

Variations on a Theme by Haydn
Vladimir Shishov Elisabeth Golibina

 was an excellent choice to follow Balanchine. The further development of Balanchine’s art in Tharp’s work is crystal clear in apposition. Brahms’ music is exceptionally moving and a welcome relief from the rather strident Tchaikovsky suite. The dark sand simple costumes and lyric variations of Tharp’s piece allowed the dance to shine through.

The cast was very strong including many of the very best dancers of the State Opera ballet. Long limbed Georgian Ketevan Papava acquitted herself well while Nina Polakova is quietly on her way to becoming an étoile in the firm hands of Kirill Kourlaev. These two were certainly the best pair of the night. Polakova’s movements were fragile and graceful, each infused with that strange tragic intensity that is hers alone. Kourlaev was both strong and suitably discreet, not overwhelming either his partner or the piece. Hopefully we will continue to see them together.

Shishov returned immediately to the stage to partner Elisabeth Golibina who was absolutely brilliant. With all her skills in classic ballet, Golibina showed an astounding flexibility and energy in Tharp’s more modern steps. She looked like she stepped out of the original creation or the Paris Opera. Stunning. Shishov continued to show better form than past years as a manly and certain partner, strong enough to handle Golibina’s tall form.

The normally radiant Maria Yakovleva was uncharacteristically dull in the reliable if prosaic hands of Roman Lazik. He seems both too tall and too diffident to suit Yakovleva as a partner. Happily enough, it turned out Yakoleva was saving herself for later that evening.

Alas, after the intermission the premiere here of Forsythe’s exciting piece The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude was not as successful. The Paris Opera performances are many levels above what happened in Vienna. What went wrong?

William Forsythe The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude Ludmila Konovalova Masuyu Kimoto Kiyoka Hashimoto

The angular geometric costumes fit Ludmila Konovalova’s attractive figure badly, while the ballerina had neither the speed nor the sharp angles to carry the role. Konovalova spared no effort to try to entrap Forsythe’s steps but here she was miscast for her major debut on the Staatsoper stage: I anticipate excellent performances from her in other roles. We will see Elisabeth Golibina dance this role next week and wish her more success.

The other two women Franziska Wallner-Hollinek and Kiyoka Hashimoto were unremarkable but adequate. After a slow start Masayu Kimoto and Denys Chervychko caught fire in the men’s solos. Chervychko has an unpleasant tendency to try to draw the audience’s attention to himself and not to the piece or his partner. One day one might hope that he learns that the artist is subservient to the art and not art to the artist.

Legris chose well to save Balanchine’s Rubies for the finale. Karinska’s original costumes from 1967 were magnificent: light gleaming in all directions from the jewels. After seeing Karinska’s spectacular raiment, I don’t understand why so often new costumes are created for Balanchine’s Jewels.

Ketevan Papava was at her best as the first ruby, her long limber legs and arms nearly endless. Despite her Circassian origins in Georgia, Papava is unusually cold on stage. Despite almost perfect steps, she leaves herself too far out of the equation. She is an ice princess: one hopes one day she will warm. With Plissetskaian passion, Papava would be a dancer to reckoned with internationally.

Balanchine Rubies Ketevan Papava

On the other hand Maria Yakovleva hit the stage like a shining hurricane. None of the earlier languour or indifference of her performance in Variations to be seen. She leapt, she smiled, she piroutted as if she were born to be a jewel. At the end of the piece, her appearance brought the most vigorous applause of the night. Her partner Mihail Sosnovichi was a fine pairing but Sosnovichi was simply unable to keep up with Yakovleva. She showed up the entire stage and brought the house down with roaring applause at the end.

Balanchine Rubies Maria Yakovleva Mihail Sosnovschi

All in all, a debut of which Monsieur Legris may be very proud. Many fine performances, a nice shift in the repertoire. Legris carefully chose some of the best teachers of these ballets to bring to Vienna. When William Forsythe couldn’t make it, Legris sent an expedition of the first cast to Frankfurt for a week. Clearly Legris will spare no expense or energy to put first-rate dance on our stage. The talk among the dancers is of a positive and encouraging atmosphere. The rest of the season continues to offer good new works to the Vienna State Opera with an original premiere based on Marie Antoinette’s life choreographed by Patrick de Bana in November. Premieres of works from Béjart, Jerome Robbins, Elo, Kylian still to come in the New Year.

Alas, a short delve into their history indicates more totalitarianism, fratricide and genocide.

Let’s start with the Huguenots. At the wedding of the Huguenot King Henri Navarre (later Henri IV) with the sister of the French king Margaret Valois, the Huguenots were lured into Paris in August 1572. There the queen mother Catherine de Medici set the mob on them after the royal wedding. Several thousands murdered in the streets and drowned in the Seine within days. Twenty thousand protestants murdered in Paris, another fifty thousand in the rest of France within the next two months. Nice way to celebrate a marriage.

Subsequently the Protestantism were outlawed by King Louis XIII in the Edict of Fontaineblue in 1685. Persecution carried on until 1787, by which time there were only 200,000 from an original peak of 2 million Huguenots left in France. In fairness, they weren’t all murdered or forced to convert to Catholicism. Many Huguenots managed to escape into exile.

With hardly a chance to catch their breath, the Parisans organised the French Revolution which resulted in up to 40,000 deaths by guillotine alone. The number of innocents to perish in that number is likely in the range of 90%.

But they weren’t done yet. After the Revolution, the seaboard province of Vendée refused to give up Catholicism and to participate in conscription rose against the Revolution in 1793. (Ironically enough the cities of the Vendée like la Rochelle were Huguenot free cities and strongholds before the Huguenots were all starved and murdered in La Rochelle, a city of 27,000 reduced to 5,000 in 1627 by Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIII.)

In the Vendée, the Republican French decided to raze the place. At Nantes, mass drownings took 4000 lives in 1793. Another 200,000 of a population of 800,000 were to die at the hands of the Republicans. General Westermann reported to the National Convention in 1794:

There is no more Vendée, my republican fellow citizens! It died beneath our sabers along with its women and children. I have just buried them in the swamps and woods of Savenay. According to your orders, the children were trampled to death beneath the hoofs of our horses; their women were slaughtered so that they couldn’t bring any more soldiers into the world. The streets are full of corpses; in many places they form entire pyramids. In Savenay we had to make use of massive firing squads because their troops are still surrendering. We take no prisoners. One has to give them the bread of freedom; however, mercy has nothing to do with the spirit of the revolution.

Curiously, the Israelis argue that the measures they are taking against the Palestinians are no different from the French did to one another and the British and Americans and Spanish to the Native Indians.

If the Israelis had gotten back to Jerusalem a hundred years earlier, they would have had a point. But apparently, Israel was created in response to save people from genocide not to advance its cause.

Surely we can do better now. Apartheid in South Africa was dissolved with a minimum of bloodshed.

The Romans were constantly murdering one another’s armies and razing the southern cities of Italy.

Civilisation seems to be another word for mass bloodshed.

It is a blessing to live in decades of relative peace, within secure countries and set borders. We should appreciate it more. It isn’t often this way. Bloody wars, civil and external, appear to make up about half of human history.

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

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

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

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

Congratulations Milan and Slobodan!

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

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

Detailed translation:

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

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

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

Protestants and even atheists are just not in the running.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence.

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

Intimacy and hatred in an inanimate object.

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

Claire Croizé in Skéné

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nice dancer. Lousy show.

Clare Croizé and Etienne Guilloteau

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

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

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

Photos © Raymond Mallentjer

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

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

The opening piece was Bach-Suite 2 danced by Kader Belarbi, based on Rudolf Nuriyeev’s own Bach Suite premiered in 1984.

On a bare stage sits a cellist in 18th century costume – contemporary to Bach. He begins to play and very shortly thereafter a noble looking man strides onto the stage. He is also in costume contemporary to the music – a long frock coat shimmering in rich Bordeaux hues.

To the sounds of Bach’s Cello-suite No.3 the man begins some very precise and small steps and quickly launches into ever more complicated footwork. The dance is based on early ballet and court dancing of the 18th century. We are taken on a tour of dance of the time with a certain modern fluidity.

Christophe Coin played the suite impeccably and with style. In the Burgtheater his solo cello carried much better than in the massive Palais Garnier. Mr. Belarbi also seemed far less lonely within the smaller stage.

But despite a more appropriate space and the fine technical execution on both sides, the Bach-Suite 2 eventually languishes and grows dreary. The piece sorely lacks an emotional through line to retain our engagement and finally the dance becomes the mere moving of feet.

But before the audience reaches that states there are many fine moments where one admires Mr. Belarbi’s grace and poise, as a clear model image for the gentleman of parts of that age. His own grace gently reminds of the original purpose of courtly dancing: to demonstrate to the modern woman (circa 1750), what she might expect of a man. A clear exhibition of his physique in motion, signals of what she might expect from him in more intimate circumstances.

At its best when watching Mr. Kalerbi’s elegant footwork in Bach Suite 2, one can imagine oneself royally instructed by one of Jean-Jacques Casanova’s dancing masters. At worst, it is just a little bit dull. Vienna’s Burgtheatre is a far better venue for this particular piece than the Palais Garnier as the elaborate footwork and small emotions are sometimes entirely lost for most of those in attendance in the Paris hall.

It is a peculiarity of Vienna that there are dozens of young men dressed in blues and yellows and red coats like that that Mr. Kalerbi wore, wandering the city hawking tickets to nightly performances of Mozart. While this makes his baroque garb more familiar to the eye, I was not the only audience member to imagine that Mr. Kalerbi might whip out a ticket book at some point.

The second piece of the programme took us immediately to the other end of the spectrum. Recently enfant terrible of contemporary French choreography, Jerome Bel, was invited to stage a piece at the Opéra de Paris. Veronique Doisneau is that piece.

Veronique Doisneau as Veronique Doisneau

Jerome Bel’s work can be pretentious and vapid, often based on some kind of a sight gag (his T-shirt piece where the performer takes off fifty different t-shirts in a row each with a different slogan, changing attitude and character with each different shirt) than any consequential feeling. So I was rather dreading what Jerome Bel might do with the Paris Opera.

Again, as in Bach Suite 2, a single dancer enters the stage. She is carrying a bottle of water, a tutu and some pointe shoes. She comes to the center of the stage and puts down her things and speaks to us. Her name is Veronique Doisneau. She is forty-one and one year away from retirement. She is a dancer at the Opéra de Paris. She has a husband and two children. She makes 3500 euros/month.

Her voice is slow and deliberate, her articulation exact. As she speaks to us, it is as if she were speaking to children. She explains her place in the strict hierarchy of dancers within the opera. She is a mere sujet, sometimes soloist, more often corps-de-ballet. With great candour, she tells us it is because she was both too fragile (a back operation at 20) and just not gifted enough to rise higher.

We are astonished that an entire life and an entire career could be summed up with such brevity.

At this point, the piece takes an unexpected turn. Veronique Doisneau begins to talk about her childhood love for dance and classical ballet, a passion which sustained her through her long but uneventful career. She has always wanted to dance the role of Giselle. She never did but she still knows the partition by heart. She puts on her pointe shoes and tutu and dances the opening dance of Giselle with Prince Albert for us alone. She sings the music and tells us when she is to be lifted.

There is a strange and wonderful appropriateness in the choice of ideal role. Giselle suffered and then died alone from her unrequited love. Veronique Doisneau’s own lifelong passion for dance has left her without ever the occasion to dance the role of her dreams.

As she finishes the four minute excerpt, Veronique Doisneau is breathing heavily. We can hear the effort to breathe in the microphone close to her chin. The illusion of grace and effortlessness which classical ballet creates for the audience is totally shattered. Her winded brings us yet closer to her vulnerability.

Then Veronique Doisneau speaks of the choreographers with whom she enjoyed working (often the dead ones, Petipa, Balanchine, but also Merce Cunningham) and ones with whom she disliked working, even citing Maurice Béjart and Roland Petit by name. She takes off her pointe shoes to demonstrate Merce Cunningham’s technique of working in silence.

Her own dancing is so fine and sensitive, it is hard to imagine that she is not good enough to dance the roles she might want. We feel tragedy of the second-line dancer in perhaps a top rank company.

There is one section of a ballet which she loathes, the second act of Swan Lake where the Swans have to stand still in difficult poses for so long. So long that she feels like screaming and exiting the stage.

Veronique Doisneau puts back on her point shoes and her tutu and calls finally into the house for the technician to put on the phonogram.

And she dances a ten minute excerpt from Lac de Cygnes. Dance is perhaps to exaggerate. True to her word, she only moves for about 30 seconds of the ten minutes, the rest of the time she is stuck rigid in uncomfortable poses.

The peculiarity of the soundtrack is that it is from a recording of a ballet performance. So when Veronique Doisneau makes her single legged steps across the stage we hear all the rest of the swans thumping on the floorboards, as one-legged as she. Finally she is drowned with applause of this past audience who are enthralled with this scene which nearly kills the corps-de-ballet.

A sharp and ironic reversal of perception.

At this point I felt the hand of Jerome Bel. Until now everything has been fast-moving and quite emotional, but the Swan Lake scene seemed quite pedantic and very out of step with the passion for dance which Veronique Doisneau shares with us.

After Swan Lake, she talks again about how her admiration for certain great ballerinas kept her going through difficult times: Yvette Chauvire and Natalia Makarova.

Jerome Bel’s intentions throughout the piece are perhaps less than honorable, seeking to take ballet down a notch or three. He is mocking of classical ballet with ten minutes of tedium from Swan Lake from the perspective of the corps-de-ballet. Clear demonstrations of the exertion involved in the weightless grace we perceive in the audience. Making the dancers banal and ordinary folk with salaries measured in euros and frustrated ambitions.

But the fundamental humanity and passion of Veronique Doisneau wins out over Bel’s irony. And we spend a half an hour in the intimate company of someone who might have been a great artist had she been a little less fragile, had she not had a back operation at 20. Veronique Doisneau shares her passion for dance with us that is what we take away.

Fifteen-love, Paris Opera over Jerome Bel. I hadn’t seen Veronique Doisneau in Paris but as a solo piece it was no doubt much more powerful in the comparative intimacy of the Burgtheater. The irony of Veronique Doisneau alone in front of the tradition and weight of the institution of the Opéra de Paris herein perhaps shed some of its irony for the better. She would certainly seem far more lonely and somewhat absurd on that enormous stage.

The third piece on the programme is the strangest piece from Sergei Diaghilev’s famous Ballets Russes which I have ever seen: a very early Balanchine choreography by the name of Apollon. The music was penned by Stravinsky.

Apollon – Jean-Guillaume Bart

However neither Stravinsky or Balanchine seemed to be much in form in 1928 if we were to judge by this piece. Apollon is supposed to be a representation of Apollo (Jean-Guillaume Bart) with Terpsichore (Nolwenn Daniel), Kalliope (Mélanie Hurel) and Polyhymnia (Dorothée Gilbert). They are all dressed in white with the three women in very short tunics over white leggings all looking very girlish.

There are some silly objects which get picked up and put down – a player’s mask, a scroll and a flute. The women flash the objects in front of their faces before doing their solos so we can be really clear about who is oratory and who is the muse of the theatre.

While the women acquit themselves reasonably well under the circumstances – running around with nary a clear emotion in site and a lot of silly pantomime to manage – Jean-Guillaume Bart leaves us cold. For some reason, he chose to play his part with an artificial smile pasted on his face throughout the piece akin to what one finds in provincial performances of Don Quixote.

His dancing was acceptable but devoid of interest behind such a relentlessly cold facade.

While both Nolwenn Daniel and Mélanie Hurel danced well, Apollon was not helped by their physical resemblance, both petite and quite fair – it was difficult to distinguish between them. The distribution would be improved by significant variation in the three muses. Dorothée Gilbert a little taller and much darker stood out. But even Mlle Gilbert did not seem to have the sensitivity and vulnerability she showed when I saw her in O zlozony / O composite last year in Paris.

Even musically one felt trapped in a musical from the 1950’s. The dancing only started to improve and attain a modicum of sincerity towards the end after Apollon broke a sweat. But we were just minutes from the end of the piece.

The final pose of the four dancers together with eight limbs fanning out on all sides as if from a single being was extremely graceful and beautiful. All in all Apollon is a cliché of a certain public perception of what ballet is about: pretentious and pretty and vacuous.

I still haven’t figured out why this particular ballet was resurrected by the Opéra de Paris with the help of the George Balachine Trust. While it is somewhat reassuring to realise that neither George Balanchine or Igor Stravinsky were infallible geniuses, both artists have much greater works that could be brought back into repertoire..

It’s not clear if Apollon would be better on the vast Palais Garnier stage or in the relative intimacy of the Burgtheater. Apparently the premiere in 1928 did take place on the Palais Garnier stage.

Fortunately, the best piece of the evening was saved for last. O zlozony / O composite is the choreographic and musical collaboration of Trisha Brown and Laurie Anderson with costumes from Elizabeth Cannon.

O zlozony / O composite is a recent creation whose premiere took place in December of last year.

Curiously the costumes are quite similar to Apollon. All three dancers are clad in white. But the O zlozony costumes are more heavily styled with thick white arm bands on all the performers arms, offering a minimalist futurism. And here, rather than three demoiselles dancing alone for the attention a single man as in Apollon, it is one woman held and lifted by two men who turn and turn around her.

The interaction is palpable throughout the piece. We are accompanied by the constant and dreamy whispering of a Slavic woman’s voice in Polish. Apparently her sensuous divagations are based on poems from Edna St Vincent Millay and Czeslaw Milosz. What matters to most audiences is the atmosphere rather than the words themselves. The minimalist music and the voice are wonderful to hear. After hearing it twice, I hope to be able to acquire the recording.

The backdrop of the stage is a starry sky, a photograph by Vija Celmins, which seems to extend into forever. Or at least it did in the Palais Garnier. Here the intimacy of the Burgtheater does not allow the same endless expansiveness that the night sky had on the Paris stage. One also felt that some of the dancing was constrained somewhat by the confines of the smaller stage. There was greater isolation and greater import when the dancers came together.

The three performers, Aurélie Dupont, Manuel Legris and Nicolas Le Riche were all extremely natural. The men effortlessly transported their partner throughout the many and complicated lifts. All three dancers are étoiles – the best that the Opéra de Paris can offer.

Aurélie Dupont’s performance was less ethereal than that of Dorothée Gilbert, but full of strength and grace. Aurélie Dupont has the powerful lines of a swimmer with strong shoulders and some sculpted curves which is far more agreeable in modern dance than the anemic look so frequent nowadays in the Paris Opera and most of the other major Western ballet companies. Her build resembles some of the famous antique statues of Diana/Artemis.

Mlle Dupont’s performance is convincing on an emotional level, she seems to be genuinely within the psychological voyage of her character with her two companions. In the past if one were to find fault with the dancing of the étoile Aurélie Dupont, it would not be for her steps but a certain hardness of shell and shallowness of performance often found in classical dancers. J-G Bart fell into this in Apollon. Apparently Aurélie Dupont herself attributes the progress in emotional interpretation to her work with Angelin Preljocaj and Pina Bausch. It is wonderful to see this kind of ongoing development in an artist at the height of her powers.

Nicolas Le Riche was as wonderful and solid as in Paris, while Manuel Legris was also excellent. The men’s roles are more understated as they turn around the woman and collaborate on the complicated lifts. As the lifts are most often as three, and involve extensions and twisting, the communication and timing must be perfect as it was.

O zlozony / O composite evoked rousing applause from the audience.

A resounding end to a highly eclectic and fascinating evening – Baroque, Balanchine, Bel and Brown. It is quite a compliment to the Impulstanz programmers that they were able to assemble four of the six male étoiles (Kalerbi, Bart, Legris and Le Riche) of the Opéra de Paris for Bastille Day in Vienna.

Every time I see them I am always astounded at how good the ballet of the Opéra de Paris is whether it be classical work or modern. There is no other company which can cover so much ground so well.

The quality of performance is supported by a superlative level of dedication. Even after the second showing of O zlozony / O composite in Vienna, ballet master Fabrice Bourgeois worked with his three étoiles for fifteen minutes after the performance on refining several of the lifts and releases.

Credits: All photos by Icare.

Je vous ai dit que le Jardin des Plantes c’était un de mes répares preferés à Paris. Et non sans cause.