The first music we hear is dreamy psychedelic sixties music played softly. The stage is covered with technicolour blankets. The cast stroll in slowly, positioning themselves on the blankets.

Spangberg’s “The Beach” is a rich colourful world.

Looking at his stage with reds, blues, yellows, purples and his cast in emerald, ruby, topaz and sapphire clothes, we are reminded about how much colour is missing in our own lives.

Marten Spangberg The Beach ImPulsTanz Heroine

The movement is centered around a young woman with long dark hair, wearing a red mask with gold glitter on the border. The mask fits her face perfectly and we can see her eyes. It turns out to be makeup. Little details like getting the mask right make “The Beach” special. Other girls have similar masks or cat’s whiskers. A boy wears a small clown nose with just part of his face in white and his eyes made expressive with liner.

The journey starts slowly. Everyone is moving in slow motion for the first hour. The large cast assemble themselves on the blankets in a kind of still life. They move but very slowly. They belong to each other and we are observing their world. All are extremely focused and present. Strangely for a piece with so little action, it’s not boring.

Two of the girls dance some sort of cross between gogo and cheerleading and ballet while blowing chewing gum bubbles. The popping bubbles performs perfectly Brecht’s estrangement (Verfremdungseffekt), not allowing us to relax or become complacent as we observe. The dancers are EXOTIC in the true sense of the word, i.e. unusual.

Marten Spangberg The Beach ImPulsTanz GoGo Dancers 2

From contemporary music, Spangberg now takes us into the Baroque. His lead dancer with the red mask leads the others in a ritual of prayer with special hand gestures.

Part way through a second set of dancers in long satin evening gowns enter very slowly and take space at the left hand front of the stage. With them, they have shiny packages with presents in them. Are they some modern three wise men or are they Paris Hilton’s cousins. For these roles, Spangberg has recruited Jennifer Lacey and Kroot Jurak (third dancer unknown to me). All three are very strong stage performers, able to carry a show on her own.

This is what is special about Spangberg’s work. While it is about the concept and the moment, he does not think for a moment that a performance can thrive without first rate artists. On his stage along with the workshop performers, there are at least five special recruits, each of whom brings something special. I’m not quite sure how or why Jennifer Lacey assented to this role – as “The Beach” isn’t something I think she’d like from the outside – but as the snobby lady with shiny bags of presents she was excellent. Jurak didn’t give her strongest performance but her physical height and stage charisma made her a valuable addition to the show.

Behind the three women bearing gifts and further stage right were another group of dancers interacting among themeselves.

At this point, Spangberg has three stages running at the same time. The Casino space is perfect for multiple stages. Spangberg was the only one to exploit the space fully with multiple points of performance at the same time. A modern audience is so used to juggling internet, handy and television at the same time that concentrating on three things at once is easy to us and allows a richer experience. Darrel Toulon and Oper Graz worked prolifically for the last two years in Wilder Mann on symphonic wide stage productions. Hopefully next year other choreographers who work in Casino will make such good use of the space.

After nearly an hour of slow motion and ritual, pounding rock hits the speakers now. The girl with cat whiskers and a man in a buddha robe hand out little painted twigs to the audience. The act of giving a gift, just like what we saw on stage.

The dancers put on modern white tshirts with catchphrases like “I love Vienna” and “I love Paris”. They start dancing very systematic but rather mundane steps in a vast cycle. At this point, Karl Regensburger, Rio and others of the ImPulsTanz artistic direction dropped in and walked out within a quarter of an hour. But without the slow motion and colour of the beginning, this section wouldn’t make much sense. It would be wonderful if they would take care to see whole shows, especially when as controversial as Spangberg’s work.

The dull repetitive steps in some way recall modern life, so far from The Beach. Every day we go to work, answer our phone, answer our email, go out for drinks, talk to our colleagues in an endless routine. I’ve done my best in Foliovision to make every day special for the people working there but modern life is a noisy routine. We aspire to get back to the beach.

The repetitive modern steps make a certain amount of sense. Even ballet was a formal expression of the steps of the day, minuet and court dancing. So Spangberg taking the night club and walking steps of our day and ritualising as dance movements makes complete sense.

Spangberg is very politically engaged. We need to break out of the world of privilege. In the sixties for a very short while society managed to wake up to the world we are missing. There was a great deal of seeking going on and questions being asked. Women acquired new rights, many countries were liberated, eventually wars were put to a start, the fight against apartheid began. The journey was spiritual for a few years and not material.

By the eighties, society had gone back to seeking money and aspiring to drive a Porsche. The world was an empty glam one. It is this world which part two of The Beach reflected.

A third part began with some psychedelic trance music. The dancers took off their white tshirts and dressed differently but colourfully again. Almost all of them began to dance. The audience started to dance too. Many audience members had walked out during part two and missed the atmosphere of joy and love in part three.

Half the remaining audience got up on their feet and were dancing in the tribune in Casino. With just a slight change in the air, everyone would have been dancing. There was this wonderful feeling of having been on a journey somewhere together. Many stayed in the room and talked animatedly to one another after the show.

“The Beach” is a special place.

Hence Lachambre’s work has always appeared conceptual and fairly painful to me. In the best case, instructive or prophylactic, like a trip to the dentist. The tangy taste I had of his work with Clara Furey at the Franz West Tribute did inspire me to attend a full show. What impressed me there was his intensity. Lila, under Lachambre’s mentorship for the summer, told me that his main speech to DanceWeb was all about intensity on stage. A very good point to make.

Benoit Lachambre Snakeskins: LaChambre is bottom left, Albanese is bottom left
Rowe is on top of the rig pounding a thunder sheet
photo Christine Rose Divito

In “Snakeskins”, Lachambre begins by hanging upside down in a harness under a vast set of cables which dip four metres out to the audience. On the left of the netting is a guitarist with some computers and sound decks. As Lachambre waves his arms and the cables move, he appears to be flying like a giant bird. As he flies the music soars.

Throughout the piece Hahn Rowe’s sound is incredible. The closest equivalent which comes to mind (without Frip’s vocals) would be King Crimson. Or the Canadian band Black Emperor. Rowe for extended passages even plays his guitar with a bow like a classical violinist.

Lachambre removes his harness later and through the piece changes his clothes several times, each time taking layers away like a snake. Occasionally he has a mask on, occasionally his face is naked. At points the guitarist dons a frightening green metallic mask to keep everyone company.

There is a third man on stage (Daniele Albanese), who is wearing a silver mask and sweat clothes from the beginning. In the one spoken dialogue of Snakeskins, Albanese’s main role is as a sack of potatoes type drunk.

Rowe’s relentless music finally stops. A masked Lachambre bullies Albanese into giving him all his money. “Give me some money,” Lachambre asks. Albanese complies readily enough. The clang of change.

“More,” demands Lachambre with the desperation of a junkie and the touchness of a hood, giving Albanese a sharp kick.

With the money of Albanese in his pocket, Lachambre isn’t interested in Albanese anymore who goes to spend the rest of the show lying in front of a wall sleeping it off.

This wretched scene from the dregs of modern society is a kind reminder to us all: there but for heaven’s graces go I. Each night someone in every city is getting a few sharp kicks a local tough, forced to cough up his last earnings. There are tired broken women wandering around who for the price of a couple of drinks will do whatever anyone wants. Even for the most punctual, homelessness and superfluity are only a natural disaster, a civil war or an American invasion away.

At one point Lachambre is shaking his butt at us and convulsing in latex pants. It’s as if Lachambre feels the audience will be pleased or excited to be offered his butt. A similar offer did work for a long while for Paris Hilton.

Somehow Lachambre manages to put a basketball on his head and a microphone up his nose before springing into his net where he struggles before he breaks free. Now he is on the floor crying like a lost and injured child. Some women left the theatre unable to reconcile Lachambre’s wailing with their expectations of an evening of dance.

Lachambre stops now to tell us a story of “a game the ancients played”. The Mayans apparently played basketball but with vertical hoops. It reminded them of the eclipse. Nice story if both convenient and incredible.

Lachambre when he doesn’t have his mask on, looks very unwell. His hair is long but lifeless, his eyes demon blue and red, his cheeks drawn, his shoulders bent, his skin pasty as the crypt. The only real sign of life, the frenetic energy he radiates from those piercing eyes.

At this point, I’m wondering what drives Lachambre on. For all its intensity, his work is cold, methodical, even soulless. There is little love and no family in his world. Just colours and sounds and nearly random moments. How far we have come from Giselle, surrounded by family, fellow villagers, fiancé before she is seduced and destroyed by the local prince.

Lachambre seems a man who has sold his soul for art. There is no hope, no greater plan. There is just the black box to be adorned and the audiences and festivals to be importuned for ready cash. Another airplane, another crowd. The sun moves in the sky and with its motions Lachambre has drinking money and rent money. This is not a critique: many esteemed denizens of capitalism do far worse. Lachambre is making something and providing divertissement: far better than the brokers who pour mindlessly into stock exchanges daily in to collect from the ebb and flow of financial tides in packs like piranha fish.

But we didn’t come for naught but a bit of music and a homeless skit. The lights go down again as Lachambre divides his net into two halves before starting to swing it. While he whips the nets around faster and faster, laser type lights create will-o-the-wisps patterns on the ropes. The music goes higher and higher, it’s like entering a kind of twilight zone where anything his possible. A small masterpiece of visual stagecraft.

Albanese finally pulls off his own mask. The men take their bows. The audience goes mad for Lachambre. Lachambrism must be some kind of cult – they scream and scream. Even through a dozen false exits and returns. Rowe’s music plays on finally serene. Albanese shows some dance moves too. The men collect their gear and dance around together to show us, they could have said it with movement if they wanted to, they could have danced had they wanted to. Somehow movement and dance are an estranged part of the past in these waters, just as peculiar to these anti-formalists as menuets are to you and I.

The exit scene lasted at least twenty minutes. I think the idea is to exhaust the audience into leaving. At least one tenth of us stuck it out the additional half hour until Lachambre, Rowe and Albanese finally gave up wandering in and out and Rowe shut down the music loop.

Lachambre himself wonders himself if he’s on the right track in his notes about Snakeskins:

I touch the excrement of the definitions I deconstruct. Like a one-man orchestra, with no limits or boundaries, I exist outside all logical description. Am I in the process of regressing or am I in fact highly evolved?

While our aesthetics may be opposed, Lachambre’s politics are perceptive. He spoke in a recent interview about the photograph used on stage of a first nations man in a dark corridor at the end of which we see a small boy with a basketball:

First nation ancestors have not been respectfully recognised in terms of their personal histories and the former nations of the Americas have not been properly dignified by society either, be it in a historical perspective or in contemporary discourse. The rejection of what was the outcome of colonialism created a great deal of pain, anger and lack of balance in and among ancestors and families and in society as a whole.

Yes, it’s an interesting question. How do you live among the people who killed your ancestors, destroyed your nation and took your lands? It’s nigh impossible.

I find stranger and stranger though the word Lachambre used many times: “the Ancients”. There are no ancients. Humankind exists all of a hundred or two hundred thousand years. This earth is in its fifth cycle of life and over a billion years old. We are as fleeting as the moths flying at our porchlights and perishing every night.

Lachambre has no answers. No one has.

When the door closes, a drum on top of a loudspeaker starts to play. It’s never quite clear what causes the drum to make noise and what part of the drumming is recorded and what part is pulled out of the drum on stage. The sound will be the most interesting aspect of this piece.

Tremor’s three dancers are modestly attired. Lisanne Goodhue is in a rose pastel thigh length dress. Isaac Spencer in faded skin tight jeans and a t-shirt. Sebastian Matthias himself in lederhosen and a beige t-shirt.

Their motions are spastic. Then motion stops and they hold uncomfortable poses, like store front mannequins. Tremor is about dislocated figures. The dancers eventually degenerate into little toy soldiers with the martial drumming behind them. At a deeper level, Tremor addresses alienation in society and the structural constraints imposed on our lives in our brave new technical world.

The idea is not bad, but the execution falls down on three points:

1. Movement: the choreography is alright but not something which one would normally leave home to see.
2. Technique. None of the dancers are so technically astonishing that it is a pleasure to watch them repeat the same movements over and over. The quality of the movement is adequate but mediocre.
3. Physical beauty/presence. None of the dancers have either charisma or intensity or physical beauty in such quantity that the previous two faults would be easily forgivable. With magnificent dancers, Tremor would be better.

All of the above sounds elitist and superficial. Perhaps it is. Dance is an elitist art with a superficial side. You wouldn’t expect Chess Grand Masters to be intellectually mediocre. Why should ordinary people of limited charisma and kinemetic gifts be performing artists?

The very subdued applause which greeted the end of Tremor suggests I was not alone in posing myself these questions.

We begin in a prison cell with metal walls. There are flashing lights which recall something from the film the Matrix. It’s good to see a choreographic production challenging (if in miniature) the opera productions and the main stage theatre productions in production design. Great to get away from the empty black room at last. Fantastic work from production designer Penelope Wehrli.

Ismail Ivo is naked in a blanket, bare naked. The bottom of his feet are painted red, reminding us all that he and we are made of blood. The other dancers’ feet are also so painted. Mortality visualised on the soles of the feet.

Ivo struggles out of his blanket and against the closed walls. No exit is to be had.

Here a man enters (Giuseppe Paolicelli). Ivo’s Bacon first fights with him and then moves to love. Their love making is violent. Here sex is no gentle caress but a lashing out against mortality, an attempt to subjugate and own the other.

The stage is a kind of triangle: the long side has three doors in it which flip up and down and also serve as beds for the lovemaking.

Later women appear. One with huge breasts rips one out of her bodice and force feeds Ivo’s former lover her breast (Elisabetta Violante).

Another woman with no legs, just a spider web where the legs should be is carried crawls out (Valentina Schisa) . Under a huge mane of hair, the most beautiful bosom you’ve ever seen is revealed. Our strange mermaid/harpie is picked up and suspended in every possible position over the course of the next half hour, both witness and participant in the tortured debauchery and tormented self-interrogation.

The two men cheat on one another with women, the women like accessories, a barrier between men, a barrier from the truth. The women often enter with large butcher’s knives which they wave around before using against themselves. Violent women with knives and naked men brings forth images of castration. Strangely that didn’t happen.

One of the strongest image is of Ivo hanging upside down like a bat, naked. He shivers and shakes, his arms become free he lifts himself up and down in a strange upside down dance. Ivo’s power and grace entrance in these moments.

The underlying theme is about about the powerlessness of of even greath strength and beauty. No matter how strong or beautiful you are, if you fight the tenets of society, you will face imminent evisceration or imprisonment. The consequences are enough to break anyone. And the attempt to break Bacon’s spirit does not end for the one hour and forty minutes purgatory.

There is no end to the brutality. At least no mothers brought small children to this show (Vandekeybus’s Medea), nor should they. There are live insects behind one of the doors.

Traditional choreography as such is nearly non-existent. There are only theatre episodes and fight scenes (apart from the hanging bat). Curiously there are four credited choreographers: Ivo, Mara Bobo, Tero Saarinen with director Johann Kresnik. The art direction (costumes and the splendid decorations is the work of Penelope Wehrli).

An unnecessary weak point in “Francis Bacon” is the music. In itself, the music is a highly atmospheric of industrial noise and violin solos and dark arias. While going with recorded music widened the musical possibilities in individual episodes, this piece would be extraordinary in the accompanied by live music.

We bathe in horrors. This is Dostoevskian existence, a kind of dance Notes from Underground.

As the stage darkens finally around Ismail Ivo, we hear a final voice: “iI you love life, then you love death. they are like two sides of the same coin. Like you, I’m always surprised when I wake up in the morning.”

Ivo’s performance is memorable and he is well-supported by the surrounding cast. I’m amazed that Ivo has the emotional strength to perform this role for nine days straight. “Francis Bacon” just misses genius but is first rate movement theatre done on a grand scale. If you can find a ticket, grab it while you can.

The original version of Francis Bacon was staged in 1994. Such magnificent productions were people then creating.

Franz West by Ludwig Koeln

Moderator and hands on organiser Jennifer Lacey did her best to keep the program on track but at two hours without a formal break and some real trouble moving the performers on and off, momentum was uneven. Had Lacey known how many pauses there would be, she could have passed on the introduction and done that in forced breaks. She told one joke which made me laugh while waiting what seemed like half an hour for Philip Gehmacher to get out of the back and onto the stage. Gehmacher’s equipment in the end was moved out onto the stage by force by Intendant Regensburger himself.

“As dancers we learn young to come on time or ahead of time and to be ready. Visual artists don’t ever seem to get this message – they are almost always late and badly organised – so collaborating with them is always an adventure for us.”

To open there was a beat poetry reading in the upper foyer of Kasino. Then the doors opened and a blonde transvestite in the most amazing electric blue platform heels pranced out.

“you can fuck a German in English too, fuck the uglies too to be kind and polite.”

I believe this was François Chaignaud.

Right after Chris Haring came out to show off one of his simplest tech tricks, microphone wrangling. Haring uses two loudspeakers and a microphone on a long cord. First he swings the mike between the speakers like a bell to get the measure of the feedback and then he starts to swing it around his head slowly and then faster. All the while his sound guy cranks up the volume into a crescendo of sound. It’s an impressive party trick. The stocky Haring can still really swing a mike like a rodeo man.

Here Lacey told us a bit about Franz West. He was a “participatory audience member. He would come to shows he wouldn’t like to be challenged by the work. An elegant hippy punk. Unlike most artists, West just got better as he got older.”

At this point, the highlight of the evening. Benoît Lachambre strutted out in thigh high platform bondage boots with a studded dog collar wrapped around his neck. Lachambre sang a song of unrequited love in a long term relationship, the pace of it tapped out by long strides with his boots. A pretty girl in tight blue hotpants and long dark hair joined him on stage, doing strange tricks like standing on her head and shaking her butt like a gogo girl. At one point Claire Furey puts on red sparkling Dorothy shoes from the Wizard of Oz and accompanies Lachambre in his rhythmic stomping. Finally Furey sits down at the piano and sings a richer version of Lachambre’s lament. Furey here sounds as good as Tori Amos, while Lachambre offers his rump coyly to the audience in a passive position of love.

The idea was good but what made Lachambre’s piece stand out was the intensity of his performance. Lachambre emoted the despair of love at the audience at volume know 12 out of 10, with a pasty face and bulging mad eyes. One worried for the man’s health. The effortless sexiness of Furey gave a necessary gloss of glamour to Lachambre’s gay madness.

After the show an Israeli Dancewebber where Lachambre is the mentor this year told me about what he had taught them: “Lachambre always talks about energy. Energy and more energy is the core of performance.” He’s not wrong.

Cecilia Bengolea did a cover of Kate Bush’s song “Wuthering Heights”. I’ve always loved Kate Bush’s fluttering voice and passion here. Bengolea got off to a surprisingly strong start despite a very present French accent. Alas, when she started to move, her vocal work limited her dancing and her dancing limited her vocal work. I think it’s the only time I’ve seen Bengolea perform clothed. I don’t think this performance can ever progress beyond shock value as there is no physical way to do the singing and dancing right.

Right here we went right off the deep end – but as this was a tribute to Franz West, it’s not important what I think but what he would have thought and I believe he would like the next (non-)performance very much. One of the world’s most famous Baroque violinists came over to perform the piece. The violinist very seriously set himself up on stage and played some tuning notes. We waited two minutes and thirty six seconds for him to start playing. He never did. The piece is called “Moment of potential silence”. It could just as easily be called “Moment of missed potential”. Bringing a world class performer to not perform is highly ironic and about as intelligent as burning €500 notes. As a political act, yes it’s highly charged. But as a long term proposition it has nothing to offer.

Now a new black strip of stage had to be rolled out. An enormous young woman in a black fur coat, a tall hair bun and nothing else strode out and stood in the middle of the stage, challenging us with her glare. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons starts. She rips off her fur coat, revealing hills of plump powerful flesh. Now she starts to powder her body as she tremors to Vivaldi. Shoulders, arms, breasts, belly. Turn and now buttocks in a rolling crescendo before stomping naked off stage. Again a party trick but a good one, confusing us with signals of classical culture, hygiene, body image and overt sexuality from non-standard body shapes. Doris Ulrich deserves praise both for the composition and for the performance.

Next come out a couple of old guys in worn out suits. It turns out to be the hairdresser of Franz West on stage with a massive soap bubble apparatus and a musician who worked with him in a beanie cap and a trumpet. A confusing twenty minutes of bubbles and half hearted trumpet. These guys are definitely going to miss Franz West as without him the world is just not quite the same. It was great to see them and to know what is waiting for all of us whether twenty years or fifty years down the road: the respect of time obscured by the confusion of age. Time waits for no man. Sow when the sun is high.

A young black gentleman in a black skirt came on stage to apologise for not being a singer and then to sing a song about “Daddy’s eyes” with the principle line being “Daddy is an alcoholic”. A moving enough performance but bit off topic. Dancers doing song covers is not really innovative or breaking the mold.

Philip Gehmacher took forever to get his act together and to come out on stage for semi improvised percussion with synthesiser on top. Phil Spector’s wall of sound. But not nearly so polished. I felt like we were being exposed to the experiments of a musician just starting his career. Something like a small child bringing his droppings to present to his mother, confident in his mother’s love and praise. Despite emptying half the hall (as usual), Gehmacher did collect a hearty round of applause after his half hour of diddling so I guess his expectations are not wrong. The sad part about this performance is that the pause waiting for it to be set up and the length of the performance broke the back of the evening. By the time we all left we were exhausted and drained.

Ivo Dimchev came out in a blonde wig which accented his cherubic face. The amazing trick Dimchev has of switching from angelic to demonic is quite mesmerising. He played with some sculptures, swapped the sculptures around, danced around to techno, scared the audience a bit by threatening to throw the sculpture at us, dry humped the corner of the wooden box he brought out with his props. Dimchev reminds me of King Lear’s fool: his madness allows him to say or do whatever he wants without giving anyone the right to offence. As much as “The P Project” delighted, this piece confused me. Showing off Dimchev’s talents but without much purpose.

Finally Mark Tompkins in his Sinatra suit wrapped up the evening with a performance of Heaven. “A place where nothing happens.” A fitting end to a tribute to a departed and much loved friend. As Karl Regensburger said in a short speech:

“I’d like to think that somewhere Franz has moved on to other works and other projects and that he is still with us in spirit. Such a creative force cannot come to an end, can it?”

High points? I was happy to have seen Benoît Lachambre’s work finally, in just the right dose to start. Doris Ulrich in the fur coat with baby powder is a very effective work. Seeing Mark Tompkins sing is always a pleasure. The beat poetry in the hallway was very good. Putting together almost overnight tributes is not an easy task and it is wonderful that Franz West got just the public wake he would have wanted.

Ivo Dimchev The P Project:
Projection of the cancelled verbal game
Readable 3456 pixel version

A guy walks onto the stage half naked shaved head and gold chains. Sits down at an electric piano. Holds his hands solemnly in prayer. Looks good and safe so far. First sign of trouble: Dimchev pulls out a little vertical jar, holds up to his nose and takes a couple of big snorts. Poppers he says.

He plays the piano rather well and then starts pounding on the keys so hard and so randomly you wonder if he knows how to play the piano at all. But then his fingers find the keys again. Dimchev stops occasionally to laugh maniacally, shaven head and UR-slavic features like some James Bond villain prototype.

Time to talk. Inspiration for the show: playing games with the word “pussy”. Word game works like this: adjective (fervent, macrobiotic, powerful, interrupted) plus “pussy” plus preposition (in, to, of, from, without) plus noun (airport, future, foundation, university). For some reason this word game doesn’t satisfy Dimchev’s requirements for interaction with audience. Too abstract.

So instead, he’s set up two computers on each side of the stage with direct chat into his own screen in front of the piano. He needs volunteers to type poetry which he will perform live. He does a stint and fairly successfully turns the words of others into some kind of meaning. Dimchev twists and repeats the words as he pleases, something like Van Morrison, something like Celine Dion, squeezing emotion out of each phrase even where there is none. A nice lesson on the tricks of “touching” vocalists”.

Now he wants performers. Some people dance for €30 while new poets type for €20 (I participated in this round – Dimchev pulled 90% of his text from my stream of consciousness stream although not without complaint – he wants his lyrics very lean).

Next round. He needs volunteers to kiss for €50. A pretty girl presents herself right away. Just what a hungry dancer needs. Exposure on stage and €50. Two guys fighting over the gig to kiss her. Dimchev swaps one of the guys out and sends the first kisser to the keyboard. The other guy gets to kiss. New information: the kiss must be topless. The girl doesn’t flinch. As well as I can tell she’s likely a real volunteer. I know that I wasn’t a plant in the audience.

The music starts again. The girl rips off her top and shows off a small but lovely pair of breasts with perfect pink nipples. No wonder she wasn’t alarmed: she’s playing to her strength. The dark haired guy has a dancer’s body and a handsome Italian look. But the girl was a much, much better kisser than he was. If she’s single, it was good advertising.

Dimchev asks the audience afterwards if we can go further. “Much further” someone shouts out. Dimchev agrees. The next two volunteers will get €200 each for their performance.

We catch our collective breath. What on earth will they have to do to earn €200? Still there’s another pretty girl with a funky calf length blue dress and long braided hair who is on her feet and the handsome mulatto guy in front of me with the cap is ready to go as well.

Dimchev says “Okay guys, I need you naked on stage, fucking and breaking my heart with your passion. Are you still on?” Dali nods. €200 is not pocket change. Tall, beautiful guy nods too. He’s not complaining. “You were in one of my workshops years ago, weren’t you Justin?” “Yes, yes I was.”

Wild card!

A guy in the back comes running down to the stage. He wants €200 and in on the action. A threesome. The usurper is a paunchy 35 year old with curly hair drawn in a half pony tail and a totally untrimmed three week old beard. Hair is pushing out of his nostrils and his ears as well. This hairy monster is sweating hard and won’t be denied, his nimble footwork belying his rich girth.

Dimchev hesitates for the first time. “Sure we could do a threesome. Do we have money for a third, Marcel? Yes a threesome.” Dali shakes her head. Dimchev has lost his girl. Quick thinking. “No we won’t do a threesome.” The hairy guy won’t be denied: he wants Justin’s place NOW. Dimchev collects his thoughts: “You can sit real close, right there in the front row. No you can even sit on the floor and watch everything.” Gorilla man sits cross legged on the ground at the front of the stage.

Dimchev dashes back to the safety of his piano, Justin and Dali strip right down. Dali has a pretty face and a nice stomach and butt. Her small chest is adorned with a funky hanging necklace which she keeps on during sex. Justin is gorgeous at 195cm, all muscle, no fat, long and lean. His milk chocolate skin is adorned with a beautiful circular tattoo which covers most of his back.

It takes the two of them some time to find the right position. They start standing up. When they hit the ground, Dimchev sternly admonishes as he plays: “No laughing, I’ll reduce the fee.”

With much less than €1000 cash, Dimchev has become ultimate lord and master over the entire room. He has audience members simulating sex in front of 300 strangers. Despite a few walkouts, Dimchev has turned 98% of a bourgeois theater audience into peep show patrons. This is an incredible proof of concept and an outrageous dark joke.

Dali went to serious work mounting Justin with his help. We could occasionally get a peek at Justin’s manhood. I was quite concerned that simulated sex might turn into the real thing, but it turns out the Justin didn’t even get to half mast. A simulated sex gig with Dali is a toddle in the park for you if you’re gay.

Dimchev sang about losing you and sex and then brought matters to a very brisk close. “Alright everybody it’s over. Put your clothes back on and collect your money.” The artists were so eager for their money that they collected the money still naked.

Dimchev started the bows. Just as the hill steepened, the show was over. There was no ringing epitaph, no interpretation, no coda just the raw facts: people has just taken small amounts of money to kiss topless and to simulate sex.

There is nowhere further for the show to go. Well perhaps the woman could urinate onto the man’s face for €500 each. Or they could have real oral sex. In any case the next step is probably technically a crime, although Austrian stage laws are pretty liberal.

I’m still puzzled. The party trick works as the escalation is gradual. Start with dancing a little bit, to kissing, kissing with top off, simulated sex. There’s nothing people won’t do for a bit of cold hard cash. Dimchev’s dark cherub grin will not leave me soon.

If you have the chance to go and see the second show on the 12th August, do.

Ivo Dimchev, “the P project.” 12th August in Kasino am Schwarzenbergplaatz at 19.00

In other words performance art is an unadulterated fiasco which has poisoned the dance world and taken it over, as the less capable outnumber and outvote the properly trained as conteporary dance slips down a long greasy rail into ramp amateurism.

At least that’s what I thought until I saw Tompkins and his French partner Mathieu Grenier perform last night.

Mathieu Grenier Mark Tompkins as mother in Opening Night

Both gentleman are gifted singers and very capable actors. For much of “Opening Night” they sing a cappella together. In the Broadway or musical genre which provided the basic for their performance piece, both would likely be able to find and hold serious roles. These men take their craft seriously. Both are very funny but they do not camp it up with sniggers to the audience as so many of our new “funny” performers do. No Tompkins and Grenier pack their material thick with meaning and absurdity and power through it relentlessy, leaving audiences a bridge deck of questions to solve.

One of their songs includes throwaway lines which are not so throw away – “how life ebbs and flows”. A Vaudeville turned out to be a matter of life and death, the fragility of life.

Tompkins in particular is a chameleon. He starts the show as the mother of the performer in high heels, gold spandex pants and a hair net over rollers. Later he reappears as a chorus dancer, later again as some kind of melancholy Sinatra figure. With his enormous eyes, distinctive nose and pouting mouth, one would think Tompkins would always look like Tompkins but each time he is genuinely different. When he first appears in a suit, he looks just like a later career Peter O’Toole, wittily observing the pageant of life leaving him behind.

Mathieu Grenier Mark Tompkins lounge singers episode Opening Night

Even the props carry additional resonance. The magic box is decorated in primary colours with large text on each side “What is war” or “What is beauty”.

This is not empty noise or self-aggrandizement. Tompkins constantly poses himself the question why:

The most difficult thing about duration, is how to avoid repeating one’s self, how to avoid fabricating a machine to produce performances. Every new work is an occasion to put into play our habits, our certainties and question again our desire – and now, what do we want to say, what is important for us today ?

One of the most powerful numbers is “In Love with the Boy” where Tompkins tells a story about a desultory and tragic love affair with a beautiful Hollywood young actor. Grenier’s interrupts Tompkins with “Boys, boys, boys” before Tompkins forces Grenier to return to his song of lament.

Throughout the show the technical work was great, with a two sided clothers rack doubling as room decoration for the apartment and alternative stage curtains with a simple spin. To create the atmosphere of a techno club, an old guy wanders across the stage strewing glow in the dark cord. This sets a credible stage for a dancing buddha. Little touches like this are what make “Opening Night – A Vaudeville” so delightful and resonant.

It would be great if the Vienna performance artists would visit Tompkin’s and Grenier’s piece to learn how real work in this area is done: with years of training and months of specific practice. Tompkin’s work proves that there is no reason performance should be synonomous with amateurism.

Mark Tompkins is a very impressive singer/songwriter independently of his performance work. His songs are like a happy cross of Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen and Bryan Ferry.

Emotional Blackmail Mark Lewis Standards von monyque

The Burgtheater Vestibule is a great place for a nightly outdoor party.  When the weather is good, a large part of the party can be outside.

Download 2000 pixel version for detail.

ImpulstTanz lounge summer in the city

It’s a great place to run into choreographers and dancers whose work you might be curious about. Generally the big stars are not there all that often (big stars are often older and have families and just don’t go out that much anymore: being a star is hard work, everyone always wants a lot from you and expectations are high).

ImPulstTanz lounge young and beautiful

Inside there’s usually some very good music spinning. On this particular night, it was mainly dance club hits from the mid-eighties, often in remixes. Some dance better, some dance worse but there’s some good dancing to be seen. What is nice is the feeling in the room: it’s a celebration of dancing and movement rather than clothes.

The couple in the middle of this picture are very stylish. A pleasure to watch them groove through their animal prime, moving like panthers.

Emio Greco when he brough Double Points: Hell to ImPulsTanz went one step further. He opened up not just the main theatre space but the wings. The performance space was massive. He chose to use the light pushing in from side windows and skylights as the principal lighting. Starting time very strang though: 19:30, too late for the daylight to really dominate the lighting, too early for artificial lights to work their magic.

The absence of coherent lighting weakened the spell Greco tried to cast with his two dancers Sawami Fukuoka and Dereck Cayla (in an role originally created by Greco on himself). On the other hand, the deep klang soundscapes resonate (uncredited).

Double Points Hell Sawami Fukuoka and Dereck Cayla
Photo Floriaan Ganzevoort

Cayla is clad all in black stocking, as a shadow. One cannot even see mouth or eyes. To open Double Points: Hell, Kayla offers a kind of neo classical frenzied solo. Anticipation is high.

What follows are solos by Sawami Fukuoka and sequences where she is shadowed by Cayla. Sometimes she seem coherent, other times she seems to rave. She pulls at her clothing, flaunts her sexuality. Fukuoka’s initial oriental doll charm falls away entirely when she rips the black wig off her head and reveals the shaved head of psychiatric patient.

Double Points Hell Sawami Fukuoka Emio Greco
Photo Anna van Kooij

Fukuoka is the incarnation of a girlfriend gone wrong, a woman gone mad.

Yet strangely her monologues in Japanese failed to touch any emotional chord. I just felt a distance from someone with whom one would not want to share a space. Later when Fukuoka and Cayla dance an extended duet to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Double Points: HELL hints at taking wings again.

Double Points Hell Sawami Fukuoka 2
Photo Anna van Kooij

Yet somehow the night I saw Double Points: HELL even that duet remained relatively flat emotionally. Something happening to two strangers, a good idea unfulfilled, a promise not kept.

The existential questions about sexuality and violence which Double Points: HELL strives to raise remain unanswered and for me unilluminated. The whole piece seems a strong concept (similar to the Roland Petit’s Le Jeune Homme et la Mort) in neither original nor virtuouso execution.

Double Points: HELL is only forty minutes long and there are passable steps hence as a spectator you don’t have the time to be bored. In the end, I felt just lightly disappointed and somewhat empty leaving the miniature. Much of the general applause felt perfunctory in honor of Fukuoka’s effort and Greco’s reputation rather than an overwhelming spontaneous combustion. But the applause rang on long enough that I might be wrong.

These two locations are just a few hundred meters apart.

Cities and differences.

Dinner in Vienna Soup Kitchen Technical University

Dinner in Vienna Karlsplatz Church

This was supposed to be a post not associated with ImPulstTanz. Ironically, the group dining under Karlskirche turned out to be associated with ImPulsTanz. It’s the theatre usher team. I only realised when preparing the photo for publication at 100% magnification. Great idea to take a table out and eat on Karlsplatz.