December 15th, 2009: Jérôme Bel – Cédric Andrieux

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Belated last post for the year, as I’ve basically taken the month off from public concert notes while I’m wondering whether I’m going to resume those, and how.

I usually don’t like Jérôme Bel, another of these french guy who are just too smart and cultured for my limited understanding. But this one worked, thanks to its namesake Cédric Andrieux, a dancer who spent years in Merce Cunningham’s company before coming back to France to have an opportunity to dance something else. It’s part of a series, but I have not seen the others.

He just walked on the stage and started to talk about his career, from his childhood to his plans for the future, with a definite emphasis on his Cunningham years — there was actually another section about it the week before that didn’t make it into the longer version. After talking a while, he would perform a bit of the dance he had just talked about, but being alone and dancing in silence, that took another dimension, more physical in a sense, which balanced out the talk.

The long part about Cunningham was particularly interesting, as it included a lot about the tedious training and the choreographer’s teaching method and his use of codes for arm, leg and torso positions. That was especially enlightening when I saw Nearly Ninety², as it explained a few things. His remarks about Cunningham’s lack of interest for a perfect execution of his instruction was valuable insight as well.

I found the show to be very interesting for giving some idea of how a dancer goes through his work. Bel was also insightful in choosing this performer for a very different kind of work, and in putting the show together. Of course, as a dance show, I didn’t like it at all, but with him I don’t think it’s the point at all. I’m glad he found a way to use other people’s dance and have someone else be the focus, this way I guess he didn’t have to hammer me so relentlessly with how smart he is.

December 9th, 2009: Boris Charmatz – 50 ans de danse

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Trying to clear out my backlog after being sidelined for a while. I actually saw this one twice in three days, but I didn’t mind, because I think it’s a great show, and as it’s a little on the brainy side, a second viewing was nice.

I’ve always thought Boris Charmatz is very smart, but prone to outsmarting himself. Sometimes it feels like he just doesn’t trust dance enough, so he adds other things and often dance is an afterthought if that much. This time the conceptual side of the show was taking a book about Merce Cunningham’s career and going through the pictures in the order they appeared in the book. I don’t know how much his not performing factored into this, but this left it to the dancers to move from one picture to another. That’s more trust in dancers and dance than I’ve ever seen from him. And somehow very fitting as a tribute to Cunningham, in my opinion, because I think his work always struck me as related to pictures. Charmatz has done this show with different casts, but this time they were former members of Cunningham’s company. Some of them actually were in those pictures, so they knew a lot about what took place around and between those. I’d have to see another cast to know what that brought to the show.

Anyway, I think it worked. The book/still origin showed, but it wasn’t an issue. Charmatz wrote he wanted to avoid poses, if that’s true he failed. I’m not sure I want to believe what he writes though. And it doesn’t matter. Because the poses didn’t matter as much as what was taking place in between, except when they were holding those for a while. And there were a few times when they would move as if stuck in those positions, a very blatant play with the constraints of the show that put the lie to those claims of going for pure motion. Having a dancer call out the decade further undermined any slight change the show would have had of taking off from that book, as did having Charmatz turning the pages of the book on the front left of the stage — is that a coincidence that it was the place Cunningham himself would occupy in the company’s studio?

The dancers themselves were probably from different decades, and the very different costumes also went counter to the uniformity that often bothered me in Cunningham’s work. But they shared something as well, an understanding of what took place at those times maybe. Overall, despite the high brow concept, I think it was a very good show, one that took the dance back from the picture perfect book and into more or less aged and imperfect bodies. With all its warts and flaws and its occasional weak moments, the show managed to bring those dance snapshots from the past into the present, and I believe that’s a very proper tribute to Cunningham.

December 8th, 2009: Merce Cunningham – Nearly 90²

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I think Merce Cunningham thoughtful plans for his company after his death show that he knew this had a fair chance to be his last. But I didn’t get any sense of a farewell or of a look upon his storied past. As usual, his dance remained about the present. And if there were lot of familiar elements in the speeds and the kind of movements, it felt more like another step in the direction he had been exploring these past few years. I think he was still trying new things.

I’ve never been a big fan of his work, and this show had about all the things I like and don’t like about it. On the positive side, there’s the dance for itself, pure movement without story or props. There’s also a really interesting array of different speeds, very slow at the beginning, pretty fast later, then less extreme. I think this is a very rich show, with a lot of different aspects, but very consistent as well. There is definitely something running throughout the show, more specific than Cunningham’s later style. That’s equally impressive and rewarding. And of course some specific movements that stood out for me. The one I liked best was repeated often at the beginning, with a dancer on one leg slowly turning her head and torso to one direction while turning her other bent leg in the other.

Which is also illustrative of what I don’t like much about his work. The software origin of the dance really shows, but in those extreme movements and in a kind of artificial looking smoothness. It does create something unique, but when combined with the high skill of the dancers, it often goes so far in this direction that it becomes almost purely visual. I think that’s what people call abstract about his work, though the word is wrong, just like cold would be. To me the demands of the dance make it impossible to relate to it on an immediate level, it’s an intellectual appreciation, which lacks something. Likewise with the dancers, they’re so skilled there’s not much showing from each as an individual.

I think the explanations of Cédric Andrieux helped me like this show better, in retrospect. Now I can guess some of the things I missed while I was seeing it. And anyway, even though it’s not the kind of dance I like best, it’s still a great show, and it display a real vision and trust in that vision. And it succeeds in making it come true. That’s a lot, more than I can reasonably expect from a dance show.

December 7th, 2009: Mathilde Monnier – Un Américain à Paris

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This was actually a short part of a tribute to Merce Cunningham that featured a short film about his career, the relevant part of Jérôme Bel’s Cédric Andrieux, and Boris Charmatz’ 50 ans de dance. More about those two later, both are on my schedule.

The evening had been planned as a private celebration of Cunningham’s turning 90, but his death turned it into a public tribute. I don’t know why I was invited while some people I know were not, even though they’ve been going there for longer than me. Anyway, it was one of those rare occasions when I saw no one after five or ten minutes — an otherwise sure bet.

Mathilde Monnier’s tribute had a kid reading things that Cunningham had written or said about his experience in Paris over the years, including having people throw tomatoes at him — something that puzzles me because of the planning involved, though I never saw it happen — and teaching one of his pieces to the Paris Opera ballet dancers. These were often pretty interesting as he managed to come off as being very confident in his vision and ideas, but with a nice sense of humor and never taking himself too seriously. I’m not fond of seeing kids on stage like this, but I think it was a pretty good idea in this case, probably better than if a dancer had done the reading.

Well, he was actually a dancer, because the second part of this short set had him joined by Foofwa d’Imobilité, a former member of the MCDC. Obviously the kid didn’t go as far as the pro, but that kinda worked too. The dance had a few of the highly technical and so visually potent graphical figures of Cunningham’s dance, some typical arm and leg gestures, but the technical limitations of the kid made it less pure, and more alive and immediate. I didn’t like it much, but that quality made it worth seeing.

December 3rd, 2009: Gilles Jobin – Black Swan

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I don’t remember seeing a show I didn’t like by Gilles Jobin, but this one may be my favorite. Totally different from the previous one, but with some familiar arm positions, and the long poles at the end reminded me of the rubber lines from Text to speech.

At first there just one dancer on stage, her arms often extended, with a lot of circles with a smooth flow at first, then this was slightly changed with a few angles added by her extending her arms. A second dancer joined her, and her dance was both close to and contrasting with the first in its vertical axis, with angles from bending and the occasional quick high kick. The first one left and that ushered another break as the remaining dancer went to the ground, sometimes rolling and something keeping her legs in circling/rolling motion as she stood straight. A totally different take on those opening circles.

Then a male dancer joined her, and as she rose he would provide support but always staying still as he doing so, pretending to be just an object happening to be there at the moment she put some of weight on him. Another contrast between her flow and his stop and go trajectory. Then Jobin came in wearing rabbit headed gloves, as did the other guy. They alternated in burst of speed, a flurry of movement but again totally different. Jobin was more classical and vertical, the other would use more space, though standing just as upright.

Then the women came back, going through the stage with arms extended like children playing at being planes, with their hands briefly alighting on the crouching male dancers’ backs. That childlike quality was reinforced by the appearance of a few small stuffed horses, which the dancers kept in front as they gathered in a rolling pile crossing the back of the stage, ushering in a more visual part of the show.

Then a single dancer came back, with a long pole, and the low blue light coming from the front was only occasionally reflected by that pole. That was a beautiful sequence, visually ambiguous. As Jobin joined her with another long pole and the light went up, that effect was dampened but not completely gone either. That’s when I was reminded of the rubber lines, the way these were slicing the space, though the pole were moving whereas those earlier lines were not.

The last sequence had more small stuffed horses being pushed around by these poles. Here the dancers going above or below those lines slowly moved by others was even more reminding me of that earlier show. Those lines moving and dividing were another nice effect, as they slowly brought those horses to the front of the stage. After the dancers had left, the last sequence had flashing lights projecting horse shadows on the back of the stage, not really looking like those were actual or moving horses, but close enough to make me think of that, and of what was missing, another delightful ambiguity.

November 26th, 2009: Lia Rodrigues – Pororoca

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The only thing I knew about Lia Rodrigues was that she had been part of Maguy Marin’s company, back when I liked what she was doing. Nothing, actually. She may be from Brazil, but there was no samba rhythm, thankfully. Just kidding, this was contemporary dance, and any postcard bit would have been tongue in cheek anyway. No music at all, actually, and I didn’t miss it, there was enough going on already, and that was fitting somehow, the sounds of their steps and breathing was enough. I can’t say I liked the only extra sounds in the show, when they were crossing the stage on all fours while belting out animal cries.

At first the dancers came on the side of the stage carrying plenty of stuff, from a table to plastic bags, through lawn chairs and shoes. They stool still for a while then erupted in a frenzied outburst, throwing those objects around. There were several times when they just stood still this way between bursts of movement. These stops paced the show in a way. There was a quite long sequence with most of the dancers somewhere between fights and embraces, more or less in a front to back line. Sometimes one would step or be pushed apart from the group and be on her or his own for a short while before going back into the group. I liked that, in part because of the group/individual dimension, and also because it made each more distinct, and that helped me to figure out that what had first seemed to like a confused heap was nothing like that at all. It was all minutely written, and I could clearly seen the patterns inside, the temporary pairings that added a middle level between the group and the persons. That made for a dense clockwork of interlocking patterns, nothing could be further from confusion.

That was my favorite part, the rest was slower and more immediately readable in my opinion, though there were also some striking images, like their holding hands in a distended circle in the front, or a moving circle in the back. The pauses often made a lot of sense, especially the one with them eating oranges. The long one when they stared at the audience while making faces came close to being too long, but they did it right, long enough to bring out some awkwardness, but just short of being just boring and losing its strength. Overall, I liked this show, despite a few times when I didn’t like what was going on, there was a great control of pretend chaos here.

After the show, there was a Q&A session with Rodrigues, and that was quite interesting. She explained how she was inspired by the alternative organization of her surroundings that she couldn’t make sense of at first, and I think she perfectly reached that goal. She also said an important theme was territoriality, and I totally missed that. Some questions were funny too, with the audience’s usual obsessing over sex. She said it wasn’t part of what she was saying, but I don’t think they believed her. Another interesting bit was her saying that the standing-still-and-staring part was originally over 40 minutes long — I’m happy she cut that shorter. And her work in Rio and her explanations about the way they prepared that show over there made me want to learn more. And see more, of course.

November 23rd, 2009: Pina Bausch – Masurca Fogo

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Obviously not new material, but I knew that even when I booked for this show. At that time, I just wanted to take a second look at a show I saw a decade ago, Pina Bausch’s death turned it into a farewell. It’s still early to say for sure, but I don’t think I’ll be going to see shows I’ve seen before, except maybe a few of the last ones which rekindled my interest. The way these show sell out, I might as well leave my seat to someone more motivated.  So it might have been the last time I saw these dancers, especially Ruth Amarante, Rainer Behr, Andrey Berezin and Ditta Miranda Jasjfi.

The show itself was OK, but still a bit too much of what I eventually got tired of. The comedy bits were relatively few, but it still had these tiresome postcard snapshots from a place — lisboa this time — even though it also showed a better grasp than most such themed shows.  And it featured some of the solo parts that came back in each show in those days, which was the price to pay for going each year.

On the other hand, some of these were real good, and there was this amazing use of music, not as a neutral backdrop or a blueprint for the dance, but more as an independent partner to be engaged, followed or challenged. The long cello cover was a definite highlight in that respect. And the small details that don’t mean much at first but ended up seared in my memory. Foremost among these was Ruth Amarante’s loud breathing at the very beginning.

As a kind of closure, this show reminded me of the place of water in her shows, and maybe that’s why I’ve singled out Ditta Miranda Jasjfi even though her role was again limited. Her dance has a flowing quality that makes her a representative of what I like best about these shows.