Category: photography

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Roberto Bolle & Robert Wilson’s “Perchance to Dream” Scared the Crap Out of Me

My friend, Oberon, told me about this exhibit – a video installation by Robert Wilson showcasing Roberto Bolle, showing at Center 548 in Chelsea, as part of Milano New York Isaloni. So I went to check it out yesterday.

Scared the absolute crap out of me! I don’t really want to say too much or it will ruin the mystery for people who go, but I’ll just say, definitely go see it – I’ve never really seen a gallery exhibit, or even a museum exhibit quite like this before. Just try not to go alone. I think that’s partly why I was so spooked. It’s very dark in there; the first room is lit only by the small amounts of light emanating from some x-ray-like photos of light bulbs.

At the beginning there’s some nice classical music playing, but then the sounds get more ominous, and at points become quite harsh.

The second and fourth rooms really scared me the most – the rooms with three-dimensional art depicting scenes both classical and apocalyptic. Some of the three-dimensional art – well, it just looked too real… I’m not even sure if I saw the entire exhibit because I was just too nervous to go to the very end of the second big room and see if there was anything around the corner. It’s like a dark maze after you enter the first room. I almost couldn’t find my way out. I think if there are more people, though, if would be obvious where the entrances and exits were. As I was exiting, there was an art critic speaking with the curator and the critic said she thought this exhibit was really compelling and should be expanded to a museum, but then said the danger of doing that would be to diminish its mystery precisely because it would be more crowded.

Anyway, another thing that startled me – I kept forgetting it was a video installation because many of the projections looked like still photos … until Bolle would move ever so subtly. It’s like the moving eyes in the portrait effect… And I never realized how doll-like he can look…  And, had I not seen Black Swan, there are additional associations I probably would not have made but…

I’ve said too much! Just go see it! I do hope they someday expand it into a larger project.

For now, it’s at Center 548, which is at 548 W. 22nd Street in Chelsea. It’s only showing through December 18th so hurry.

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THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE IS NOT THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (BUT COULD USE MORE DANCERS!)

 

Over the weekend I went to see The September Issue, the documentary about Anna Wintour and Vogue, focusing on the mag’s — well, the fashion industry’s — most important issue of the year. I found it thoroughly entertaining, but not in the way I expected. I expected it to be a real-life Devil Wears Prada, but it wasn’t that at all. I remember from the book, Lauren  Weisberger’s main character constantly feeling like a horrid slob amongst all the fashionistas — or fashionista wannabes — who worked at the magazine, and I remember her even being ridiculed by everyone for wearing Ann Taylor, supposedly a cheap designer.

Of course Devil Wears Prada, the film, played up on all of that, having Meryl Streep lecture Anne Hathaway on her decidedly frumpy wardrobe and call her (a size 6) “fat.” But here, everyone who works at Vogue — particularly Wintour and other higher-ups like creative director Grace Coddington (who is really the emotional centerpiece of the film) are pretty mundanely dressed. They seem more like incredibly hard-working women who are far too busy to care much about how they look everyday at the office. No one wears much makeup, hair looks completely unstyled, Coddington munches on a rather bland-looking corner deli-bought salad while enthusing about the photo-shoots she’s designed and her romantic vision for the issue, talking about her past as a model and how she turned to the editorial side of things early on after a car accident ended her modeling career, and bemoaning the wasted money spent on photo spreads Wintour ended up not liking and axing entirely.

But my biggest surprise was how unattractive I found the models to be. And they weren’t — they were all really beautiful. But I think I’ve seen so much dance now that, as much as I used to admire models, I’m now almost horrified at their bad posture, their boney bodies, their completely uncoordinated frames, their sloppy-looking lines. During a shoot, this one model was playing around and she decided to do a kick — a battement — for the photographer and it was just about the worst kick I’ve ever seen. Her knee was bent awkwardly, her foot was doing nothing at all and gave her leg no line, and she almost fell over. The photographer seemed to think it was great though.

Made me think how much better dancers might be at making the clothes look good. I don’t know, maybe most dancers are too short or the fabric doesn’t drape as well over built musculature as it does over basically skin-covered bone.

 

This wasn’t the same model from the film — I can’t find a photo of her — but it’s taken from Italian Vogue. I mean the clothes look good — she’s pretty — but look at her lines underneath…

This in contrast to the New York City Ballet dancers, as photographed with this gorgeous flowing diaphanous fabric for NYCB’s Winter season calendar, which I just received in the mail today.

 

 

 

 

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KYLE FROMAN = VISIONARY

 

 

Just looking at a couple of the photos New York City Ballet dancer turned photographer Kyle Froman has shot for Morphoses to publicize that company’s upcoming City Center season (tix go on sale for that today, by the way) and am realizing what an excellent photographer he is. I mean, he doesn’t just take pictures of dancers in action (which is an art in itself) but he has a real vision for dance with the way he poses his subjects against a setting and the overall images he creates and the feelings they evoke. He’s like Balanchine as a photographer. I don’t see a lot of dance photography like this.

 

 

 

 

I enjoyed watching him dance with NYCB — particularly his hilarious turn as the pompous Russian danseur in Balanchine’s Slaughter on Tenth — but sometimes I think a dancer finds his or her true calling when he “retires.”

Here is his website. He also has a book out, In the Wings, consisting of photos he took behind the scenes at NYCB when he was still dancing there.

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WHO WOULD MAKE A BETTER MODEL THAN A DANCER?

 

I was in the bookstore the other day looking for literary magazines and somehow got caught up in the latest issue of Vogue Hommes International. I’ve been a fan of Keanu Reeves all the way back since River’s Edge (honestly) and I saw on the cover that there was an interview inside with Bret Easton Ellis (novelist, Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Glamorama, etc. etc.) Interview with BEE is pretty funny, actually, in a way it likely wasn’t intended to be. IE: interviewer: So, you were an icon in, like the 80’s. BEE: Yeah, it was hard being an icon. And confusing. Seriously. I’d get in a fight with my boyfriend and I’d be like, wait, you can’t criticize me; I’m an icon!” But my favorite BEE quote is here.

Anyway, I was flipping through and there are all these little mini interviews with and photos of writers (Stefan Merrill Block too!), architects, actors and filmmakers, of course designers and models.

 

 

 

But not a single dancer anywhere. Why not? They’d make such good models 🙂

 

 

(Sergey Surkov, my photo; Slavik Kryklyvyy from here)

 

 

 

(Arunas Bizokas, my photo; Linas Koreiva, from here and here)

Vogue Hommes should so hire me to compile a dancer spread! Fabrizio Ferri can do the pictures. Maybe Bruce Weber, though he can get kind of cliched and corny… No, Fabrizio.

Then, yesterday, I saw Valentino: The Last Emperor, which was pretty good. The Dolce Vita-esque scenes were the best 🙂  And it reminded me of Fashion Week’s being moved from Bryant Square to Lincoln Center, and I thought how excellent (and fitting of course) it would be to have NYCB and ABT ballerinas as the models, an idea Kristin Sloan had proposed on the Winger a while back. Ballerinas generally have far better bodies than models. Come on!