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ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON PIERRE RIGAL’S "PRESS"

By my friend, Christopher Atamian, who went to the Friday night performance.

Pierre Rigal’s Press

September 10-13 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center

Pierre Rigal’s “Press,” originally a 2008 commission from the Gate Theater in London should come with a warning for the claustrophobic or anyone who finds watching another human slowly get crushed à la Star Wars trash compactor scene unsettling. Pierre Rigal, a French mathematician turned hurdler turned dancer performs this solo piece with remarkable aplomb.  For the better part of fifty minutes Rigal contorts, girates, sits, stands and otherwise dances (yes he “wri-gals” as well) inside a box that slowly compresses and threatens to flatten him like a pancake… His only sets are a chair and a slinky rotating lamp creepily reminiscent of Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey. “Press” isn’t for everyone: watching Rigal stand on his head and negotiate the walls as the ceiling slowly close in on him is either frightening or frighteningly boring, depending on your point-of-view.

The box, Rigal explains in a previous interview, is a symbol for the danger man faces today in society and also for the solutions to these problems as well.  “The box” Rigal notes like a good Frenchman is eminently “cartesian.” These quasi-philosophical statements do Rigal’s cause little good-he should let the performance speak for itself.  It isn’t every performer after all who can carry off a solo like this with such brio.  Although it begins rather tediously, “Press” increasingly captivates as it heads towards its terrible, unavoidable (funny?) end.  Somewhere about forty minutes out, once Rigal has already swallowed the lamp’s red light bulb and caressed the light’s frame like a pet or perhaps even a lover, a voiced narration joins Nihil Bordures’ clever eerie score (“Inside my head…inside my head…”) implying as I read it that perhaps everything we are witnessing is taking place within his head. This to me is the wonderful if obvious stroke of genius, the redeeming touch that takes an otherwise repetitive performance and lifts it to something unique, powerful and worth watching.

 

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GO SEE PIERRE RIGAL AT BARYSHNIKOV ARTS CENTER

 

 

Last night, despite a sinus infection that made my head feel as if it were stuffed with cotton candy, I ventured all the way over to the extreme west side of midtown to see the U.S. premiere of Press, by French dancer / choreographer Pierre Rigal, whose work I’d never seen before. And I’m glad I did — I loved it, even though some of its themes made me feel more claustrophobic than I was already feeling due to said cotton-head condition.

I guess there can be many interpretations but it’s a solo danced by Rigal himself, about an hour long, about, to me, a man feeling trapped … by everything — by the tiny room he’s in, by his clothes, by the furniture, by his body, by his own mind, by the room’s one piece of technology — a camera / halogen lamp / robotic-looking toy that kind of comes to life at one point. It was surrealist, very Magritte, with lots of tricks of the eye that make you think about the nature of reality. At one point, the way he runs in place in his trendy-looking work shoes, which at points — because of the way he moves —  almost resemble clown shoes, makes it look as if the floor is actually moving (at least I don’t think it was); at another point it appears the the ceiling has fallen on top of him, squashing his head down into his body (at which point the techno music begins playing, the voice singing, “I live in my head…” — many in the audience started laughing); at another point it seems his shoes and hands are magnetized and he can’t detach them from the ceiling; at another point his body almost looks like rubber. It reminded me a bit of the movie Being John Malkovich because the ceiling was continuously moving, mostly downward, toward him, and he constantly had to invent new ways of contorting his body so that he’d fit within the room’s constantly changing confines. This of course provides much of the dance drama.

I found it both comical and unsettling, often at the same time.

Here’s a video:

I’m interested to hear what others think, if anyone else sees it. It’s showing at BAC twice more — Saturday the 12th at 2 and 8 p.m. There’s a discussion with Rigal following the matinee.

 

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CITY CENTER'S NEW STUDIO 5 SERIES

New York’s City Center is beginning a new series of informal conversations with dance artists, curated by Damian Woetzel. So far there are three talks scheduled. The first is going to be on October 26 with Wendy Whelan, the second on December 14 with Alvin Ailey’s Matthew Rushing, and the third on March 15, 2010 with Angel Corella. All talks are at 6:30 p.m. and are in the upstairs studio 5. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased starting September 8th (looks like the first, with Wendy Whelan, is already sold out).

Each talk will be accompanied by performances and demos by the artist and his or her colleagues. Wendy Whelan will be discussing her work with NYCB and Morphoses and the talk will include performances by her and some of her selected guests; Matthew Rushing will speak about Alvin Ailey and he and others from AAADT will demonstrate excerpts from some of his roles; and our beloved Angel will be talking all about his new company, Corella Ballet Castilla y Leon and there’ll be demos by him and his company’s members.

Very cool!

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BALLROOM VIDEO FROM VAIL IS UP

The Vail International Dance Festival website has finally posted a video of the festival’s ballroom night, Ballroom’s Best. I’d been waiting for this. There are interviews with the spectacular International exhibition champions Hanna Karttunen and Victor DaSilva (from South Africa; you might remember DaSilva from that TV show Superstars of Dance) and the sweet American Smooth champs J.T. Thomas and Tomas Mielnicki. For those of you who follow ballroom, there’s a bit of footage of American Rhythm champs Jose DeCamps and Joanna Zacharewicz in there too.

Sir Alastair did not so much like this show when he saw it.

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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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STAND IN LINE FOR FALL FOR DANCE TICKETS AND LET MONICA BILL BARNES ENTERTAIN YOU

 

I think this is pretty funny. Fall For Dance tickets go on sale this Sunday, September 13th, at 11:00 a.m. In the past crowds have been known to line up beginning at 4 a.m. (this festival is popular), and the line’s been known to wend its way practically all around midtown. Well, this year, festival participant Monica Bill Barnes (above, on the left), a modern / experimental dancer and choreographer, is going to entertain the queued-up crowd from 10-11 Sunday morn. She and her dancers can be rather amusing.

 

These pics are from a site-specific performance of hers I saw last summer downtown and wrote about here.

Also, during the festival there will be three free, open-to-the-public talks in City Center’s Studio 5 (which is upstairs, I think on the 5th floor). All three talks will be about the legacy of the Ballets Russes (in honor of their centenary this year).

The first, on September 23rd at 6:30 p.m. will be a discussion with three original members of the legendary troupe: Frederic Franklin, Raven Wilkinson and Eleanor D’Antuono and will be moderated by Robert Greskovic, author and dance critic for the Wall Street Journal.

The second, on Sept. 25th, same time, will be about how BR’s collaborations with clothes designers, painters, and musicians of the day created lasting change for the dance world. Panelists include Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, Juliet Bellow and Simon Morrison and the moderator is Lynn Garafola, a dance historian at Barnard.

The third, on October 3rd, same time, will be about BR’s influence on today’s choreography. Panelists are choreographers Nicholas Leichter, Robert Johnson, Mark Dendy, and Virginia Johnson and the moderator is Wendy Perron, the editor-in-chief of Dance Magazine.

Speaking of Ballets Russes, one final reminder: if you haven’t yet seen the fantastic exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, at Lincoln Center, you only have until September 12th to do so. They’ve got videos of Baryshnikov dancing Balanchine’s Prodigal Son, of Anna Pavlova, of Fokine’s Les Sylphides, of Branislava Nijinska’s Les Noces, of original BR choreographer Leonid Massine instructing Joffrey dancers on reconstructing his Parade, they’ve got original costumes and poster designs by Picasso, letters and diary entries by Diaghlev, etc. etc. etc. Definitely worth seeing.

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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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MICHELE WILES + SEBASTIEN MARCOVICI THIS WEEKEND IN MIAMI

 

 

This is a most interesting pairing, and one I hadn’t thought of before. One of my NYCB favorites, Sebastien Marcovici, and ABT’s Michele Wiles will dance the Black Swan pdd this weekend in Miami at the International Ballet Festival. It’ll be their first time as a partnership. Apparently, they both take class with David Howard here in NY and he thunk it up. Wish I could be there… There’s a lot going on this weekend.