Monday night Baryshnikov will be dancing in a one-performance-only show in Los Angeles. Ticket prices range from $350-$1,000 (top end includes a dinner with the man himself). Wow. Good thing we got him for only $20 a pop of BAC! It’s for a good cause though — proceeds go to the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation (it’s actually their annual gala, and Baryshnikov is dancing a Cunningham piece set to John Cage).
Here’s an interesting preview by Joel Lobenthal of Baryshnikov’s return to the stage, which happened at BAC this Wednesday. He danced three solos, along with two other men — Steve Paxton and David Neumann. Program was called, aptly, “Unrelated Solos.” I went last night, and particularly loved the last piece for Baryshnikov, a work in progress by Susan Marshall, which, to me was a meditation on how dance is meant for an audience, a performer must have a viewer or s/he is not a performer. It left a lump in my throat at the end. The other two solos for Baryshnikov were by Benjamin Millepied and Alexei Ratmansky – the Millepied another rather sobering reflection on a life spent in dance and the aging process, and the Ratmansky a rather funny retelling of composer Mikhail Glinka’s obsession with an aristocratic woman that made me realize how great an actor Baryshnikov was and made me sad that his and Ratmansky’s eras didn’t really intersect. I’d think Ratmansky could have come up with a lot of very clever, humorous work for him.
Both of the Neumann pieces were highly entertaining and witty, and the Paxton reminded me of Sara Rudner and the dance for dance’s sake / Judson Movement where the emphasis is more on the inner awareness of the dancer than strictly on the “performative.”
Anyway, don’t have much more time to write about the program right now but plan to write more this weekend. But read the Lobenthal article. And here is Macaulay on the program.
Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
Reviewed by Christopher Atamian
I caught Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods for the first time on November 8th at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Auf Den Tisch is more a collaborative piece than Stuart’s choreography per se: a huge room is filled with tables lined up against each other with the audience sitting around it-critics, fellow artists, the general public and an occasional straggler or two judging from their reactions. The performers: Trajal Harrell, Keith Hennessey, Janez Jansa, Jean-Paul Lespagnard, Jan Maertens, Yvonne Meier, Anja Müller, Vania Rovisco, Hahn Rowe, George Emilio Sanchez, Stuart and David Thomson are a diverse, talented lot. It would be impossible to describe the action, as these twelve artists performed just about every possible type of improvisation imaginable in a nod to Grand Union and other experimental groups from the past. Jansa stood on a balcony looking out at the audience complaining in a Croatian accent that no one was risqué enough today to get naked in public as Richard Schechner did in the 60’s-then he proceeded to get naked and climb down among the hoi polloi: my older French colleague was unimpressed, noting with distaste that he had dirty feet. I thought he looked fine naked. The immer intellectual, immer thinking Harrell was alternately baffling as he read Rancière aloud (who could process the French philosopher at such break-neck speed?), fascinating as he fielded questions about forgiveness and charming as he zipped around the table in a bumble bee outfit. By now, you must get an idea of what the performance was like…Parts of Auf den Tisch were also terribly slow. Stuart officially “curated” this project-with a bit of nipping and tucking, it could have been much shorter and more enjoyable-not that pleasure was at the top of anyone’s agenda…Oh yes, as usual Yvonne Meier was her dry, hilarious self.
Photo taken from the Performa 2009 website.
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.
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.
Today begins the New York African Film Festival, at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. I love New York for things like this — particularly the Walter Reade, which most often hosts the foreign film festivals here. There are loads of intriguing-looking films showing as part of the NYAFF — comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, political, historical, documentary — you name it. One, in particular, caught my dancing eye: Nora, about Nora Chipaumire of Urban Bush Women. I’d seen her dance at Jacob’s Pillow two years ago and she really blew me away. The film is about her return to her native Zimbabwe, where she remembers her youth. According to the description, the film “brings her history to life through performance, dance, sound, and image” and “includes a multitude of local performers and dancers of all ages.” Famed Zimbabwean musician Thomas Mapfumo composed the music. It’s showing together with another film, Coming of Age, about Kenya’s road to democracy as seen through the eyes of a young girl. There are so many films. The festival runs at the Walter Reade through the 14th, then travels to Columbia University and then Brooklyn Academy of Music. Visit their website for the full schedule.
Then, April 15th begins the Catalan Days Festival, a NYC-wide celebration of all things from Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. This festival includes free food samplings, plays, film, music, literature, and of course dance. The Baryshnikov Arts Center is the main host of the dance events. Visit BAC for a dance schedule, and the Catalan Days website for the full lineup. Happily, this festival runs all the way through mid-May.
Last night at Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Square, Mikhail Baryshnikov talked briefly with New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella about his new book of photos of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Merce My Way. (I love the title, by the way).
The talk was brief (about half an hour) but pretty good. But, honestly, I had a very hard time getting over my anger at Barnes & Noble. I arrived early in order to get a good seat up front, knowing (hoping at least) it would be crowded. But on my way in, I was stopped by a B&N employee. She said they were giving “preference” to people who purchased his book, which cost $36. She pointed me to the cash register, set up, conveniently, right next to the entrance.
I was so mad. There was such a crowd already, it was pretty clear “preference” meant that unless you were buying a book, you weren’t getting in. And in this economy, $40 is a lot to spend when you’re not expecting it. Honestly, I found it a really sleazy, unfair corporate practice to take advantage of his fame like that to sell books. A lot of people must have come from a ways away to see him, and you’re not really going to walk away if you’ve traveled. People were standing around looking like they didn’t know what to do, hesitantly withdrawing their wallets and picking up a book. “We’re a couple, can we get in on one book?” I heard someone ask the people at the door.
I mean, this was advertised as a regular talk / author reading event, which are always free. Nothing in the adverts (at least the ones I saw) said anything about having to purchase a book. As Ron Hogan (of the pub / book blogs Galley Cat and Beatrice) tweeted me (and damn, was I a mad tweeter last night), “seriously. if bookstores want to pull that crap, let them charge $40 IN ADVANCE and include the book w/admission.”
Just as I was getting mad about missing Bill T. Jones (who was giving a talk downtown) for this b.s., I saw my friend Monica Wellington (who I met through Philip). They’d agreed to let her buy the Joan Acocella book instead, which was less expensive. She told them at the door we were together, so they let me in. Thank you thank you, Monica!!
Anyway, the talk was pretty good, albeit short (about half an hour). I’d never heard him speak before, other than giving a brief sound byte on a pre-recorded interview. He is, as expected, charming and smart, though he talks very slowly, thinks hard about his words as if he’s always too far ahead of himself, struggles with English, and digresses frequently. None of which were a big deal, and his digressions often led to entertaining little tidbits.
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