Tag: Press

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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.