'Insects contain an old knowledge that we have even lost in our development. So, that’s the reason why I call them the oldest computers, the oldest memory in the world. Don’t forget we are in that sense quite vulnerable; because we live in our inner skeleton and scarab beetles live in their outer skeleton. Scarab beetles survived a lot of catastrophes on the planet that we could not survive. I think animals are the best doctors and philosophers in the world. We still have to study them well to give ourselves again progress.' -- Jan Fabre
'In the late 1970s, the still very young Jan Fabre caused a furore as a performance artist. His 'money performances' involved setting fire to bundles of money from the audience in order to make drawings with the ashes. In 1982, the work Het is theater zoals te verwachten en te voorzien was (This is Theatre like it was to be expected and foreseen) placed a virtual bomb under the seat of the theatre establishment of the day. This was confirmed two years later with De macht der theaterlijke dwaasheden (The Power of Theatrical Madness) commissioned for the Venice Biennale. Since then, Jan Fabre has grown to become one of the most versatile artists on the international stage. He makes a clean break with the conventions of contemporary theatre by introducing the concept of 'real-time performance' – sometimes called 'living installations' – and explores radical choreographic possibilities as a means of resurrecting classical dance.' -- Troubleyn
from 'Requiem for a metamorphosis'
from 'Another Sleepy Dusty Delta Day'
from 'Je Suis Sang'
____________
'Most choreographers expect more from dancers than a proper use of steps. My personal feeling is that theatrical knowledge is a very important part of a dancer and the total process of making dance. She is totally giving, and at the same time she is super-aware of her actions in the performing space. She owns it.' -- Anne Teresa De Keersmaker
'Belgian dancer and choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has revolutionised European dance. From her first production, Asch, in 1980, she has displayed extraordinary sensitivity in merging movement with music, often working with composers to create her pieces. In 1982, Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich was the first of several collaborations with the American composer. She founded her company, Rosas, in 1983. In the same year she made Rosas danst Rosas, with music composed by Thierry De Mey and Peter Vermeersch.
'From the beginning she has chosen a controversial vocabulary. It has earned her work such assessments as "chaotic," "self-indulgent" "aggressive," and "anarchical," but also "formalist," "powerful," "emotionally tough," "stringently structured," "lucid," "gripping," and "honest." Since 1992, Rosas has been company-in-residence at Brussels’ Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie/De Munt. ERTS, a large-scale production incorporating videotapes, and Rosa, created for a film directed by Peter Greenaway, were her first projects there. Since then, she has made works featuring a complex structure of movement, gesture and texts, set to many different kinds of music.' -- RolexMentorProtege
from 'Rosas'
from 'Fase'
from 'Counter Phrases'
'Most choreographers expect more from dancers than a proper use of steps. My personal feeling is that theatrical knowledge is a very important part of a dancer and the total process of making dance. She is totally giving, and at the same time she is super-aware of her actions in the performing space. She owns it.' -- Anne Teresa De Keersmaker
'Belgian dancer and choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has revolutionised European dance. From her first production, Asch, in 1980, she has displayed extraordinary sensitivity in merging movement with music, often working with composers to create her pieces. In 1982, Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich was the first of several collaborations with the American composer. She founded her company, Rosas, in 1983. In the same year she made Rosas danst Rosas, with music composed by Thierry De Mey and Peter Vermeersch.
'From the beginning she has chosen a controversial vocabulary. It has earned her work such assessments as "chaotic," "self-indulgent" "aggressive," and "anarchical," but also "formalist," "powerful," "emotionally tough," "stringently structured," "lucid," "gripping," and "honest." Since 1992, Rosas has been company-in-residence at Brussels’ Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie/De Munt. ERTS, a large-scale production incorporating videotapes, and Rosa, created for a film directed by Peter Greenaway, were her first projects there. Since then, she has made works featuring a complex structure of movement, gesture and texts, set to many different kinds of music.' -- RolexMentorProtege
from 'Rosas'
from 'Fase'
from 'Counter Phrases'
____________
'For me, the past is always present in my work. But the past for me is amnesia. Is not remembering. And amnesia is the core of memory. And you can feel the past, because there is always an absence. There is always something that is missing. So the past is like a ruin. With a ruin you have always to build against something that is not there anymore. This rebuilding is the force of amnesia. The past is always hidden somewhere – it doesn’t show. And you can feel it because of the absence. So the project on the tragedy is based really on the absence of the tragedy. Because we don’t know what tragedy is anymore. So it’s work on the ruin of tragedy. What is left of tragedy – like a fragment.' -- Romeo Castellucci
'Since Romeo Castellucci founded his theater company, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, in Cesena, Italy with his sister Claudia in 1981, he has steadily won acclaim — and generated debate — for provocative, hallucinatory imagery and often apocalyptic themes. His notable successes include “Giulio Cesare,” a 1997 Shakespeare adaptation in which ancient Rome was inhabited by ghostly performers, some with anorexic bodies or laryngectomies. “Genesi,” his 1999 fantasia, juxtaposed biblical themes, images of radiation and sequences with several of Mr. Castellucci’s six children riding on toy trains. Indirectly but chillingly, “Genesi” evoked the horror of Auschwitz. His compositions, along with his jarring and sometimes disturbing visuals, reflect his early training as a painter and set designer. His company’s name refers to the Renaissance artist Raphael and the many painterly perspectives Mr. Castellucci tries to incorporate into his stage compositions. One of Mr. Castellucci’s overall goals is to express “a tragedy of the future,” partly by making visceral allusions to Europe’s violent history.' -- New York Times
from 'Tragedia Endogonidia'
from 'Inferno'
from 'Hey Girl!'
____________
'One of the things about DV8's work is it is about subject matter. For a lot of people who go and see dance, dance is not about anything. DV8 is about something. I think the other thing that is important are the notions of humour and pathos, of tragedy, of multiple emotions and responses to my work — I've been so tired over the years of watching so much dance on one level; it may be very pretty, but it just goes on and on. It's pretty nice, pretty much the same and pretty dull really, a lot of it. So my big concern is to try and present images through movement and to talk about the whole range of social and psychological situations.' -- Lloyd Newsome of DV8 Physical Theater
'DV8 Physical Theater is a British dance theatre company founded by Lloyd Newson in 1986 and, influenced by the work of Pina Bausch and European dance theatre, it has committed itself to work which reflects issues in the real world rather than abstract dance concerns. It makes a practice of involving all performers in the creation of the work, drawing on their personal experiences as well as their choreographic ideas. Its first major work, My Sex, Our Dance (1987), was a duet for Newson and Charnock in which physical risk-taking mirrored the emotional challenges of a male relationship. In My Body, Your Body (1987) eight male and female dancers explored sexual stereotyping while Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men (1988) tackled issues of male alienation and desire. The work was filmed for television, as were several of the company's subsequent productions, including Strange Fish (1994), and Enter Achilles (1995), which won the Prix d'Italia award in 1996. The company tours internationally.' -- DV8
from 'Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men'
from 'Enter Achilles'
from '3 Ballets'
_____________
'I am more interested in what moves people, than how they move.' -- Pina Bausch
'Drawing deeply on the violence in male-female relationships, often with mordantly witty texts and fantastical sets, Pina Bausch crossed the borders between dance and theatre, inspiring radical theatre and film directors such as Robert Wilson, David Alden and Pedro Almodóvar as well as younger choreographers including William Forsythe, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Lloyd Newson of the company DV8. She was unquestionably the most influential figure in European theater of the last thirty years.
'She shocked audiences by the apparently punishing lengths to which she drove her dancers. Leading American critic Arlene Croce excoriated Pina Bausch's US debut in 1984, describing her as a "theatre terrorist" and her material as "the raw pulp of abuse". Obsessive behaviour was meat and drink to Pina Bausch's caricaturist sense of humour – a gargoyle of a woman possessively counting out her spaghetti strands, men shovelling chopped onions into girls' mouths, crowds throwing themselves off walls. Absurdity and cruelty punctured episodes of dull banality or dreamlike confusion, and thanks to Pina Bausch dance-theatre became the most chic form of theatre in Britain, much (and, often, horribly) imitated.' -- Guardian
from 'Le Sacre Du Printemps'
from 'Barbe Bleue'
from 'Vollmond'
----
*
p.s. Hey. Well, I made it to Avignon, obviously, and I seem to have sussed a way to do the blog as well, at least for the time being. There will definitely be a day or three when I can't do a full-fledged p.s., and I should be able to tell you when that will be a day in advance. I'll mostly be doing the p.s. in the theater with people working around me and interrupting me with requests to do something theater-related, so excuse both my rushing along and what will likely be a fairly distracted version of me. The last thing I'll say is, fucking hell, it's hot here, and the room I've been given to sleep in is an oven, and I'm a bit of a sweating, sleep deprived wastrel as I begin this. ** David, When I was a kid, you could buy and shoot off a wild arrangement of fireworks galore in almost every part of LA. At this point, I think there are maybe two suburbs/ cities in the entire area where you can buy them, but none where you can actually use them, I think. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, ha ha, thank you for imagining such a very French commercial for my sadly American perfume. ** Scunnard, Hey. Yeah, I hope. I need to unpack my packed days first, hopefully in a week or so. No, the 4th was zero, a train ride, a borderline fatal sweat loss. I'll do Bastille Day though. ** Stan_cz, The heat here hasn't killed me yet, but the visit is still very young. ** JW Veldhoen, The interview thing with Vanessa is on-line, so she'll be ... in LA, I guess ... and I'll be in Paris. I'm not exactly sure how that's going to work. If I knew dreams better, I might guess they're imperative. ** Wolf, Awesome stuff re: Alan's post's stuff. Can you bring along an air-conditioned space suit to Avignon if you have an extra one lying around? Mm, I'm not getting the more tolerable heat here as opposed to Paris thing yet, ha ha. But I live in a cooled castle-like place in Paris, remember. No tree covered streets where I'm staying. Fuck, I could whine all day. Shut up, Dennis. Okay, I'll try. ** Christopher/ Mark, Hey. Well, it wasn't my favorite ever comment, let's say. Maybe my pragmatism is getting the best of me, but I guess I'm accustomed to David's style of expressing his great dislike for people and things via jolting outbursts, so my main reaction was akin to Hitchens, really? I don't like the guy's politics, obviously, and I don't keep up with what he does and says that much, but I thought he was just a cranky, 'witty' right wing journalist and socialite, so I couldn't figure out what crime of his could have a warranted such extremely harsh punishment. To me, Hitchens has always been kind of irksome, sometimes sort of funny, and that's about it. ** Colin, A Glamour-puss, ha ha, nice. If I ever come across a forgotten stash of 'The Brute', which is not at all impossible in my disorganized, storage space-like LA apartment, I'll you ask for your address. ** Ken Baumann, Hey, Ken! Well, I'll wait anxiously for my Paris return so I can download your fun news! Very cool. Yeah, the upcoming premiere brings a crazy mix of feelings, most of them tamped down by the current scramble to dot the pieces' i's as best we can in the next three days. At the moment, feelings are positive. This theater space is cool: a working high school gymnasium. Pix to come. Thanks, Ken, and enjoy today to the absolute max. ** Sypha, Very interesting back and forth between you and Stan_cz. ** You-x, Hey. I don't remember that Pinback song. I'm probably just forgetting the title. Interesting. My 14th will probably be a lot like your 4th, maybe without the grill. I don't think the French grill. I think they have things grilled. ** Postitbreakup, Hey. It's done the opposite of cool off. Hm, I'll give those pressure points a shot. Thanks! Well, yeah, 'S&tC' not affecting you sounds like a step in the right direction to me, but you know me. ** Alan, Hey, Alan. Thank a lot again, man. I suspect the comments are going to keep on coming in for a while. And thanks for linking to the LA Times review. Yeah, that was a nice surprise! Good idea, re: highlighting that comment. Everyone, Alan found a very late breaking comment from Friday by one Susie Nguyen re: Tigersare's Iwanoff post that I will pass along: '“Hi! I just stumbled upon your post and I LOVE IWANOFF. And I am glad that someone else loves him as much too! I remember learning about him in first year architecture. He truly is amazing and its a shame that a lot of his buildings are being demolished now. I am trying to visit all the iwanoff buildings in perth, you can follow my progress on my blog at http://www.whatwouldfrankiedo.blogspot.com/”. ** Killer Luka, Hey. Oh, gee, I hereby nominate the 18ish Lee Williams for God of the world's next, least bullshitty religion. Everyone, Killer Luka's pictorial homage to the young Lee Williams is here, and it doesn't matter whether you recognize the name or not, just go there. Thanks, KL, even though your post left me 10 degrees hotter than I was two minutes ago. ** Bill, I read about that film with Steve Severin's music. I'll see if I can see it. I fear your dread of the heat here is fully warranted. I just hope that you, unlike me, have an air-conditioned place to sleep 'cos that's the most horrible part. ** Trees, Hey! Oops on the firing. 'The Image', 'project', 'boss' ... bleah. Fuck 'em. Really glad you liked Mr. Gluth's novel, of course. It's the shit indeed. Very cool you're in Dodie's workshop. You're in legendary hands there, duh. Uh, sorry for this disjointed message. It was interrupted twice, one time for a fifteen minute meeting, and the other time when I tried to blow-dry a giant sweat drop that fell between my keyboard's 'n' and 'm' keys. ** L@rstonovich, I've only seen three episodes of 'Mad Men', can you believe that? It seemed excellent though. Not enough VK however. I know, $200, but, dude, in addition to the GbV coup, what a line up! ** Steevee, Well, yeah. I mean, I would only let him do it if it would be interesting for you and done under lock and key. ** Mark Gluth, Thanks, Mark. We're way buckled down and looking for the payoff. ** Waiting for John, Greetings! So, he's staying with you? Excuse the question if it's dumb; I'm prevented from maintaining my happy 'WfJ' habit while I'm here. As always, you and yours are an honor to this. ** Justin, Hi, J. My head is /&%#%)*(@W right now. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey, man. The perfume is called 'green tea'. Curious, no? I haven't dared try it yet. Texas has air-conditioning, right? I'm sure. Not here. Avignon not only looks medieval, it thinks medieval. It sure is pretty here, though. I'll show you later. I don't know a single one of those movies you watched. I'm getting so far behind on American movies, TV, celebrities -- like I don't have a clue who the fucking Kardashian Sisters are, not a clue! -- it scares me sometimes. Ouch, tack, ouch. I love that your 'Imajica' smells like pot. It made me laugh in delight. I don't know why. Heat delirium. Here's my weekend in shorthand: Let's see, I can't remember Saturday at all. On Sunday morning, train ride to Avignon. Only 2 1/2 hours, not bad. Plus, the France we traveled through is much prettier than the Paris-Brest section, so I looked out the window as often as I read my magazine. Got here about noon, total heat shock. They took me to my barren, steamy little apartment, and I dumped off my stuff and escaped to the theater asap. Then we worked/ rehearsed, etc. all day until about 10:30 pm. The stage looks better here than in Brest 'cos the space is much smaller, and the acoustics are tighter, and the audience kind of looks down at the stage rather than up. A lot of adjustments, like the fog behaves very differently in this room and in the hotter climate, so Fujiko had to redo it, and the crew here don't know the piece, so they had to be taught everything, and they fucked up a lot. The birds, on the other hand, did their little parts perfectly, which is a relief. I don't know ... lots of work, basically. Then I went back to my broiling hovel and tried to sleep and kind of vaguely did. That's the best I can do. I'll try to do better tomorrow. And now, you? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey, Ben! ** Misanthrope, Bieber hair is getting big over here. A few Emo boys I always used to see around in Paris have modified themselves into Biebers. Me, I do not see this as a good thing, but, on the other hand, I do not see it as a bad thing either. As long as the hair stays long or longish, I'm easy to please. Hope your headache is outta there. ** Bollo, The trick with the snakes was to stack/pile about fifty of them and then light the stack/pile whereupon you'd get this giant ass python. Your weekend sounds nice. All I've got to show for mine is a stinky t-shirt. ** Syreearmwellion, Dude, you're building yourself a Sundance (if not Cannes) winner piece by piece. I swear to ... Whoever. Uh, oh, I'll write to you really soon with the launch date on your awesome post. And ... there was something else I was going to tell or ask you, but I think I'm too fried. Next time. Thanks, bud. ** We're there. I'll go ask the theater higher ups to please turn on the air-conditioning -- they like to wait until we're dead -- and then I'll get back more completely to work. Today you get a kind of Avignon themed post. Uh, yeah. See you tomorrow.
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