On a Saturday night

Decide to go out because you want to see your friends. Think that you've had a great day so far and maybe you are pushing your luck to try and extend this feeling into the night: staying home, eating rhubarb fool while watching some edgy crime drama would comfortably do it anyway. Anxiously wonder if you might miss out on something whatever decision you make. Go out. Your friends leave early in the end, not in the mood for the crowd and the commercial music served by the DJ. Decide to feel your fear of being in a club alone and stay anyway. Dance alone. Dance with people. Dance some more. Listen to a drunk female dental nurse compliment you about your smile and advise you to always floss. Tell her you learnt that lesson the hard way, thank you. Make a note in your mind of a great remix of some song you don't know, that you will easily find on the internet the morning after (yikes, you won't be able to proudly tell people you don't know any Taylor Swift songs anymore!). Cycle back home, feeling teary. Maybe you are just tired. You experienced some good times, yet they seem diminished in your memory because you did not have anyone to share them with. Talk to the love of your life about it all. Sleep peacefully.

On dancing flamenco

Some words about a very personal experience that happened at my flamenco class yesterday.

'Chest open! Chin up! Stand taller, look higher than you normally would' shouted our flamenco teacher. 'You are dancing tarantos! When you dance tarantos the audience should cry!'. We laughed. 'Try and make me cry! I want to see lots of feeling!'. We laughed again: who will cry watching us dance under that awful sports hall light, covered in sweat? OK, maybe we can try this. How can I put lots of feelings into it, give it more intensity? Then I think about my dead. I imagine them in the room, sitting on the floor in front of the mirror, watching me dance. My grandmother, my aunts, my friends. They give me 'feeling', they make me dance more intensely, those people who will never see me dance. How can I impress them? I concentrate more on my elbow (drop it down, drop it down), on my weight when I lean forward (not too much), on my balance. It's kind of working but of course they are not there. Wherever they are, can they hear me stamp? I stamp harder, louder than I did before, in the hope that the sound will reach them. Pa-ra-tat-tat! Hello it's me I am dancing for you! Can you hear me out there? I get home and I think about this moment again, and how morbid it is: really, I should think about my friends that are alive and present, and how I would dance tarantos for them. I talk to my partner about important things, I sign some papers about buying a flat. Moving forward. Chest: open. Chin: up.

Re:Rosas - You Danst Rosas

I've mentioned it before, but I'd love for amateur contemporary dance classes to include the chance to learn well-known pieces of choreography, in the same way that a ballet class might teach you some pas de trois by Petipa or some riff on Bejart. Who wouldn't love to learn a bit of Pina Bausch for example?

Well Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker has kind of answered my call. To celebrate the 30 years of her work Rosas danst Rosas, she is teaching the moves of the piece's chair section online, and inviting us to film ourselves performing it and send her the results. 

From the first time I saw this work, I've always wanted to know the moves of this iconic section, and get hold of the music too. Well it's all on the Re:Rosas website, so pull up a chair and get learning! There are some great film submissions already to get you inspired.

In The Middle Somewhat Elevated

How much I'd give to see this live again! Really looking forward to seeing another Forsythe piece performed by Boston Ballet next week though!


In The Middle,Somewhat Elevated, chorégraphie William Forsythe from Stage de Danse/Les Hivernales on Vimeo.

Note to self: how to dance bulerias

I went on a 3-day flamenco course this weekend, which was fantastic. Bulerias are a fun, short flamenco dance that people tend to perform at a juerga (party). If you go to see flamenco shows in big theatres (eg Sadler's Wells), the performers (dancers, guitarists, singers) will often dance bulerias at the end of the show, at the curtain call: they form a semi-circle and all get to have a go. It's called 'bulerias fin de fiesta' then.

It's really fun but it's also very frightening as the dance is improvised on the spot. The dancer needs to call the singer when he is ready to start the dance, needs to respect the singer during his song and needs to show him when it's time to be quiet as he's about to show off his steps. So there's lots to be aware of, while you also need to look relaxed and have super attitude (see the video below for some cheeky steps, looks and more!). No need to say that dancing bulerias has always been scary for me: I had the feeling that I knew some steps but had no idea how to put them together and where they should go. That course has really increased my knowledge of the form, and now I know where things go - which feels amazing!

Structure
- walk into the semi-circle, simply right-left-right-left, be relaxed. You can walk for as long as you want, as the singer is unlikely to start his song until you give him a cue that he can start. A call to the singer is quite simple: clap your hands in front of you, hit your chest, direct your arms towards the singer and walk.
- while the cantaor sings, as a dancer you should do very little - by that I mean just do some marking steps (little walking steps to the right and left, nice arm movements, though you can play around). See 00:23-00:41 below:



- when the cantaor has finished his song, or is nearing the end of the song, you do a llamada, which is another type of call with a very distinct rhythm. This is the basic one, and you can play around once you feel comfortable.
- after the llamada, the cantaor will not start a new song. It's your time to do a bit of footwork and show off. The end of your footwork should include another call (like the one at the start) so the singer knows you're done and he can start singing again with another verse (then you go back to point two above). If you don't feel like doing footwork - or, like me, just want to be out of the spotlight asap! - you can simply end your llamada with a few steps that show the singer that you are about to leave the circle (usually the simplest is to to go into one of the corner of the circle, and show that you're about to walk through it in a diagonal: see 00:41 above for the llamada, followed by the walk to the corner showing that the dancer is about to leave) He will then sing a 'coletilla', a song that goes with those moves

So this is the basic. It gets more, way more complicated! For example, you can decide to wait for the singer to start his song and then jump in in the middle - as the man in the video above does. You can add lots of footwork. You can do a 'remate' to change your marking steps (as the dancer does at 00:22 above). You can do the llamada at another time. etc etc It's like improv - you have all those building blocks and you can play with them within reason.

Your bulerias can last only a minute or so if you want it to - it still feels like a long time when you can fuck up though. For now, I'm going to just keep it super simple until I get more confident and realise that embarrassment does not kill. After all a three-year old is doing it in the video above and she survived.

Alvin Ailey's Revelations

Alvin Ailey's Revelations, created in 1960, is the most seen modern dance work - over 23 million people have seen it live. Here is a guide to one of contemporary dance's classics.

Choreography: Alvin Ailey

Performed by18 dancers (9 male, 9 female)

Duration: 38 minutes

Original décor and costumes: Lawrence Maldonado

Revival décor and costumes: Ves Harper

Lighting: Nicola Cernovitch 

First performance: 31 January 1960 at Kaufman Concert Hall, YM-YWHM, New York

Original dancers (the first version of Revelations featured fewer dancers than today's): Alvin Ailey, Joan Derby, Merle Derby, Jay Fletcher, Gene Hobgood, Natheniel Horne, Herman Howell, Minnie Marshall, Nancy Redi and Corene Richardson.

 © Andrew Eccles

Pelican Books - Ballet (1945) - vintage illustrations

The other weekend I went to an antiques fair and found a copy of the 1945 edition of Pelican Books' guide to Ballet, first published in 1938 to what seems to be pretty good success (there were three reprints in 1938, one in 1940 and one in 1943, before a new edition came out in January 1945).

I mainly bought it for the beautiful illustration by Kay Ambrose, so I thought I'd do a 'Brain Pickings'-style post and share some of these. I can't decide whether my favourite is Checkmate or Les Patineurs - love the sense of the dancers being front of stage, almost blinded by the lights.

Les Sylphides (Kay Ambrose)

English National Ballet brand statement

English National Ballet, one of the major British ballet companies, went through a major rebrand exercise this week, with a new logo, striking visuals and a collaboration with designer Vivienne Westwood. See Design Week for more.

It's quite exciting. I am not super taken by the visuals and some of the ideas behind them. For example the thought of partnering up with designers in other fields is not that original. Diaghilev did it after all. But I guess it's good for them to really run with it. The images are beautiful but sadly they don't say 'ballet' to me, they look like a normal fashion shoot, and I wonder what message they will convey to people who go to the Nutcracker or Swan Lake only once in a while - surely a core audience for this touring company.

Of course it's great to challenge them and show that ballet's unique selling point is not pointe shoes, tutus and fairytales, but athleticism, grace and emotions.

Their copy conveys that strongly to me: 'looks like a doll, dances like a demon' goes one version. And I love their new brand statement - it's got oomph and guts and I look forward to where this new drive will take the company:

'We danced before language and this is our promise. Through our art we will tell your story. We will dance the times you fell in love. We will dance your dreams and your fears. We will dance your death. Our suspended moments, grand glories, kaleidoscopic whirlings, rats, swans, firebirds, heroes, heroines and tracing of psyche are your mirror. We are not dolls. We are artists, young and hungry. At war with gravity to capture poetry from air. We do not exist to embalm traditions. We exist to cherish them and then create more. We leap and grasp for the new. We are for everyone. Watch ballet and you are not rich or poor. Cultured or barbarian. Brain or brawn. You are human. Full of lust and adventure. We are yours and we are you.'

Forsythe ballet in London

We just don't get the chance to see many ballets created by William Forsythe in London. For some reason, he is not on the main companies' roster. So it's great to see Boston Ballet coming to town for the first time in 30 years with one of his pieces, The Second Detail. After really enjoying Artifact by Royal Ballet of Flanders last year, you bet I'll be there! Plus it's on a programme with Christopher Wheeldon's Polyphonia, which I also like (and some Jiri Kylian, oh well)

Here's a clip of the piece performed by Semperoper Ballet

Rosas - En atendant

I went to Sadler's Wells tonight to see Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's En atendant, a piece she originally created to be performed at sunset/dusk, with the light slowly fading.

The piece was full of beautiful moments, but I spent most of the time wondering 'Why do you have to make it so difficult for yourself, ATDK? Why?'. Obviously she is an artist with a vision, a craft, a style, but I really wish she put herself in the audience's shoes sometimes, and she just tried to meet us halfway.

Why oh why couldn't they afford costumes, or simple things that would make us feel like the piece had more production values and wasn't just plain dry choreography? It is more than that of course, but I must say my heart sank a little bit when the singer came out in her jeans and purple top, and when the first dancer walked in with her little black dress and blue adidas trainers.

I started by having to consciously ignore the bland lighting and the dancers' boring black clothes - the female dancers would actually tuck their dresses into their pants (!). For sure it helped me focus on the movement and the music, but it would have been so nice to just go 'oh what pretty stuff they are wearing' and move on from there.

I loved the music used in the piece (early, medieval, ars sutilor from the 14th century, performed live by a singer and two musicians), but unfortunately there were also long moments of choreography in silence. These often looked to me like choreographic games we the audience didn't know the rules of, so they were a bit baffling.

I liked the choreography though: lots of balances and shifts of weight between dancers (there was this repeated movement of the right foot nesting itself on the back of the bending left knee and the body jolting backwards), some beautiful group work with knots of necks, arms and torsos being tied and untied, walks across the stage to the rhythm of the viola, the voice or the flute and more.

So by the end, I am thinking 'this is beautiful but how flippin' alienating'.

And then, two beautiful moments: a young, blonde, male dancer lies on the floor, puts one arm behind his head and looks towards the audience. Then he stands to take off his shorts. He is naked underneath, and he takes the same pose, and just breathes there for a minute or two. It's immensely erotic (and probably still fairly alienating to be fair).

As the lights dim and start to turn off, another male dancer ends the piece with an astounding solo. He too is naked, and his white body can be seen, glimpsed and just made in the darkness that enfolds him, his breathing the sole soundtrack. It's simple, but that image proved to me that ATDK can do beautiful and accessible when she wants to! And there will be an audience for that, and they won't leave before the end.

Pina Bausch season wrap-up

It's taken me a long time to write that post. The World Cities 2012 season of ten Pina Bausch works ended back in July, but hey, there's always time to talk about Pina Bausch right?

So it was, let's face it, an incredible privilege to see so many works by one choreographer in such a short period of time. I had only seen four works by Pina Bausch live before then, and my total has suddenly more than tripled in five weeks.

It was not all positive though. I can't deny that Pina fatigue kicked in a little bit in the middle. Formulas became apparent, some images seemed a little bit cliched, and it was hard to work out which piece the solo you remembered was from, as they were all so similar. Thankfully Palermo Palermo (penultimate piece in the series) kickstarted the love back.

But, here is what I have learnt:

- Try and sit on the front row, as audiences at the front of the auditorium often have to get involved in the show (a man got his glasses cleaned, another was offered a banana, a dancer counted the fingers on the hands of all the front row, bread tartines were served etc...)
- Long evening dresses are to Pina Bausch what unitards are for Merce Cunningham. Maybe not as practical, but for the purpose of her dances, they work.
- Pina Bausch dancers can, well, dance - something lost when you only see the more theatrical productions
- When things start to get repeated, and it feels like a coda of the beginning choreography, you know it's nearly the end of piece
- She can make you laugh and cry within two minutes
- British audiences laugh at odd moments, sometimes the most sad and tragic ones

Another thought: can someone please teach contemporary dance classes where we learn famous routines? I would love to learn some Pina Bausch steps, you know, the same way some hip hop classes teach you the moves to a particular video or some classic Michael Jackson steps. I would particularly like to learn the clapping routine from Der Fensterputzer and one of the girl's Bamboo Blues's solo.

Martha Graham dance quote / picture

I have loved and pondered this Martha Graham quote for a while. It inspired me to take a few pictures and represent it visually in some way, while relating dance back to the body.

Image: @studioincovent

Nigel Charnock RIP

I was abroad last week so have only just found out about the passing of Nigel Charnock, way too early in life. He was very influential on the UK and European dance scene and will be sorely missed.

We are invited to share words, thoughts and memories on his website.

Crazy dances from the archive - 2

'Oh everything is as crazy as I am!' sings Hong Kong actress Grace Chang in the opening scene of Mambo Girl, the film that made her a big star in 1957.

Not quite mambo crazy though, is she? The steps are there, but it seems something is missing and she's certainly no Rita Moreno. To be fair, she is definitely more at ease with the rhythm than the friends looking at her and clapping (a girl in particular seems to have none!)

The opening step and sharp turn is particularly well executed, and I also like the little jumps from 2mins 10sec. Also of note is the superposition of the square tiles and her diamond trousers. Sty-le! You gotta love this scene.

Grace Chang was a big film and music star, but left the screen in 1964. You can find out more about her on the super blog Soft Film, and there are heaps of videos on youtube.

Pina Bausch - Wiesenland

A wall of grass and vegetation.
An old Korean song and dance, performed with a white handkerchief, just as intermission has been announced.
Do you love someone?
A woman walking on men lying at her feet, the men continuously appearing before her.
Two men smoking and blowing the smoke into a woman's thick dark hair. As she starts dancing, smoke floats out of her head.
A feast.
A village in France where they have a festival where people just jump.
Another village in France where they have a festival where people throw food at each other.
Running through fields and sitting on the floor, your dress/skirt spread around you.
A dance where women hold the front of their dresses, their head bowed and their hair back combed to fill the space created by their arms and the dress. Then they lift the dress up and look up, letting the dress fall back slowly.
Talking to the front row audience through mime (move arms as if rocking a baby (do you have a baby?), count with fingers (one? two?), hand near the floor, or raised high up (young or old?)), or by spelling on your body (a first name name written on a stomach - R E G I N A).
A make shift shower with a big basin, a coat rack and a watering can.
The joy of walking/dancing to a waltz rythm: 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3... down, up, up, down, up, up

Pina Bausch - Palermo Palermo

Silence. Dim lights.
A brick wall falls.
A woman repeatedly asks two men to hold her hand (she shakes him/them away), to hug her ('harder! harder!' before she pushes him away). She asks them to throw tomatoes at her face (they do), and at her stomach (they do).
A man breaks one spaghetti at a time on his chest.
A woman, holding spaghettis under her arm: 'These spaghettis are mine! I am not giving them to anyone because they are mine! I am not lending them. They are mine!' She takes one spaghetti: 'Mine!'. Another 'Mine!' 'Panadero! Panadero! Panadero!' (that is her last name)
A man wears a crown of cigarettes, poses like the statue of liberty.
The same man carries a snake and an apple, like Eve, staring at the audience.
Line dancing with an apple balancing on the head.
A soundtrack of ringing church bells.
A soundtrack of cicadas.
Nightime. A man bathing under the moon.
An interlude of five pianos.
Performing dance two by two (man and woman), side by side, then facing one another. Each dancer performs his/her own little routine. There are stamping feet, jerky arms, swift movements, little claps. A dancer comes behind them to take over - the new dancer puts her/his hand on the other's shoulder or waist to tell them they can go.
A man empties a bag full of coins on the floor.
A march forward by all the dancers, in three lines: they carry bags or cartons of rubbish, and throw one item of rubbish to their right, all at the same time.
The 14 women dancing all together in unison, in close formation. Mainly arm movements: crossing, bending, slight angling in the torso. They perform several short sentences, each one four times, with one of them calling 'Last' when it's time to change.
A women puts on several underwear under her skirt. She sits down, shakes a bottle of soda water and opens the top slightly to let out some hair. She moves her bum as though she is letting out a fart.
A woman is carried by five men. She moves as if she is walking but they move her body for her, she does not touch the ground.
A Japanese dancer bows politely to an audience member on the front row, before giving them a camera and asking them to take a picture of her. She then gives the camera to a fellow dancer, and starts abusing him in Japanese, shouting at him 'Can't you take a fucking picture? Take a picture!'
A man lights a candle. He pours the melting wax on his forearm and places the candle on there. He does it with about ten candles.
A man cooks eggs on an iron.
A man places a table napkin nicely on top of some of the brick ruins, places a plate with food on top, his cutlery. He leaves. A dog comes in, sniffes around, eats the food, and leaves.
A row of women do handstands at the back of the stage. One of them can't do it and does lots of preparation and tries several time.
A gypsy song about love that goes against conventions and shame brought to the family, recited deadpan.
Exotic fruits.
Thirteen men and fourteen women. Five pianists. One saxophonist.

Pina Bausch - Agua

Four men walking on stage from the auditorium, wearing big platform shoes.
A woman eats an orange, while a man holds a mike next to her face and makes noise 'sluuuurp!' 'It's so delicious'
A man talks to a woman: 'I love your round eyes, they're so pretty'. 'They're not pretty!', she replies 'they're horrible! So round!' He compliments her on her hands, feet, hair, mouth etc, but she is never happy with them ('I move my hands fast so no one can see how small they are! I wear long dresses to hide my feet.')
A man tickles a woman by putting his face close to her arm and having his eyelashes brush against her skin when he blinks.
Women doing cartwheels over the men's backs.
White leather sofas arranged in big semi-circle. Dancers lounging on them.
Holding baskets of fruits, tarts and other things on their hands, dancers serve coffee to the front row audience.
A woman walks arm in arm with a man. She puts lipstick on him (his forearm, his belly button) and kisses those parts so her face end up with lipstick marks.
A small female dancer gets lifted by a tall male one, who puts his hand either side of her neck, towards the back of her head, to lift her.
Another tall man lifts her too, slowly walking across the stage, while throwing little parachutes in the air.
A cocktail party in a tropical garden.
A dancer tries to perform her choreography, but she is always interrupted by another one who keeps coming on stage to talk about her childhood dance classes.
After having thrown an old boot up in the air with her right foot, a woman looks at the direction it has fallen to predict the weather. 'It goes that way, see? And that way means the weather in London tomorrow will be rainy!'
As a man crosses the stage, a woman suddenly runs and lies in front on him, her dress over her face, showing him her body.
A woman goes through what she wanted to do but couldn't because it was impossible 'I wanted to saw this table's leg, and see it fall.' 'I wanted lots of newspaper, more than that, and put fire to it, but it was not possible.'
Projections of green vegetation and the sea.
Playing with silly beach towels printed with ideal, sexy bathers (women with big breasts wearing thongs for example).
A dance solo that seems to be a collection of small daily gestures, ending with a cigarette thrown on the floor.
A dance solo with sudden slow arm movements: a hand coming down across the face, an arm rising in an arc above the head.
A water fight.

Some of the music used in Agua
PJ Harvey - The Wind
Tom Ze - Emere
Susana Baca - De los amores
The Tiger Lillies - Pretty Lisa
Bugge Wesseltoft - Fast Forward
Bebel Gilberto - Samba da bencao
Tom Waits - Walk away
Julien Jacob - Shanti
Caetano Veloso / David Byrne - Dreamworld/Marco de Canavezes
Carlinhos Brown - Omelete Man

Pina Bausch - Nefés

Ten women and ten men.

Water seeping through the black flooring, creating a small lake in the middle of the stage.

Reflection of the water and the dancers's shadows on the back wall.

Men lying on the floor wearing white towels, as if in a hammam. Women stand next to them, head down, long hair hanging over them. They brush their hair slightly in rhythm.

The men sit on black chair. The women come crawling on stage and stop next to them. They pet their hair.

'My grandmother had 10 children!' she says after ten dancers come out from under her dress.

In the darkness, two women walk into the water with torches, and pick things up in their dresses (seafood?)

A male dancer sits cross-legged on the floor. To impress a girl, he throws a pillow high up in the air and as the pillow comes down he moves his leg and jumps slightly so the pillow is now under him. The girl, also sat on the floor, is impressed so he does it several time until he finds his way around her. He turns on himself, taking her with him.

'I am too fat for you!'

The men make a long line, holding hands, across the stage. It seems infinite as the last man in the line walks up to the front, and it goes on off stage and re-appears. The women do the same, going down into the audience.

The empty space around women's arms when the men they were holding leave their place.

A female dancer is lifted by a man and held horizontally as he turns and turns and turns. Several men replace him. When she is finally back on her feet, she is dizzy.

A branch balancing on a head, with inflated plastic bags hanging at each side.

A picnic.

A row of men slowly moving across the stage, from one sitting position facing the audience, to the same one facing the back. At the back, a row of women also do a routine of gestures all together, which takes them across the stage. They all smile happily at one another, and even hum the Tom Waits song that is playing.

Pina Bausch - Bamboo Blues

Eight men and eight women
Long white hanging fabric moving in the wind
Recorded sound of kisses
Tow men hugging and running fast in a circle. Sometimes one stops running and lets himself be dragged by the other.
Two by two, the dancers walk down in a diagonal, demonstrating different ways to tie a sarong (white with a blue trim)
Barathanatyam dancing. Dancer Shantala Shivalingappa's hands and wrists.
A man walks down in a diagonal towards front right. A woman keeps trying to stop him: she flungs herself at him, wrapping herself around his feet. She then grabs his arms and rolls herself to him, he then walks backwards and she slides down to the floor.
'I dreamt I was flying! I was flying! I was flying and cleaning the floor at the same time! I was flying and cleaning! I was also ironing!'
The woman who is telling us about her dream is surrounded by two men who each flap about a big fan-like square. Her hair and dress move about the place.
A vision of a woman washing her hair by the river: dry ice smoke, pulverised mist, a stone, a bucket
Women lying on the stage, their mouth moving as if cows grazing, looking impassibly at the audience
Pieces of branches balanced ona man's head, shoulders, arms, hands, while he walks slowly

Pina Bausch - Der Fensterputzer (The Window Washer)

A mountain of red silk flowers
Good morning! Thank youuuuuuu! Allo the YMCA?
'His nostrils were moving like a horse who does not yet know his rider'
Big circle of the right arm and fall sliding on the floor to the right, one dancer, then another, and another
Front row audience members getting their tickets inspected
A footbridge hanging from the ceiling, a man with a suitcase walking on it
A French woman singing a Chinese song 'I heard it in Hong Kong! I love that song! So beautiful!'
A woman walking on a long table, from one end. At the other end, a man slowly lifts it until it becomes very steep and the woman falls, sliding down
A woman is standing in front of a man. She bends her knees to go into crouch position, while raising her arms and putting her hands behind the man's neck, as though she hangs off him. He moves her slowly down to a lying position.
A skier going down the flower mountain, and then sidestepping back up
A bare chested man wearing a diamond necklace, holding two pekingese dogs, walking slowly down the mountain, surveying the stage and the audience
A Korean and a Japanese dancer singing a childhood/school song for two, complete with hand gestures
The dancers showing childhood photos of themselves to the audience
Soundtrack of fireworks explosions. Flowers being thrown in the air.
Women laughing and using their hair to hide their faces
The dancers, one after the other, climbing up the flower mount, again and again
A man hangs upside down on a table that is held vertically. A bucket of water is by his head. An empty bucket is hanging off the table, by his feet. With a small glass he moves the water from one bucket to the other, in a striking display of his abdominal power. After 3 or 4 repetitions, a man empties the second bucket back into the first one. Repeat.

Some of the music used in Der Fensterputzer
The New World Renaissance Band - La Prima Vez
The New World Renaissance Band - Minden Allat Orul Az Tavasznak (I may have imagined this one...)
The New World Renaissance Band - Dum Estas Inchoatur
Cesaria Evora