Dancing to PJ Harvey

More about Mathilde Monnier here

RIP Merce Cunningham

Another very sad news today.

A good article and interesting video on the NY Times Arts Beat blog. Do take time to watch it.

'Mr. Cunningham ranks with Isadora Duncan, Serge Diaghilev, Martha Graham and George Balanchine in making people rethink the essence of dance and choreography, posing a series of “But” and “What if?” questions over a career of nearly seven decades.' NY Times

From the Guardian archive, a step-by-step guide to Merce Cunningham.

Article 19 reminds us that he had already made arrangements for his company after his death: the company will go on tour for two years before disbanding.

I was not the biggest fan (I like musicality) but he was a true legend.

Taste The Place

Now that I have booked my places, I can talk about the special weekend Taste The Place at the Place ('The UK's premier centre for contemporary dance')

On Friday 11 and Saturday 12 September, they are offering over 50 free dance sessions, in a massive range of styles and for people of all ages and dance experience.

Sessions include street, Kathak, Egyptian, Contemporary African, samba, Cha Cha Cha, jazz, contemporary, ballet, plus sessions for families ('dads and lads' sounds like one I'd love to watch!), pilates, tai chi and more...

On Friday, there also are some DJs and on Saturday a barn dance, some Q&As, film screenings and plenty more.

You can only book for 3 free sessions, so making a choice was hard, but I can't wait!

Erika Janunger - Weightless

A friend sent me this great video, really clever, well-made and almost hypnotising.



Click here to see the credits.
More on Erika Janunger here.

La La La Human Steps - Amelia

Dance filmed beautifully - it can happen!



Full performance in 7 videos here.
More about La La La Human Steps here.

Bonachela Dance Company - The land of yes and the land of no @ St Paul's cathedral's steps

I went along to the steps of St Paul's cathedral last weekend to check out Bonachela Dance Company's new work, The land of yes and the land of no. Dressed in white, six dancers moved up and down the steps, performing solos or in partnership with others, before a big finale all together.

In a way this was typical abstract contemporary dance, with quite a lot of floor work and some phrases that looked bloody exhausting to perform - particularly the last section, that must be relentless for the dancers.

As well as a cast of very good dancers, the piece benefits from a great score written by the Italian composer Ezio Bosso. All strings and minor keys, it conveys particular emotions (somethign bitter sweet, some sadness, the wish to soar) that I could see in the movement and the dancers.

My only small criticism is that I found it difficult to see how Bonachela explored how everyday signs and directions affect us, which is apparently the idea behind this piece. I noticed how, when they performed in three, two dancers often seemed to block the other or redirect his movement, but beyond that... A solo by Paul Zivkovich also reminded me of someone trapped, unable to achieve what he wants because of society's obligations and expectations.

But this is only minor, for anyone can read what they want into an abstract dance piece, and it does not matter anyway. What matters is that it makes you feel something, touches you. And I was quite touched by The land of yes and the land of no. I am now curious as to how these extracts will transform into a full-length piece at the Queen Elizabeth Hall this September, without the powerful backdrop of St Paul's columns behind them.

Some nice black and white images of the performances here and here.
More info on Bonachela Dance Company here.

RIP Pina Bausch

'I am not interested in how people move, but in what moves them'
Pina Bausch


The Guardian - 'a dangerous magician of modern dance'
The Times - 'Europe's most influential modern dance choreographer'
The New York Times - 'the scene is smaller without her'
and more

Dance costumes

I showed the video of ballets C de la B's piece, Ashes, to a friend and he made me laugh saying: 'Why do people always look like tramps in contemporary dance?'

Hummm... yeah... it's true that they often look like they are wearing their own rehearsal clothes, or are in their underwear...

Budget issues, most probably?

But it's not always like that, of course. See Guillem/Maliphant/Lepage's Eonnagata and its Alexander MacQueen costumes. I also had a look around and saw this video for Inbal Pinot & Avshallom Pollak Company, from Israel (part of Dance Umbrella 2009). Great coiffures!

Les ballets C de la B

Love the music in that trailer, and there is some interesting stuff going on with a trampoline!



Coming to Southbank Centre next week.

Clod Ensemble's Under Glass @ Village Underground

Went to East London on Friday to see the Clod Ensemble and their show Under Glass. I wasn't really sure what to expect from 'a collection of human beings contained in a series of glass jars, cabinets and test tubes', except that it would be different to what I had seen before.

I was not disappointed. Everything was different from the moment we arrived at the venue. Tucked in an alleyway, me and my friend couldn't find the place, until we noticed this massive wall painting indicating it. Duh.

There are lots of people outside having tea and cigarettes, who tell this is indeed the place we are looking for. It turns out that they actually were the cast having a break between two performances. Pretty chilled out!

Before the show starts, an usher makes an announcement: 'There will be moments of complete darkness. Please follow the ushers, who will tell you where to sit. When you have to move, the area you are moving to will be lit. Ushers might ask you to sit on the floor or crouch to ensure everyone can see, please follow their instructions.' I get quite excited. We are led to a rectangle of light and asked to sit on the floor.

Under Glass is made of eight individual pieces: eight characters, each in their own glass case (a test tube, a jam jar, rectangles, squares...), each prisoner of their own world and their own minds. Only one of them speaks, an older lady who talks to someone on the phone. She is one of those grannies who know everything that goes on in the village, spending her time hiding behind the curtains, looking out and calling her friends to share gossips. Her text is a poem by Alice Oswald, and it describes a disturbing place at the end of the world, where nothing is quite normal:

'so many names in this place not many of us left
living on the last we can find can you hear this
somebody out peering out not me noticed the least likely the very soul of respectability
eating something in the cemetery not rats I hope are you listening'

Each character is intermittently illuminated: the old woman, a shy girl, a big woman in water, a couple on the floor who look very much alike and who are confined to a small circular spacelike twins in a womb, a tall woman in a black victorian dress who spends most of her time looking at herself, an office worker stuck in his very small office, unable to stand up in it, a girl in a small jar, another girl lying on grass.

There is a bit of dance (in the shy girl for example, who like a wall flower is confined to a thin strip against a wall), some humour, a score made of strings and rumbles, and in the end it creates a very immersing and poetic experience.

After the show we went for vietnamese on Kingsland road and the police burst into the restaurant to arrest a man in the toilets. You gotta love London on nights like this.

More about the Clod Ensemble.
Review of Under Glass and image from the Guardian.

Dance Film 09

Dance Film 09, Scotland's Dance Film Festival, is back from 21 to 30 May, featuring musicals, documentaries, short films and workshops. Sounds like a pretty nice mix to me.

More info here, and a trailer of some of the movies being shown below.

Hagit Yakira - Oh Baby @ Cloud Dance Festival, Jacksons Lane

Headed all the way to Highgate to Jacksons Lane for one night of the Cloud Dance Festival (it ran Friday 24 - Sunday 26 April) for what was a pretty long evening of dance (7.30pm start, end past 10.30pm)

And following some good (Jennifer Essex in Washed and the quote of the year: "Have you ever been on a date because you were too lazy to commit suicide?", Rancidance's Musicology) and quite bad stuff, came on Hagit Yakira and Takeshi Matsumoto with Oh Baby, choreographed by Yakira.

It started with Matsumoto singing what sounded like some sort of Japanese nursery rhyme (though I can't be sure!), smiling to the audience, gently and with humour, before he was joined by Yakira, who was her singing in Hebrew (I believe!)

The choreography was very physical, with lots of jumps and collisions between the two, reflecting the dynamism and crazy mood of Yakira, who started giving orders to her partner: Hug me! (he hugs her, drops her, she falls on the floor) Hug me! Stay! Fall! (they both fall on the floor) Hug me! Stay! Fall! Turn to the left. Another turn to the left. - in their relationship, she is the one making the decisions, she is the choreographer.

But when she orders him Talk to me! He stays silent, until, after she repeats her order again and again, getting angrier and angrier, he makes a face and starts screaming like crazy, venting his frustration.

The mood of the piece throughout is very humourous and witty. They flirt, play with each other, she bosses him around, they kiss... All in all, this was my favourite piece of the evening: fun, full of energetic movement, it left me with a big smile on my face.

I wish I was that good at PR

Wow big credits to the PR person who managed to get the Guardian to write and publish this piece about Shobana Jeyasingh's new work Just Add Water?

'A dance about paella and pumpkin pie? Judith Mackrell on the long love affair between choreography and cooking'

What da what???!!!! Thin thin thin it seems to me.

Their video of the rehearsals (with an interview of Jeyasingh) is worth it though.

Make war on yourself

Extract from Order my steps by Evidence, a dance company. Coming to London 7-8 May at Southbank Centre.

Forsythe's Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced

Still from annotated video illustrating the complex system of cueing in One Flat Thing, reproduced
Credit: Synchronous Objects Project, The Ohio State University and The Forsythe Company

Back in January, I was looking at William Forsythe's videos from his CD-Rom Improvisation Technologies and wondering what we could do now that computer and film technologies have progressed so much. Well it turns out Forsythe was on it too: his latest project, called Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced, is a collaboration with the Univeristy of Ohio and launches on the 1st of April.

From the press release:

'Focusing on Forsythe’s complex ensemble dance One Flat Thing, reproduced, the project presents an original collection of screen-based visualizations (video, digital artwork, animation, and interactive graphics) that reveal interlocking systems of organization in the choreography. The project aims to appeal to a broad public from diverse fields including but not limited to dance (...)
This research is a process in which choreographic ideas are the source of information for the composition of unique visual objects. These objects enable the ideas in the choreography to be quickly grasped in their entirety and suggest new interpretations.'

The teaser video and images look stunning, I am really looking forward to seeing more.

Full press release and images from the Synchronous Objects website. There is also an essay by Forsythe. To be honest he kind of lost me after about the fourth paragraph but I kept reading and it started making sense. Choreography can now exist outside of performance, outside of the body, and this project gives choreographic thinking a new outlet for expression (I guess?!)

Dance and disability

A video from the New York Times about Gimp, a New York City dance company that includes disabled dancers.

A good opportunity to shout out to Candoco Dance Company, very well known in the UK for their fantastic work integrating 'disabled and non-disabled dancers' as they say. It has been running since 2001.

Are we overdosing on Swan Lake?

Asks the Times, in a very interesting piece where Debra Caines asks top companies what's going on and why there are so many Swan Lakes being performed in London this year.

"Any national company has to have a Swan Lake because it is the very definition of classical ballet. It is the standard of measure and you have to keep it alive" says Kevin McKenzie, AD of American Ballet Theatre, who is performing Swan Lake in London this week. But "my heart sank when I realised that we and the Royal were performing Swan Lake at the same time,” McKenzie says. “If we had known, we would have looked to do a different repertoire. If the economy weren’t so bad, people might come to see both, but who is going to do that now?"

I too want a giant tambourine to dance on

Carmen Amaya, probably the best flamenco dancer of the 20th century.

Miyako Ishiuchi

1906 17
Credit: Miyako Ishiuchi

Photographs by Japanse photographer Miyako Ishiuchi are currently on display at Michael Hoppen Gallery in London, until 16 April. From their website:

'In ‘1906 to the skin’, Ishiuchi creates portrait of Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, who was born in 1906. For this unusual exploration of a man, Ishiuchi turns her attention to human skin –studying Ohno’s scars and the effects of aging on his body, the patina of which convey a person’s history. No shot captures his face or personality; instead the series is an intimate study of the strength and vulnerability of a man through close up images of his skin. The results are celebratory and full of warmth. Ishiuchi says: “His skin is unusually beautiful. It is smoother than silk, warmer than wool, suppler than cotton, stronger than canvas.”'

Los Abrazos Rotos - trailer

It's not dance-related, but Almodovar is my favourite film director, and the man managed to include some Pina Bausch into one of his films - the guy has balls!

Almodovar's new film, Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces) comes out next week in Spain. In the UK later this year I'd imagine.

Plus below a genius short inspired by characters from the film - hilarious!