the art of bodies in motion



Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Reflections: Bolero and the Paris Opera Ballet

In L'aprés-midi d'un faun (1912) choreography Vaslav Niijinsky
Afternoon of a Faun (1953) choreography Jerome Robbins
Firebird (1970) choreography Maurice Béjart
Boléro (2013)
conception Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet, Marina Abramovic
choreography Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet
sceneography/projections Marina Abramovic
at the Palais Garnier
June 1, 2013

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copyright Ann Moradian for The Dance Enthusiast

Nijinsky’s original version of L'aprés-midi d'un faun (The Afternoon of a Faun) was inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé's poem of the same name and danced to the music of Claude Debussy. It caused quite a sensation in 1912 when Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes first premiered it. This year marks the dance’s 100th anniversary, and almost anywhere you go in Paris right now you will likely come across one version or another.

Nijinsky’s choreography is supremely minimalistic, almost pedestrian. Only his “Faun”, danced by Nicolas Le Riche, has a starring role. There is a nymph soloist, Eva Grinsztajn, who emerges from the small corps, but the dance seems designed so that we hardly notice her.

Léon Bakst created the costumes and a stunning abstract woodland in a palette of ochre, browns, greens, grays and blues that almost smell of the musky, heathen earth. The fairly overt reference to the Faun's sexual climax at the end of the work certainly contributed to the mix of outspoken reactions at its premiere.

L'aprés-midi d'un faun’s movement vocabulary is limited to that 'walk like an Egyptian' move that Martha Graham used over 20 years later with greater intensity, expression and variation. Just add an occasional hinge or plié, and then change direction from time to time and there you have it. I appreciate simplicity, but here I was asking myself 'How can you possibly perform those steps and keep them alive?' Walk this way, then walk that way, then smell the scarf. (Ahh -- smelling the scarf -- the only moments with any real life vibrating in them.) I wonder if Nijinsky didn't create the unimpressive movement just to irritate his female cast. No prima ballerina, no fouette turns on a dime, no sylph-like floating bourrées to entrance the audience, and certainly no chance to shine!

While the work's theme is essentially erotic and its medium is the human body, the experience created is cerebral, rather than sensual. The construct of a faun in the woods could imply innocence, but it feels contrived. This is a dance about the idea of sexuality, and it really gets no closer than that. I was happy to see it on film at the Centre Pompidou last year as part of their rich exhibit Danser sa vie, but felt no driving need to see it again.

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Forty-one years later, Jerome Robbins created his Afternoon of a Faun. I confess that, even while complaining about Nijinsky’s work, I loved seeing these two pieces side by side -- two interpretations of the same music, inspired by the same poem, and yet so different. This type of juxtaposition is an education in itself, whatever you think of the works. We can see Robbins' choreography moving more toward the athletic, even a bit toward the gymnastic, and yet the thoroughly upright torso from 1912 remains.

Robbins' forest of 1953 is the New York City Ballet's studio classroom. Jean Rosenthal's set appears through a dream-like haze of scrim revealing the ballet barre, walls, windows, floor, and the light. The studio is inhabited by a young man and is, for the moment, his very private domain. We, the audience, are the mirror. A young woman enters as the nymphs do in the older version, not realizing she is invading the faun’s space. He lifts her gently and she stays.

The two never look directly at each other. Their attention is captivated by their reflections. Whether they are self-centered or simply detached, we don't really know. While the work is elegant in its simplicity and gently lyric, as in Nijinsky’s version, it is all about the boy. There is nothing unique about the girl. Any pretty girl (with a similar technical ability) would have suited just as well. And yet, even in this thoroughly narcissistic perspective, there is a strong sense of innocence and sweet sensuality. The climax is a gentle kiss on the cheek. Clearly this dance was created long before the birth of MTV and the Internet made our children jaded beyond their years.

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I was happy to see Maurice Béjart's Firebird. It seems to me that he always uses his male dancers well, while he often overlooks women or offers them surprisingly ordinary choreography. This Firebird, created for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1970, was born out of a guerilla resistance movement. Set to Igor Stravinsky's abbreviated score, it lasts a fleeting 22 minutes. I would have loved to see Michel Fokine's original 1910 version alongside this one, just for the history lesson. (The Ballets Russes commissioned Fokine, like Nijinsky, for their Paris season.)

Béjart introduces a male “Firebird”, danced here by Florian Magnenet. He also gives us a male “Phoenix”, performed by Jérémy-Loup Quer. These are the only starring roles. Magnenet's performance lacked poetry and any sense of flight, which is a pity, because the choreography demands it. Every arabesque, arch and heart opening leap was lost in a stiff back and broken line through the neck, which was not very convincing as birds go. But the Phoenix, wow - harsh choreography well done! There was not a lot of individuality but, frankly, it’s a noteworthy accomplishment just to get through the viciously complicated sequence of fast, twisting jumps.

The costumes, conceived by Joëlle Roustan, are unisex. The entire corps dance the same steps and everyone wears the same clothes: gray combat fatigues in the first half, with the Firebird removing his, then dancing in a bright red open-chested unitard. The red band of fabric across the chest is far from flattering on a broad-chested man, and I found it distracting. The costume works better in the second half when the Firebird, in his death, joins the Phoenix and a full corps de ballet all wearing the same outfit. They create a beautiful landscape beneath the deep red setting sun that is projected onto the back scrim.

By casting both Firebird and Phoenix as male roles while simultaneously keeping much of the standard, splay-legged poses often found in classical pas de deux, Béjart highlights the sexual metaphors that are bandied about so blindly in western ballet and contemporary dance. With France having just witnessed its first same sex marriage in May, one could view this Firebird as a celebration of same sex union, whether that was the intention or not.

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The last work of the evening was Boléro, choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet to Maurice Ravel's driving, sensual score. (The orchestra, under the direction of Vello Pahn, played all of the evening's familiar classics beautifully, by the way.)

I wonder how Boléro, would come across without Marina Abramovic's projections and scenography. Cherkaoui's and Jalet's movement is a whiplash of swirling spirals in a sea of chaos. The dance is given form and order by the projections that begin as concentric circles. The circles come rippling out from central points all over the stage, with the dancers, whirling and wrapping within them. The waves expand out into what feels like an ocean of existence.

A mirror is suspended above the stage, facing us. It is positioned with a slight downward tilt so that it reflects everything happening on the stage in double. Every image, every movement, every pattern on this enormous canvas draws our focus toward the overall patterns and emerging order of the apparent chaos, rather than toward the detail of any individual performer or coupling.

What a relief to see the dancers move with such abandon and commitment after such a constricted evening. Their physical range –- moving from total control to total abandon, astounds me. I find myself grateful to be breathing again, back in contemporary time, as these dancers claim the space. Witnessing these works from various points in history side by side reminds us how dramatically western dance has evolved.

There is no distinction between masculine and feminine. The dancers start out covered by full-length black capes, but for most of the piece everyone wears nude unitards painted with glowing skeletons (I guess you can't get more gender neutral than a skeleton) and amplified by long sheer skirts. Eventually, even the skirts come off. The costumes are designed by Riccardo Tisci.

Everyone plays their small part in the choreography, but my attention is constantly drawn to the larger universe they exist in. The dancers seem more like atoms and molecules in action than individuals. Abramovic's projections accentuate Ravel's pulsing music. Sometimes we follow the music, sometimes the dancers, and sometimes the relationship between both. Everyone matters, and no one matters.

Boléro is billed under Cherkaoui and Jalet's names, yet I suspect it is Abramovic’s contribution, rich with imagery and symbolic metaphors, which directs our focus and drives our experience of this work. It is not a piece you watch, it is a piece you live. Without Abramovic's contribution to the work, I would have been watching only the steps and the dancers rather than the spaces between them, and the extraordinary beauty of the work would have been lost in something far more ordinary.

The greatest paradox is that this collaborative team (Cherkaoui, Jalet and Abramovic) has managed to create an exquisitely spiritual work to one of Western classical music's most sensual pieces. I sense profound questions driving the work. We look at how things come together and move apart, we think about union separation, about love even. What might love mean in a context beyond human experience?

The entire evening, from the billing, seems to have been devoted to men and their visions or ideas of sexuality. The fact that Cherkaoui, Jalet and Abramovic's work is a collaboration that fully embraces masculine and feminine, as well as spiritual and physical, was glorious. ('We've come a long way baby!') Now we simply need to have the administration catch up so that the billing is corrected to include Abramovic's name. Hers was no standard set design or background projection -- it offered not only a new perspective on movement but a challenge to our ideas of what dances, and what dance is.

That being said, the fact that the Paris Opera Ballet is continuing the tradition of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, commissioning new and important works for its repertory, is not only laudable, it is critical to the continuing progression of dance, of dancers and of audiences. New commissions are vital to keeping dance alive and relevant.


Monday, July 1, 2013

Interview with Ann Moradian for Make Me Yoga


Who are you?
One human being among many, many others. I have spent most of my life learning through the body -- through dance, yoga, the martial and energy arts. It brings me great joy to share what I love and to accompany others in their process as they claim their own full being and potential.

What are your Yoga classes like?
There is a strong focus on linking the breath, movement and attention together. Over time this link becomes not only habitual both in and outside of class, but it continues to deepen, and we come to embody our being more and more completely. There is an attention to alignment and body mechanics, which provide a safe base from which to grow. When these simple physical elements are united with the breath and attention, we naturally and simply begin the process of unblocking the gross and more subtle knots that disrupt the flow of our energy, body, breath, and mind.

What is it about Yoga that inspires you?
The breath, really. 'L'inspiration' itself! I appreciate the clarity and wholeness that Yoga offers as our breath and attention begin to flow more smoothly together. I find an enormous strength in this that brings ease, joy, vitality and resilience to my life. And I love how this practice -- that usually begins simply at a body level -- begins to deepen, allowing us to delve beneath the surface of things and recognize the roots that give them birth, in our time and at our own pace.

Do you have a favorite posture?
I love inversions, because they turn our assumptions and habits upside-down. They challenge our perception and assumptions, and clean out and replenish the heart and mind. I love the ability they create in us to feel steady, clear and at ease in any situation, even when the ground seems to have shifted beneath our feet.

A favorite book?
Around 20 years ago I was given a well written and highly condensed English translation of The Mahabharata -- the great Indian classic in which The Bhagavadgita is nested. I have found myself returning to it again and again -- and again. I am continually surprised at the richness of the work, and discover with each new reading insights, metaphors, and wisdom that I had not been able to see on the reading before. It seems to reveal itself according to my readiness, according to how much of life I have lived and experienced.

And music?
I love almost all music -- any music that honors and claims its own inherent identity and character. I especially love layers and textures of sound that seem to converse and dance with each other. I love the sound of the tabla and the pan-pipes.

A film?
Kal Ho Na Ho is an Indian film that has the whole gamut of life packed into its two or so hours: love, tragedy, music, dancing, ridiculous comedy... everything. But I think the added element that addresses the life of our souls (that our conscious being doesn't always recognize or appreciate) and the layers of love we can feel speaks to me the most.

A place?
There is something about nestling into the lush pockets of the Pyrennes in France that seems to nourish and rejuvenate me unlike any other place I have been. The Gorge du Tarn is a close second, with a similar contradiction between its harsh exigence and its generous embrace. But in the French Pyrennes, I feel as if I have returned to my own source.

A teacher?
The Yoga teachings that were passed on to me by Eric Beeler with simplicity and generosity changed my life when I encountered them, and have continued to deepen and merge into all aspects of my life as I continue to explore the relationship between breath, mind and body.

Any remedies?
I lived in India for 6 years and was constantly astonished by how everyone knew at least something about the use of food and spices for keeping the health in balance. I find that I use a few regularly: lemon, honey and ginger steeped in hot water (with or without cayenne pepper) to help clear a cold; the increase of garlic when the immune system needs and extra boost; white rice mixed with 'active' culture yoghurt for diarrhea; fennel or mint for an unsettled or aching stomach...

An animal?
When I was younger, I loved the Rabbit and the Black Panther equally -- the Panther for its beauty and power, and the Rabbit for its sweetness and softness. But for the past 12 or so years, after living in India, my animal has become the Phoenix. The Phoenix gives the strength and courage to face and embrace transformation on a deep and ongoing basis, 'dancing with the Dragon', in an ongoing process of death and re-birth.

A plant?
I feel a strong affinity with all plants, but especially trees. I love how they convert light and air directly into life. I love the beauty and the balance of our relationship with them, as we nourish each other in our shared breath. I had a dream once where I was at a party where everyone was wearing t-shirts with silouettes of all the people they had been in all their past lives printed on them. I still don't know how I really feel about the idea of past lives, but in my dream, when I looked down at my shirt, I saw that it was filled with trees and dinosaurs! It was an "Aha!" moment, when I suddenly understood why I have always been so intense about living this life well.

A perfume?
I love the smell of lemon but more than anything, I love the smell of earth after the rain.