Oct 26
If the filmmaker David Lynch were ever to make a contemporary dance piece for three Gallic performers, it would probably look and sound something like Maud Le Pladec’s Professor. Looming shadows, dancers disappearing through the curtains, slow-motion visual effects and an aurally uncomfortable soundtrack – all it needs is a dancing dwarf, and the Lynchian setting would be complete.
Nóra Bükki Gálla
Generations of choreographers thought music was a painful limitation to their work, so they escaped it. How? Well, they invented many clever ways. Using experimental works were one good option, sound recordings hardly recognizable as music – and of course there is the absolutely honest and inscrutable solution of not using music at all (variations include spoken texts, breathing and other noises the performers make). If none of those things seem possible, you still have the option of simply ignoring the piece of music that is played during the performance. And that’s it – one thing nobody does today is dancing to music. Making a dance piece with the particular aim of illustrating music is so very unthinkable…
…that actually it’s worth a try.
That is what French choreographer Maud Le Pladec must have considered when she decided to do a piece for the eerie and unsettling sound-mix of Fausto Romitelli, Professor Bad Trip. The composition is based on violin and electric guitar tunes, manipulated and amplified to the point of becoming a chaotic rumbling. The soundtrack itself consists of three parts; this structure is reflected in the choreography, offering multiple layers of meaning. We keep bumping into the iconic number three: there are three lectures of the’ Professor’, each lecture being announced by a narrator’s voice; there are three black-clad figures, very similar as the music suggests, still not identical. We also have three types of activity that these figures are engaged in: dance, mime-like everyday gestures and the actual making of live music (one of them is playing an electric guitar backstage, producing soundwaves instead of tunes). The stage is divided into two by an important third element: a black curtain revealing and hiding the dancers as their movement is conducted by the absolute dominance of music.
The first lecture is about pure dance: a solitary figure acts out the sounds and notes of music. Movements are modulated and tuned in a way to not only reflect on, but actually and in a very literal way perform music, spell it out with motions that are connected to everyday gestures, but still are made abstract in order to match the music’s ambiguous quality. Movements are clever and articulated, even ironic and inventive in the sense the music is. Le Pladec does not aim to exceed the limits set by the soundtrack but manages to cover this specific audiovisual terrain with a playfulness of movement that enriches the piece.
The second lecture leads us toward a more theater-like experience: the curtain at the back of the stage opens up to reveal a second figure playing a guitar. A strange hide and seek scene enfolds in which all three dancers make their appearance – in their similarity they look like they are actually one person in three different bodies, making the game puzzling and entertaining at the same time. The third lecture is on acting: the three figures are engaged in different poses, using excessive gestures and facial expressions; they face the audience and play ping-pong with the sounds of the music or move the other one like he was a life-size puppet.
The scenes seem to lead to nowhere in particular but then the music does the same: it arches from quietly weird to disturbingly abstract without offering an easy reading. Professor is a strictly formalist piece leading in a witty line from dance to theatre, from the graspable to the abstract and from the two dimensions of music and dance to a third of multiple interpretations, still with the clear intention of being no more than what it is: an embodiment of the music that inspired it in the first place.
Two dancers doing a solo, one an elegant musical-dance-combination on a penetrary, crazy hip-hop-song by Fatboy Slim done in 2001 in a hotel, the other one a silent piece done 23 years before with modern dancer Trisha Brown on an empty stage, formed mostly out of swinging legs and head movements – and still „Water Motor“ by Babette Mongolte from 1978 and the Fatboy-Slim-Video „Weapon of Choice“ by Spike Jonze have something important in common: They both suprise and deal with what was contemporary in the days of their making, adding a new idea to their genre.
In the case of „Weapon of Choice“, director Jonze surprises the audience in various ways: By having a hip hop video done in a luxury hotel and especially by having Christopher Walken, known for his devil-parts in many Hollywood movies, who is in the beginning sitting in his chair like the Godfather, dance Broadway-style-jazzdance and Michael-Jackson-style-hip-hop-moves on lobby tables, escalate, suitcase carriere and many more – and not only that, but even bringing it up to the level of a science fiction movies by having him fly around the hotel after having danced energetically like a young one.
Mongolte and Brown also suceeded in surprising the audience in their days by bringing in moves which seem unintended, without structure, recognizable but still in a way new and strange. Trisha Brown, on an empty stage and without music, jumps, turns, does many release movements, but without any intention to create a narrative piece.
With both „Water Motor“ and „Weapon of Choice“, the spectators may wonder very much, what might have happened before the actual action happens and what made the dancers to do these movements. Both leave this open and the audience is invited to create its own pre-story.
In an era of music promos featuring identikit popstrels performing overfamiliar street-jazz routines in monotonous unison, with intrusive close-ups of the face and midriff of the otherwise forgettable pop muppet in question, it’s good to be reminded that there are artists with a genuine interest in making a creative product to accompany their music. And it’s great to be reminded also, in the figure of Christopher Walken, what genuine star quality is.
Walken’s character in the video is deliberately unglamorous – he wears a shabby, dun-coloured suit and his face appears ashen. He sits in a bland hotel foyer with only the hum of a hoover for company. Walken is, of course familiar to millions for his ice-cold Bond villain and crime boss characters, so it’s a surprise for many to see him leap up from his lonely seat and tapdance to Fatboy Slim’s latest floor-filler. That Walken is a trained dancer who performed in musicals as a younger man was news to most.
The movement has a wonderfully relaxed quality to it – although Walken’s tapping is scintillatingly rhythmic, he performs much of the material with hands casually in pockets and with minimal effort showing in the face. Parts of the material are gently mimetic: on the line “You can go with this,” Walken gestures to the side with a hand. Other sections have more visual dash – a sequence where Walken executes a series of fast stepping turns through a double-mirrored corridor, causing infinite reflections of the dancer, lingers long in the mind.
The illusion of a middle-aged man (Walken was 58 when he shot the video) having fun in a hotel-shaped playground is somewhat broken towards the end when the actor takes to a harness and flies around the lobby. This fantasy sequence actually takes away some of the magic for me – I prefer the idea of the jaded man having a moment of plausible pleasure, dancing around the escalators and corridors of the hotel, and this final sequence breaks my suspension of disbelief. But that one small niggle aside, Weapon of Choice remains one of the most inventive, original and surprising videos of the last ten years. And all without a hint of midriff in sight.
Fatboy Slim
The music video „Weapon of choice“ follows a narrative structure. A man sitting in a chair rather bored or depressed is somehow activated by the music. His dance is directly addressed to the camera/the spectator, as he wants to impress us with his “show”. In the environment of a hotel lobby movement-elements of jazz dance, tab-dance are put together to a choreography. Suddenly the man starts flying through the lobby, we enter a surrealistic layer, which creates an absurdity of the whole event. In the end he returns to the chair from the beginning as nothing has happened.
Trisha Brown
It is a document of Trisha Browns solo “Water Motor” from the year 1978, recorded in a dance studio by Bebette Mangolte. Her particularly movement quality, loose, casual including movements of everyday life working with different tensions, swings, jumps, at that time a new approach to dance. We see the solo twice, one time in normal speed, afterwards in slow motion. In between a fade-out and a fade-in. The camera is fixed, but follows Trisha Browns movement (with a pan shot).
(to be continued…)
We all know we shouldn’t judge people on the first eye, but still to often we do. Spike Jonzes proves us wrong in a video clip for ‘Weapon of choice’ by Fatboy Slim. The American filmmaker introduces us to a business man in tie and costume, sitting in an archair, looking a bit bored. All of a sudden, he starts making little tic mouvements with his head, as if suddenly he fell under some kind of spell. When he next stands up from his chair, he immediately starts dancing to the (…) music in a very confident, energetic and upfront way- facing the camera as much as possible. Soon, he starts taking bigger leaps, dancing his way through the hallways, jumping on a table where he tries out some tapdance moves, .. At the pique of his dance, he jumps from the second floor into the air, sailing to a huge painting in the lobby of the hotel. The painting shows three boats, sailing away under a cristal blue skye. Not only is the guy trough his dancing exploring the physical space (and we with him), he now also takes us to a possible imaginative mental space- away from the dreary interior of the hotel lobby. Just for a short moment tough, because soon enough the guy in a superman-ly way lands back on the floor again. Nevertheless, when he again takes up his initial position, we can never look at him in the same way anymore then we did. Even your everyday grey yuppie guy is not always what he seems like.
(since I’m feeling so guilty for missing today, here you are a text about the Rimini Protokoll performance I saw a week ago; be as critical as you like)
Abdulah (Mr. Dağaçar), Aziz, Mithat and Bayram are experts. They have very precise working hours, they know everything about the object of their activity; they are the best in their field for expertise.
Abdulah, Aziz, Mithat and Bayram are professionals. Experts in trash. Some would call (and are calling) them scavengers. Every day, they cross the Turkish capital with their self-made sort of carriages, in search for recyclable „left-overs“ – paper, cardboards, plastic, aluminum (a nice word for mainly Coca-Cola and Fanta cans). They are the invisible people. Read more
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