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The Buzz, 10-5: Let Them
Eat Dance!
Northern American Exposure: France Moves at the Bastille
By Paul
Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2005 The Dance Insider
PARIS -- My pal and
colleague Jen Macavinta, late of Pilobolus and recently of here,
made a point of telling me I was invited as a friend, not a critic,
to her French choreographic debut Saturday night, in the shadow
of the Opera Bastille. And yet the stakes -- just as they were at
that earlier storming of the Bastille -- are simply too important
not to write about what happened. We're in the midst of a battle
to liberate Dance from the Conceptual Prison in which some (though
not all) of France's presenters, funders, pedagogues and managers
have locked her up. By 'we' I don't mean Jen -- who would not be
so cheeky, and who, after all, is 'just a dancer' who wants to move
-- but a French audience which has begun to reject the dance-lean
diet presenters are force-feeding it, and is starting to demand
real dance in their dance performances. They showed their dance-craving
colors again in their receptive response to Jen's "Rest," more proof
of their unrest.
The performance took
place in the cadre of Off Nuit Blanche, Nuit Blanche (White Night)
being the inappropriately named first Saturday night in October
-- inevitably chilly -- when, by decree of the city's out Socialist
(out sexually I mean; socialists have been out for at least 70 years
in France, gays for about five) Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, Paris tries
to be New York and stay up all night. (Even the Metro lines, which
normally go to bed at about 12:30 a.m., offer some all-night service.)
It's another one of those schemes through which Paris, her political
leaders no longer secure in the eternal elegance outsiders love
her for, is trying to be cool and hip and cosmopolitan (in the Benneton
sense) but not quite clear on the concept. Having lived in Alaska,
I know that white nights usually happen in the summer, when the
Sun doesn't go to sleep and when playing or partying all night does
not put you at risk of hypothermia (usually, but watch out, it can
hit you at 40 degrees). But there I was, in heavy Eddie Bauer shirt,
leather Western vest, and Peruvian by way of Canal Jeans parka,
and there was Jen, dispatching her overcoat at show-time for performance
wear, a billowing (thanks to the wind) red satin dress and shorts,
to jump into the arms of suavely attired and demeanored fellow (Mexican)
American dancer Carlos Sanchez, a real rock (he's solid) and wend
herself around him for the premiere of "Rest."
But before we get to
the rest of "Rest," let's take a diversion to a bit earlier in my
Saturday, when I was perusing the vide grenier on the rue St. Denis.
A vide grenier -- literally, "empty attic" -- is basically a community-wide
garage sale. They're what I do on the week-ends, in search of cool
trucs and quartiers, finding treasures and discovering
France through its detritus. Saturday's take included Brubeck's
"Angel Eyes" (3 Euros or about $3.60) and a pair of Peet's coffee
mugs (2 Euros), perfect for the Peet's coffee a friend from back
home had just sent me. (The coffee here's too weak for me.) ("From
San Francisco," the man said -- like Brubeck -- and I let him have
it; Peet's is actually from the East Bay.) From my excitement at
finding Peet's trucs in Paris he thought he could interest me in
a travel mug, but when he said the magic words Starbucks -- yes,
they're multiplying here like they were around Astor Place in the
late '90s -- I cut him off, "I don't like Starbucks!" "Oh, politics!"
he said. I thought about giving him my standard "Friends don't let
friends drink at Starbuck's" imprecation, but not knowing whether
it would translate, I let him have that one too. (I am going somewhere
with all this.) Then I spotted his two crystal-clear wine glasses
with plodding moose and the words "Northern Exposure, Cicely, Alaska,"
and, in smaller print, "Roslyn, Washington." This was the town where
Northern Exposure was actually shot, which I didn't realize until
the television series had already suckered me into taking a job
in Anchorage, Alaska, which, it turns out, has more in common with
Boise, Idaho than Roslyn, Washington. The young French guy selling
me the glasses (2 Euros; I had to get them, they matched my Northern
Exposure stuffed moose) (I never actually saw a real moose the five
months I spent in Alaska) (which became a running joke among my
colleagues at the Anchorage Daily News. It seemed that every morning
someone would come into the office and casually relate a moose encounter:
"Moose came into the backyard today and spooked the reindeer." ((There
actually was a citizen who kept a fenced-in reindeer in his front
yard, with the sign "Please don't feed Star," which I drove past
every day on my way to work.)) "Moose got run over on my way to
work.") (There's a rule in Alaska: If you can do it within an hour
after the moose has been roadkilled, you can carve up and take home
as much moosemeat as you like.) (I did have moose stew for breakfast
one morning, brought to work by a Native Alaskan who's sister brought
it from the Bush. And I bought moose nugget jewelry, which is just
what you think it is. At my don't forget to shut the door on the
way out you Klezmer-loving rebel I mean going away party, everyone
pitched in and got me a book, "How to be a Great Moose Hunter."
I still have it somewhere, as well as the two feline Alaska natives
I WAS able to wrangle.).... As I was about to say, the young French
guy selling me the glasses seemed to have fond memories of Cicely,
or Roslyn, or at least Northern Exposure. It might just as well
have been his culture, Chris in the Morning his a.m. DJ..
Then, on my way to Jen's
show Saturday night, back-to-back I passed a private restaurant
party from which emanated "Your Song" and a car blasting "Flash
Dance." (As I write this, the eclectic Radio France station I listen
to is playing David Byrne.) The point of this seeming digression
is that French people LOVE American culture; we're as exotic to
them as Alaska was to me. And not just calcified American culture,
but what we've produced in the more immediate past. (Every episode
of 'Friends,' though under a different name, is readily available
on DVD.) One would therefore assume they'd love RECENT American
dance too. But the presenting-managing-state funding cabal which
rules what dance we get to see here has decided that, basically,
all American choreographers since Judson not named Bill suck. I've
always known they're wrong about American dance, but in the last
two weeks I've had confirmation their presumptions about the tastes
of their own French audience may also be wrong. (It's also occurred
to me that maybe the dour, chin cupped in hand expressions I've
long-observed on the faces of French spectators don't mean they're
being pensive but that they're bored out of their minds and are
holding their heads up so they don't nod off.) First was New Yorker
Layard Thompson, performing Deborah Hay's "The Ridge" in a gallery
up the street from me, which I wrote about last week. (Hay's dance concepts actually
involve movement.) Thompson's audience lapped it up. Instead of
walking out -- as half the audience did in Avignon this past summer -- they talked back, enthusiastically.
Even the dog in the audience couldn't stop yapping.
Saturday night witnessed
a similar public response to Jen's work and her performance with
Carlos. The conditions were trying: They'd selected a petite alcove
literally to the side of the steps of the Opera Bastille, which
legend has it was based on a design accidentally chosen by Mitterand
-- the space is cold and impersonal. I'm speaking of the inside
of the theater, home to the Paris Opera and occasionally the Paris
Opera Ballet; outside Saturday night was cold and frigid in temperature.
I don't know that the scene was particularly a mad house because
it was Nuit Blanche. This corner of Paris is always packed, especially
on Saturday nights, with an amalgam of 'boarders, teeny-boppers,
tourists and the occasional certifiable. One of the latter decided
about 10 minutes before curtain that he was going to piss in the
upstage right corner of Jen's stage and thus mark it as his stage.
Jen's gallant husband Gauthier diplomatically cajoled the mechant
to take his business around the corner to another corner. "If he'd
have done it during the show," I quipped to Jen, "they'd have thought
it was part of the performance." I wasn't exaggerating; my first
Paris season just about began with a man from De Keersmaeker's P.A.R.T.S.
school bepissing himself on stage. (Now FIP, the Radio France
station, is playing an Iggy Pop tune whose lyrics tell me you'll
never hear it Stateside.)
Jen's "Rest" -- I caught
the second of three shows -- began hardly restful, with, as noted
above, the choreographer jumping onto Carlos and weaving her way
about him, to pulsating Radiohead. (I hope I said already: Don't
mistake this for a review. Although it's starting to shape up as
a manifesto.) About, oh, 75 people began gathering from around the
plaza and peering from the stairs above and behind the stage. They
applauded as this first section ended. Then Jen shifted, refreshingly
-- in that she confounded the usual, expected pacing of the build
-- into what might be called a 'bring it down' closing section.
She and Sanchez each caught their breath, slumping on chairs that
could have been before an imaginary television set, occasionally
looking at each other as they gasped as if to say, "Whoah! What
was that all about?" They had been somewhere intense and were now
considering it, shell-shocked, and assessing what it meant. They
approached and took in each other. There was movement but it was
reflective, appraising.
French people (in my
experience) usually run the other way when you try to hand them
a piece of paper but at the end of this show, this audience was
eager to take the programs being handed out by Seol-Ae, a dancer
friend of Jen's, before they disbursed. In fact, these spectators
-- ranging in age, I'd say, from about 15 to 75 -- stood in the
windy cold attentively watching and considering Jen and Carlos's
dancing for the duration of the piece; few walked away. They seemed
to love the thrilling windswept kinetics of the first part -- one
teenager even grabbed a partner and tried to imitate and join the
pros on stage -- and to want to understand the more meditative second
part. But really, I think they also liked seeing dancers MOVE. I'm
projecting of course; I can't know what was in their minds. I can
tell you that for me, I later realized, I had the combined joys
of again seeing real movement close-up and of seeing a male-female
relationship physically enacted in contours that help me understand
that relationship. This is one of the greatest gifts choreographers
and dancers offer to us non-dancers: the ability to articulate and
express the male-female relationship in ways we can't, but which
explain it and amplify it to us. They draw our feelings in ways
we can't. In the sea of talking heads that is French dance today
(France doesn't so much Move as Think), it's not only dance but
the heart that has little place.
At least among most
(but not all) presenters and the choreographers they've chosen to
encourage, that is. The hope kindled Saturday -- building on that
inspired by the audience walk-out in Avignon -- is that they're
wrong. My response to Jen's success is not jingoistic; after all,
if I just wanted to see American dance, I would have stayed in America!
Indeed, when I moved here four years ago, the dance motivation was
that I would be pushed and challenged. Things got off to a good
start -- the P.A.R.T.S. festival referenced above -- but I realize
that this was a false start, because the engine of P.A.R.T.S. is
its director Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, the dance ethos of an earlier
generation. This current generation is losing dance. So if I root
for Jen Macavinta, it's not because she's American nor because she's
my friend but because I hope and prey that she -- and others like
her, including, yes, French choreographers who just need to be given
the opening by French presenters -- can put the dance back in and
on the French dance scene. The audience wants it; will the presenters
listen?
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