Choreographer: Jérôme Bel
Production: The show must go on (2001)
Photo: Laurent Philippe
I propose livening up this Reading Group through conversation – where we all participate in defining this field. I would like to start this conversation by inviting all of you (whether you’ve read Lepecki’s Exhausting Dance or not) to share your viewpoint on this critique of representation/virtuosity through stillness and reduction…
When Jérôme Bel had one of his performers ask this question – “To be … or not to be” – in The Last Performance (1998), he set up a critique of representation. Re-Read this famous Shakespearean quote from Hamlet as:
To represent … or not to represent … that is the question in contemporary dance.
Jérôme Bel critiques representation through stillness … or reduction … as Lepecki points out in Concept and Presence (A chapter in Carter’s book Rethinking Dance History, 2004):
“The contemporary European dance scene can be qualified by one term: ‘reduction’ – of expansiveness, of the spectacular, of the unessential…”
Pirko Husemann points out “on the level of dance an evident fading-away of dance itself prevails. Contemporary European dance becomes less and less danced in the usual sense. Admittedly, this tendency within dance history is no singular occurrence – here mentioned would be only the minimalism of American 1960s postmodern dance.”
This critique of representation is certainly not new. The lineage of this rejection of virtuosity and representation includes amongst others:
Dadaist performances,
Duchamp’s conceptual art,
Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt,
Artaud’s manifesto for a theatre of cruelty,
Performance art,
Happenings,
Installations,
Judson’s minimalism,
as well as postmodern dance in general.
It has also been theorized extensively in critical theory – Derrida; and psycho-analysis – Lacan.
What is your stance? And why?
• Listen to a discussion called “Not Conceptual” between Jonathan Burrows, Jérôme Bel, Bojana Cveji? and Xavier Le Roy.
• Watch the Last Performance lecture.
• Watch a section from The Show Must Go On (Choreographed by Jérôme Bel)
Boris Willis
I love this kind of talk. I saw Jerome Bel’s The Show Must Go On and I hated it. I see it’s value and I understand why so many of my friends loved it. But because I have done similar kinds of performances with non-dancers as a member of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange it seemed too simple and obvious to me. I listened to Not Conceptual and it make me realize that I am attempting to find something new or undiscovered or re-imagined. The discussion was more interesting to me than the dance.
Aug 19, 2007 @ 20:25
tonya
Thanks for all this info, Maia. I watched the video clip but when I have time, will listen to the other discussions too. I’ve never seen Bel’s work before but I think saw similar things at the Nothing Festival at the Dance Theater Workship here not long ago, where people were questioning the idea of dance as movement. Choreographers would construct sequences where people wouldn’t be moving at all, or would be moving in a variety of different ways — not all what one ordinarily thinks of as “dance”, like in the video above. I’m still trying to work my way through the Lepecki but it’s hard having no real dance theory background! It’s hard to think of dance as anything other than movement, and I guess movement of a specific type, but what are the political implications of this assumption? It’s interesting to ponder. Anyway, I hope to listen to the audios soon!
Also, Boris, I’m curious — what did you hate about the Bel, and what did your friends love about it? Of the short clip above, I’m not sure what to think of it!
Aug 20, 2007 @ 16:41
Maia
Thanx Tonya & Boris
I’m so glad you responded to my question …
I must admit I was getting worried about the reading group
Boris:
I would also like to know what exactly you hated about Bel’s work.
I’m coming from the other perspective - I’ve never seen any of Bel’s works, so I can’t say whether I like it or not.
In South Africa, work which ruptures representation are few & far between - which is why I’m so interested in locating both local (SA) & international work that does.
Why, you might ask - well, because I believe questioning & pushing boundaries brings about change & growth.
My response to Bel’s work is a theoretical one - I have read a lot of articles about his work, by various established writers including Andre Lepecki, Johannes Birringer, Tim Etchells, Ramsay Burt, Arnd Wesemann, H. Ploebst & many more).
so anyone who has seen works by Bel / Xavier Le Roy / and other contemporary dance that questions ‘representation’ please respond.
I have also done a research paper on it (which was damn hard considering I’d never seen his work live).
The theoretical response is incredibly inspiring.
And yet, the question of what this work is like live has stuck
Tonya:
I think the political implications has to do with what I mentioned above … It is a questioning of established dance/performance aesthetics which is an important and necessary aspect of breaking boundaries and rupturing the conventional to cultivate growth in choreographic innovation.
Bel very specifically plays with this political ontology of dance.
To name but one example: In his work called “Jérôme Bel” (1995) he distills the fundamentals of dance in an exploration of the minimal requirements for a dance to take place. So there are no lights (only a single household bulb held by one of the performers for the duration of the piece), no scenery/props/costume (the dancers perform in the nude - and they hardly move!!). Bel points out that he could not imagine any “meaningful movement” in dance anymore and as a result he decided to “begin with zero. And zero means naked.” Starting from zero, Bel wanted to re-establish movement & its meaning. He argues, however, that it would have been easy “through dance and movement to go from zero to one, two, three, four, five,” but he decided to take the opposite route: “minus one, minus two …” (Bel cited in Ploebst’s fabulous book “No Wind, No Word” - 2001) - In short “REDUCTION”.
By the way “No Wind, No Word is a great book that discusses the work of contemporary dance in a somewhat less theoretical & more creative / descriptive fashion.
Tonya … don’t worry about not having any dance theory background … I suggest reading some articles on the SARMA database website. You can go to:
http://www.sarma.be/text.asp?id=1056
for an article by Ramsay Burt called “Undoing postmodern dance history”
http://www.sarma.be/text.asp?id=929
for an article by Lepecki called “Rethinking words: A field trip to Dance Criticism”
Just follow the links - specifically to Lepecki - to find some great (& short!) articles that will place the argument into context.
Xavier Le Roy’s website is also fantastic - with some interesting discussions, write-ups & beautiful pics.
http://www.insituproductions.net
Aug 20, 2007 @ 22:34
Boris Willis
Have you ever gone to a museum and saw a painting and thought, “anyone can do that, why is it in a museum” that is the feeling that I had watching “The Show Must Go On” everything was a kind of literal interpretation of the music, a mingling of dancers and non-dancers on stage and each one challenged by the simplicity of the task they were performing. Looking at it from a theoretical point of view it challenged my assumptions about concert dance, in fact for the performance I attended there was a section where they turned the lights on the audience and stood in a line facing us. A friend of mine Kristin Hapke stood up and stared at them and soon half the audience was standing and staring. That had not happened before and Bel was delighted and surprised in his talk to us afterwards. It was an unusual moment in dance and it was wonderful. I will say that after over 20 years of watching dance concerts to sit in the dark and just take whatever is given to me is a bit dull. On the question of why I hated it, I usually start with literal interpretations when I teach composition. It is easy and simple and I can teach people to make abstract compositions in an hour, so to see an entire concert of it was incredulous to me. It had little to do with the work and more to do with my experience. However, I would rather see that than most of the modern dance I see because at least he had a clear concept that was well executed.
Maia,
Thanks for the links, I will check them out too.
Boris
Aug 21, 2007 @ 02:53
Tony
Thanks again Maia, great presentation. I watched “Not Conceptual” with Jonathan Burrows, Jérôme Bel, Bojana Cveji? and Xavier Le Roy. Jérôme Bel certainly likes to talk. Granted he has lots to say. Sometimes I wish there was a space where people could dance and theorize at the same time. At times during “Not Conceptual” Bel is so animated, talking with his hands and gesturing, that I feel like he might disrobe and “perform” something. Indeed artists communicate when they perform, I just have a fantasy that the dance would infect the philosophy rather than just the philosophy taking residence in the dance.
It is interesting to hear Bel talk about his own work and understand what he thinks he is doing when he performs. There is some action taking place clearly. He talks about about Foucault and the other philosophy informing his work. Amazing to me that the critics/academics and the choreographers are using the same theoretical tools and able to transmit so much information through performance.
Even when we start from zero, with a naked body, there is representation. It seems inescapable because we recognize it as a naked body. We have language to describe it and once we are using language we are no longer just experiencing some “presence” (something that is present) but we active viewers engaging in a linguistically filtered re-presentation.
I explain this all better dancing in front of a blackboard.
http://blip.tv/file/get/Bea-SpaceGhost748.m4v
Aug 22, 2007 @ 15:47
Maia
Boris - thanx! that’s great & so funny how we have a love/hate relationship with this kind of work! Well I know I do
I love the theory behind it all, but sometimes the actual work bores me, besides if you don’t know the context (ie the theory) how are you to love it…
I love what happened in the Bel performance you described… that kind of interaction (co-presence) is fantastic & what I strive for in my own work. Where the audience fills in the empty gaps & co-produces the work.
Tony - thanx for the compliment & my apologies for taking so long to get it out there.
Thanx for putting the ‘not conceptual’ conversation into context. I couldn’t listen to it because my connection here on the farm (where I’m on sabbatical) is way toooo slow, so it will have to wait.
Its actually quite interesting - Lepecki talks about how the barriers have collapsed between dancers, choreographers, critics & audience members. As usual he puts it very eloquently:
“In the new landscape, the choreographer claims a theoretical voice, the critic emerges as a producer, the agent writes dance reviews, the philosopher tries some steps, the audience is invited to join as both student and practitioner…”
For those interested you can read this whole article at http://www.sarma.be/text.asp?id=860
Tony - I’m not quite sure if I agree with you that there is always representation … can you expand on this one a bit more?
Aug 22, 2007 @ 21:06
Swan Lake Samba Girl » Blog Archive » Mesmerizing Traditional Thai Dance Versus Dumb White People Tricks | Tonya Plank | Writer, Dancer and Public Interest Lawyer
[...] Okay, knowing me, this is the kind of thing I would have thought was brilliant — or maybe not brilliant but something I would have at least been into — when I was in college, so I do see where he has his followers. After last night, I have decided that I am not, however, one of them, if my tone hasn’t made that obvious. Having only seen this one piece of his, though, I could be missing something. Here is another perspective from someone I highly admire. [...]
Nov 09, 2007 @ 00:32
Maia
It is funny how time changes … and perhaps when one is a student, one should be into these kind of things. The further I move away from my studies into “REAL” life … (having just started my own company) … the more I realize that it is wonderful to explore the conceptual … but what the audience wants in real life is really beautiful and moving experiences. And I cannot help but wonder … “Is it possible for the conceptual to offer that?”
Feb 18, 2008 @ 14:41