September 12, 2007 at 6:18 pm · Filed under ballet, dance, music, composers, art, stage, judson church, performing, mercecunningham, set design, performance, modern dance, community, choreography, john jasperse, costume design, performance art, art into life, composer, duchamp
The roundtable discussion, “Approaches to Collaboration: Choreographers and Visual Artists,” took place on Saturday, September 8th at The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, on the upper east side. Collaborative models for performance were discussed.
Complete description of event and panelist bios: http://www.philoctetes.org/Event_Archive/Approaches_to_Collaboration_Choreographers_and_Visual_Artists
Following are my notes from the panel, as discussed by Noel Carroll, Roger Copeland, Mary Fleischer, Lynn Garafola, and Yvonne Rainer.
Ballet Russes’ collaborative model exemplified the Wagnerian idea of Gesamtkunswerk, or “total work of art,” via a synthesis of poetry, scenic design, staging, action, and music.
The ballet Parade was cited as a very early example of artistic collaboration, composed for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes 1916-1917. Choreography by Léonide Massine (who was also dancing), music by Erik Satie, a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau, costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso, and the orchestra conducted by Ernest Ansermet. Painter Henri Matisse also did sets and costumes for another of Ballet Russes Le Chant du Rossignol 1920 (or The Song of the Nightingale).
Parade Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parade_
Apparently, George Balanchine (one of the founders of New York City Ballet), was not so interested in visual aspects such as costuming and sets, but he was interested in lighting. Another choreographer who was very involved with lighting was Louie Fuller. She is considered a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques.
Info about Louie Fuller: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/current-loie.html
There was a good time spent on the Cage/Cunningham collaborative model. Both artists were in favor of “disillusion,” but for different reasons.
While Cunningham is a defender of the autonomy of the art form (in his case it would be dance), Cage is more of an integrationist, a descendant of Marcel Duchamp’s ideas who also wanted to dissolve the distance between art and life. Where Cage and Cunningham agree is on strategy: the use of aleatoric methods.
Yvonne Rainer called this collaborative model “mechanical,” where there is no apparent conversation between the collaborators. She cites a piece by choreographer John Jasperse, whose name she didn’t say but because of her description I suspect she meant California, as a good example of the integration of the stage elements (that set was designed by Ammar Eloueini).
Info about John Jasperse’s California: http://www.johnjasperse.org/index.php?name=rep8 Image of Set Design by Ammar Eloueini: http://www.digit-all.net
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May 24, 2007 at 8:30 pm · Filed under SLOAN, art, new york city, performance art, mark beasley, david platzker, creative time, public art, daniel buren, jonathan monk, art into life
Posted by Kristin Sloan
For those in NYC…
Five Ballerinas in Manhattan is a public art piece by Jonathan Monk, based on the original work Seven Ballets in Manhattan, by Daniel Buren. It is being presented by Creative Time, and uses seven different locations in Manhattan.
From Creative Time:
JONATHAN MONK
Five Ballerinas in Manhattan
May 27 - June 2
Chinatown, East Village, Greenwich Village,
Times Square, SoHo, Central Park, Wall Street
WHERE AND WHEN
Sunday, May 27, 2-4pm: CHINATOWN beginning at Walker and Centre Streets
Monday, May 28, 2-4pm: EAST VILLAGE beginning near 8th Street and 3rd Avenue
Tuesday, May 29, 2-4pm: GREENWICH VILLAGE beginning near West Houston Street and 6th Avenue
Wednesday, May 30, 11am-12pm and 9-10pm: TIMES SQUARE beginning near 42nd Street and 7th Avenue
Thursday, May 31, 1-4pm: SOHO beginning at 420 West Broadway
Friday, June 1, 2-3pm: CENTRAL PARK beginning near Rockefeller Center @ 5th Ave and 50th Street
Saturday, June 2, 12-2pm: WALL STREET beginning near Greenwich and Fulton Street
“Jonathan Monk is restaging Daniel Buren’s key performance work, Seven Ballets in Manhattan, on its 32nd anniversary. Re-titling the work, Five Ballerinas in Manhattan, five performers dressed in dance rehearsal clothes will attempt to perform Buren’s choreography at the identical locations on the same days and times of the original performances. In 1975, the dancers carried placards featuring the striped work of Buren; for this rendition, Monk will have the dancers distribute an adaptation of Buren’s brochure featuring illustrations of the choreography for each site.
This enigmatic work in its original presentation prompted questions regarding the status of art in the public realm and how such confrontations are defined. For example, audiences in SoHo, then the center of the commercial gallery scene in New York, accepted the work as art, but audiences on Wall Street interpreted the parade of placards as a protest and a potential unidentifiable threat. By re-phrasing and re-presenting works from the Modernist Canon of the 1960s and 1970s, Monk aims to test their continued strength and validity, in part through demystifying the process. Part homage, part parody, the work suggests alternative outcomes, differing audience responses and new-routes for the cultural producer and artist of today.
This is conceptual artist Jonathan Monk’s first non-gallery based work in New York. Born in Britain in 1969, and now based in Berlin, Monk works in a wide range of media including installations, photography, film, sculpture and performance. His tongue-in-cheek methods often recall procedural approaches typical of 1960’s Conceptualism, but without sharing their utopian ideals and notions of artistic genius. Monk, like Buren, is a key practitioner in the “art into life” debate.”
This presentation is part of Creative Time’s “Six Actions for New York City” Curated by Mark Beasley and David Platzker.
Click Here to download the brochure that will be distributed by the dancers.
Daniel Buren’s Seven Ballets in Manhattan work in situ, New York, USA.
27 May-2 June 1975.
© DB & ADAGP
Anyone up for a Sunday afternoon in Chinatown?
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