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KRISTIN SLOAN |
Just a brief post with a couple photos from the Jeff Koons exhibit at Versailles…
(I’m in Paris for a few weeks working on a video project on NYC Ballet’s tour here.)
Hearing the tourists who weren’t expecting the exhibit go on and on about how inappropriate it was, was almost as fun as viewing it.
Posted by Kristin Sloan
After many years of Serge Gainsbourg making Repetto jazz shoes cool, followed by his daughter Charlotte… the New York Times has picked up on the current trend and published an article this morning…
“UNBEKNOWN to many, Serge Gainsbourg, the seminal French singer and style icon, had sensitive feet. Boots hurt him. He hated walking. His only salvation was calfskin jazz shoes made by Repetto, the French dance shoe company. Jane Birkin, then his lover, turned him on to the supple shoes in the early ’70s. “Serge was looking for gloves for his feet,” she told Les Inrockuptibles, the French music magazine. Originally designed by Rose Repetto for her daughter-in-law, the ballet dancer Zizi Jeanmaire, the lace-up shoes served Gainsbourg well. ”
Gloves for the feet. Hmmm. Sounds like how my old ballet teachers used to describe how pointe shoes should feel. Probably not the same feeling Serge had in mind though.
They also include a little slideshow, (with a projected backdrop of images of Paris), showing all the new takes on the classic shoe available at design-y stores like Comme Des Garçons and Opening Ceremony.
Posted by Sloan
Matt Murphy of Ranting Details, and la Tour Eiffel
For those of you who are yearning for an ABT fix (or just enjoy hearing things from a dancer’s perspective)…
Our friend at over at Ranting Details, Mr. Matt Murphy of American Ballet Theater, has been doing an amazing job documenting his dance journey with ABT on their tour of Paris and London. With great photos, and plenty of witty text to accompany them, it’s fun to feel like you are right there with Matt and his friends.
The last time I went on tour with the company outside the U.S. was for NYCB’s trip to Scotland and Japan in 2000. Ouch. It’s been a while. So nice to live vicariously through you Matt… Thanks for sharing!
| | Posted by David
Sankai Juku anyone? No I didn’t sneeze…
I have put this Paris-based Japanese butoh group on one of the top five performances I have seen… ever..
Now, that is quite a bold statement I agree, but I wish you all could have seen this performance of “Kagemi, beyond the metaphors of mirrors”.
Butoh I believe is best described as momentary meditative movement, therefore the artist is completely in the moment of the performace and looks as though they are in a trance, which then brings the audience in with them. These aritists all have their heads shaved and paint their whole body in white chalk, which comes off in a powder as they move.
What made the performance so compelling for me was not only the visual aspect (as you can see in these pictures) but the complete dedication of the aritsts to what they believed. The director of Sankai Juku, Ushio Amagatsu, had clearly spent his lifes work evolving this form of butoh. And the result of it, as an audience member, was almost a voyeuristic approach to seeing him in their habitat.
The piece opened with dozens of Lotus flowers hanging on the floor of the stage, only to rise to the ceiling once the performance started. Seeing these flowers gradually rise, made me feel as though the whole show was underwater.
It is art like this that motivates me to be an artist. Performers like these inspire not only fellow dancers and artists but the general public as well. The whole audience around me was captivated and entranced… Entranced with this movement that seems so hard to put into words.
Photo Credit: Jacques Denarnaud
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