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Performa 07

October 25, 2007 at 4:01 pm · Filed under dance, events, recommendations, GIA, GIA PICKS, new york city, performances, xavier le roy, jerome bel, judson, peforma, visual art, marie cool, fabio balducci, carlos amorales, russel maliphant, isaac julien, pablo bronstein, grand union, kelly nipper, yvonne rainer

GIA KOURLAS
Time Out New York
New York, NY USA
BIO | POSTS

Dearest wingers — It’s time to sit in the audience. It’s time to wash Nacho Duato out of your hair. Performa 07, the second edition of a biennial focusing on new visual art performance and established by RoseLee Goldberg, runs Oct 27–Nov 20 — the schedule is endlessly confusing, so I’m just going to list the events that fall under the category of “Dance After Choreography.”

But please check out the website (performa-arts.org) because there is plenty of other fascinating stuff—Pete Drungle’s Continuous 24-hour Solo Piano Improvisation at SculptureCenter, the Israeli artist Tamy Ben-Tor at Salon 94 and Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (Redoing). I put ** on the things I really care about.

And to remember — not everything will be good, This is a chance to learn a lot in a short amount of time — it will be overwhelming — and just because people look like artists doesn’t mean they are. xoxo

November 2 from 6-8 pm
MARIE COOL AND FABIO BALDUCCI, Untitled (Prayers, 1996-2007)
The Clocktower Gallery, 108 Leonard Street, 13th Floor
Tickets: $14/$12 PERFORMA Members, $10 students, performa-arts.org

November 10-17 with performances at 1 and 2 pm daily
CARLOS AMORALES, Spider Galaxy
590 Madison (The Atrium)
FREE

November 6, 8-10 at 7:30 pm
ISAAC JULIEN AND RUSSELL MALIPHANT, Cast No Shadow
BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton Street
Tickets: $45/$35/$30/$20, www.bam.org or (718) 636-4100

November 7 from 2-5:30 pm
PABLO BRONSTEIN, Plaza Minuet
World Financial Center, One New York Plaza, 60 Wall Street and 375 Hudson Street—please check performa-arts.org for starting location
FREE

** November 7-10 at 7:30 pm
JEROME BEL, Pichet Klunchen and Myself
Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street
Tickets: $25/$15 DTW and PERFORMA Members, dtw.org or (212) 691-6500

** November 12 at 7:30 pm
Dance After Choreography: An Evening with Grand Union
Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue
Tickets: $8/$6 students, seniors children/$5 Anthology and PERFORMA Members, available day of show at the Anthology Film Archives Box Office
In this event Douglas Dunn, David Gordon, Nancy Lewis, and Yvonne Rainer — members of the improvisational group Grand Union — reunite for the first time since the group’s dissolution in 1976. it should be hilarious.

November 13 at 7:30 pm
Dance After Choreography: From Judson to the Present
Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue
Tickets: $8/$6 students, seniors children/$5 Anthology and PERFORMA Members, available day of show at the Anthology Film Archives Box Office

November 13-15 at 7 pm
MARKUS SCHINWALD & OLEG SOULIMENKO, Stage Matrix I
Dance New Amsterdam, 280 Broadway, 2nd Floor
Tickets: $18/$14 PERFORMA Members/$12 Students, www.performa-arts.org

November 14-16 at 8:30 pm
KELLY NIPPER, Floyd on the Floor
The Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South
Tickets: $18/$14 PERFORMA Members/$12 Students, www.performa-arts.org

** November 15-17 at 7 pm
XAVIER LE ROY, Le Sacre Du Printemps
Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th Street
Tickets: $18/$14 PERFORMA Members/$12 Students, www.performa-arts.org

** November 16-17 at 8 pm
AIDA RUILOVA, The Silver Globe
The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street
Tickets: $10, 212-255-5793 ext.11

** November 17 from 12-3 pm
NOT FOR SALE: Dance and Conceptual Art in Visual Arts
The Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South
Tickets: $5, www.performa-arts.org

** November 18 at 4 pm
Dance After Choreography: The French Aftershock
Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue
Tickets: $8/$6 students, seniors children/$5 Anthology and PERFORMA Members, available day of show at the Anthology Film Archives Box Office
Two films are shown: Boris Charmatz & Dimitri Chamblas’s Les Disparates and Jerôme Bel’s Veronique Doisneau.

** November 18-19 at 7 pm
YVONNE RAINER, RoS Indexical
The Hudson Theatre at the Millennium Broadway Hotel
Tickets: $18/$14 PERFORMA Members/$12 Students, www.performa-arts.org

Chapter 2: Ghost Story | Reading Group Post IV

July 11, 2007 at 6:31 pm · Filed under dance, TONY, tony schultz, choreography, reading group, andre lepecki, exhausting dance, solipsism, thoinot arbeau, orchesographie, bruce nauman, juan dominguez, xavier le roy

| | Posted by Tony Schultz

The Reading Group at thewinger.comAndré Lepecki’s Exhausting DanceChapter 2: Masculinity, solipsism, choreography

Lepecki reads the work of 3 performers as a ghost story beneath the spectra of a 1589 dance manual Orchesographie in the second chapter of Exhausting Dance. The ghost of this ghost story is our solitary male dancer, in the empty dance studio, resonating with written language. This ghost haunts western choreography with a “solipsistic excess”. The relationship between this private dancing and the making of the “idiotic” modern subject (as from Greek idiotes: a private individual who declines public political engagement) is problematic for dance in the social and downright spooky.

Lepecki attempts to turn solipsism in on itself, framing its use in choreography as a generative metaphysical echo chamber. In his view it functions “to dismantle modernity’s subjectivization as a mode of the idiotic” and “intensify critically and physically the hegemonic conditions of subjectivization and to explode them.”

Rewind…What is solipsism?

Solipsism is the philosophical position that all things outside our own experience, including other minds, are unknowable and non-existent. It is the subjectivity of Descartes “I think therefore I am” taken to an extreme, “what I don’t think, is not.” It is a selfish and lonely philosophy.

Lonely ghost #1.

Thoinot Arbeau, dance master, Jesuit priest and mathematician. Author of 1589 dance manual Orchesographie. The engravings are really interesting. The proximity of military choreography to court dancing is evident in the manual (which reminds me of another conversation). The notation clearly derives from music scoring, consisting of notes on a scale over a beat time series.

The manual unfolds as a dialog between the Arbeau and the young lawyer Capriol. Capriol is in search of dance instruction so that he may integrate properly into society. The challenge of transferring dance knowledge through notation, so that the pupil could teach himself alone in the absence of the teacher, initiates the project of orchesography. Its development “as practice, as a technological binding of writing and dancing, as a pedagogical bond between men” allows “socialization with those who are not quite there…whenever a dance book is read in a secluded chamber.”

Obeying the commands of an absent dance master raises an apparition. I wonder if Kristin has ever seen Balanchine’s ghost. Scary.

Lepecki reads Bruce Nauman, Juan Dominguez, and Xavier Le Roy as lonely ghosts haunting and haunted by “solipsistic masculinity.” The chapter is interesting once you get your head around it a little and understand what it means to look at “Western choreography as an early modern subjectivity-machine” from a paranormal perspective.

I would love to see what conversation arises from these ideas and readings of these artists. Are these ideas useful to you? A dance blog seems like the sensible place to talk about language and the body as a technological interface. Do we believe that our technique shapes our subjectivity? Can/does dance suffer from solipsistic excess?

These ideas are useful for me to think about my own work. Most of the videos/dances I have made consist of solitary dancers recorded in empty studios. Much of my personal dance/technology practice takes place in the same space, the small studio.

I am there right now, writing and dancing, trying my hardest to not be an idiot.