NORA CHIPAUMIRE

Nora Chipaumire’s creation, Nehanda Manifesting Thinking, presented at the Espace Cardin on November the 5th, is a fine example of Protest Theatre. The creation: is in the form, stated by Chipaumire, of an Opera and, is as Insulting, Loud, and Jumbled as any Protest could be. The theme is the Shona spiritual leader, Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana (c. 1840 – 1898), who was a syikiro or spirit medium of the Zezuru Shona people. Nehanda was one of the leaders of the Chimurenga, against the British South Africa Company’s colonization of what is now Zimbabwe led by Cecil John Rhodes in 1889. She was captured and executed by the Company for an alleged murder. Her spirit lives on, linked to the theme of resistance, and has become increasingly important to the nationalist movements in Zimbabwe. The Opera begins with a twenty-six-minute harangue, of No Justice, No Peace, screamed, hollered, chanted, and sung, by performers with their backs turned to the audience, facing inwards to an assembled choir. The whole presentation lasts for one hour and six minutes, which, Chipaumire claims, is but a “snack” of what could be a six-hour ritual! Lord help the audience of a full meal! The performance screeches to an end with a thankfully soft sounding of Shofars, which could perhaps bring down: the Wall’s of a Jericho, of prejudice, hate and oppression, of peoples around this chaotic world of now. PKO

Review by: Patrick Kevin O'Hara

Date line: Saturday, November 5th, 2022

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FUCK ME

Marina Otero and five wonderfully nude male dancers presented her autofiction FUCK ME at the Les Abbesses Théâtre, to a delightfully bemused public. Ms. Otero obviously loves a long somber joke. Throughout, her dance litany of a nihilistic autodestructing of her superb body, she maintains a poker face portrayal of a seriously handicapped dancer, while her five males all named ‘Padro’ enact her tale of mayhem and corporal auto destruction. The five dancers are polymorph, ranging from very young to begging middle age, all dancing with concentrated energy, and strong technical skills. Video projections, mimicked by the dancers, of all her ages and roles, reveal her evolution as a dancer, director, author, and choreographer. A born expressionist, she presented her inventive gesticulations and dance moves to all and sundry, sparring no one, from family to street spectators and theatre audiences. Strongly sex orientated she relates her fascination with the act, by fucking everybody available, physically, and metaphysically. After a year in a hospital bed, and a cathartic operation, she no longer able to dance as she would wish, directs her choreographic theatre presentation from her bed. The result is an alternation street dance creation, which she finishes on the street, to the delight of a relieved audience, witnesses to a fairy book ending! A must see! PKO

 

Review by: Patrick Kevin O'Hara

Date line: Thursday, November 3rd, 2022
Time:  20:00

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(LA)HORDE

The Ballet National de Marseille, under the artistic direction of Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer and Arthur Harel aka (LA)HORDE, presented We Should Have Never Walked on the Moon at the Chaillot Théâtre National de la Danse to a preopening press performance on the 26th of October. Starting with a Belmondo style cascading fall down the grand marble stairway, carpeted by a partially burnt red carpet, performed by alternating stunt people, the press entered a post internet wonder world, of dance and multi-media. An ultra-long black limousine dominated the Foyer de la Danse, backed by the spectacular view of the Eiffel Tower. Strange denizens from a post-apocalyptic underworld populated the space, alternatively scrawling graffiti, on whatever available surface presented itself, which was promptly erased by cleaning machines, constantly circulating around the limousine, upon which outlandishly clothed fashion models prostrated themselves. Press folk feverishly snapped photos and filmed the ongoing event, reminiscent of an Andy Warhol Silver Factory happening. This set the tone of what was to follow, a potpourri of diverse danse and multi-media presentations strewn throughout the vast Chaillot Théâtre, obliging the spectators to scurry here and there in an effort to catch all that was offered in the three-hour long extravaganza. The dance elements by diverse choreographers, ranged from: jump dance style, energetically executed by seven male dancers with fluorescent shoes, performed to pumped-up disco drive music, to down home fuck-fest group sex contrivances remarkably illustrated by three couples, to an isolated romantic pas deux at the foot of the grand staircase. For those who had the stamina to go up and down the diverse staircases, through and around all the spaces, there remained much to see and savor. All and all a must see for the adventurous dance fans who wish to be amused and bemused by the shenanigans of the horde!

Review by: Patrick Kevin O'Hara

Date line: 26th October, 2022 

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Via Katlehong /Amala Dianor Marco da Silva Ferreira Via Injabulo

Marco da Silva Ferreira’s choreography, for ferm inferm is to be seen, again, again, and again: performed by eight polymorph dancers, executing diverse composition modes, it fills the stage with mystery, passion, and joy. The four women dancers are built for strength, speed, and flexibility, sporting thighs that permit incredible hinges and fast near floor moves. The men are lithe and smooth complementing the overall look of dancers rooted in everyday life. Together they are coolly synchronized in Ferreira’s complex composition, ranging from tribal ritual, street dancing, pantsula, fugue, tap, hip hop, and post-modern modes of dance expression, accompanied by cries, whistles, speech, and gestural codes, supported with good old down-home foot, leg, chest, and body slapping, backed by vigorous hand clapping. Ferreira’s opus opens visual structures, rich with potentially diverse interpretations: one that strikes the imagination is the final three dancer totem formed at the end of his composition. The totem is not perpendicular but multi directional, one dancer on the shoulders of the supporting figure, with the third hanging upside down, legs encircling the totem’s waist, reminiscent of clan totems celebrating ancestral origins, all positioned at the end of a long triangular black slash opened on the stage, with dancers gravely observing the ceremony, only to be interrupted by a Bojangles tap routine performed on the black slash, finishing the performance. Jonathan Uliel Salidanha’s music provides excellent depth with a firm foundation for Ferreira’s work, encompassing natural sound scaping, challenging electro acoustic composition structures, and rock-hard rhythm backing. Lighting by Carin Geada is evocative of diverse venues and effectively complements the overall work with Dark Dindie styling concept providing costumes suited to the strenuous moves executed by the remarkable dancers.

Amala Dianor’s work Emaphakathini is second on the Chaillot experience Focus Portugal program: second but certainly not least! His work employs a dance-fusion style that embraces altérité, an ancient Platonian concept of otherness encapsuled by societies encountering other societies judged to be completely different. Dianor’s poetic choreography breaks down historical colonial barriers in a celebration of togetherness. Dianor uses Pantsula, which is a life-style culture covering: fashion, music, dance, gestural and speech codes, to interpret his choreographic philosophy of acceptance of métis and unison and integration of the difference between peoples. The dancers are up to this challenge, interpreting Dianor’s work with enthusiasm and consummate technical virtuosity. The eight dancers of Via Katlehong Dance, the same as those in Ferreira’s work, are superb! Their collective persona transcends mere dance, ascending to poetic heights of artistic excellence, earning well merited applause from an enthusiastic and appreciative audience. Awir Leon’s music powers Dianor’s dance poetry, laying down acoustic tracks supporting and amplifying his vision, in complete harmony with his conceptual philosophy. Lighting by Carin Geada and costumes by Julia Burnham are both in tune with the overall concept and complete the artistic vision of the work.

 

Review by: Patrick Kevin O'Hara  

Date line: Thursday, October 6th, 2022
Time:  19:30

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Sharon Eyal Chapter 3: The Brutal Journey of the Heart

Four-on-the-Floor, Hard Disco, Quaaludes, Blow, Poppers, Shades of Club 54, Andy Warhol, Silver Factory, and Loud, Loud, Loud pulverizes the audience with 55 minutes of a DJ Wet Dream galvanizing eight dancers on a Journey to the heart of a Discotheque Land leaving a shaken, exhausted audience to pick up their pace makers, locked on cardiac overdrive, to ponder on what they had just experienced. So said, what happened? Sharon Eyal and her cocreator Gai Behar have choreographed a stream of consciousness style of dancing: celebrating disco dancing, from its origins to beyond present times. Discotheques: launched in a war time occupied Paris, in clandestine night clubs, to music emanating from scratchy vinyl records, backed by stomping Nazi Jack Boots laying down a ground bass, accentuated the rebel nature of the disco movement that Eyal and Behar eulogize and epitomize in their choreography. Ori Lichtik, master DJ, lays down an irresistible wall of sound pulsations: driving dancing interpretations of a primal scream therapy, inherent in the overtly sexual gyrations practiced before a transfixed gallery of hapless voyeurs. Lichtik’s postmodern electro acoustic soundscapes use brilliant mastering techniques to produce impossible Donna Summer, Tina Turner vocals that go on and on and on, producing music, which according to Peter Shapiro, produces a: “mechano-eroticism, which links the technology used to create the unique mechanical sound of disco to eroticism, setting the genre in a new dimension of reality living outside of naturalism and heterosexuality.” Smooth, slick, slinky dancers explore a range of choreographic styles reminiscent of Margot Sappington’s naked “Oh! Calcutta!” Twyla Tharp’s clumpy groups in “Hair,” Mark Morris’s tangled hand Mosaics, Bob Fosse’s funky “Sweet Charity” … the list goes on! The effect is a non style of imitative choreography creating an exhausting non genre. Not to discredit the wonderful dancers, who dance non-stop from beginning to end of a crotch grinding extravaganza of disco lust. The end result could be said to be: “wonderful to do, but better left to the relative warmth of a discothèque rather than a theatrical event.”

 

Review by: Patrick Kevin O'Hara

Date line: Thursday, September 22nd, 2022
Time:  19:30

COMMON GROUND[S] LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS

CO-CHORÉGRAPHES & DANSEURS GERMAINE ACOGNY, MALOU AIRAUDO / COMPOSITION MUSICALE FABRICE BOUILLON LAFOREST COSTUMES PETRA LEIDNER / LUMIÈRE ZEYNEP KEPEKLI / DRAMATURGIE SOPHIATOU KOSSOKO

Pina Bausch Foundation, Ecole des Sables, and Sadler’s Wells Production participated in a Paris Premiere Coproduction at the Espace Chapiteaux of the Théâtre de la Ville (Hors les Murs) on September the 19th, 2022 that will be long remembered as a major dance event. First, on the program, COMMON GROUNDS: a female pas de deux, rooted in magical shamanistic practices, grasped the attention of the audience through its stillness and aura of deep mysteries, supported by ritualistic movements recalling First Nations peoples’ practices of imitative dances and gestures, permitting communion through spiritual marriages of hunter, and hunted. These shaman choreographies, embraced many aspects of the communal existence, linked with the natural environment, dominated by the close interconnection of nature and human interdependence, each changing the other through eternal friction and rejuvenescent copulation. The dancers, Germaine Acogny and Malou Airaudo compelled attention, a shared state of trance and tenderness that gave added depth to their performance. Throughout their pas de deux there were constant choreographic references that foreshadowed the ballet that was to follow their performance, namely that of Le Sacre du Printemps.

CHORÉGRAPHIE PINA BAUSCH / MUSIQUE IGOR STRAVINSKY / DÉCOR & COSTUMES ROLF BORZIK / COLLABORATION HANS POP PREMIÈRE LE 3 DÉCEMBRE 1975 À L’OPERA HOUSE WUPPERTAL. REPRISE 2020 DIRECTION ARTISTIQUE JOSEPHINE ANN ENDICOTT, JORGE PUERTA ARMENTA, CLÉMENTINE DELUY DIRECTEURS DES RÉPÉTITIONS DITTA MIRANDA JASJFI, ÇAĞDAŞ ERMIŞ, BARBARA KAUFMANN, JULIE SHANAHAN, KENJI TAKAGI

 After a long intermission, The tout Paris of the dance community held their collective breath, waiting to greet Pina Bausch’s creative master piece. The first strains of Stravinsky’s immortal percussive exploration of the primal depths of procreation floated over a field of peat, covering the stage. Sir Alistair Spalding, Artistic Director of Sadler’s Wells London, gallantly provided the information that the peat was especially imported from Wuppertal, and it would stay with the ballet throughout its international tour. Not a pretention, the peat is an integral part of Bausch’s choreographic concept. To touch the peat is feel its soft invitation to immerse one’s self in its procreative, preservative, transformative warmth. Peat is a sacred element essential to many First Nations people, used for building, burning, and interring sacrificial offerings to appease the spirits living in its depths. Often the gifts to the spirits were human, at times willing, sometimes not. The dancers move through the peat sharing its spiritual essence with the observer of their collective choice of the chosen maiden. The male contingent of the company is impressive, strong, virile, graceful, powerful, and at times gentle, then exploding in lustful frenzies of copulative pulsations, traversing a vast range of sexual acts and positions from cunnilingus to postural acrobatics with their female counterparts. Bausch does not forget Le Sacre’s first choreographer, Nijinsky, commemorating his sexual fascination with a nymph’s scarf in his Après-midi d’un faune, by interpolating its symbolism in her ballet. First, passed from maiden to maiden the scarf is finally united with the chosen one then her ardent suiter. The final cathartic dance of the chosen maiden brings the ballet to its triumphal end, not of death, but resurrection and preservation of the species, united with Gaia.

Review by: Patrick Kevin O'Hara

Date line: Monday, September 19th , 2022
Time:  20:00

Compagnie XY en collaboration avec Rachid Ouramdane Möbius 7-18 sep 2022

XY: In search of a new choreographic language, The company XY challenges the scenographer to develop a new language to describe their choreographic genius. Their present production of Möbius in collaboration with Rachid Ouramdane, at the Chaillot-Théâtre National de la Danse, demands danse vocabulary neologisms, to describe the neomodern dance phenomimes that their work represents. XY’s auto descriptive of their art uses the term “verticalité circassienne,” which opens polyvalent possibilities of interpretation: ‘verticalité’ accentuates the risks of falling, also in psychotherapy the lack of words, for an individual or a small group; ‘circassienne’ implies circus, or Circassian Circle dances, which are ancient folk dances, exemplified by running and hopping steps. XY excels at running, whether in a line, a group, or individually, running is a sublime form of expression in the company’s corporal vocabulary. Their diverse running manners include: the leaning run, which is used for high acceleration moves, twisting and turning, punctuated by hops, jumps, and falls, leading to an endless mobius, forming a perfect polyhedral. Falling gives XY indelible images to share with an enraptured public: perpendicular, lateral, curved, individual, group, dangerous, amusing, menacing, accidental, planned, or contrived falls, are all part of their choreographic repertoire. Apart, from analyzing their use of descriptive vocabulary to describe their work, it is the evocative aspect of their imaging that transcends the ephemera of the moment, and transmits indelible images of totems, recalling ancestral communal roots. Human totems, two, three, and four bodies high, bring feelings of being watched, cared for, and at times menaced. The use of these totems helps XY to develop a continuity with the folkloric aspect of their work and cements their roots in universal dance traditions. Ouramdane’s deft choreographic touch is evident in XY’s use of group movements, where dynamic interactions polarize the emotional impact of the dance ensembles, bringing conflict, tenderness, exclusion, and mystery to the pallet of expression of the nineteen individuals in the mobius. Excellent lighting design and execution by Vincent Millet, costumes by Nadia Léon and sound by Claire Thiebault-Besombes compliment the theatricality of the work, and are to be congratulated.

 

Review by: Patrick Kevin O'Hara

Date line: Tuesday, September 7th , 2022
Time:  20:30

Elisabeth Gets Her Way CHORÉGRAPHIE & DANSE Jan Martens - Théâtre Les Abbesses 04 - 13 July, 2022 15:00 / 20:00 DURÉE 01:00 Le portrait dansé d’une grande musicienne. Rencontre inattendue et touchante entre un danseur-chorégraphe et le clavecin contemporain. Jan Martens n’est jamais là où on l’attend. Incarnant à lui seul la remarquable ouverture d’esprit du paysage artistique flamand, il nous fait ici la proposition insolite d’un solo en hommage à Elisabeth Chojnacka, virtuose contemporaine du clavecin. Pendant un demi-siècle, jusqu’à son décès en 2017, elle fut l’égérie des cordes pincées au sautereau, inspirant les plus grands compositeurs contemporains, de Ligeti à Xenakis et autres Górecki, à créer sur mesure pour son talent démesuré. Comme Jan Martens, Elisabeth Chojnacka s’est produite à plusieurs reprises au Théâtre de la Ville, en récital ou dans les créations de Lucinda Childs, endroit naturellement incontournable pour ce solo. Où Jan Martens danse en écho à la musicienne et son approche percussive du clavecin, sur des rythmes complexes et imprévisibles, non sans donner la parole à ceux qui l’ont connue et accompagnée. Un hommage sincère et émouvant.

 

Review by: Patrick Kevin O'Hara

Date line: Monday, July 4th , 2022
Time:  20:00

Jan Martens presents a delightful ode of seven dance solos, at the Les Abbesses Théâtre in Montmartre, in praise of his muse, Elizabeth Chojnacka, the harpsicord artist. Martens skillfully blends pedagogy and ingenuity in his use of movement and multimedia in his theatrical presentation. He uses the recorded music of Chojnacka for his choreography, she is sadly, no longer alive to accompany him in his work. Part of his pedagogic intent is, to honor the desire of Elizabeth Chojnacka, to share her music and that of a constellation of composers with a wider public. The choreographic dexterity of Martens is well served in his use of a body, his own, atypical to that of an idealized dancer, resembling some imaginary god or goddess, his is the simple body of an ordinary everyday individual. The complexity, of Martens’ solos, comprises a neoclassic post-modern dance salute to many of the dancers and choreographers, whose work has built the danse world that we know today. Martens evokes the work of Harald Kreutzberg, in the isolated use of his bald shaved head, mesmerizing the attention of the onlooker. Marth Graham’s, Lamentation, is recalled in Martens’ propensity to stay nailed to one place on stage, calling into play an extravagant repertoire of arm, hand, head, and upper body work. His naked body provokes a bemused scrutiny by a public, reminiscent of the Saint Petersberg intelligentsia in 1905, shocked by the extravagance of the nude bosom of Isadora Duncan. When Martens decides to move around the stage, he, at times explodes into a display of powerful runs, jumps and bounds, recalling an exuberant young Merce Cunningham. His nudity, however, is not without humor, as when he rubs his calf muscle on the floor, searching for a concrete found sound, then smacking the poor muscle for its lack of suitableness, in the manner of John Cage’s search with his prepared piano for the unusual new found sound, to be used to complement Cunningham’s choreography. Martens’ androgenous corp is complemented to advantage in a Tango, wherein the costume, his body, and choreography, embodies the elusiveness of the LGBTQI movement to be categorized or stigmatized. The solo concert is closed with the music of György Ligeti, where Martens’ choreography devolves into a single movement, frozen in time, leaving the mystery of the symbolism of the red glove covering his hand and forearm. PKO

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Past Events in 2022:

Venue : Théâtre National de La Danse Chaillot 1, place du Trocadéro, 75016 Paris, France Salle Jean Vitar

Review by: Patrick Kevin O'Hara

Date line: Saturday, June 18th , 2022
Time:  20:30

 Rachid Ouramdane Corps extrêmes 16 – 24 juin 2022 Création

 Possible Worlds explored by a tightrope walker, a climber, acrobats, and high-level athletes unified and concretized by the choreographic genius of Rachid Ouramdane, supported by the transcendent music of Jean-Baptiste Julien, unleash an epiphany of natural movement that is at the heart of all true dance. The choice of a multimedia environment brings Ouramdane’s creation Corps extrêmes into our modern hyper digitalized interactive networked world, thus, cementing an immediate visceral audience contact with his oeuvre. The delight of the work, is that the revelation of its meaning, is only revealed in the last moments of the performance. Ouramdane constructs his argument, in an ongoing dialectic with his public, unveiling in a series of highly evocative images, its ultimate resolution. His high-level athlete dance artists, in a series of solos, combinatorial compositions of nine, eight, three, ten and finally two, dance movements, provide the essence of his oeuvre. Special accolades to Nathan Paulin for unitizing choreography and concept, by interrelating his slackline work, in an especially difficult and perilous performance. Paulin’s final descent from the ethereal to the concrete, completes Ouramdane’s choreographic argument. The theatrical impact of Ouramdane’s work is augmented by bringing, the external world of the environment, into the theatre, in the form of a climbing wall, offering an enormous range of spatial possibilities, which he explores, into the now real dance world. Corps extrêmes is a must see! PKO

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Past Reviews