Vitro Nasu

Chantal Akerman:Moving Through Time and Space at MIT List Visual Art Center -
May 2 - July 6, 2008

Chantal Akerman retraces a journey from the end of summer to deepest winter, from East Germany, across Poland and the Baltics, to Moscow. (via)

D’est on youtube

From the Other Side is an unsentimental look at the plight of illegal Mexican immigrants as they attempt the dangerous crossing from Agua Prieta in Sonora, Mexico, to Douglas, Ariz. (Via)

Last month Marian Goodman gallery (New York) exhibited Chantal Akerman’s photographs. (Chantal’s main audience is from museums, galleries and film societies.)

The first time I was introduced to Chantal Akerman’a work was her documenatary film on Pina Bausch.
(An Italian version of this film is cut awkwardly in 6 parts, now provided on youtube).

Part Five

Other samples of film clips from youtube
The Buzzcocks: Boredom - from “Jeanne Dielmain”

Hotel Monterey (1972) Akerman - passage (Glenn Gould Bach aria is added to the silent film footage on Youtube)

A Couch in New York - trailer (Chantal’s most accessible film starring Juliet Binoche and William Hurt)

A week ago I decided to see “La Captive” starring my favorite actress Sylvie Testud.
Here was a review by Hoberman (scroll down)

Chantal Akerman’s La Captive is another sort of psycho-epistemological inquiry that asks: How can we know another?

Visual as La Captive is in its rigorously formal compositions, the filmmaker is straightforwardly concerned with language. She filters her Proust through the old nouveau roman of Duras or Robbe-Grillet to fixate on recurring phrases: “au contraire,” “if you like,” “you think so?” Similarly, Akerman takes situations from Proust and elaborately defamiliarizes them.

More films by Chantal Akerman by Acquarello

Baryshnikov at Joinville

I saw Mikhail Baryshnikov on Charlie Rose yesterday.
Micha is showing his dance photographs (Merce Cunningham dancers).
Charlie Rose managed to insult him. He suggested he should try filmmaking like Julian Schnabel. Charlie often acts real weird like that. Telling people you can do better.

Micha Teaching Ballet class in Cuba 2007 (Youtube)

Born To Be Wild: Ethan, Angel, Jose and Vladimir (Mark Morris working with the elite male dancers)

Vladimir Malakhov - Voyage

And one more Malakhov - Handel (short clip)

This was the most satisfying and fantastic men’s competition we have ever seen. Two artistic skaters were rewarded with gold and bronze and an athlete came back to sneak in to take the silver.
Jeffery Buttle - Gold

Buttle followed up Jourbet’s spectacular skating with this beautiful and flawless performance that beat Jourbet. (Ararat was from a film by Atom Egoyan)

See also Buttle’s short program on youtube. (Music by Astor Piazzolla, choreographed by David Wilson)

Brian Jourbet - Silver

Brian Jourbet performed brilliantly with great power. He has improved in many areas. Kurt Browning helped him with his footwork.

Johnny Weir- Bronze (Short program - he placed second)

Johnny skated conservatively in his long program for the worlds. He was very honest, saying that he had a Michelle Kwan moment referring to the time Kwan lost the gold to Tara Lapinsiki in the Olympics,’
(Here is a clip of his long program from the Nationals.)

I have been watching old elegant skating by John Curry on youtube. Today is Philip Glass’s birthday; a good way to celebrate his birthday is with a piece done by two great skaters from the forgotten past. Curry wanted to introduce the idea that figure skating can also be an art form, not just a sport with medals, winners, and losers.

He was light on his feet like Fred Astaire, see here. Today Sasha Cohen, Johnny Weir, and Matt Savoie have inherited Curry’s elegant skating.

Nocturn by Grieg

Here is a piece by Twyler

His life was cut short with AIDS.
Found this article claiming that he died in the arms of Alan Bates.

See Cafe Muller here and Pina Bausch here.

Mark Morris (pictured) has choreographed a dance called Looky to five of my Disklavier studies, and it’s being presented at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston(via)

Like many of Morris’s older dances, such as “Mythologies” (1986) and “Ten Suggestions” (1981), “Looky” is at once an homage to classical and early modern dance forms and a comment on them. Looky is a playful premiere from Mark Morris.

Many of us are not fortunate enough to keep up with Morris’ new works. I was happy to find a clip from Mozart Dances and clips from Dido and Aeneas.

Mozart Dances

Dido Aeneas - Henry Purcell

The argument is even weaker in the case of Dido and Aeneas, which is one of Morris’s most starkly beautiful and touching pieces. In its recent BAM incarnation, Dido’s classically rigorous structure was more visible than ever, because Morris—who used to dance both the role of Dido and the role of the Sorceress—had for the first time given away his two parts, one to a woman and one to a man. There were losses entailed in this changing-of-the-guard, but there were also gains. Without Morris to draw your eye every time he was onstage, you could actually see the precise details and careful symmetry of the other dancers’ steps. And though I missed the presence of Morris himself—and missed, as well, the implications of the traditional double-casting, whereby the victim of the tragic love affair was also the manipulative destroyer of that affair—I understood that this version had a clarity and purity that offered us something new. (Wendy Lesser, the idea of Camp)

Here is an older, original version with Mark Morris dancing.

Dido’s Lament

Mark Morris previous post includes photos of musical masters.

Nihonbashi

This is a photo of Tamasaburo Bando, a Kabuki actor who specializes in onnagata (women’s roles). He is known in the West as well as in Japan, and has worked with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Yo-Yo Ma (dancing “Struggle for Hope” in the Inspired by Bach video series). More here

Playing puppet (bunraku) dance (Youtube)

Nastassia directed by Wajda

Photo of Bando Tamasaburo by Baryshinikov

Inabune (Youtube) See for design, costume and camerawork.

Courtesan (Youtube)

Princess Yang Kwei-Fei or Yokihi (Youtube)

Yokihi
above and White Lion below

Here, a brief interview and see his powerful and bold lion dance.

Two years later we now have this on youtube. (See previous post on this tap dance number)
Only Takeshi would conjur tapdancing with “geta”
They look like tap sandals made to look like geta.

Happy Birthday to “Aniki” Takeshi Kitano and to “Kyoju” Ruichi Sakamoto. (Jan 18, 1947 for Takeshi and Jan 17, 1952 for Sakamoto.)

Found this great clip - Sakamoto channelling Warhol and Steve Reich.

Go to sitesakamoto and click on the moving elegy Bring Them Home. (The Professor is an activist for Peace.)

Nagisa Oshima launched the two of them onto the world stage with “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”, both Kitano and Sakamoto had supporting roles to David Bowie.

Recently Sakamoto composed the filmscore for Tony Takitani. (Youtube trailer is here)

Radha’s Dance from the River by Jean Renoir

We added the dance sequence on youtube. (See previous post here.)
Additional Note:
The movie River served as a launching pad for the directorial career of Satyajit Ray, who met and befriended Renoir during the shooting of this film.

Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, & Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu on Charlie Rose - an hour on film and friendship
Alfonso Cuaron is currently filming a drama, based on Mexico’s violent student revolt of 1968.

Hanif Kureishi on the birth of “Venus”

One sees why O’Toole jumped at the part. Hanif Kureishi has written a hugely impressive script - funny, poignant, wise and politically incorrect in equal measure. (via)

Daniel Craig was in “Mother” by Kureishi.

It’s obviously me and Roger, and our preoccupations, and our interest in people who are older, our interest in people who are in the second half of their lives, and finding a spark in them, I guess. Roger and I are not particularly old, but we both turned fifty. We’re on the last lap, as it were. Both of us are thinking about that, but also about bringing people into the cinema, characters who are not normally represented. (via)

Who is Orlando Gibbons 1583 - 1625? One of Glenn Gould’s favorites.
Listen to “Gaillard” played by Glenn Gould
Just learned this from Sylvie Guillem’s homepage.

Part I - a list on Sylvie Guillem

1 A Diva Ballerina’s Long Leap ( NYtimes)

2 Sylvie Guillem on youtube, Wet Woman

3 Wet Woman, (short version without a desk prop).

4 History of Dance page from Sylvie’s homepage with sound.

5 Blisters (Bach Organ piece?)

6 Listen to “A Room” for Piano by John Cage, Xenakis is here and Villa-Lobos is here.
On Guillaume de Machaut c.1300-1377, Sylvie wrote,
“One of the first composers, and very modern.”

7 Synopsis Sylvie’s hilarious take on silly stories from Ballet Classic.

Part II - Nothing to do with Slyvie Guillem

More listing than sold

The question always floats around as to whether Happy Together would have been a ‘better’ film with the Shirley Kwan sequence in. There is no clear answer. (Long Reviews:Exiles, Escapees and Emigrés - a look at Buenos Aires Zero Degree (1997)

Shirley Kwan
in Happy Together.

We can view the deleted sequence of Shirley Kwan from Happy Together on youtube.

(It has become our tradition to pay attention to deleted scenes from Wong Kar Wai films. See previous post here.)

Love me or leave me, we (Max and Thomas) are happy and jubilant together.

More great dance links from metafilter, here.

Rhada dance sequence from Jean’s Renoir “Le Fleuve” or the River.

This dance scene is part of story within a story. Radha plays a mixed race character called Melanie in this coming of age film.

The review of “The River by Beth Gilligan

Interestingly, Melanie’s character does not appear in the Godden novel, but was added by Renoir, who wanted a non-colonialist voice to be heard in his film

Who is Radha?

See the Dance on YouTube.