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Vitro NasuIconoclastic Incubator
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Trisha Brown
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R.I.P Madelyn Dunham (Obama’s Grandmother) – To the Mountaintop – Joe Klein
“She was a quiet hero” Obama on youtube.
Byodo (Digital image by
Fung Ching Kelling)
Byodo image is dedicated to Madelyn Dunham. Fung Ching lives in Honolulu, not too far from Obama’s grandmother’s apartment. (See Byodo Inn in Haiku village).
(Digital image by Fung Ching Kelling)
Akram Khan Zero Degrees
About a decade ago, the London-born choreographer Akram Khan and his Bangladeshi cousin were boarding a train from India to Bangladesh when police confiscated their passports and wouldn’t return them until Khan’s cousin slipped them some money. Then the cousins found a dead man in their carriage.
Khan moved to help the man’s distraught wife, but his cousin told him to stay put. “They’ll just blame you for the death,” he said. “They need to blame someone, so they’ll blame you.” They’d recognize that Khan was a foreigner–he had insubordination in his eyes–and they’d throw him in prison and he’d never get out.
When Khan and the Moroccan-Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui sat down to plan a joint work in 2005, Cherkaoui asked Khan to tell him something he’d never told anyone before. Khan told this story.
Akram and Juliette 
Juliette Binoche will debut as a dancer, choreographed by Akram Khan and set design by Anish Kapoor.
Portrait of the artist Akram Khan
Sacred Monsters by Sylvie Guillem, choreographed by Akram Khan (Youtube).
(The fact that Juliette Binoche is not a professional trained dancer like Sylvie may bring more surprises and warmth to Khan’s work, as evidenced by the sample of this clip).
Rhada’s Dance (traditional Indian dance excerpted from Jean Renoir’s film “The River”)
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker –
Rosas_Fase_Clapping Music
De Keersmaeker’s biography here.
(See Happy Geta Feet – Japanese tap dancing video from previous post)
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Listen to Delia Derbyshire’s Experimental dance track
Delia is a pioneer in Electronic music
A recent Guardian article called her ‘the unsung heroine of British electronic music’, probably because of the way her infectious enthusiasm subtly cross-pollinated the minds of many creative people. She had exploratory encounters with Paul McCartney, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Martin, Pink Floyd, Brian Jones, Anthony Newley, Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson.
Delia at BBC 
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).
Other samples of film clips from youtube:
“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.
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)
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.
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)
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
