Vitro Nasu

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?

Happy Birthday Pina Bausch! The great woman we love.

More on Pina Bausch, here and my favorite dance photo here.

R.I.P Pina Bausch 1940 – 2009 (archive)

Google Igor or
Happy Father’s Day
Igor by Pablo Picasso (via)

Youtube Tango for Piano

Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, Russia in 1882. We can celebrate his birthday on two days, June 17 and 18. The Orthodox Eastern religion had a different calendar than North America. (via)

Played here by Fazil Say

Found video (interesting work) The Rite Spring – (Pina Bausch version here)

Stravinsky was committed, disciplined and precise.
Because each piece is different, and none is derivative, there are no “major” and “minor categories in Stravinksy’s output. Apollo is polyphonic, Persephone homophonic: Le Sacre uses huge orchestra, Hitoire du soldat a very small one: Threni is triadic, Movement is not: the Rake’s Progress lasts two and a half hours, Epitaphium lasts one and quarter minutes. All are equally part of the total ouput: each has its own, unique, aesthetic raison d’etre. (from Master Musicians – Stravinksy by Francis Routh)

One of the most fertile partnerships in all of ballet wasn’t seen on stage, but was danced behind the scenes – the collaboration of composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer George Balanchine. Both Russian artistic émigrés to the West, together they defined neoclassical ballet throughout the 20th century by forging an amazing creative bond that spanned 50 years and resulted in the creation of 30 ballets. As Charles M. Joseph shows in his fascinating study, Stravinsky and Balanchine: A Journey of Invention, both were also great showmen.

Kabuki Player Susumu Takagi as Matsuomaru

The above photo by Hiroshi Watanabe
More for Hiroshi here.

While Hiroshi Watanabe is traditional and respectful of old custums and traditions, now we shift our attention to a Choreographer who is contemporary and daring in her approach to tradition and craft.
Yasuko Yokoshi mixes a Kabuki-and-Carver cocktail

Shuffle <> <> Yasuko Yokoshi

Born in Hiroshima Yasuko Yokoshi is fearlessly idiosyncratic.

She is a huge fan of Raymond Carver.
In this in depth interview she revealed how she ripped off Yasujiro Ozu “Tokyo Story’ for one of her dance sequences.

Travel Theory – Baka (baka; meaning idiot, stupid or fool in Japanese) Yoko’s old work.

“Inspired lunatics who work together and leave few of today’s icons unassaulted.” (Yasuko Yokoshi and Gonnie Heggen: Royal Madness at the Kitchen).

Josephine Baker By Calder

Ake Ome Koto Yoro – continuing the tradition of snappy Japanese new year greetings I learned on this blog last year.

Mutant Eggplant New Year Greetings

In pictures: Celebrations of New Year (BBC)
(From Sydney and other cities around the world)
Osechi – Japanese New Years feast for your eyes.

Mark Morris image source design by Maira Kalman
“Four Saints, Three Acts,” by Gertrude Stein

Gong Li celebrated her birthday yesterday.
Gong Li is a Capricorn/Snake like Mao Tse Tung, Martin Luther King and Mohamed Ali. They are big people with presence.
Matisse and Paul Bowles were also born on Dec 31.

“Saturated in hothouse colors, the three-act “Lantern” is an intense dance-theater version of the multi-award-winning film by Chinese auteur Zhang Yimou (“Hero,” “House of Flying Daggers”). The stage version is as lush and fluidly cinematic as Zhang’s — which, ironically, was banned in China when it was released in 1991.” (LA Times)

“Raise the Red Lantern is now a “Chinese Ballet making an American premiere this month in Berkeley and will be also at the Orange County Performing Arts Center for six performances beginning Tuesday. (The company then goes to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.)
“Having seen and admired the film of the same name, I have to report that the ballet is entirely different and only the theme of female subjugation remains” (from past review when it showcased in England)

A few days ago BBC had this curious article about Mosuo Women in China – it says ” The Chinese region with women in charge”

The two images from BBC.

Now read Mr. Zhang Jia in a comment to the blog Peking Duck referring to this same article.
“A huge fuss is made of the supposedly “matriarchal” Mosuo who live around Lugu Lake. The Mosuo were just one of a whole patchwork of local ethnic groups who had adapted in different ways to their environment. They mingled with Tibetans who practised polyandry [several brothers, one wife] and Han Chinese who still practise polygamy with their Da Laopo and Xiao Laopo. The Mosuo were a lot more than just a matriarchal society: to label them as some unique sexual social group is to misrepresent them as freaks. Unfortunately, they have attracted the attention of prurient tour group visitors who come thinking that they will be able to partake of casual sex in the name of a “walking marriage”.
If you want to read more about the traditional mix of Mongols, Mosuo, Pumi, Naxi and Tibetans in this area, try:
In the Footsteps of Joseph Rock

Edge on Dan Sperber talking about Anthropology.
“Anthropologists started studying themselves and trying to reflect on their own situation. It was a kind of reflective anthropology, which had a number of interesting aspects. I certainly don’t think it was useless although it became a bit obsessive. Parallel to these developments, were the post-structuralist and then post-modernist movements in the humanities and the social sciences, the development of “cultural studies,” and many anthropologists felt at ease in these movements. This produced a new kind of discourse, taking the study of other cultures as much as a pretext as a subject matter to be investigated in a standard scholarly manner. Again, some of the products of this appraoch are of genuine interest, but on the whole more harm has been done than good.”

Bach, Handel and Purcell

Happy Birthday, Mark!
Mark Morris was born on August 29, 1956 (Virgo/Monkey – a cunning perfectionist.)

(Mark Morris introduced me to Lou Harrison’s music).
More Mark Morris (4 dance clips from Mozart and Dido & Aeneas)

The Man I Love

Happy Birthday! Pina Bausch.

Danzons

The mystery image from the previous post (July 26) is from Kontakthof.

Pina (short for Philippine) was born nearby in Solingen in 1940, three years before the Battle of the Ruhr. (Pina, Queen of the Deep)
More interviews, here.
One way to get an introduction to Pina’s work is to see a documentary film by another brave avant garde filmmaker Chantal Akerman, (a brief description about the film here).

See Palermo Palermo on youtube

Her work is more than the dance, these mysterious and powerful photos speak for themselves.
Click the links to see the photos.
Cactus image from here.
Arien

Nelken – Feb. 2005 review

Growing old disgracefully How a bunch of untrained 60-somethings are breathing new life into a Pina Bausch classic.

Cate Blanchet said “If I had my time again, I’d do anything to work with the choreographer Pina Bausch; her work is beautiful. When dance theatre is at its most perfect, you think, ‘Why does anyone ever need to speak?’ To dispense with words entirely… I wish I could do that.” (from here and also from other interviews including one from Bravo’s actors studio)

R.I.P Pina Bausch 1940 -2009 (Archive)

Long, long ago, I wrote a paper called Japanese Farmhouses for my art history class. Seeing “Twilight Samurai” brought the memory back. My earlier post indicated my intention to see the film and I finally found the DVD with a different and unattractive cover.

Twilight Samurai

Twilight Samurai is narrated by Keiko Kishi who made a brief appeance at the end. Madame Kishi received Legion of Honor from the French government in 2002. (From here.) She worked with Ozu (Early Spring) , with Kon Ichikawa (Ototo, Makioka Sisters), with Sydney Pollack (Yakuza) and with Kobayashi (Kwaidan).

Hiroyuki Sanada is finished shooting the “White Countess”.
He did his best not to blow Tom Cruise away in “The Last Samurai”
(It still looked like Tom Cruise got blown away by many excellent Japanese cast).
Hiroyuki Sanada as the Fool in King Lear.

King Lear
The Fool with King Lear (Nigel Hawthorne)
Receiving the MBE for his work in King Lear with The Royal Shakespeare Company(from here.)
Hiroyuki Sanada, a martial art trained actor had a singing career and played Romeo and Hamlet when he took acting seriously.
Found this film (Tadon and Chikua) today, Hiroyuki Sanada with Yakusho Koji – looks like a comedy. I doubt that I will ever get to see this film.

Portrait of Tanaka Min

No this is not John Hurt playing a Japanese character, his name is Tanaka Min and you can catch him acting in “Twilight Samurai”.

Tanaka Min is a butoh dancer who got recruited by Yoji Yamada to play against Hiroyuki Sanada who is the main character. Yoji picked him for his body and his face and of course he was looking for a dancer to play a character.
He wanted to show a slow death. Min Tanaka lost many pounds to prepare for this role by eating only beans for his diet. (“The unbearable lightness of beans” put in effect as a workable diet regimentation.”)
His name Min Tanaka can be shortend to mean Minka
Here, the famous village Shirakawa
(Film location is in Yamagata and I have not done the research).

(William Shakespeare was born on April 23 – the actual birthday is not known).
We can move from King Lear to Macbeth.
Check this old web art.
La regina , mio signore , è morta (The Queen, my lord is dead).
The best place to waste your glory – hypermacbeth by dlsan. (An Italian Shakepearean actor and web artist.)

The Russian Hamlet, where I got introduced to Shostakovich – the greatest filmscore composed by a master.