Performing Arts

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by Sally at 12:04 am 2007-11-18
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At times disappointing (how can you top “The Show Must Go On”?), and at others delightful, annoying, enlightening, I am still chewing on “Pichet Klunchun and Myself” these three days later.

I’ve had to describe it to several people who could not attend but wanted to know what it was like. I heard myself say “It’s kind of like ‘My Dinner Wth Andre’ and Spaulding Gray’s work,” “There wasn’t much dance. You wouldn’t like it,” and “Brilliant!” depending on where I was on the rewind of the show and who was asking. I have no idea if what I experienced and translated is true, but for me it does fall into a small mental file of thinkers I admire. Are these people eccentric (Pina Bausch, Jiri Kyllian, Anthony Hopkins)? Is that part of the appeal?

How difficult is it for Bel and Klunchun to leave their native tongues and perform (act) in english? An odd triangle of expression.

I’m sort intrigued that writer Lightsey Darst said some of it depresssed her, while Galen Truer blogged about clowning! And that Matt Paikin preferred this show to the one many of us loved in 2005, the one he almost walked out (offended) on.

I’m going to sign off and finish watching “Withnail and I” which is highly comical and only slightly depressing.

 

2 Comments

  1. “I want to disappoint you”, Bel said. ‘Ninety-five percent of the shows you pay to see are terrible’, he said. Perhaps Bel is simply asserting his right to be in the majority; his right to anti-inspiration, anti-opus, anti-climax, etc. Maybe he just fell asleep at the wheel. Or died. Maybe this was Bel’s answer to Klunchun’s refusal to ‘act out death’. Maybe Bel- unwittingly or otherwise- represented his version of the western white man’s death on stage: death by malaise, or death by detachment killing us softly, and we are him.

    Comment by Melissa Birch — 11/18/2007 @ 10:15 pm

  2. […] posts include: Jerome Bel: still thinking by Sally Rousse The Republic of Jerome Bel by Aynsley Vandenbroucke […]

    Pingback by Dance Theater Workshop » Blog Archive » Jerome Bel - People are still talking about it — 12/17/2007 @ 2:08 pm

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