Azzedine Alaïa, 82

Azzedine Alaïa, Fashion’s Most Independent Designer, Is Dead at 82
by Vanessa Friedman, The New York Times, November 18, 2017

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The Guggenheim's journey into the mystic

Armand Point: The Annunciation or Ancilla Domini (L’Annonciation), 1895
Tempera on panel, 99 x 51 cm
Private collection, courtesy Sotheby’s
Photo: Courtesy Sotheby’s

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

presents

Mystical Symbolism: 
The Salon de la Rose+Croix, 1892–1897

Open now through October 4

Ferdinand Hodler: The Disappointed Souls (Les âmes déçues), 1892
Oil on canvas, 120 x 299 cm
Kuntsmuseum Bern, Staat Bern
Photo: Courtesy Kuntsmuseum Bern, Staat Bern

"The world is too much with us," wrote William Wordsworth, critiquing new realities wrought in Britain's first Industrial Age. Nearly a century later, French Rosicrucian writer Joséphin Péladan (1858–1918) struck a similar note, creating space for artists seeking refuge from a swiftly-changing Europe through the embrace of classical myth, Biblical narratives, nature's elevating beauty and the more ethereal, spiritual climes of imagination. The Guggenheim's new show, Mystical Symbolism: The Salon de la Rose+Croix, curated by Vivien Greene, samples Symbolist works that appeared in Péladan's annual salon of international works in Paris over its six years, 1892-1897.

Installation view
Photo: David Heald
©Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2017

Greene's installation spaces these works in a way that would encourage the sort of concentration and contemplation Péladan surely intended to inspire. But with its wan religious iconography intertwined with pagan flourishes, inert androgyny and women relegated to either virginal or monstrous roles, most of this visual art will likely merit attention mainly for its historical, influential connections to other artistic mediums of the period. I glanced at and breezed by much of it--the familiar (Khnopff, Delville) and the unexpected, such as Charles Maurin's remarkably political painting, The Dawn of Labor--but did find myself lingering with one pencil-and-chalk work on paper.

Armand Point's April or Saint Cecilia (1896) depicts the martyred patron of musicians strumming her harp before a lush cascade of ivy. Point's chiseled modeling of the bones of Cecilia's articulated hands held my eyes once and again. We are meant to notice those bones. Although willowy and idealized in her femininity, Cecilia is neither flattened nor vague and evanescent, unlike so many of the good girls and femmes mystérieuses rendered in Symbolist allegory. She fully inhabits a defined, structured body. And like legendary Orpheus, a subject popular with the Symbolists, she expresses a transcendent power through music.

Audio introduction to the exhibit and related poetry readings: click

Related programming: click

Visitor information: click

Ticketing: click

Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue (between 88th and 89th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Yvette Chauviré, 99

Yvette Chauviré, Ballerina and Symbol of French Culture, Dies at 99
by Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, October 19, 2016

That new French magic from CIE 14:20

Shadow puppeteer Philippe Beau and his avian friend
(photo courtesy of CIE 14:20) 

What quiets a theater packed with boisterous kids and parents? Phillippe Beau's shadow puppetry, for one thing. I speak with confidence, having heard that with my own ears at French Institute Alliance Française's Florence Gould Hall, one of several city hosts for the new Tilt Kids Festival. Launched by FIAF and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, the festival offers a wealth of family-oriented arts, ideas and fun at venues like BAM Fisher, The Invisible Dog Art Center and, of course, Time Square's New Victory Theater. It runs through April 3.

Accompanied by the wonderful pianist Madeleine Cazenave, Beau performed a segment in the magie nouvelle (new magic) production, Cabaret de Magie Nouvelle, presented by CIE 14:20. The Parisian troupe also featured renowned sleight-of-hand magician, Yann Frisch. If you missed these two masterful performers, I'm sad for you. Don't let that happen again.

My attempt to recreate Beau's tricks in order to describe them better for you has proven futile (and might require hand splints). Let me just say that this digital magician does not only pull a rabbit out of the "hat" of his imagination but produces a complete menagerie of animals--a stag with magnificent antlers; a snarling wolf; a galloping, rearing horse; a cat with swishing tail, licking its fur and scratching its ear. A bird feeds its young, later teaching the fledgling how to fly. A lover plants a kiss on a shyer, somewhat startled partner. Even the Devil himself makes an appearance. I'm not sure why but, hey, if you can form a Devil shape with your shadow puppetry, why the hell not?

If your notion of shadow puppetry has always been something amateurish and cheesy, please, get over yourself. This is new shadow puppetry. (I might as well follow the French trend of "new circus," "new magic," "new whatever.") As practiced by Beau, it is a razor-sharp storytelling skill and damned awesome.

Cabaret de Magie Nouvelle has closed, but there's much more Tilt up ahead through April 3, from the visual to the gastronomic arts, co-curated by Lili Chopra (FIAF) and Violaine Huisman (BAM). For information on the festival's lineup, click here.

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Luc Bondy, 67

Luc Bondy, Swiss-Born Theater and Opera Director, Dies at 67
by William Grimes, The New York Times, December 1, 2015

Swallowing her whole: Volmir Cordeiro at Danspace Project

Volmir Cordeiro in Inês
(photo: Cristiano Prim)

One day, I met a woman named Inês. I wasn’t satisfied with just looking at her – I wanted to get closer. I immediately put aside my role as an observer and began to live with this “being of flesh.” It wasn’t enough to capture her; I had to swallow her whole.  -- Volmir Cordeiro

The figure you see in the photo above is Inês.

Or perhaps I should say it is Brazil-born dancer Volmir Cordeiro encasing the being of Inês in his rangy, barelegged body in a study named, Inês, presented by and at Danspace Project with Performa.

That's already a lot surrounding a woman who is not there, and this does not even take into account the audience also surrounding a woman who is not there.

Inêssssssss.  The cry of her name issues from Cordeiro's lips like an invocation of an orixá. Or a viper's hiss. Or a spray of rum from the mouth of a macumba priestess. Or all of these things at once.

Inês lives. Yes, an actual person, a sexagenarian and mom. By word of Cordeiro (and a useful post-show Q&A with Miguel Gutierrez and translator Patricia Hoffbauer), we know two other things: 1) She wants to get on a reality TV show. 2) She has had "a radical amount of plastic surgery," as noted by Gutierrez, to make herself a better candidate for elusive and likely ephemeral celebrity.

We must imagine what she looks like. What Cordeiro looks like borders on the wolfish. And when he strides right up to the edge of the audience's front row, right up to the eyeballs there, he can intimidate. Especially since he holds that place of dominance for a long time. Even when swiveling his limbs, or moving sideways along the row or venturing inside an aisle, he's a force that seems to want to pin you in your seat. You don't know what, in the very next second, could burst from him. And you don't want to know.

In your own head, you're walking on eggshells.

Is that Inês?

If so, she seems unbalanced enough to achieve the reality TV stardom she desires.

He/she is reckless with his/her body--especially when Cordeiro tapes his eyelids shut--in ways that make empathic/empathetic people like me cringe.

Is that Inês?

A useful tidbit from Danspace Project's material on Cordeiro (now based in Paris):

Volmir Cordeiro...is currently working on a PhD thesis on figures of marginality in contemporary dance at Paris VIII University. His studies and time spent in the favelas of Rio with Lia Rodrigues’ company reflect a desire to bring to life those who are “condemned to weaken, disappear, derail.” In previous works Cordeiro has explored the physicality of marginal and underprivileged figures.

Inês fascinates her observers, even as she scares them. How strange that her dream is such a flimsy thing, far flimsier than she herself must be.

Final performance of Inês: tonight at 9pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

William Forsythe takes post at Paris Opera Ballet

William Forsythe joining Paris Opera Ballet as associate choreographer
by David Ng, Los Angeles Times, February 4, 2015

Navigating the Louvre: It gets better

Revamping the Louvre to Lose That Lost Feeling
by Doreen Carvajal, The New York Times, December 14, 2014

Mavis Gallant, 91

Mavis Gallant, 91, Dies; Her Stories Told of Uprooted Lives and Loss
by Helen T. Verongos, The New York Times, February 18, 2014

Photography by Carlos Cruz-Diez at Americas Society

Carlos Cruz-Diez. Los diablos de Yare, San Francisco de Yare, estado de Miranda, Venezuela, 1951. Image courtesy of the artist.

Americas Society (Council of the Americas)

presents

Within the Light Trap: Carlos Cruz-Diez in Black and White

February 4 - March 22

Wednesday-Saturday, 12-6pm

Curated by Gabriela Rangel and assisted by Christina De León

Venezuelan-born, Paris-based artist Carlos Cruz-Diez’s longstanding research in color has won him an international reputation as one of the most important figures of Latin American modernism.
Cruz-Diez’s empirical exploration of photography is further grounded on social preoccupations the artist developed in the 1940s, when he became aware of the rapid demographic and economic transformations caused by modernization in his native Venezuela.

Since then, he has documented everyday life rituals linked to the vernacular, such as local folklore festivities in rural communities and the viral emergence of shantytowns in Caracas. He has portrayed important intellectual figures linked to popular culture and music who were key interlocutors for him and his generation. Cruz-Diez’s interest on local popular culture through photography also laid a foundation for a number of realist paintings that conveyed social concerns he later redefined with the use of color as a participatory element. 

Americas Society (Visual Arts Gallery)
680 Park Avenue (between 68th and 69th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

André Schiffrin, 78

André Schiffrin, Publishing Force and a Founder of New Press, Is Dead at 78

by Robert D. McFadden, The New York Times, December 1, 2013

Steppin' out with Rick Owens in Paris

Rick Owens Paris Fashion Week Show Took Runway Diversity To A Whole New Level

by The Huffington Post, September 26, 2013

International Dance Day 2013: Message from Lin Hwai-min

Lin Hwai-min (photo ©LIU Chen-hsiang)

It is said in the Great Preface of "The Book of Songs,"

an anthology of Chinese poems dating from the 10th to the 7th century BC:

"The emotions are stirred and take form in words.

If words are not enough, we speak in sighs.

If sighs are not enough, we sing them.

If singing is not enough, then unconsciously

our hands dance them and our feet tap them."

Dance is a powerful expression. 

It speaks to earth and heaven.

It speaks of our joy, our fear and our wishes.

Dance speaks of the intangible, yet reveals the state of mind of a person and 

the temperaments and characters of a people.

Like many cultures in the world, the indigenous people in Taiwan dance in circle. 

Their ancestors believed that evils would be kept out of the circle. 

With hands linked, they share the warmth of each other and move in communal pulses. 

Dance brings people together. 

And dance happens at the vanishing point.

Movements disappear as they occur. 

Dance exists only in that fleeting instant. 

It is precious. It is a metaphor of life itself.

In this digital age, images of movements take millions of forms. 

They are fascinating.

But, they can never replace dance because images do not breathe. 

Dance is a celebration of life.

Come, turn off your television, switch off your computer, and come to dance. 

Express yourself through that divine and dignified instrument, which is our body.

Come to dance and join people in the waves of pulses. 

Seize that precious and fleeting moment.

Come to celebrate life with dance.

Lin Hwai-min,
Artistic Director, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan and Cloud Gate 2

The International Theatre Institute (ITI) is pleased to announce that the celebration of International Dance Day 2013 will take place Monday April 29th, 2013 at Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris, starting at 8 pm. The Taiwanese choregrapher Lin Hwai-min, author of this year's message, and his company Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taïwan are the guests of the 2013 edition of International Dance Day. They will perform extracts from their works at the occasion. In 1982 the Dance Committee of the ITI founded International Dance Day to be celebrated every year on 29 April, anniversary of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), the creator of modern ballet. The intention of the International Dance Day Message is to celebrate Dance, to revel in the universality of this art form, to cross all political, cultural and ethnic barriers and bring people together with a common language – Dance.

Every year, a prominent choregrapher and/or dancer is selected to write a message about Dance and its importance in our societies. Translated in more than twenty languages, the message is circulated through the ITI network (more than 90 national Centres and cooperating members) and performing arts organizations, starting from April. Time magazine talks of Lin Hwai-min as one of "Asia's heroes". Founder of the companies  Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taïwan and Cloud Gate 2, the choregrapher's work has been internationaly acclaimed.

Art Roundup: A Stein is a rose; radical cameras

Fans of Gertrude Stein, make your pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to view The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde, an immersive introduction to the prophetic taste of Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael and her sister-in-law, Sarah. Picasso, Renoir, Manet...all of that's fine, but what really lifted me were the images of the writer herself--photos, paintings, sculpture infused with her presence and the energy of how she was perceived by her contemporaries. The Steins Collect opens to the public on Tuesday, February 28 and runs through June 3. For information, click here.

Detail, Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906
Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met will also host a Gallery Workshop on Art and Writing: Making Creative Connections, led by Claire E. Moore, assistant Museum educator on Friday, March 30, at 6:30pm.

Explore the synergies between the artists and writers who were part of famed collector Gertrude Stein's Paris as you listen to inspiring literary excerpts, view works in the exhibition The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde, and respond through writing.

At the Met's Carson Family Hall, Uris Center for Education. Fee: $35. For more information or to purchase tickets, click here.

Also highly recommended:

The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951 at The Jewish Museum, an exhibition of documentary photography-- most often treating social issues and conditions--that can surprise and inspire today's viewers by its fine aesthetic vision. The Radical Camera continues through March 25. For complete information, click here.

Time for a dance interlude with Gilles Jobin

The Moebius Strip (2001, 26 min. video)

by Gilles Jobin

A sensual, fluid, hypnotic exploration of a “human sculpture”: the bodies of five dancers pass, cross, follow, intertwine with each other. A video of dance, adaptation of Swiss choreographer Gilles Jobin’s The Moebius Strip,created at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris during the spring of 2001.

Presented by dance-tech.tv.

For more "innovation in motion" from dance-tech.tv, click here.

Wilde kisses!

To Oscar (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Oscar Wilde’s Tomb Sealed From Admirers’ Kisses
by John Tagliabue, The New York Times, December 15, 2011

Monet rocks Paris

Paris Rediscovers Monet’s Magic at the Grand Palais

by Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, October 4, 2010

Two great arts residencies with June deadlines

A Studio in the Woods (New Orleans, LA) 

Changing Landscapes: A Dialogue Between Art and the Environment

deadline: June 18

International Residence @ Couvent des Recollets (Paris)

offered to established foreign artists and writers

deadline: June 20 

Sankai Juku in Paris

My review of the extraordinary Butoh troupe Sankai Juku at Théâtre de la Ville (Paris) is here at Dance Magazine.

at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

(c)2010, Deborah Feller

Père Lachaise Cemetery