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Comes the Revolution: A Tired Liberal Take on 1789
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16508 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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11 / 1989 |
772 Words |
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Maya Wallach
Maya Wallach is a dance writer, critic, and photographer
currently based in Los Angeles |
The French Ministry of Culture and France's Bicentennial Commission apparently felt that choreographer Maguy Marin, who had earned an international reputation for her 1985 Cinderella, danced entirely in masks, was just the person to create a ballet inspired by the events of 1789.
The resulting work, Eh, Qu'est-ce que ca m'fait a moi!? (Hey, What's All This?), was premiered by Marin's company at the prestigious Avignon Festival in July. Now playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's New Wave Festival in November, it has been contracted for performances throughout Europe in coming months.
The quirky title comes from a popular song of the revolutionary period, reflecting what the petites gens thought about the newly proclaimed Rights of Man and its effect on their lives. Marin, working with Denis Mariotte, a musician and designer, incorporated ideas from Antonin Artaud's Theatre de l'Absurde and the black humor of the late Boris Vian with their own inspirations, putting a rather tired liberal slant, not to say bias, on the whole work.
Broad Caricature
They chose to concentrate on broad caricature, using twelve dancers to conjure up the revolutionary masses. Basically, the dancing was limited to heavily counter pointing the simplistic lyrics.
The actual performance at first seemed rather like some old television variety show. The stage was covered with dirty gray building blocks of every conceivable size, being pushed around by white-coated workmen.
... (2000 of 4510 Characters)
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