In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag bounces around and between the issues and complexities that arise when things like war, art, and entertainment are confused with and for each other in the world of photography.  She marches briefly through many histories, mostly from the 20^th century, including that of war, paintings, and photography.  She includes, but refuses to focus on, disenchanting tales (like one of the staged Iwo Jima victory), and instead exerts her efforts on the many and varied influences and affects that these photographs have and have had, asserting that a photograph’s caption or publication date can grossly change our understanding of the photograph itself, can grossly effect a photograph’s reception, despite the prevalent idea that photography, the photographer, and the photograph are all objective objects, i.e., those tangible things which both are real and depict reality.  Though at times it seems as if Sontag is simply trying to dethrone the role of photography (particularly war photography) from its high position of authoritative story telling, where photographs behave as factual pieces of evidence, she is actually doing much more than this, something far less naïve.  Instead of advocating for the blind discrediting of photography and the re-positioning of writing and painting to its previously, (perhaps) more highly esteemed location, she is actually, quite importantly, encouraging the reader to see more frequently and more critically the complications that lie between products of reality, perceptions of products of reality, and the experience of reality itself.  She is called to re-iterate what has become commonplace in postmodern thought (though not yet in postmodern living), that all is subjective, all is valuable and questionable, all is worthy and vulnerable…that to question, investigate, and challenge, is a noble thing, a necessary thing, and that we should never equate.  Her punch line at the end let’s us know that although photographs might seem to bring us a closer to a conflict, and do have a specific and special role in presenting conflict and world events to us, they can never substitute or adequately represent the event itself.  That the photograph (like all things, essentially) exists as part, as a very small part, of much larger systems, happenings, histories, and circumstances.  The book is brilliantly written, quickly read, incredibly appropriate, and highly recommended.

This is nearly the entire work (in two clips) - just a bit at the beginning has been left out because the footage we captured wasn't too great.  I premiered this work at the Fringe Club in Hong Kong in July 2007, as part of a shared evening of choreography, with Emily Woo Zeller, titled "Corresponding Constructions". 

The work itself is largely based on my perception of a sketch Anna Timofeyeva made of me....so my perception of someone's perception of me.  As it's based on these ideas of identity and perception, I'm utilizing repetition throughout the piece as a means/attempt to present familiar material in new contexts, so as to make visible a new statement/reality/perception of the material itself,  making the argument that context and framing are ever present and will always affect the way we understand everything...ourselves, environment, others, histories, futures, presence, etc.  We can also think of existence this way, as constant re-framing of things familiar.  Throughout life our body continues to produce, more or less, the same cells built on the same DNA models and of the same materials, all the time...but they're NEW cells...and as our body is filled with new cells, and emptied of old ones, we become 'new'...though all of this new material has really just been re-framed/re-organized....such that we are always new and different and simultaneously always as we were.

This 'task' or 'message' may not be discernible to/for the audience.  I'm convinced that it's not absolutely necessary for them to 'get it'. Most important with this work (and all my work) is that the audience takes their own path to understanding what they're seeing (their own frames determine their own perception).  By having a clear task for myself and the work,  though, I can have clear direction, focus, and rigor during the process, and clarity during performance, such that the audience might be able to understand that I'm doing something - even if they don't immediately understand what I'm doing. Comments appreciated - more work to come.

Video:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkpRel0yyWc&feature=related

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nwo8x-oivc&feature=related

I suppose I've rediscovered my obsession with Forsythe - and what a wonderful re-discovery it has been!  I'm sure this is due, in part at least, to thinking about my own company...the work that I want to make, the affect I want it to have, and the relationships I want to have with my dancers and my work...basically everything.  In being frustrated that my first video-post was taken down, I've been searching just a bit for other clips about this work - and came across this absolutely fantastic recording of a rehearsal.  Featured in the 10 minute clip (ALL of which is worth watching) are both the duet I mentioned in the first Forsythe blog, and also the solo posted in the 2nd one.  It's wonderful to get an opportunity to see how Forsythe works with his dancers...and perhaps even more so, great to see how the work itself was developed, how the dancers 'figured' things out and etc.  Often the process is infinitely more interesting than the performance itself.

 

However,  San Francisco Ballet will be performing this work, January 29 to February 8, 2009, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, if you'd like to see it live.

 www.sfballet.org

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtpF7A_o0v0&feature=related

So - the first video disappeared, but I found it again!  So now we've got three awesome examples of Forsythe's work.  A duet, then a solo, and then a 10 minute clip from rehearsal.  All important, all awesome.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLWDtbHNzxw

Not my favorite Forsythe ballet - but a damn good one nonetheless and arguably his most important work, as it cemented his place in the canon.  Created on the Paris Opera Ballet and premiered in 1987. The music is by Thom Willems.  Just after Balanchine died, Forsythe emerged as the internationally heralded champion of ballet - providing a new (and much needed) take on neo-classicism and 'contemporary ballet' - making it a relevant form for the 21st century.  The angular aesthetics of Balanchine are sufficiently evident here, but also evident are the boundaries Forsythe pushes and the risks he takes as a choreographer, in addition to his unique use of and relationship to space, lighting, and music.

One can also find recordings on YouTube of the Mariinsky (Kirov Ballet) doing this work with Svetlana Zakarova, and while the her extensions are more extreme - the soul of the work seems to be lost and it moves from a dance to a series of unfelt acrobatics...I think this has largely to do with the way she contains her energy within her body...while it's clear with Syvlie Guillem that she's radiating outward, and focusing more on the performance of the work than on what it requires technically.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVWf-JDw8CQ