Gareth K Vile: Death and Burlesque
(Mon 15 Mar 2010, http://www.theskinny.co.uk/article/98830-death-and-burlesque)
The twin muses of Experimental Performance and Burlesque battle for the soul of the theatre critic. What will happen?
Given her almost nihilistic approach to both life and art, it is unsurprising that La Ribot’s death, as represented by Via Negativa, is a naked body in a welter of blood. While a tape-recording of Ribot’s thoughts on life crackles on the side of the stage, she lies there, ribs, breasts and bright red wig, slowly fading away, an installation to mortality. Once she is gone, the wig and her shoes are gathered up in a shoe box, her remains packed away with less ceremony than a pet buried in the back garden. Her words deny meaning, deny magic: not just a Godless world, but one devoid of purpose and coherence. In this imagined death, the human body is a mere object, bereft of soul or erotic intent.
Twenty four hours later, at Va Va Voom in Edinburgh, I am watching Cat Aclysmic’s Powder Puff routine. Once a fairly simple bump and grind addition to her repertoire, she has powered it up through close study of classic American burlesque and a cheeky British humour. It’s playful, and sexier for it: the body is tattooed with meaning, the focus of attention, and desire. Where La Ribot’s body is exposed and explicit, it is mere flesh. Cat Aclysmic’s body teases and implies, becoming word.
If Via Negativa perform Four Deaths – the symbolic murders of four artists – Va Va Voom, through Cat Aclysmic and Cherryfox, create Four Lives: sensual routines of assertion and energy. Both Via Negativa and Va Va Voom use humour – as the cast of Four Deaths announce, “theatre is fun.” But where Via Negativa gradually shift to melancholy – Marina Abramovitch’s departure is a slowly dissolving fall of bubbles that uses an obvious metaphor in a moving finale – burlesque leaves the audience dancing.
Ian Smith, MC of the National Review and head honcho of Mischief La Bas, has commented that humour allows serious artists to comfort the audience before leading them into darker territory. Via Negativa, with a tinny rendition of Mozart and a wry self-depreciation, relax the crowd before focussing on death. La Ribot’s terse material notwithstanding, Four Deaths is a spiritual journey, like a Buddhist meditation on impermanence. It also offers concise summaries of four artistic greats’ aesthetic, describing Tim Etchells from Forced Entertainment’s dangerous relationship between health and performing and Abramovitch’s notorious study of the body. It is intelligent, thoughtful, drawing a connection between the stage and life: the friendly, natural personae on stage add to the blurring of boundaries. It’s as if the audience is being invited to conspire in the company’s own fantasies.
I left the CCA calm and moved: despite the blood and scattered body parts, death is recognised as part of a natural cycle, possessing its own resonance and beauty. Even the pitiful dissolution of Pina Bausch into a final smoking cigarette becomes a symbol of her life and achievements. Yet Va Va Voom left me agitated, dispersed. The erotic thrill transforms into a terse questioning, the celebration of life compromised by the impolite desires swirling around my thoughts. My erudite contemplations on Cat Aclysmic’s use of tradition and narrative, dressed up in formal language, are driven by an undercurrent of raw physical desire. If burlesque is a meditation on life, life is confused, the mind and body locked into a conflict only resolved by tiny deaths.
Pascal Bély: Au Festival Komm’n’act: quatre morts et un enchantement
Entre la fraîcheur et l’ouverture de ce collectif d’artistes Slovène et notre difficulté bien française à travailler le lien dans la créativité, il y aurait là une performance que ce festival pourrait assumer! (www.festivalier.net, May 2009)
Rok Vevar: Can love exist without trauma?
“Four deaths is a performance about the viewer and his desire; an attempt to “see beyond” and in this the setting of the question which is the gist of intersubjectivity: what does the other posses (Pina Bausch, for example) that I lack inherently. By trying to fill out this mystery with content, name, definition, reflection, I kill what a mystery should be. I name it (for example: “I love you, but because I love the inexplicable in you more than yourself, I maim you”). It is a process of reflection, symbolization, naming – and thus always a death of the inexpressible, the truth, the Real, mystery.” (Večer Maribor, 23.11.2007)
Jacopo Lanteri: Via Negativa vs. Tim Etchells
“In the last action, the focus falls upon the historic performance of Marina Abramović and Ulay, in which they slap each other – with one difference: here, the performer is alone, naked, in the center of the scene. In this action, various meanings and possible readings branch out: from the killing the tutor through a process of reconstruction and remake, all the way to the exact opposite: an extreme homage to the tutor’s work. And the will and desire to punish oneself for the transgression made. The Salieri syndrome, brought to extreme consequence.” (Exibart, 27.11.2007)
Francesca Giuliani: L’altro volto dell’invidia
“The artists, imperfect copies, balance precariously, caught between reality and fiction. And keep applauding the audience. Not a set search for an aesthetic, but rather a total removal of all elements unnecessary for the clarity of the message. The strategy the four Slovenes use to point to envy is clear: repeat the actions of their masters, which become grotesque and stop making sense when they are passed through the performer’s bodies, their physicality.” (Gazzetta di Modena, 17.10.2007)
Zala Dobovšek: The audience – the godly arbiter
“Through evolution, the audience becomes king, the godly arbiter. Beside the artistic effect, the performers, actors and dancers ready to face Death to gain in prestige, keep breaking through to dimensions of reality. Has this become the only path to victory in the “Cain and Abel” artistic battle?” (Radio Student Ljubljana, 6.10.2007)
Primož Jesenko: Invisibilities
“The performers undertake indirect “killings” of their “rivals” systematically: upon entering the stage each one presents a clinical dramaturgical dissection of the chosen postdramatic opus and then evokes it with a live replica of one of the canonized performative acts. Katarina Stegnar presents a gracious death in the smoke of the last cigarette á la Pina Bausch, staging herself beside extras, random audience members, in a pieta. Zorc examines the terminal dimension of Tim Etchell’s performances as he slowly breaks the spiral succession of plugged-in light-bulbs. Barbara Kukovec, a virtual La Ribot lies naked in a spilled bucket of paint and then positions the angles of the spectators’ gazes. Petra Zanki a virtual Marina Abramovič slaps her naked self intensively. The effect of once revolutionary renditions varies in expressiveness (the spectators prior knowledge of the presented authors is not necessary to establish identification), while the “more” the authors reach for is, in this context, the applause of the manipulative (but very supportive) audience, brought upon by the reconstruction’s closing.” (Delo Ljubljana, 3.11.2007)