MEDIATHEK

Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church is the collective and shared title of seven dances and one publication to be choreographed and directed by Trajal Harrell. “What would have happened in 1963 if someone from the Voguing ball scene in Harlem had come downtown to perform alongside the early postmoderns at Judson Church?” Rather than illustrating a historical fiction, these new works transplant this proposition into a contemporary context and debate about seduction of the audience. What we experience was neither possible at The Balls nor at Judson, but a third possibility is created. Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church: THE SERIES comes in eight sizes- Extra Small (XS), Small (S), Medium (M) also known as (M)imosa, Junior (jr.), Large (L), Plus (++), Made-to-Measure (M2M), and Extra Large (XL).

The (L) confronts the postmodern antagonism against tragically dramatic dance epitomized by Martha Graham’s mythological Greek dramas by presenting an all-male contemporary dance version of Sophocles’ “Antigone”. By imagining a theoretical meeting between Voguing and Post-modern dance, much of Yvonne Rainer’s 1965 “No Manifesto” is put into crisis. Most of the no’s become definite maybe’s: maybe to spectacle, maybe to transformations and magic and make-believe, maybe to the glamour and the transcendency of the star image, maybe to the heroic, maybe to involvement of performer or spectator, maybe to style, maybe to trash imagery, maybe to camp, maybe to seduction of the spectator by the wiles of the performer, and maybe to moving or be moved. The only thing we know for sure is yes to the heroic and we’re adding yes to the tragic.

The choreographer comments: “In the case of the (L), I wish to re-imagine the classical theater of ancient Greece. Is it possible that voguing and this theater of antiquity were not so far apart in their performative strategies? It is easy today when we see men performing as women to classify these forms as drag, camp, travesty, or to base our conclusions on notions of sexual identity; but sexual identities in Ancient Greece did not fall into the categories we prescribe today. Therefore, perhaps this performance of mixing genders had it’s own codes and references. Can we imagine that there was ‘Greek Theater realness’ where like voguing, gender and class or social status were revealed as constructions of codes of fashion and movement? It is also easy to forget through layers of classical interpretations that the theater of antiquity was a intrinsically political theater whose purpose was to educate and potentially problematize the important responsibility bore by the citizens of Athens (all men).

Furthermore, how did cross-dressing in theater roles function as activism to debate potentiality of female citizenship? Did these artists – actors, directors, and writers – use this particular performativity to shift the political beliefs of the day? In Antigone, a young woman, albeit royal, goes against the highest ruler of the land, the king, not only in action and law, but in debate and intellect. Although her status as a woman makes her actions even more antagonistic, I wish to explore her femalehood as a trope of politicization to rethink both gender rights in Ancient Greece, but also this ancient performative context itself as a kind of ‘gender trouble’ perhaps not so different from the discourses of our today.

Therefore, the central aesthetic questions become: how do we vogue the play Antigone? What new meanings are produced from this operation as well as new relations with the contemporary theater audience? Furthermore, what would it have meant to vogue Antigone in the context of 1963 Judson Church? Would this had created an aesthetic anachronism that further divided our Harlem traveler from these new Judson colleagues? Or maybe by voguing Antigone something closer to Judson aesthetics rather than Graham aesthetic might be created that in turn gives us an even more ‘authentic’ representation of classical Greek theater? And might this authenticity further problematize the ways in which we have assimilated and re-imagined Judson aesthetics? These are the questions which we will investigate in our creation. There is no possible way to know exactly what this theater was like. Video did not exist, but by reimagining the possibilities, perhaps we reimagine the notions we have today in respect to gender, class, and sexuality.”

/ CAST & CREDITS /

CHOREOGRAPHER: Trajal Harrell

DANCERS: Trajal Harrell, Stephen Thompson, Thibault Lac, Rob Fordeyn, Ondrej Vidlar

SET DESIGN: Erik Flatmo

LIGHT DESIGN: Jan Maertens

SOUNDDESIGN: Robin Meier and Trajal Harrell

DRAMATURG: Gérard Mayen

TECHNICAL MANAGER: Bob Bellerue

CO-PRODUCTION: New York Live Arts, CNDC Angers, CCN Belfort, dance in August / HAU-Hebbel on the shore

RESIDENCES: WpZimmer – Antwerp, Workspace Brussels, Pact Zollverein – Food, Dansens Hus – Stockholm

Kindly supported by The Jerome Foundation, The Multi-Arts Production Fund, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation

PRODUCTION AND INTERNATIONAL TOURING: Key Performance, Koen Vanhove and Julia Asperska

/ Tanz im August 2014 /

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Virve Sutinen

PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT: Sven Neumann, Andrea Niederbuchner

Supported by the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs.

Funded by the Capital Culture Fund and Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie.

// GERMAN //

Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church wirft einen neuen Blick auf die postmoderne Tanzästhetik der Szene rund um die Judson Church. Ausgangspunkt von Trajal Harrells Stück ist eine imaginäre Begegnung der Judson-Ästhetik mit dem sich gleichzeitig entfaltenden Voguing (das durch den Dokumentarfilm „Paris is Burning“ über den Underground hinaus bekannt wurde); mithilfe einer neuen Zeichensprache ermöglicht Harrell so eine andere Sicht auf den Minimalismus und die Neutralität des postmodernen Tanzes. „Was wäre passiert, wenn sich 1963 jemand aus der Harlemer Voguing-Szene nach Downtown aufgemacht hätte und in der Judson Church gemeinsam mit den ersten Vertretern der Postmoderne aufgetreten wäre?“ – Diese Frage liegt der neuen Arbeit des Choreografen zugrunde, dabei wird es Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning … in sieben verschiedenen Größen geben, von Extrasmall (XS) bis Extralarge (XL). 

Entstehen soll nicht eine historische Fiktion, vielmehr soll die Frage im Hier und Jetzt durchgespielt werden. Was dabei herauskommt, wäre so weder im The Balls noch in der Judson Church möglich gewesen. Das Stück Antigone Sr., dem (L) der Reihe, versucht eine neue Herangehensweise an das Drama der klassischen Antike. Ähneln sich das Voguing und das antike Theater in ihren performativen Techniken womöglich stärker, als man gemeinhin denkt? Ästhetischer Dreh- und Angelpunkt der Inszenierung wird die Frage sein, wie eine Voguing-Fassung des Dramas Antigone aussehen könnte.

/ BESETZUNG & CREDITS /

CHOREOGRAF: Trajal Harrell

TÄNZER: Trajal Harrell, Stephen Thompson, Thibault Lac, Rob Fordeyn, Ondrej Vidlar

SETDESIGN: Erik Flatmo

LICHTDESIGN: Jan Maertens

SOUNDDESIGN: Robin Meier und Trajal Harrell

DRAMATURG: Gérard Mayen

TECHNISCHER LEITER: Bob Bellerue

CO-PRODUKTION: New York Live Arts, CNDC Angers, CCN Belfort, Tanz im August / HAU-Hebbel am Ufer

RESIDENZEN: WpZimmer – Antwerp, Workspace Brussels, Pact Zollverein – Essen, Dansens Hus – Stockholm

MIT FREUNDLICHER UNTERSTÜTZUNG: The Jerome Foundation, The Multi-Arts Production Fund, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation

PRODUKTION UND INTERNATIONALES TOURING: Key Performance, Koen Vanhove and Julia Asperska

/ Tanz im August 2014 /

KÜNSTLERISCHE LEITUNG: Virve Sutinen

PRODUKTIONSLEITUNG: Sven Neumann, Andrea Niederbuchner

Mit Unterstützung des Regierenden Bürgermeisters von Berlin – Senatskanzlei – Kulturelle Angelegenheiten.

Gefördert aus den Mitteln des Hauptstadtkulturfonds und der Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie.

[jup/msb]

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