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RAVE FASHiON, DANCE, MTV, BALLET & SEXUAL iDENTiTY INTERNATIONAL Poorhouse Newsletter No 2 January - March 2004 ART:21 “...THE MOST iNTERESTiNG ART-MADE- ACCESSiBLE SHOW WE’VE SEEN SO FAR” lesfilmsd’ici2 rave art:21art:21art:213 RAVE iS A DANCE WHiCH BLURS THE BOUNDARiES of fashion, dance, MTV, ballet and sexual identity in a festive celebration of life. Running time: 26’ increased, she left the Cunningham Company ʻ to work regularly with Courtesy PaceWildenstein Wilson Photo © Ellen Page York New Collection Guggenheim of Museum, Solomon R. NY Photo Guggenheim © Museum, Solomon R. her own group of Rave began as the finale to an evening of dancers, performing in Kiki Smith My Blue Lake, 1994, photogravure & monoprint, 42.5” x 53.5” Kara Walker Insurrection! (Our Tools were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On), 2002 Installation view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Karole Armitage choreography for her New York the U.S. and Europe as Projection, cut paper and adhesive on wall, 12’ x 74.5’ company, Armitage Gone! Dance, in 2000. It was Armitage Gone! Dance then expanded into a six-section piece for Ballet (1979-1984) and as The de Lorraine which premiered on November 28, Armitage Ballet (1985- 2001 at the Opéra de Lorraine in Nancy, France. 1990). Each of the sections lasts from 5-7 minutes and Armitage is currently Choreographer for the ...THE MOST iNTERESTiNG art-made- is set to music by composer, David Shea. The music Centre Chorégraphique Nationale- Ballet de Lorraine based in Nancy, France. She has also is an encyclopaedia of the techno-scene featuring © Laurent Philippe different styles: Latin, Jungle, Ambient, Electro, been named director of the Venice Biennale Trance, House and Tribal. of Contemporary Dance for 2004. Using New accessible show we’ve seen so far. Different dance techniques and styles blend into York as a base, Armitage continues to work an organic dance language: mixing Kung Fu, Vogue, as an independent choreographer alternating Esquire Free Style, Catwalk, Capoeira and Ballet in differing projects for Ballet de Lorraine and other measures for each section to create an individual companies with work for her own company, identity for each ‘rave’. The costumes by Peter Armitage Gone! Dance. visual arts components of CityArts, a fear that art, especially new art, is a Speliopoulos are a joyous ode to fashion and street new series. As I worked with the subject matter that is beyond their style based on icons from tribal cultures, rock and ʻ CityArts team, I discovered that my ability to understand or promote. MARK KiDEL experiences as a curator provided And finally, perhaps, the creation of film. Mark Kidel is a film-maker and writer me with strong instincts regarding programs about art must be specialising in the arts and music, working in the the presentation of visual art on conceived and executed by individuals UK and France. He has been making films since KAROLE ARMiTAGE television and a clear sense of the with the passion and knowledge of Karole Armitage formed her company, Armitage the early 1970’s. He made a number of classic subject matter that I thought would specialists - individuals who have Gone! Dance in 1979 while still a member of the feature-length documentaries about rock music best engage viewers. At that spent their lives looking at art, Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1976-1981). in the mid-70’s, and went on to co-found the point I began thinking about the talking with artists, and thinking She began her career as a member of Ballet du ground-breaking BBC-2 arts series ARENA as development of the series that is about art -rather than by film- Grand Théâtre de Genève, Switzerland, directed by well as become the co-founder of the world now Art:21, and formed the non- makers on assignment. Moreover, it George Balanchine (1973-1975). Her combination music festival WOMAD (1982). profit organization to facilitate the seems to me that programs about of ballet and modern dance, mixing the articulation He has been rock critic of the New production of the series and its art for film or television, unless they of ballet with the spatial complexity of modern Statesman (London), as well as music writer accompanying educational programs, present art through the realm of dance, was immediately perceived as an innovative for many national newspapers and is a regular Susan Sollins Web site, DVD, and books. It was fiction, are usually didactic and dryly force in the dance world. As interest in her work contributor of the Times Literary Supplement. © Laurent Philippe Art:21 - Art in the Twenty-First my good fortune that I had already professorial in nature. This, despite Century became a series for public learned how to create and run a the fact that the greatest pleasure television in the United States non-profit arts organization, and that we take in looking at art is the through a series of unanticipated one of my life-long friends, Susan direct and singular experience each events and, for me, a rather rapid Dowling, had considerable experience of us has with an art object. Even personal evolution from curator of in public television as the Executive within a group of viewers, each of us contemporary art to film-maker and Director/Producer of the WGBH experiences the particular object of Executive Producer of the series. New Television Workshop. Once desire on our own, through our own I spent twenty years as the co- she joined forces with me to work eyes, with our own interpretations. Private collection, San Francisco Private collection, Courtesy of the artist & Paul KaSmin Gallery founder and Executive Director of on Art:21, we were off and running, Knowledge, of course, enhances the Walton Ford Madagascar, 2002, Independent Curators International even though it took several years experience, but the primary Watercolour, gouache, ink & pencil on paper, (ICI), a New York-based non-profit to develop, fund, and create the first experience is ours alone. And so, 120” x 60” organization that functions much as season, broadcast in September 2001. perhaps, the lack of programming a museum without walls, organizing I can only speculate on the about art on television in the United and circulating exhibitions of reasons for the paucity of programs States has simply been due to an contemporary art to museums and about the visual arts on television in undefined fear of failure - both in other cultural organizations both the United States. It is possible that terms of not being able to provide a nationally and internationally, and we still retain elements of a frontier direct and singular experience for the publishing exhibition catalogues mentality in this country, and that as viewer, and in terms of not being able to accompany them. Under my a result there is a general tendency to define the audience - so disparate Candidly captured leadership ICI organized more than amongst many to believe that the in its singularity. 75 exhibitions that traveled to well cultural arena is not of great interest in their raw over 350 institutions. In 1995, toward to the general public. This attitude SUSAN SOLLINS the end of my tenure at ICI, New seems to prevail despite the fact that elements, the York’s WNET/Channel 13 asked me there is a huge and growing ʻ to provide consultant services for the attendance - far greater than for ʻartists welcome us, sporting events in this country on an annual basis - at our art museums. one-on-one, into Perhaps the managers of television stations (who must be generalists their complicated, and, to some extent, bureaucrats) intimate lives. Artbyte © Laurent Philippe poorhouseinternationalNewsletter No 2 poorhouseJanuary - March 2004 international lesfilmsd’ici2 rave art:21art:21art:213 RAVE iS A DANCE WHiCH BLURS THE BOUNDARiES of fashion, dance, MTV, ballet and sexual identity in a festive celebration of life. Running time: 26’ increased, she left the Cunningham Company ʻ to work regularly with Courtesy PaceWildenstein Wilson Photo © Ellen Page York New Collection Guggenheim of Museum, Solomon R. NY Photo Guggenheim © Museum, Solomon R. her own group of Rave began as the finale to an evening of dancers, performing in Kiki Smith My Blue Lake, 1994, photogravure & monoprint, 42.5” x 53.5” Kara Walker Insurrection! (Our Tools were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On), 2002 Installation view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Karole Armitage choreography for her New York the U.S. and Europe as Projection, cut paper and adhesive on wall, 12’ x 74.5’ company, Armitage Gone! Dance, in 2000. It was Armitage Gone! Dance then expanded into a six-section piece for Ballet (1979-1984) and as The de Lorraine which premiered on November 28, Armitage Ballet (1985- 2001 at the Opéra de Lorraine in Nancy, France. 1990). Each of the sections lasts from 5-7 minutes and Armitage is currently Choreographer for the ...THE MOST iNTERESTiNG art-made- is set to music by composer, David Shea. The music Centre Chorégraphique Nationale- Ballet de Lorraine based in Nancy, France. She has also is an encyclopaedia of the techno-scene featuring © Laurent Philippe different styles: Latin, Jungle, Ambient, Electro, been named director of the Venice Biennale Trance, House and Tribal. of Contemporary Dance for 2004. Using New accessible show we’ve seen so far. Different dance techniques and styles blend into York as a base, Armitage continues to work an organic dance language: mixing Kung Fu, Vogue, as an independent choreographer alternating Esquire Free Style, Catwalk, Capoeira and Ballet in differing projects for Ballet de Lorraine and other measures for each section to create an individual companies with work for her own company, identity for each ‘rave’.