Month: August 2020

A Gra­cious Narcissism

It is said that Ein­stein once wit­nessed the spec­tac­u­lar fall of a con­struc­tion work­er; fall­en from a mul­ti-storey build­ing, the work­er mirac­u­lous­ly sur­vived. Ein­stein has­tened to vis­it him at the ear­li­est oppor­tu­ni­ty, for he had a press­ing and spe­cif­ic ques­tion for him. The physi­cist’s ques­tion was: “What did you feel when you fell, dear sir”? The work­er smiled and was silent for a moment. He could have answered in sev­er­al ways. He could have said: “I was afraid, I thought of the mis­for­tune of my wife, my chil­dren, my father, my moth­er, my friends, my broth­ers and sis­ters”. Or: “I have felt the whole bur­den of my actions, of my sins that I repent”. Or again: “I regret noth­ing”. But the work­man’s response was just as remark­able as the physi­cist’s ques­tion: “I felt, sir, that I had no weight,” he replied. The anec­dote is report­ed by one of the mas­ter’s stu­dents. Regard­less of the fate of this work­er who mirac­u­lous­ly sur­vived the acci­dent, the famous physi­cist had got the answer he was look­ing for and he had gone where he could get it. But, won­der­ing the chore­o­g­ra­ph­er envy­ing the work­er for the fame his fall drew upon him, could the short dia­logue even have tak­en place if, instead of a work­er, Ein­stein had met one of these dance mas­ters who are still lured by mat­ters of grav­i­ty? The schol­ar hard­ly seems to have been con­cerned with the chore­o­g­ra­phers in mat­ters of grav­i­ty, hav­ing sought the opin­ion of an unprej­u­diced indi­vid­ual who felt he had no weight when falling. Ein­stein would have seen Martha Gra­ham dance, oth­er sources report, as no mem­o­rable dia­logue is found to this effect, but a praise or two addressed to the chore­o­g­ra­ph­er whom, per­haps, he knew she was grap­pling with the gra­cious nar­cis­sism to which she owed her genius.

Text adapt­ed from The Great Dis­cov­ery of Free Float. In Wheel­er, John A. (1990, 11).
Pho­to: Hen­ry & Co. from Pexels

A Bard’s Apoc­ryphal Advice

At dawn each day, gaze into the sun’s rays for five min­utes to improve eyesight.

From Jil & Yill (2010 – 11-12). Choreg­ra­phy by Richard Trem­blay to per­cus­sion music, by Bruno Paquet. Dance per­formed by Sophie Jannsens.

Danse Kalashas, Montreal

Danse Kalashas (con­tem­po­rary dance com­pa­ny) was the first dance organ­i­sa­tion to per­form at the Ago­ra de la danse when the venue opened in the fall of 1991 at the dance depart­ment of the Uni­ver­sité du Québec, on Cher­ri­er Street. The com­pa­ny per­formed an entire pro­gram of con­tem­po­rary dance, Of Mice and Oth­er Sim­i­lar Devices (1990), Danse Kalashas’ found­ing work first per­formed at Tan­gente (Nov. 29-Dec. 1, 1990) and show­cased at l’Agora in a repeat per­for­mance at 8 p.m. A late show by a guest artist in Indi­an dance fol­lowed on the week­end. In the after­noon, there was a lec­ture-demon­stra­tion of the Kathakali dance and music. Super­vised by Dia­gramme, a Mon­tre­al-based cul­tur­al man­age­ment organ­i­sa­tion, these pre­sen­ta­tions focused on Richard Tremblay’s cul­tur­al and artis­tic con­nec­tions and hybrid work. The pre­sen­ta­tion of a series of relat­ed but inde­pen­dent activ­i­ties and the ini­tia­tive of bring­ing a dance audi­ence to a new venue was the main chal­lenge of the ven­ture. Danse Kalashas and Richard Trem­blay returned to Ago­ra in 1995 to fea­ture in Volet Choré­graphes, a Danse Cité series where the com­pa­ny pre­sent­ed La Courbe en Flo­con de Neige to music com­posed and per­formed live by Bruno Paquet — a week-long pro­gram shared in tan­dem with chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and artis­tic direc­tor Daniel Soulières, Volet Choré­graphes XII.

Danse Kalashas pré­pare une semaine d’activités spé­ciales pour l’automne à l’Agora de la danse, qui per­me­t­tra au spec­ta­teur de se famil­iaris­er avec le Kathakali et le Kathak, deux formes tra­di­tion­nelles, et d’assister à des spec­ta­cles de contemporain.

(Le Devoir, 1991)

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Pho­to: Col­lec­tion Geneviève Pepin

The per­form­ers at the 1992 revival at the Saidye Bronf­man Cen­ter (Cen­ter for the Arts and Per­for­mance), Mon­tre­al. Fore­ground: Bruno Paquet (per­cus­sion) with dancers Geneviève Pepin, Sophie Des­jardins and Kir­il Chour. Sec­ond row: Richard Trem­blay (chore­o­g­ra­ph­er) and Francine Gag­né (Dancer).

Once upon a time: The make up of weapons

The Para­pu­rap­pa­da is the Kathakali grand open­ing of war, includ­ing the make up of weapons, and a for­mal call to his armies by the hero war­rior. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, it is wide­ly used by the Kat­ti (“Knife”) char­ac­ter. It was in The Ili­ad or The Sto­ry of Achilles, that Parap­pu­rap­pa­da was first made use of as a chore­o­graph­ic pat­tern for the pac­cha (“Green”, or of benev­o­lent) type. As designed by Richard Trem­blay, in the Kathakali Ili­ad, the Parap­pu­rap­pa­da empha­sizes Achilles’ wrath as he returns to war after his friend Patro­clus is slaugh­tered by the Tro­jans. There­after, the pat­tern was used in oth­er new Kathakali works for sim­i­lar purposes.