Friday, January 4th, 2013
Consider this scene. Galván hammers an old upright piano apart with his sputtering footwork. In doing so, he destroys the harmonic integrity of the instrument. When he forces the piano apart, we hear its strings shrieking as they stretch. We see Galván in a deep lunge with his muscular arms working to push the battered object to its breaking point. But the piano doesn’t dissemble. Instead its strings, like Galván’s wiry body, produce a shrill, taut dissonance, one that is awe-inspiring in its intensity. At this moment, the image of the persecuted gypsy becomes real: Galván, stripped of his shirt, dances while caught in a barbed wire fence. His angular, contorted gestures and his sharp, hard footwork eviscerate him as they reveal the unique quality of his dancing, which bends the tradition of the Seville school of flamenco beyond recognition.
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Tags: Belén Maya, Bobote, Caracafé, Chicuelo, David Lagos and Tomás de Perrate, Eloísa Cantón, Flamenco, Isabel Bayón, Israel Galván, Jacques Lacan, Leni Riefenstahl, Lo Real/Le Réel/The Real, Pedro G. Romero, Rachel Straus, Roman, Saville, Sinti, Txiki Berraondom, Uchi
Posted in The Torn Tutu | Comments Off on A Masterwork by Israel Galván
Saturday, October 13th, 2012
Hofesh Schechter is a slippery soul. In Political Mother, seen October 11 as part of Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival, the Israeli-born choreographer cloaks his earnestness in irony. The 80-minute, 2010 work is structured through a series of blackouts in which 12 dancers and seven musicians evoke the demagoguery in politics, and entertainment.
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Tags: Brooklyn Academy of Music, Daniel Craig, folk dance, Hasidic, Hofesh Schechter, Leni Riefenstahl, Nazi Germany, Next Wave Festival, Political Mother
Posted in The Torn Tutu | Comments Off on Political Mother: Bring Earplugs and Irony