A monumental Vision Impure
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Wikipedia
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| Noam Gagnon, Dana Gingras - February 2005 |
It was only about a year ago that in a CNN newscast from
an American aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean that I noticed the impossible-to-confuse EA-6 Prowler. What this meant is that an airplane that came into
production in the earlier incarnation of the A-6 Intruder was in operation 53
years later. The airplane with renewed avionics was still an effective radar
blocker.
A few weeks ago I was telling my friend composer John Oliver that I could no longer listen to any new version (either live or
recorded) of Bach’s Concerto for 2
Violins in D minor, BWV 1043. Oliver said something close to this, “Alex you are done with it.”
Part of the issue is that at age 74 all my fave Gerry
Mulligan records and CDs are firmly ensconced in my memory. I don’t need to
listen to them. They are in me, part of me. Only the visit of a friend who
might not know of the wonders of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto or of Gerry
Mulligan playing My Funny Valentine would lead me to play the music on my
stereo.
I thought of all this when I read two reviews, on in my NY Times and the other on The Atlantic this week of The Holy Body
Tattoo’s performance of monumental (originally
labeled in lower case by Dana Gingras and Noam Gagnon at the Howard Gillman Opera
House part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival.
The NY Times said, not a glowing review, of the performance
which was an original 2005 work:
“it’s a good looking production.
Yet “monumental” was first staged, without the live
music, in 2005 – when Blackberry was king, the iPhone was still a rumor, and
the economic crash was three years off.
The way we work [ monumental is about working in an office in the that
year and the loneliness and depersonalization of it], and worry about work, has
changed since then; if anything, we’re more disconnected now, more aware of the
ephemerality of employment. But with its army of miserable whit-collar drone, “monumental”
feels stuck in the past.”
The Atlantic review was kinder. But it all made me think
and think about that out-of context A-6 Intruder of 1963 and of the very title
of the NY Times review – Setting a Squadron of Joyless Worker Drones to Music.
Of drones even bees have been left behind by the new applications of drones to
kill from afar electronically.
It all made me think that I would be reluctant to attend
a performance of Giselle or Swan Lake. Yes, John Oliver would be right, “I have
done them.”
When I saw monumental in Vancouver back in 2005 I was
deeply affected by it and I recognized it as a wake-up call for the society of
the time. Perhaps like the NY Times says, times are now worse therefore
monumental is passé. And yet I believe that particularly in dance or in art, (imagine
the uproar in Paris of the first exhibitions of the Impressionists!) does that diminish
those Impressionists today in comparison with modern 21st century
art? I don’t think so.
In some way the expiration date of monumental is the very
explanation of its cutting edge of the time and its subsequent influence on
dance in our present time.
Long after The Holy Body Tattoo split up I followed the
sinewy and tight Noam Gagnon (his company is called Vision Impure). I look
forward to his next presentation (perhaps a modification of the one I saw
before) at the Vancouver Dance Centre, October 20-22 Vision Impure.
Noam Gagnon & wonderous Polaroids
A Friday ritual of dance sushi & miso
The unhappy princess
Noam Gagnon & wonderous Polaroids
A Friday ritual of dance sushi & miso
The unhappy princess
