Performance

  • Peter Stein/Peter Schönhofer/Thomas Grimm – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust (2001)

    2001-2010ClassicsGermanyPerformancePeter SchönhoferPeter SteinThomas Grimm
    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Faust (2001)
    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Faust (2001)

    Faust I und II. By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Arena Treptow, Berlin. 16/17 December 2000.

    It took Peter Stein more than ten years to realize his life-long dream of staging both parts of Goethe’s tragedy in an unabridged version. He finally succeeded in raising sufficient funds to hire an ensemble and, most importantly, to engage Bruno Ganz for the part of Faust. They had worked together before; early in both their careers Ganz played Tasso in Stein’s famous production at the Bremen Municipal Theatre in 1969 and Peer Gynt and the Prince of Homburg at the Berliner Schaubühne in 1971 and 1974 respectively. However, even though casting was settled, a series of disasters still seemed to haunt the production. Read More »

  • Babette Mangolte & Marina Abramovic – Seven Easy Pieces (2007)

    Marina Abramovic2001-2010Babette MangolteExperimentalPerformanceUSA
    Seven Easy Pieces (2007)
    Seven Easy Pieces (2007)

    About the performing body and how it affects viscerally the people who confronts it, looks at it and participates in the transcendental experience that is its primary affect. The ceremonial and meditative are the common responses to the weeklong series of performances that took place in November 2005 in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. From an art event to a social phenomenon, the seven performances became the talk of the town because it created among the visitors a sense of sublimation like prayer. The film attempts to reveal the mechanisms of this transcendental experience by just showing the performer’s body living the events inscribed in each pieces with details that outline the body fragility, versatility, tenacity and unlimited endurance.
    —Babette MangolteRead More »

  • Henrik Ibsen & Richard Eyre – Ghosts: Almeida Theatre (2014)

    Richard Eyre2011-2020DramaHenrik IbsenPerformanceUnited Kingdom
    Ghosts Almeida Theatre (2014)
    Ghosts Almeida Theatre (2014)

    The Telegraph: “I trudged to this production with all the enthusiasm of a schoolboy making his way to a double maths lesson on a dank Monday morning.

    One of the peculiarities of my job is that you are sometimes required to see the same play twice in close proximity, and it was only last week that I endured Stephen Unwin’s punishingly dour production of Ghosts (1881) at the Rose Theatre in Kingston. The idea of a second dose of a work that is grim even by Ibsen’s demanding standards felt almost unendurable.Read More »

  • Lasse Hallström – ABBA: The Movie (1977)

    Lasse Hallström1971-1980AustraliaCultPerformance
    ABBA The Movie (1977)
    ABBA The Movie (1977)

    ABBA: The Movie is a 1977 film about the pop group ABBA’s Australian tour. It was directed by Lasse Hallström, who directed most of the group’s videos. The film has become a cult film among ABBA fans. Its release coincided with the release of ABBA: The Album, the group’s fifth studio album, and features many songs from that album as well as many of their earlier hits, and one, “Get on the Carousel”, unavailable anywhere else.Read More »

  • Peter Sellars – Don Giovanni (1990)

    Peter Sellars1981-1990MusicalPerformanceUSA
    Don Giovanni (1990)
    Don Giovanni (1990)

    Quote:
    This modern-dress studio production is “not your parents’ Don Giovanni” – the very opening shots, depicting a real New York slum full of rundown buildings, dead rats and garbage-covered snow, make that clear. Set in the South Bronx, this Giovanni strips the characters of their social statuses, keeps humor to the barest minimum, and brings forth loudly and clearly all the darkness that normally only simmers below the opera’s surface. Anna is an obvious rape victim who turns to heroin to escape from her trauma. Masetto does indeed beat Zerlina. And Giovanni and Leporello, innately “not so different,” are here portrayed as identical African American twins – a nearly interchangeable pair of streetwise, leather-clad, coke-snorting, gun-wielding hoods. Ensembles are staged as interpretive dances, and the finale is a hodgepodge of surreal horror, with a green-faced Commendatore, a somber little girl who lures pedophile Giovanni toward his doom, and bare-chested “demons,” both male and female, rising from the pavement.Read More »

  • Peter Geyer – Jesus Christus Erlöser AKA Jesus Christ Saviour (2008)

    2001-2010CultGermanyPerformancePeter Geyer
    Jesus Christus Erlöser (2008)
    Jesus Christus Erlöser (2008)

    Berlin, Deutschlandhalle, November 20 th 1971. Kinski emerges into a lone spotlight on an empty stage. Shoulder length hair, plain jeans, a shirt with flower and polka dot patterns. No set, no stage effects, no costume. By reciting his own version of the New Testament’s “Jesus Christ Saviour”, he realizes a project well over 10 years in the making.

    It is the time of the Hippie movement, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” is celebrating a sensational success in Germany as well. It is also a time of nonviolent resistance.Read More »

  • Gaspard Augé, Xavier de Rosnay, Romain Gavras & So-Me – A Cross the Universe (2008)

    Gaspard Augé2001-2010DocumentaryPerformanceRomain GavrasSo-MeUSAXavier de Rosnay

    Synopsis
    Extraordinary things always happen when unexpected. During the 18 months Justice spent touring, “extraordinary” didn’t necessarily mean “amazing”, or “great”, (though it sometimes did) but “surreal”, “weird”, “horrendous”, “fascinating”, “paranormal”, etc. To cut a long story short, it means that without anyone to film you twenty-four/seven, no one will believe or get the essence of every moment you’d like to tell them about. So as Justice were about to tour the USA for the second time, multi-awarded directors and intimate friends of the band Romain Gavras and So-Me taped every second of that 3 week tour that looks like it lasted 3 years. This documentary isn’t a report of a Justice live show (the audio CD is here for that), but is all about the extraordinary things that can happen when a bunch of frogs get dropped in dreamy America.Read More »

  • Twyla Tharp – The Catherine Wheel (1982)

    1981-1990PerformanceTwyla TharpUSA

    An evening-long collaborative work between Tharp and David Byrne (of The Talking Heads), The Catherine Wheel is a continuous piece of dance/theater that makes its way toward a firework-like finale [see: The Golden Section] through episodes presenting the disintegration of the nuclear family, while ruminating on the detonation of nuclear weapons. The dance ensemble becomes a cast of specifically defined characters: The Leader and The Chorus; The Mother; The Father; The Sister; The Brother; The Maid; The Pet; and The Poet. A pineapple prop plays a part as its natural self and as its symbolic self, as a nickname for explosive devices.Read More »

  • Ron Mann – Poetry in Motion (1982)

    1981-1990CanadaDocumentaryPerformanceRon Mann

    More than 20 contemporary North American poets recite, sing, and perform their work. Early in the film, Charles Bukowski talks about the energy of poets and of a poem. These poets are the children of Walt Whitman and of Charles Olson, incantatory and oratorical, radical, sometimes incorporating contemporary political imagery. Black Mountain poets, the Beats, minimalists like John Cage, the wordless Four Horsemen, Tom Waits, and others capture aspects of poets as troubadours.Read More »

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