Boléro Variations
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
September 24, 2009
L’Après-midi
Danspace Project
New York, NY
September 24, 2009
by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2009 by Leigh Witchel
Hoghe espouses a European aesthetic that takes its own sweet time in the theater. And ours. He began his career as a writer for the German weekly Die Zeit and went on to work with Bausch as a dramaturge for a decade. Since 1989 he’s made his own pieces.
His first time performing in the United States, Hoghe completed his tour in New York City as part of the Crossing the Line Festival, bringing works to two venues. Dance Theater Workshop presented his “Boléro Variations,” and then Danspace showed “L’Après-midi.”
“Boléro Variations” was two hours long with a single short intermission. The first half was excruciating. The cast of five (a sixth dancer was not able to enter the U.S. because of visa issues) stalked about to various renditions of “Bolero.” This included the sound recording of the Torvill/Dean skate in the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics that earned them perfect artistic scores. Hoghe had one man slowly inching backwards to the crackling recording interspersed with applause, leaving us to fill in the drama.
Hoghe uses dancers good enough so that you can sense their ability even when they’re not doing much. The lone woman in the cast, Ornella Balestra, glided about in a black fitted jacked and skirt. She was riveting and underused.
Hoghe lost a chunk of the audience at intermission, but the second half was livelier and more cogent. The best sections came at the end. Hoghe took off his shoes and slowly buried them in grains of what looked like pasta while the other men hypnotically poured circular drifts of lentils and beans. This was done to a recording of an Auschwitz survivor discussing her selection for the camp’s orchestra, a conjunction both obligatory and gratuitous. After that, to a final, traditional, version of “Bolero,” all the men took off their shirts and slowly rotated on their knees on the floor, sometimes tracing patterns, sometimes spasming. Hoghe is a hunchback with spinal curvature to the point of deformity. He forced us to look at him with three “perfect specimens.” If the Holocaust reference felt dropped in, that seemed to be the connection. It was fascinating and disturbing.
The erotic atmosphere of Nijinsky become homoerotic. There were no nymphs, just Hoghe moving about two glasses of milk in between minimalist solos for Eggermont. “L’Après-midi” connected more vividly to its source material than “Boléro Variations” and was more interesting for it. Eggermont didn’t move as much as he posed, but neither did Nijinsky’s Faun, and Eggermont can hold a stage. Several of the Faun’s iconic poses were referenced, including the famous orgasmic arch, but the references were subtle. The dance is billed as a solo, but it wasn’t; Hoghe’s presence was essential to it.
At first watching Hoghe, a dour little man, trot around two glasses of milk seemed enigmatic, then irksome. Why? Then one mulled over the possible symbolism of milk. Youth. Purity. Healthy bones. Looking at Hoghe’s spine pushed into a hump on his right shoulder, the resonance was there.
After a final, full, version of the prelude, Hoghe spilled some of the milk in four pools on the stage and then emptied the glasses in the front in one larger puddle. The cum reference was unexpected, but obvious. Hoghe dipped his fingers in a pool, and then wrote with it. Eggermont dipped in his. Just when you thought Hoghe should get it over with already and smear it on his face – he did. There was as much “Death in Venice” here as “Afternoon of a Faun.” Rather than shattering stereotypes of beauty, Hoghe played right into them – the unattainable youth and the older, unattractive, man who can only have him second hand.
Hoghe and Bausch both produce singular imagery that could stay with you for years, and both make you wait for it. Had you watched only the last quarter of either of Hoghe’s performances, you would have gotten the same effect, minus the agony. Maybe it’s daring theater, maybe it’s the choreographic school of Fuck You.
Hoghe’s aesthetic can be defended; so can finding it exasperating. Uptown, there were also Fauns and Boleros at Fall for Dance. Boston Ballet opened the festival with Nijinsky’s version of “Faun,” followed by Ohad Naharin’s “B/olero.” Naharin made his point, and made it well, in around ten minutes. So did Nijinsky. Hoghe is going to have to do more convincing to make me sit two hours to get to his.
copyright © 2009 by Leigh Witchel
Top: Raimund Hoghe, Lorenzo De Barbandere in “Boléro Variations,” photo by Yi-Chun Wu
Bottom: Emmanuel Eggermont in “L’Après-midi,” photo by Rosa Frank.