“Sans-titre”
Raimund Hoghe with Faustin Linyekula
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
September 16, 2010
by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel
Raimund Hoghe is an artist who, like Pina Bausch, improves in memory. What I recall about his performances last year is a great deal more positive than what I wrote at the time. What mercifully faded in the interim were the doldrums – the long periods of nothing doing that make up the bulk of what Hoghe does.
Hoghe, a German writer and artist now doing his own theater pieces, was also the dramaturge for Pina Bausch. He has a severe spinal curvature and his deformity shades everything he does. Not a dancer himself, he collaborates with some very good ones. For this program, Hoghe worked with Faustin Linyekula, a lithe Congolese choreographer and dancer with a thin, cut, loose-limbed body articulated like an anatomy lesson. When Linyekula moves, he does it in the current improvisatory fashion; close to the body with fast variations in tempo.
Everything that happened in the approximately 70 minute-long performance can be described in few words. The two men were on an almost-bare stage, save for a candle at the back and a small pile of smooth stones at the front; the kind one might leave on gravestones as a memorial. The dolorous music included famed songs sung by Kathleen Ferrier, Janet Baker and others. There was no lieder, but there might as well have been.
Linyekula (in white) and Hoghe (in black) slowly crossed one another, working their way to the back of the stage. Hoghe took a sheaf of papers and methodically laid them out one by one on the perimeter. Linyekula took the stones and created a line with them heading to the back. He gathered the stones back up, lay down and placed them along the length of his spine, like a spa treatment. He rose up to his hands and knees and moved, slowly shaking each stone to the ground.
Hoghe walked to the same spot center front as Linyekula occupied. Hoghe removed his shirt and Linyekula now lined Hoghe’s spine with stones. Sooner or later, understandably, the return to Hoghe’s body as a mute demonstration is probably going to happen in everything he creates. In a moment of strange modesty, Hoghe covered his front with his shirt as he removed it – yet he’s only too willing to expose his back to us.
Hoghe dressed again and gathered up the papers. Linyekula gathered up the stones and rattled them in his hands, burying his face in them as if divining. The two put their arms round one another’s backs and slowly walked backwards, finally wheeling around to face us. Impassive and forlorn as in a Watteau painting or a Buster Keaton film, they stood there without moving as the lights slowly faded.
It sounds more interesting described – and even now in memory – than it was to sit through it. Yet, tighter editing isn’t a solution: it takes that kind of pacing to create the emotional state Hoghe is aiming for. As stupefying as Hoghe’s aesthetic can be, it’s important and can’t be done another way. Nor is it selfish. He’s not about his own process; everything is done for its effect on the viewer.
I may rarely agree with Hoghe, but he knows what he wants to do. Almost nothing happened at the end of the work, except for the stunning clarity of the two men’s faces, but as my memory fades, I’m guessing that’s what I will remember of this performance years later.
Everything that happened in the approximately 70 minute-long performance can be described in few words. The two men were on an almost-bare stage, save for a candle at the back and a small pile of smooth stones at the front; the kind one might leave on gravestones as a memorial. The dolorous music included famed songs sung by Kathleen Ferrier, Janet Baker and others. There was no lieder, but there might as well have been.
Linyekula (in white) and Hoghe (in black) slowly crossed one another, working their way to the back of the stage. Hoghe took a sheaf of papers and methodically laid them out one by one on the perimeter. Linyekula took the stones and created a line with them heading to the back. He gathered the stones back up, lay down and placed them along the length of his spine, like a spa treatment. He rose up to his hands and knees and moved, slowly shaking each stone to the ground.
Hoghe walked to the same spot center front as Linyekula occupied. Hoghe removed his shirt and Linyekula now lined Hoghe’s spine with stones. Sooner or later, understandably, the return to Hoghe’s body as a mute demonstration is probably going to happen in everything he creates. In a moment of strange modesty, Hoghe covered his front with his shirt as he removed it – yet he’s only too willing to expose his back to us.
Hoghe dressed again and gathered up the papers. Linyekula gathered up the stones and rattled them in his hands, burying his face in them as if divining. The two put their arms round one another’s backs and slowly walked backwards, finally wheeling around to face us. Impassive and forlorn as in a Watteau painting or a Buster Keaton film, they stood there without moving as the lights slowly faded.
I may rarely agree with Hoghe, but he knows what he wants to do. Almost nothing happened at the end of the work, except for the stunning clarity of the two men’s faces, but as my memory fades, I’m guessing that’s what I will remember of this performance years later.
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel
Photos by Rosa Frank; Raimund Hoghe and Faustin Linyekula in “Sans-titre”