Jerome Bel
Tomorrow night I will see Jerome Bel perform at YBCA.
I’ll be interested to see how his work functions within the context of the Yerba Buena San Francisco audience.
Tonight I attended a showing of The Show Must Go On and Veronique Doisneau. I must say that I was surprised by how much Bel draws from what I would consider a Western dance canon in terms of breaking the ballet industry. In The Show Must Go On Bel explores a kitschy regurgitation of popular culture and a reversal of the gaze. Although he works with similar concepts in Veronique Doisneau, the tone of the piece seems much different and more effective. In the discussion that I participated in at the showing this evening we explored how Veronique Doisneau employs a critique of the dance canon by allowing Veronique to retell the canon from a personal standpoint. She collapses an emotional, historical and critical while the choreography combines simplicity and virtuosity. The most telling aspect of the piece, for me, was the location: The Paris Opera House. How fitting that a commentary on the ballet industry take place in this opera house in particular. In this sense the piece became deeply site specific for me.
As Bel performs in San Francisco I’ll be curious to see how his work becomes site specific in terms of the context or lack thereof for his work.
