The Metamorphosis of Mons

We’re packed into stands on opposite sides of a vast exhibition hall on the outskirts of Mons, Belgium. There are no windows and it’s all rather dark and gloomy. There are no signs of creativity. In fact, were it not for the guest list I was holding that stated the presence of leading artists, museum directors, choreographers and architects – presumably sitting somewhere in the dark cavernous hall - I could well have wondered if I’d walked into the wrong event.

©OlivierDonnet

Two hours later and my doubts had been totally dispelled. The huge space had been filled with more creativity than I have ever before seen at a press conference. It felt like a mini opening ceremony for London 2012, particularly when an open-top double decker bus full of British quirkiness arrived in the exhibition hall - think the Queen waving from the front of the upper deck, techno music blaring out, umbrellas, Sherlock Holmes, policemen on stilts…! But no, this was not the prelude to the Olympic Games, it was the launch of the cultural programme for Mons as European Capital of Culture next year: Mons 2015.

The launch event included the tricky choreography of several local buses arriving in the hall, each illustrating a different Mons 2015 theme through the words lit up on its destination board and the people and props that emerged from each vehicle. 

One bus was filled with sunflowers and had the words ‘I’m called Vincent. And you?’. Vincent Van Gogh lived for a time in the Mons area and it was there that he decided to become an artist. Cue visits to the house where he lived and an exhibition on the sources of his inspiration. Another bus said ‘I sing for Mons. And you?’ Standing on the roof was a singer dressed as the Renaissance composer Orlando di Lassus, who was born in Mons in the 1500s. One of the related events will be 700 amateur and professional choral singers gathering on the steps of the town’s Sainte-Waudru collegiate church. And as for the British double-decker, it represented London, which will be one of eight global cities featured in La Maison Folie (the Madness House).

In total Mons will organise some 1,000 cultural and artistic activities throughout the year. Many big Belgian names have got involved, including choreographer Frédéric Flamand, who founded the Charleroi Danses company, artist Arne Quinze, renowned for his large outdoor installations, and the designer and illustrator François Schuiten, best known perhaps for his comic strip work.

There will be no shortage of development projects happening in the town, with five new museums opening in Mons and a brand new train station designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava – and set to rival another of his creations, the futuristic train station in another Walloon town, Liège.

In its own words, Mons plans to undergo a metamorphosis. The town wants Mons 2015 to bring about positive change that will last well beyond 2015. As the outgoing Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo explained in his opening speech, Mons has undergone difficult economic times in recent decades with the collapse of the industrial age. Mons 2015 will enable the former coal-mining area to turn the page and start to write a new and prestigious chapter, he said. “Mons 2015 will not be an end in itself; it will be the start of a new era,” said Di Rupo, who is also the official mayor of Mons.

©DavidBormans

So, as the six local buses, which by the close of the launch were all parked at one end of the hall, said on their destination boards:

In 2015

I am from Mons

She is from Mons

He is from Mons 

Everyone is from Mons

And you?

KlaraFestival 2013: melancholia

The KlaraFestival is underway in Brussels! The theme running through this year's festival, which is largely one of classical music but also incorporates dance, theatre and film, is melancholia. As the film director Lars von Trier said, "I see melancholia as a vitamin that we all need. In all western art there is something of melancholia, otherwise something's missing."

To bring this theme of melancholia to life, three composers feature heavily in the two-week KlaraFestival: Britain's John Dowland, born 450 years ago and one of the most influential musicians from the Elizabethan period, his compatriot Benjamin Britten whose centenary is being widely celebrated this year and the Russian master Dmitri Shostakovich, a contemporary and close friend of Britten.

Last night Shostakovich and Britten were on the programme in a performance by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra conducted by the young and lively Teodor Currentzis. The concert opened with Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, which was a first for me and throughout which I was totally captivated by the tenor Ian Bostridge's interpretation. After the interval the focus switched to Shostakovich, first a thrilling Piano Concerto No. 2 played by Alexander Melnikov followed by an energetic Symphony No. 9.

Earlier in the week I went to hear ‘Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorgno for 40 and 60 voices’ by Florentine composer Alessandro Striggio, the largest known polyphonic work from the entire Renaissance period. Still to come is a date with Quartet lab, a string quartet that is said to contrast established repertoire with contemporary works and improvisation.

There are also plenty of other offerings on the programme, including classical musicians interpreting Radiohead in a night club and a series of film classics all with a melancholic edge. Take a look at the KlaraFestival website to see if there's anything that grabs your attention. And if you can't make it in person, many of the concerts are broadcast on the radio.

Nordic Dance Makes Waves in Bruges

December's here again and so is December Dance, an annual festival of contemporary dance in Bruges. This year's theme is 'Nordic Waves', and as the name suggests the focus is on dancers and choreographers from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark.

Westward Ho! choreography: Tero Saarinen
photo: Sakari Viika

The festival opened on Thursday evening with a triple bill from the Finnish choreographer Tero Saarinen. While each of the three pieces was very different in character, it was striking how each of them used light in an innovative way to complement the dance and music: Westward ho! had a backdrop of the aurora borealis (Northern lights), the visual focus in Scheme of Things was a large rectangular board of lights that at times resembled disco lights and at others the light of fire and other elemental forces, while in Vox Balaenae a prism suspended from the ceiling played light games with the dance floor and the soloist's costume.

VOX BALAENAE choreography:
Tero Saarinen
photo: Sami Kulju

Can't wait until Tuesday's performance which promises to be a showstopper with choreography by the Helsinki Dance Company's Kenneth Kvarnström, combining contemporary dance with live classical music and costumes from leading Swedish and Finnish fashion designers.

Check out the full programme here. The festival runs until December 16.

Heavenly music at the KlaraFestival

4 Elements - 4 Seasons - Sommer (Dvd Extract) from Stephan Talneau on Vimeo.

The Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin orchestra last night gave a performance of baroque music like I've never seen before. On the programme were 'The Elements' by French composer Jean-Fery Rebel and 'The Four Seasons' by Antonio Vivaldi, both pieces composed in the early 18th century and both brought to life not only by the musicians but also by a dancer.

The performance, which was part of the annual KlaraFestival in Belgium, was full of life, energy and movement. At times I was absorbed in the music, at others mesmerized by the choreography. Sometimes I found myself chuckling at the cheeky gestures, at other times quite simply wowed by the interaction of music and dance.

During Rebel's work, the choreographer and dancer Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola played with fire and danced in water as he interpreted the music of 'The Elements'. During Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons', he wooed the solo violinist through the first signs of spring, the heat of summer, autumnal leaves and winter snowflakes. It really was a truly original and uplifting performance.

Another great concert earlier in the festival, whose theme this year is 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door', was 'Kosmos'. Have a read of my review in the Wall Street Journal.

The KlaraFestival runs until September 14, so there's still time to catch a concert, be it in Brussels, Antwerp or Bruges.

Pina: All About Dance

Pina, the 3D film by Wim Wenders for the late choreographer Pina Bausch, is all about dance. Nothing surprising there, you might say. But the film really is about the visual beauty and physicality of dance and movement, not an intellectual reflection on dance. It is about the dance works created by Pina Bausch, not Pina Bausch the person.

Going into the cinema I had anticipated hearing a lot of the choreographer's own voice and listening to insights from dancers who had worked with the German choreographer. Don't get me wrong, the film includes archive footage of Bausch, but she doesn't say much in these clips, and it incorporates interviews with dancers who worked with Bausch at Tanztheater Wuppertal, but their comments reveal little.

Instead it really is the dance productions that take centre stage. Extracts from four of Bausch's works - Kontakthof, Le Sacre du printemps, Café Müller and Vollmond - dominate the film. Each is mesmerising and beautiful, enhanced by the 3D experience. For the film's 3D Supervisor François Garnier, using 3D was  ideal because dance is, by its very nature, movement in space. "3D has all the space, all the action, and all the movement to offer. The sense of physical sensation is much more powerful than any intellectual reflection," Garnier says on the Pina website.

The dance is left to speak for itself, creating a rich visual and sensory experience full of colour, movement and beauty. Viewers are left to make their own interpretations, rather than be guided by any voiceover or strong verbal narrative. The picture of Bausch that emerged for me was of a woman who expressed herself through gestures and movements, not lengthy discussions and debates. Her words to the dancers were few and far between, but the words she did utter were exactly what was needed to motivate, encourage and inspire them.

© NEUE ROAD MOVIES GmbH, photograph by Donata Wenders

The dancers are filmed both on stage and in outdoor locations in and around the German town of Wuppertal, which was Bausch's home and creative centre for 35 years until her sudden death in June 2009. As Tanztheater Wuppertal's long-time costume designer, Marion Cito, says, "I sometimes cannot believe that Pina Bausch is no longer here...One senses, however, that she lives on in her works." That is perhaps why it is so apt that it is the works that are at the centre of the film.

Mikrokosmos - Rosas at the Kaaitheater

Dance and music have to be two of my favourite artistic disciplines. Make that contemporary dance and a string quartet playing live and it doesn’t get much better. Last night I was treated to such a combination with the performance of Mikrokosmos.

Mikrokosmos is one of choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s early works (created in 1987) and is a performance that starts with a couple dancing to music for two pianos by Bartok and concludes with four women dancing to Bartok’s String Quartet No. 4. The striking rhythms and energy of both the music and the dance complement each other perfectly, making the overall performance one fizzing with excitement, and with several cheeky touches thrown in for good measure

The creation is part of Early Works, a project made up of four pieces choreographed by De Keersmaeker in the 1980s and being shown at Brussels’ Kaaitheater over a three-week period. Early Works will next be shown at Sadler’s Wells, from 10-16 April.

Having the music played live is simply wonderful. It is no longer the background sound to which the dancers move but an integral part of the work, with the musicians on stage, their entries and exits choreographed, and the dancers including them as part of the piece, either by dancing right up to them or by looking across at them as part of their choreographed movement. The Bartok string quartet was played by the UK’s Duke Quartet, which has been working with De Keersmaeker and her Rosas dance company for many years.

For more about string music and dance, click here to read my article ‘All The Right Moves’ for The Strad magazine. The interview with De Keersmaeker below (nothing to do with me) is also worth listening to.

Only When I Dance: Rio Teenagers Pursue Their Dreams

Only when I dance is a documentary that follows two teenagers from rough, working class areas of Rio de Janiero striving to attain their dream of becoming professional ballet dancers - unsurprisingly it has been dubbed the Brazilian Billy Elliot. I enjoyed Billy Elliot; I loved Only when I dance.

The key to the film’s appeal lies in its two stars, 18 year-old Irlan Santos da Silva and 17 year-old Isabela Coracy. Director Beadie Finzi chose to follow these two dancers not because she could somehow tell where their lives were going to lead, but because of their personalities. 

Speaking in Brussels yesterday evening, Finzi explained how she was immediately drawn to these two particular dancers and could tell from their body language that it was going to work well. True, Finzi knew these two had a lot of potential to succeed in the world of dance, but so did other students. She chose Irlan and Isabela because she could sense their magnetism and warmth - worthwhile characteristics not just for the film, but also because Finzi and her crew were going to spend a year, on and off, with the two dancers and their families, filming the ups and downs of their lives.

Both dancers attended the Centro de Dança Rio, a school set up by former Brazilian ballerina Mariza Estrella in order to give the next generation a chance to succeed in a city where too many young people succumb to the easy temptation of drugs and crime. Mariza acts as the link between the poor neighbourhoods of Rio and the bright lights of New York and other western cities where the young dancers dream of working.

On the one hand the stories of Irlan, who lived with his family in Rio de Janiero’s most violent favela, the Complexo do Alemão, and Isabela, from a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Rio, are a million miles away from those of us watching the film yesterday in Brussels. That was part of the documentary’s appeal, an insight into another world, another way of living.

Yet for all the differences, the story had universal appeal because it was a tale of two children striving to realise their dreams and their parents doing everything within their means to help them. The human emotions, real warmth and sense of truth in the film were what made it. It was impossible not to be moved by the film. And because it was a film about real people and real lives, it was all the more compelling.

Of course a documentary chooses to include only certain elements of the characters’ lives and leave out others, to follow one particular narrative more closely and leave another undeveloped. These are the essential choices made during production in order to condense the real lives of two families filmed over a year into a work lasting less than an hour and a half. I accept that a documentary uses techniques that you find in a fictional film, but for me there’s something about the truth and the reality of a documentary that I find irresistible and inspiring. Only when I dance certainly fell into that category.

The Brussels screening of Only when I dance was organised by the United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe.

Cafe de los maestros: Bozar transformed for tango spectacle

Last night the Bozar’s concert hall, renowned as a top classical music venue, transformed itself into Buenos Aires of the 1940s and 1950s for the final stop of the Cafe de los maestros tango orchestra’s European tour.

Tango legends, who first performed in the music’s heyday in Buenos Aires more than a half century ago, took to the stage and proved that those in their seventies, eighties or even nineties still have the energy to put on a dazzling show. Then again, these were the same musicians who starred in Gustavo Santaolalla’s 2008 documentary film ‘Café de los Maestros.’ Film, international travel, concert tours – who said life slows down at a certain age?

Never before have I seen or heard so much joy during a performance in the Bozar concert hall. The showmanship of one of the pianists, who finished his pieces with flamboyant flourishes and winked at the audience as if to share a joke, caused the house to burst out with laughter. World champion tango dancers Daniel Nacucchio and Cristina Sosa added a ‘wow’ effect, as they impressed with their passionate dancing and daring kicks. And as soloist Juan Carlos Godoy shuffled onto stage, he had won over the audience’s hearts before he even started to sing.

The orchestral numbers were interspersed with songs by Godoy and Nina Miranda, the only female musician in the group, as well as solos to show off the bandoneón, guitar and double bass. The violin was showcased by the leader of the ensemble, Fernando Suárez Pas, who used to play in Astor Piazzolla’s New Tango Quintet.

As an Argentinian sitting next to me in the Bozar last night said, part of the wonder of the live performance was seeing these tango musicians playing the music of their youth for what might be one of the last times. An inspiring evening. Now, where was the number for that tango dance course again?

Vuil & Glass: powerful performance

One of the advantages of living in Brussels is how close it is to other European countries, or put more cynically by some, how easy it is to leave the country.

This week I took advantage of this oft-cited fact and, straight after work, drove with a couple of friends to Eindhoven in the Netherlands to see ‘Vuil & Glass,’ a dance performance choreographed to music by Philip Glass arranged for cello octet - a powerful combination that had me mesmerised from beginning to end. It was by far the best dance performance I’ve seen since Nederlands Dans Theater came to Brussels a couple of years ago.

The eight cellists that make up Cello Octet Amsterdam sat side by side high up on a scaffolding on the stage, the seven dancers (there are usually eight, but one was unfortunately injured) moved around the whole stage, including around and under the scaffolding. The modern music and dance complemented each other perfectly.

The first time ‘Vuil & Glas’ was performed a few years ago its venue was a waste disposal station (hence ‘vuil’ – waste – in the title). The revival has been adapted for the theatre, but as the dance company, Conny Janssen Danst, says itself on its website: “Complete with new dancers, new choreography, new costumes, and a new composition – but still with eight cellists, a pile of mattresses, and the hypnotizing, pulsating music of Philip Glass.”

In short, it was 75 minutes of pure joy listening to and watching the musicians and dancers, who performed solos and duets interwoven with composition and choreography for the full ensemble. A double thumbs up from me.

Intoxicated by words and music

Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal was a set text at university and appealingly so with its themes of drunkenness, intoxication, love, beauty, ennui and anguish. A decade or so later and the collection crossed my path again as I saw an amazing performance directed by Frédéric Dussenne at the Théâtre Marni in Brussels.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect as I entered the theatre for “Baudelaire: music and poetry”. As it turned out, I was treated to a spectacle that combined drama, theatre, dance and music. The words were almost entirely taken from the Fleurs du Mal collection (the one exception was a prose poem by Baudelaire that was set to music by Benoît Mernier) and either sung by the soprano Sophie Karthäuser or spoken by the actor Angelo Bison.

Bison’s delivery was particularly powerful. He turned what could have been a straight poetry recital into a truly theatrical performance. The stage had little on it: on the left was the pianist David Lively at his grand piano with the soprano in front of him, on the right the actor dressed in black with a single chair as a prop. When the poems spoke of beauty and love, Bison looked imploringly at the soprano, when the poems raised questions, he turned to the audience. At times he was calm, at others he stormed into the audience or off the stage in a fit of rage or anger or desperation. He was totally in command of the audience’s reactions, orchestrating whether we watched in silence, allowed ourselves a little chuckle when asked what we should get drunk on, or made our skins crawl as he spat out the words of Une charogne (carrion). I was captivated.

The rhythm and metre of the poetry were brilliantly accentuated by Bison and at times it was as if he was almost singing. It was a natural transition between his poems and those sung by Karthäuser such as Harmonie du soir (Evening’s harmony) or La mort des amants (The death of lovers), both set to music by Claude Debussy. As well as the piano, song and spoken word, dance was also woven into the performance with a male dancer representing for example ‘evening’ and ‘the devil’.

According to the director, Baudelaire was “a musician of spoken French”. Well, that certainly came across in last night’s performance. Wonderful stuff.

Binoche turns Brussels opera into cinema

La Monnaie opera house turned itself into a cinema for the first time on Monday evening, with a showing of Mauvais Sang, a film from 1986 starring Juliette Binoche. Before the film started, the French actress came on stage to give a half-hour interview about her work and life.

The main reason for her being in Brussels this week is a dance performance that she’s giving with Akram Khan, In-I. I didn’t know that Binoche was also a dancer. Apparently she isn’t, or at least wasn’t until last year. “You have to discover new things, push yourself,” Binoche told the audience. And that was one of the reasons why she accepted the opportunity to work with Khan.

It’s not only Binoche the dancer who is in the Brussels spotlight. The cinematheque is holding a retrospective of her films this month. Given that retrospectives are more often for the dead or those whose heyday is over, Binoche assured the audience that her acting career wasn’t over.

She did acknowledge, however, that on several occasions she had considered giving up acting and once went to her teacher to ask for a lesson in how to teach acting, thinking that could be an alternative career. She was met with the words “No way! Not yet.”

“Sometimes the desire to do something isn’t there any more. But you just have to be patient. It comes back,” Binoche said.

As for the film Mauvais Sang. I unfortunately felt like I was in a film studies class at university thinking I’m sure I’m supposed to find this intellectual and ground-breaking, but I don’t. Highlights: the aerial shots of three of the characters parachuting down to ground; the lines delivered by a sinister American female character who (intentionally) spoke French with an amusing Anglophone accent. Lowlights: the clever camera shots substituting for what it lacked in plot and character depth; too many occasions when I found myself simply thinking “what?”