A strange place to be...George's page

Back in March 2009 I watched the final preview of Eonnagata a stellar collaboration between Sylvie Guillem, Russell Maliphant and Robert Lepage with some incredible costumes by Alexander McQueen. The result was an interesting and sometimes heady mix of Japanese kabuki, mime, dance and straight narrative. All three protagonists looked terribly excited to be on stage. Sylvie was genuinely glowing and Maliphant surely looked a very manly version of the Chevalier d'Éon. Lepage on the other hand looked very assured, despite the plain fact that his metier is directing and not being on the stage. The most wonderful aspect was the expectation of what those great artists have come up with. Especially when considering the past collaborations between Maliphant and Guillem gave us some veritable gems.

Creating such a hybrid art form that mixes so many types of performance is bound to be problematic. And in this occasion the plot was wandering when it was trying to create beautiful images while falling the story by slowing down the pace of the narration. The best example being Maliphant’s battle scene.  Surely one of the most dramatically staged parts of the evening, but with very little character development.  The musical choices where very interesting and magpie like, but unfortunately clothed in a post modern ramble and haze that was not wholly appropriate. It gave the starting scene the air of a blockbuster action movie. Which I don’t think makes enough connection with the heart of the story.

Despite those failures Sylvie managed to use her stage charisma to create some truly electrifying moments. For instance her letter writing scene is a treatise on abstract characterisation and how it can be mingled with narrative passages, advancing the plot and humanising the character.

After the Premiere a couple of days after my experience of the piece I looked forward to the reviews.  Most dance critics thought the work was confusing and lacked focus. A couple of them said the work was too long and that Lepage was not a natural dancer and the choreography was scaled down to suit him. All in all it seemed like a pretty unkind reaction to the work and surely not the warm reception that Guillem is used to.

When I received an email in early May that they would be returning for another week of performances in June I instantly bought a pair of tickets in order to experience the work in its final form.  On Friday 26 June I was in Row A trying to experience anew the work, wondering what alterations they had made. To my dismay two whole scenes where cut, including the rather poetic sea passage from France to the UK. This originally gave a wonderful respite from the action and allowed more compassion for the hero/heroine. Also a number of parts where shortened making the autopsy finale fell all too soon. While in the preview when the stage darkened with the ageing Chevalier’s body on the anatomist’s slab it was a shocking conclusion and a moment of catharsis both for the audience and the performers. This second time around the finale looked as if it had no reason to exist and had a hollow theatrical feel.

Deep in my heart I was disappointed, despite the great gift Sylvie Guillem is to the theatre. Her presence was not enough to save the piece from its ponderous and slightly crushed ambition. My feeling on the night was that the cuts were made in order to make the running time shorter by 15 minutes. Thus reacting to the main initial criticism. As most of the other ones could not be addressed effectively without ripping the choreography apart.

I still felt that we were touched by greatness but somehow I also sensed that all three of them did not want to be on the Sadler’s Wells stage. My one hope is that Sylvie and Maliphant will rework the piece and remove some of its dubious “post-modern” stylings and give the Chevalier the chance to shine.  I do wish her more luck with her next project and surely I’ll be there to applaud her.

I had only seen Viktoria Mullova live once before during the 2003 Proms.She was surrounded by a full Symphony Orchestra and playing the wonderful Prokofiev concerto. With her very powerful, vigorous, energetic playing against a populous orchestra is almost like a primeval battle of the individual against a mass of people. And she surely stands up in that context. 

Last Sunday it was a different situation altogether. She was accompanied by her own Ensemble made up of friends.I really did not know what to expect, especially as I had the chance to be on the fourth row. Would it be too close to appreciate her sound, would it be intimate?

Till the lights went down I was quietly wondering in my head, especially when both pieces they performed were totally new to me.

The Beethoven was very classical in feel, restraint and very poised. Seeing Mullova interact with the other six members of the ensemble was lovely. They only exchanged cursory looks and they were clearly at ease with each other. From my viewpoint the oboist was looking at Victoria with a tender devotion that one would expect from a dear friend. 

After the heights of the Classical tradition, the Schubert Octet was a plunge in deep Romantic waters. Their performance became more fluid and much more in tune with the beautiful harmonic lines that Schubert used in the piece. Being so close to the ensemble it was incredibly intimate it felt as if they were playing just for me. It had a wonderful communicative feel to it. A totally refreshing experience.

The Programme:

Ludwig Van Beethoven Septet in E flat, Op.20
Franz Schubert Octet Lin

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:iu964z8B13YJ:www.southbankcentre.co.uk/music/productions/mullova-ensemble-artist-in-fo-40320+http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/music/productions/mullova-ensemble-artist-in-fo-40320&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

A week ago my web connection went dead for two and a half days and being used to always having information on tap it was like entering a different world. And as with any crisis (even as miniscule as this) I couldn’t stop thinking how we take things for granted till we lose them. But then was losing access to the web such a horrible thing?

Well YES!
It totally throws the Web 2.0 world we live in out of the window, my media server can not fetch video and audio from the web, my Playstation 3 can not go online to download demos and other content, my computer can not access any online data…it is like being totally excluded from a society we think we have a place in. Ten years ago I barely used to check my email three times a week. Nowadays I am always wired to my Gmail account through Wi-Fi. It is crazy!

But then the other day we had a conversation about simnel cake (a great banal subject) and its origins and it really helped getting instantly to Wikipedia and finding the answer on my handheld device. Sure it is possibly diminishing the need to remember any intricate details about most not day to day items but it is immensely fun having so much information on our fingertips. The novelty never really wears off. A recent Guardian article put it in more old fashioned terms…Wi-Fi is the nearest we can get in our everyday life to magic.

And I will have to second. Being able to stream video and data over the air to any room we choose is a freedom I never imagined of. But it just feels both luxurious and mystical. Maybe that is the reason that it makes it feel like a birth right it’s the fact that data access is no more something that a dull black cable brings to you, but part of the air we breathe.

Long live IEEE 802.11n

The main products was a plate and a canvas bag. Unfortunately while I was browsing books in their shop for 15 mins at least 5 people gasped at the prices of those two items. The plate is being sold for £25 and the bag for £14.50 (http://www.delawarrpavilion.com/shop/peoplewillalwaysneed.htm)
It then dawned on me that the merchandising was aspirational (with a prominent Alvar Aalto and Iittala display) but it was not acknowledging the local area and its people.
A large proportion of the population of Bexhill is pensioners that aspire to retirement by the sea. I do not think that they would have a large amount of disposable income to spend on merchandise and surely the prospect of a £25 plate must seem extortionate. To my eyes the selection in the shop was geared towards a very design conscious urbane audience.
 
This instance raises the question to who runs artistic and cultural centres around the UK and how well they know their local area. I wonder how many members of the administrative team of the Pavilion have grown up in the area or have resided for long enough to know what the locals would want. The Pavilion is a wonderful building that is clearly very popular with the local community but it seems its administration is out of touch when it comes to the commercial activities.

For a couple of months now when I arrive to Pimlico tube every morning I seem to be walking as a late-comer to a Symphonic concert. Normally I end up somewhere in the middle of the final movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony or like today when I landed mid flow of a Telemann quartet.

I remember when London Underground trialled playing orchestral music at Brixton Station back in 2001 with the obvious target being the various drug dealers that used to frequent directly outside the foyer of the station. They even installed speakers on the outside!

It is rather intriguing how the choice of music reflects back on Transport for London. They seem to go for a certain “unfashionable – uncool” kind of music that petty criminals would not enjoy listening to (or at least is what their advisors are telling them).

While orchestral music is in terminal decline in the public’s consciousness. And the record companies have pretty much given up on new (studio recordings, live recordings don’t really need the same amount of investment) ambitious recordings of Opera, Classical, Romantic and Baroque repertoire. Most record companies seem to be more than happy to rehash their back catalogue from the 1950s-80s into compilations. And so avoiding taking any commercial risks and giving new artists and orchestras the chance to record in studio conditions either contemporary music or give a new breath of life to older repertoire.
It is symptomatic of this decline in support that most of the large orchestras have set up their record labels (e.g. The LSO and the Hallè in Manchester) in order to disseminate their distinctive ‘sound’ out of the big record labels and their politics.

My personal response to the classical muzak, that Transport for London is putting us through, is contradictory. On one side I like listening to the music itself (the performances seems to be decent and the sound adequate) but on the other I have an uneasy feeling on the ethnic & economic profiling that has gone on in the background. Clearly TfL must be thinking that orchestral music will not appeal to the caricature of a mugger that they have in their minds (probably non-Caucasian and under 30). To me the amount of presumption that has gone on, before settling in this “novel” way to combat petty crime, creeps me out.

 
And a few links

Hallé: http://www.halle.co.uk/publishedSite/products.asp

LSO: http://lso.co.uk/buyrecordings/catalogue

http://www.urban75.org/brixton/features/brixton_tube.html

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/08/should_music_be_used_for_crowd_control.html