Rosas - Partita 2

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't have very much exposure to modern dance.  But I know enough about the dance scene in Belgium to be aware of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her impact on modern

dance, not only here in Belgium, but internationally.  De Keersmaeker is a world renowned dancer and choreographer and the woman around whom the Rosas dance company is centered.  And when I saw that she would be performing herself in this Rosas production in Leuven, I convinced Linda that we should include tickets to this in our annual culture subscription.

I am very glad I had already seen a Rosas production (see my post on Vortex Temporum below) because I already had a little bit of an idea of what to expect.  The performance began in pitch black with violinist George Alexander Van Dam playing Bach's Partita 2.  Then, the lights came back on to a bare stage and two dancers, De Keersmaeker and Boris Charmatz, who danced the entire choreography in silence, except for the occasional squeak of their gym shoes on the floor and a few unintelligible vocalizations.  Finally, Van Dam rejoined them, and the two pieces were joined together: the music and the dance.

I really enjoyed it.  I especially loved the choreography pictured (right) where one of the dancers was lying on the ground but following the footsteps of the other dancer as if he/she were the other person's shadow.  There was a beautiful movement they made to exchange places by grasping hands and letting the weight of the one person pull the other up.  You can get a bit of a feel for it, as well as hear an excerpt of the music, in this video:

As in the performance of Vortex Temporum, I enjoyed the running and jumping movements, the simple, athletic costumes and the bright gym shoes they wore.  But most of all, I loved the interface with the music, the interaction with the musician, and the way watching the movements on stage took me to a completely different planet for an hour.

I Muvrini

I went with Linda and her husband Luc to see I Muvrini last night in Hasselt. Linda and Luc are big fans and seemingly everyone else in Hasselt because the group got three standing ovations and everyone was singing along to the songs!  I Muvrini is a Corsican folk group who sing most of their songs in the traditional Corsican language, Corsu.  Wiki has this about Corsu:

 Corsican (corsu or lingua corsa) is an Italo-Dalmatian Romance language spoken and written on the islands of Corsica (France) and northern Sardinia (Italy). Corsican was long the vernacular language alongside Italian, official language in Corsica until 1859: afterwards Italian was replaced by French, owing to the acquisition of the island by France from Genoa in 1768. Over the next two centuries, the use of French grew to the extent that, by the Liberation in 1945, all islanders had a working knowledge of French. The twentieth century saw a wholesale language shift, with islanders changing their language practices to the extent that there were no monolingual Corsican speakers left by the 1960s. By 1990, an estimated 50% of islanders had some degree of proficiency in Corsican, and a small minority, perhaps 10%, used Corsican as a first language.

 

Very interesting - and I can see why people in Flanders are so enthusiastic about this group because they share a common bond through being/having been a minority language.

I Muvrini is also very socially and environmentally active, supporting through their songs and activism projects in nonviolence, ecology, and minority culture and language preservation, not just in Corsica but all over the world.  This adds an extra dimension to the concert as many of their lyrics are translated and projected on the screen behind the musicians so you can really understand the causes they support.

Many of the songs were lovely and the singing was impressive, but on the whole it was a bit too "Enya" for me to become a huge fan like so many of the people around me.  However, I'm very glad I went and I really enjoyed seeing all the enthusiasm!

Wim Helsen - Spijtig, spijtig, spijtig

Went with my youngest son to see this show by one of our favorite Flemish comedians, Wim Helsen, master in absurd comedy with a twist of melancholy.  And just about the only person I know who can fill an entire 90 minute show with a story about standing in line waiting to pee in the bathroom of a bar.  I love the way he takes us into his own universe, how he gets sidetracked but always, always comes back to the very human situation of feeling awkward and misunderstood, and the hilarious ways he (or rather the character he plays) tries to compensate for it, some of his ways more recognizable to the rest of us than others.  Respect!  And I have always loved his voice and cheeky smile, from back in the day when he was on Man Bijt Hond with "Vrienden van de poezie" (see video below).  It was a real treat to see him live for the first time, and going by how much my son was cracking up in the seat next to me, I wasn't the only one who felt this way.  Awesome evening out!

Michiel Coxcie - De vergeten Vlaamse Rafael (M Museum Leuven)

Self portrait as St. George

I had a free ticket for this temporary expo in our local art museum.  Even though I don't have much art history baggage, I have always loved learning more about it and a special expo is a good opportunity.

In this case the artist was one of the most influential Flemish painters of the 16th century but is virtually unknown today.  He was one of the first artists from northern Europe to go to Italy and absorb the art of the ancients and the Italian high renaissance, including Michelangelo, with whom he worked, and later bring these influences back to the Low Countries.

One of the works that impressed me the most was this self portrait.  Coxcie was strong defender of Catholicism in times of religious upheaval, and I think this comes through strongly in the way he portrayed himself.

Coxcie died at the age of 93, from a fall while restoring one of his own paintings in Antwerp.

Here is some more info from Wikipedia.

Paulien Cornelisse - "Maar ondertussen"

Linda and I went to see the stand-up comedy show by Dutch comedienne Paulien Cornelisse last week, and we both enjoyed it.  I had seen Cornelisse a few times on the TV show "De Slimste Mens" and thought she was funny in a quirky but low-key fashion, which is what motivated me to pick her stand-up show when we were putting our annual culture subscription together last summer.

This was her third theater show, and it got lots of good reviews in the press, so I had high expectations.

She started out the show by playing the flute solo from "California Dreaming" on a recorder, and then got started with what felt like tales she would share with a good friend, lots of things I could relate to.  She also had a microscope set up on stage, projected with a camera onto a screen, so we could all enjoy her analysis of her own saliva and blood, which I have to admit, was kind of gross.

Other than that, the show was funny without being vulgar, thought-provoking and made for an enjoyable evening.