Throwing the Body into the Fight

Mary Kate Connolly

Description

Throwing the Body into the Fight is the first English-language publication dedicated to the German choreographer Raimund Hoghe. Curated and edited by Mary Kate Connolly, the book operates as a collage, drawing together a variety of international voices to create a fragmented portrait of the artist. Lavishly illustrated with photographs by Rosa Frank, who has collaborated closely with Hoghe for two decades, this book will be welcomed by all who admire a man described by the New York Times – in its review of Hoghe’s 2012 'Pas de Deux' with Japanese dancer Takashi Ueno – as 'a lover of romance and beautiful things.'

 

Editor’s Note

An Introduction to Raimund Hoghe by Mary Kate Connolly

Lettere Amorose: Lois Keidan

Raimund Hoghe’s Emblems of Absence by Gerald Siegmund

Lettere Amorose: Finola Cronin

Luca Giacomo Schulte

Rosa Frank

Undone by Martin Hargreaves

Lettere Amorose: Philipp Gehmacher

Guerre et Paix by Laurent Goumarre

Young People, Old Voices

Lorenzo De Brabandere

Emmanuel Eggermont

Ornella Balestra

Lettere Amorose: Boris Charmatz

Stay a While: Raimund Hoghe’s Histories by Dominic Johnson

Lettere Amorose: Meryl Tankard

Lettere Amorose: Franko B

Photo Archive

 

Sujets

• Performing Arts
• Theatre
• Live Art
• Performance art
• General officer
• Dance
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783201402
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

THROWING THE BODY INTO THE FIGHT
A PORTRAIT OF RAIMUND HOGHE

Si je meurs laissez le balcon ouvert - Emmanuel Eggermont Ensemble

Pas de Deux
Contents
In Conversation
Editor s Note
In Conversation
An Introduction to Raimund Hoghe
by Mary Kate Connolly
Lettere Amorose: Lois Keidan
Raimund Hoghe s Emblems of Absence by Gerald Siegmund
In Conversation
Lettere Amorose: Finola Cronin
Luca Giacomo Schulte
Rosa Frank
In Conversation
Undone by Martin Hargreaves
Lettere Amorose: Philipp Gehmacher
In Conversation
Guerre et Paix by Laurent Goumarre
Young People, Old Voices
In Conversation
Lorenzo De Brabandere
Emmanuel Eggermont
Ornella Balestra
Lettere Amorose: Boris Charmatz
In Conversation
Stay a While: Raimund Hoghe s Histories by Dominic Johnson
Lettere Amorose: Meryl Tankard
In Conversation
Lettere Amorose: Franko B
In Conversation
Photo Archive
Contributor Biographies
Credits
Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote of throwing the body into the fight. These words inspired me to go on stage. Other inspirations are the reality around me, the time in which I live, my memories of history, people, images, feelings and the power and beauty of music and the confrontation with one s own body which, in my case, does not correspond with conventional ideals of beauty. To see bodies on stage that do not comply with the norm is important - not only with regard to history but also with regard to present developments, which are leading humans to the status of design objects. On the question of success: it is important to be able to work and to go your own way - with or without success. I simply do what I have to do.
Raimund Hoghe

Swan Lake, 4 Acts

Bol ro Variations
Mary Kate Connolly
Editor s Note
With every project comes a moment when all seems lost. For me, such a time came deep into the process of compiling this book. Following an arduous journey from attempting to get the publication underway, to the joy of commissioning texts from writers and finally receiving them, of travelling to interview Raimund and write on his work, I realised that somehow, I had no idea how to proceed. Faced with the task of compiling this portrait of the artist, I feared destroying the very thing I had set out to preserve; that of the complex and ethereal space which is Raimund Hoghe s theatre.
My first encounter with Raimund s work was Swan Lake, 4 Acts. In endeavouring to distil my response to this performance, I identify greatly with Martin Hargreaves description of becoming undone. I was brimming with words, yet rendered speechless. During subsequent research on Raimund, I became acutely conscious of the capacity for words to illuminate, and yet also do strange violence to an experience of theatre which is pleasingly impossible to pin down. This is true perhaps of all performance, but in the case of Raimund Hoghe s work it seems particularly so. Above all, I was struck by the strength of feeling provoked in those who write about this artist (myself included), and at times, the sharp divide in opinions on his work. Writing in 2001, Gerald Siegmund suggested that we should thank [Hoghe] for his art, whereas in 2007, UK dance critic Jenny Gilbert (reviewing Sacre - The Rite of Spring for The Independent newspaper) concluded that Hoghe argues his point bizarrely The entire event is so perversely undramatic, so devoid of context, you can imagine whatever you like.
Of course severe differences in opinion regarding performance are nothing new or particularly noteworthy. But perhaps what registered for me in the face of these divergences was the desire to tread softly, and not endeavour in the collation of this publication, to forge a seamless or exhaustive account of Raimund Hoghe and his work. Rather, this book aims to operate as a collage; it seeks to draw an incomplete and fragmented portrait of Hoghe, through the assemblage of a variety of international voices. These voices have different registers, tones, preoccupations, and there is a deliberate editorial attempt to allow these to co-habit.
In commissioning the content for this book, it felt important to draw from a variety of sources, and furthermore, that the writers contributing could offer differing international perspectives. Currently, Raimund Hoghe enjoys much critical acclaim; he performs across Europe, and has presented work in New York, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro. Awarded the French Prix de la Critique in 2006 for Swan Lake, 4 Acts , and the title Dancer of the Year in 2008 (by the magazine Ballet-Tanz), he is now predominantly billed within the realm of dance performance. This was not always the case however, and the writers within this book have encountered Hoghe s work in different contexts and at different times. Lois Keidan has written of the negative reception which his early work received in Germany and Austria, and by contrast, the positivity with which Meinw rts was greeted when programmed in 1994, within the context of Live Art, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Mercifully, the demand for the categorisation of Hoghe s work no longer appears a significant concern among critics, but the evolution and shift in the ways in which his work is viewed strengthened the need for a diverse collection of contributors spanning time and geographical location.
Whilst writers such as Gerald Siegmund, Martin Hargreaves and Laurent Goumarre hail from Germany, the United Kingdom and France respectively, more importantly, they have encountered Hoghe s work in different contexts and at varying times across Hoghe s career. Thus their points of reference contrast, and so too their central thematic concerns. For his contribution, Gerald Siegmund has re-visited a lecture he delivered during a conference held at Kaaitheater (Brussels) in 2004. Eight years on from the original lecture, he adjusts his argument slightly, and so the writing emerges both from a historical perspective, whilst simultaneously being relocated to the current context.
Besides the need for the writing to span time and place, a number of seemingly valuable themes surfaced in curating Throwing the Body into the Fight . Once again, these do not masquerade as an exhaustive or definitive list, but provide focal points for the discussion of Hoghe s work.


Meinw rts
People say he is too small for his age. Too delicate, too weak. And there is something else, barely noticeable: a slight curvature of the spine, a scarcely visible arching that makes them afraid. It becomes more and more pronounced, and there s no way of stopping it. There s not much we can do, the doctors say, prescribing massages and gymnastic exercises and an annual period of rehabilitation at the seaside. That s good for the boy s bronchial tubes, they say; it will make it easier for him to breathe. When he was younger still, his mother had once sewn him a sailor s outfit. At the cinema they watched the popular movies, movies transporting them to far-away places, down South, to the sun and the sea. The new films started on Fridays and Tuesdays. The sea was always as blue as the sky. ( Meinw rts , 1994)
The first of these themes was an exploration of the body; not only how Hoghe s particular body (with severe curvature of the spine) might occupy the space of performance, but more vitally, to extend the question beyond this realm. Martin Hargreaves seeks to understand how it is not so much Hoghe s body, or not only his body, that enters the fight but how it is the body , which is always a body for someone else, a social body, a body with a history which does not belong solely to itself. Discussing Hoghe s work against a backdrop of disability, queerness, communication and ecstasy, Hargreaves highlights Judith Butler s citation of Spinoza in preferring to ask What can a body do? as opposed to what a body is or should be.
Laurent Goumarre too, addresses Hoghe s body, but frames his discussion through a concept of War and Peace, the notion that Hoghe s ritualistic strategies in performance offer the possibility of turning the stage into a realm at peace. By throwing himself into the fight, Goumarre suggests, Hoghe is in fact defying the inherent conflicts which the space of performance presents, and instead, bringing peace.
I remember that I absolutely wanted to be twelve to see films for which you had to be twelve
I remember that Judy Garland said on the stage of the Palace
Theatre in New York I ll stay as long as you want me
I remember the photos from Vietnam, the faces burned by napalm and the children running away from the bomb dust
I remember that in the school they never talked about the War and the Holocaust
I remember the day when Marilyn Monroe died. Her photo was hanging on the film star calendar, next to the cupboard. Later they reported that the weight of her heart was 300 grammes
( Another Dream, 2000)
Further thematic concerns of this book centre on ritual and memory. Raimund Hoghe remembers. Treading a carefully constructed path, personal and collective memories are called to mind in his performances through the enactment of ritual, dialogues with inert objects, and an emotive, restrained use of music. Sometimes-forgotten histories are unearthed and cultural wounds exposed, as sites for memory and re-enactment are created and quietly destroyed. Hoghe s relations to history and ritual are explored in this publication from divergent standpoints. Gerald Siegmund (in Raimund Hoghe s Emblems of Absence ) begins by unpicking the concept of substitution and the staging of absence, before proceeding to question the connection between Hoghe s art and ritual. Whilst in his initial lecture some years earlier an opposition between the two appeared evident, here Siegmund mediates further between the two, drawing attention to ritualistic aspects in art and aesthetic devices in ritual practice.
Dominic Johnson s Stay a While: Raimund Hoghe s Histories