Tag Archives: Bernard Marie-Koltès

ADAM LINDER AT REDCAT

Playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès (1948–1989)—a key figure in French postwar drama—believed that dramatic action is always transactional because, writes stage director and Koltès scholar Fabrice Conte, “characters can only interact within the context of a form of negotiation.”

The relationship between the Client and Dealer in Koltès’ play Dans la solitude des champs de coton was the impetus for Adam Linder‘s contemporary opera THE WANT—at Redcat this week in its premiere Los Angeles engagement.

THE WANT will be performed by Jess Gadani, Justin F. Kennedy, Jasmine Orpilla, and Roger Sala Reyner.

Ethan Braun wrote the music and the lighting design is by Shahryar Nashat. The Los Angeles production is co-presented by CAP UCLA.

Working on projects in which our roles interweave, we don’t start with Shahryar as the maker of sculptures or of moving images. Because he’s worked in those mediums, his way of thinking has a particular texture. And because I’ve worked in performing arts and with liveness and theater, my way of thinking has a specific texture.

What interests us is how these textures either complement or productively resist each other. It’s not about the formal outcome of these mediums being combined. And that’s where I would ontologically separate our way of working together from the notion of the “interdisciplinary.” We don’t care about disciplines meeting, but about our sensibilities crisscrossing.Adam Linder

The reason why Adam and I say we never collaborate and are not interested in doing so is that we don’t really make work together. When he comes to me asking if I would do the stage design for a piece he’s making, I’m happy to work within his concept and apply my skills to his vision. For an artist, it can be playful to have these limitations—in an applied arts versus visual arts kind of way. Adam becomes a bit like my client. — Shahryar Nashat

ADAM LINDER—THE WANT

Thursday through Saturday, September 19, 20, and 21, at 8:30 pm.

Sunday, September 22, at 7 pm.

Redcat

631 West 2nd Street, downtown Los Angeles.

Linder and Nashat quotes are from their 2018 Bomb interview by Aram Moshayedi.

Adam Linder, The Want, 2019. Images courtesy and © the artists, performers, and videographer.

CAP UCLA DANCE SEASON 2019–2020

Alastair Macaulay was unambiguous. Closing his 2018 review of the world premiere of FOUR QUARTETS—a collaboration between choreographer Pam Tanowitz, artist Brice Marden, and composer Kaija Saariaho—with the following paragraph, the former New York Times dance critic made its case for posterity:

If I am right to think this is the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century, we’re fortunate that FOUR QUARTETS will travel to other stages. I long to become more deeply acquainted with the many layers of its stage poetry.

The drawback for Los Angeles audiences is that this landmark work will be performed at Royce Hall in early 2020 only twice—a highlight of a remarkably strong CAP UCLA 2019–2020 dance season.

The season begins at Redcat, where Adam Linder presents THE WANT—a contemporary opera/performance piece based on a play by Bernard-Marie Koltès, with music by Ethan Braun.

Sankai JukuUshio Amagatsu’s all-male troupe of Butoh dancers, performing MEGURI—will be at Royce for one night only, as will Michael Keegan-Dolan’s Teaċ Daṁsa (House of Dance) in a new interpretation of SWAN LAKE, featuring a score by Slow Moving Clouds.

The great ballerina Wendy Whelan will dance at Royce, for two nights, in THE DAY. Choreographed by Lucinda Childs with a score by David Lang, Whelan will be joined onstage by cellist Maya Beiser.

The dance season closes in April 2020 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with the Dance at the Music Center co-presentation of PALERMO PALERMO, a 1989 work by dance legend Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal.

See link below for details.

CAP UCLA 2019–2020 SEASON OF DANCE

From top: Sankai Juku, Meguri; Adam Linder, The Want, photograph by Shahryar Nashat; Michael Keegan-Dolan, Teaċ Daṁsa, Swan Lake, photograph by Colm Hogan; Maya Beiser, Wendy Whelan, Lucinda Childs, and David Lang, The Day; Pina Bausch, Palermo Palermo, photograph by Jochen Viehoff; Pam Tanowitz, Brice Marden, and Kaija Saariaho, Four Quartets, photograph by Maria Baranova. Images courtesy and © the artists and photographers.

SORRY ANGEL

In the art-for-art’s-sake world of Christophe Honoré and his characters—gay men in love with love and the legends of representation that give their at-risk lives sense, sensibility, and station—matters of love, life, death are navigated through a filter of literature and performance, and this combination of high art and pop sentimentality brings solace.

In PLAIRE, AIMER ET COURIR VITE / SORRY ANGEL—now playing at the Nuart—the brief 1990s encounter of Jacques (Pierre Deladonchamps) and Arthur (Vincent Lacoste) is haunted by the long shadows and quotations of some of the writers Honoré recently celebrated in his stage piece Les IdolesBernard-Marie Koltès, Hervé Guibert—supplemented by queer icons and allies Jean Genet, Isabelle Huppert, Robert Wilson, Walt Whitman, W.H. Auden, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Jacques, not willing to undergo yet another course of AIDS treatment, is reaching the end of his story just as Arthur—like Honoré, a transplant from the provinces—is beginning his. With a little help from his idols, Jacques can put Arthur on the path to become a proper young Parisian.

SORRY ANGEL

Through March 21.

Nuart Theatre

11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

From top: Pierre Deladonchamps (foreground) and Vincent Lacoste in Sorry Angel; Deladonchamps; Deladonchamps and Lacoste; Lacoste.

CHRISTOPHE HONORÉ — LES IDOLES

LES IDOLESChristopher Honoré’s new evening-length theater piece dedicated to his cultural heroes lost in the AIDS epidemic—celebrates the lives and work of Hervé Guibert, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Serge Daney, Cyril Collard, Jean-Luc Lagarce, and Jacques Demy.

The cast includes Youssouf Abi-Ayad (Koltès), Harrison Arévalo (Collard), Jean-Charles Clichet (Daney), Marina Foïs (Guibert), Julien Honoré (Lagarce), and Marlène Saldana (Demy), with the participation of Teddy Bogaert and Aurélien Gschwind (Bambi Love).

LES IDOLES

Through February 1.

Odéon

Place de l’Odéon, 6th, Paris.

Les Idoles production photographs © Jean-Louis Fernandez, courtesy the photographer and the Odéon, 2018.

ADAM LINDER — THE WANT

Inspired by the Bernard-Marie Koltès play In the Solitude of Cotton Fields (1986), choreographer Adam Linder has created a new opera, THE WANT, with music by Ethan Braun and a libretto in co-operation with Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer.

The work premieres this week in Berlin, and will open in Hamburg in January. The cast of singers, actors, and dancers includes Jess Gadani, Justin F. Kennedy, Jasmine Orpilla, and Roger Sala Reyner.

THE WANT—Premiere

Thursday through Saturday, December 13, 14, and 15, at 8:30 pm.

Sunday, December 16, at 7 pm.

Hebbel am Ufer, HAU 2, Hallesches Ufer 32, Berlin.

 

THE WANT

Thursday through Saturday, January 10, 11, and 12, at 8 pm.

Kampnagel, K1, Jarrestrasse 20, Hamburg.

Adam Linder, The Want (2018). Photographs by Andrea Rossetti.

Images courtesy the artists and Hebbel am Ufer.