Paris exhibits – Scènes sur Seine

7 December 2017

88 – 90

Processed with VSCO with b1 preset — Degas – a series of dancers

Networking.

I’m not the biggest fan of it, yet it is one of those necessities of my field. I think it partially comes from the fact that, seeing as I was kind of an…eccentric, weird kid growing up, my social skills edged very close to the “oh yeah, no, this person definitely has no interest in speaking to me about my interests” territory. Thankfully that’s abated somewhat – who knew that all it took was surrounding myself with other people who liked the same things I did – but that little tinge of anxiety always comes up in one particular situation: sending emails.

And yet, here I am sending out emails to people I hope to speak to about my project, patiently waiting for a response all while wondering whether ot not the lack of one means I came off like some kind of idiot in my message. There’s a term for this…oh yes: imposter syndrome.

Yes, once again that…thing…rears its ugly head.

Thankfully, though, there are ways to distract from it, at least momentarily. One of these ways is stopping into the Musée d’Orsay for a bit to check out the exhibit Degas Danse Dessein. Hommage à Degas avec Paul Valéry, which examines some of Degas’ works through the lense of writer/poet Paul Valéry – who coincidentally also published a book on Degas after the latter’s death in 1917.

Processed with VSCO with a5 preset — Degas as poet

The exhibit was centered primarily around the close friendship between Degas and Valéry, one that has apparently almost been forgotten. Interspersed amongst the Degas works on display – the majority of them being works in process, or the stages of a process rather than ‘completion’ – , were fragments from Valéry’s 1937 text on the artist (and whose title the exhibit borrows for its own). Fragments conversing with other fragments, medium complementing medium, each one revealing more of itself through its attachment to or bonding with the other…there’s a certain intimacy that arises from the realization of exactly how much one person permeated into the works of another.

Processed with VSCO with s3 preset — Honestly, I don’t know if I will ever get over how much I love the…rawness of Degas’s bodies…

Processed with VSCO with u3 preset — The ubiquitous ballerina painting…

Tomorrow will be a day of preliminary Christmas shopping/scouting, closing with – finally – another night of theatre. Oh, and packing. I’m off on a quick adventure this weekend. More to follow…

2 November 2017

Overhear Paris, and other pre-conference activities (64 – 66)

Will I ever get tired of fall foliage? No, no I will not.

I think by now it should be relatively obvious that any time I do a post on a clump of days like this, it’s because I’ve been reading all day. Of course.

Last-minute prep for Boston has been contributing to this as well. Before anyone asks: yes, it feels weird to be going back. No, I don’t necessarily think I’m going to break down. But who knows.

In any case, today, at least, proved a good final distraction before conference prep, editing, and packing got in the way.

First, a visit to the Palais de Tokyo to check out the expo Medusa bijoux et tabous (Medusa, jewelry and taboo) before it closes on the 5th. As the name suggests, the primary focus was on jewelry, but more specifically, the different ways in which jewelry is used or appropriated by the wearer not only to create, affirm, or subvert an identity, but also establish or undermine cultural norms and values. I’ve never really given much thought to how my own choices in jewelry are/can be seen as a reflection of myself – as my style/preferences have changed frequently throughout the years –, but maybe next time I’m getting ready in the morning, I’ll take some time to examine what it means to have so many pieces shaped like triangles.

No lie, would probably actually wear this if given the chance.

The evening’s second event was more in line with my usual wheelhouse of artistic interests, namely experimental/experiential theatre. About a week ago, a friend posted a link to It’s Not a Box Theatre’s Overhear Paris project, a theatrical experience advertised as an interactive walk through part of Nation, punctuated by periodic performances. The first night of performances was this evening, and, as I have been doing for pretty much every show I end up going to and as this would be my only chance to see this, I pretty much said, why the hell not and signed up for a slot.

The way it works is that you show up to a designated meeting spot (in my case, just outside metro Avron), where someone from the troupe will meet you and hand you a phone – having a good set of headphones is a plus for this, but they can provide those as well – with a preloaded app open and ready to guide you along your journey. At your start time – only one person can take the walk per slot – the app is launched, and a recording starts guiding you along the designated route. Every so often, you come across a performer, who also has a phone with the app preloaded, and when you do, your phones pair up, and their narrative starts playing as they in turn – through dance and gesture – perform their story in front of you. It’s a strange sort of intimacy that happens when you have a situation like this where two people, seemingly isolated with their headphones on, are in fact connected via virtual and corporeal transmission of a narrative. In any case, there were moments where I couldn’t help but also watch some of the passerby who stole sometimes intrigued, sometimes confused glances at what was going on.

The theme of the show was on immigration, expatriation, generally, leaving one’s home to move abroad, and the trials and tribulations that come with it. At the end of the show, once you turn your phone back in, the team asks if you would like five minutes to share your story. Which I did.

If anyone reading this is currently in Paris, the show is still on for a few more performances. I highly recommend checking it out if you have the chance.

25 October 2017

Picasso (59)

I have a tendency at times to get a bit restless. The downside of this is that in moments where I’m hitting a block mentally, my mind tends to race in about as many directions away from what I want to focus on than I can possibly imagine. Normally, when a situation like this hits (like it did this morning when I was staring at my conference paper draft that I knew I needed to add…something to, but could not put my finger on what), I tend to seek solace not just in my usual walks, but in something more intellectually stimulating.

Like art exhibits.

The Picasso Museum in Paris is currently hosting an exhibit titled Picasso 1932, année érotique (Picasso 1932, an erotic year). There’s been a bit of good buzz around the exhibit, so I figured that, since studying erotics has been, if nothing else, at the background of a lot of what I do, why not spend some time around a thing that is both familiar yet has absolutely nothing to do with the paper I am currently blocked on.

And, as these things usually go, I think that may have worked.

I’m not an art expert by any means, but even I can say that the praise surrounding this exposition is not entirely unfounded. The whole thing is laid out like a sort of calendar/journal tracing Picasso’s life and art in the year 1932, with letters, newspaper clippings, posters and personal photographs interspersed amongst the paintings themselves.

And I’m not sure if this had anything to do with why I left with such a good impression of the exhibit, but I couldn’t help but freeze momentarily when, after stepping into one of the exhibit rooms, I came face-to-face with this :

If you are familiar with Hokusai’s “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”, maybe you’ll agree that there is something about this piece that harkens very strongly back to it. Or at least, I thought so. There was just something about the way the female body has become so refracted, so broken down, reshaped and manipulated that it regains a sort of animalistic quality as it reaches back to envelop the head in repose that I could not look away from for what seemed like the longest time. In any case, I think that somewhat snapped me out of my tailspin because I went through the rest of the exhibit with an almost clear head (let’s be honest with ourselves, my mind is never not racing on something, but better one or a few things than a hundred).

The rest of my afternoon before my 5pm tutoring session consisted of stopping by the FNAC to pick up a book recently recommended to me (a French translation of an Icelandic novel) and then grabbing a quick snack before having to stop myself from getting too far into the book too quickly. Yes, this is a legitimate problem.

29 September 201729 September 2017

Paris theatre : Une Hache pour briser la mer gelée en nous (32 + 33)

Right.
So before I get into discussing the show I just returned from seeing, I thought I’d start off with something pleasant, calming, pleasing to the eye. Like these photos I took while visiting the Dior exhibit at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs yesterday :

Behold all these gowns that I could never hope to afford.

As an aside, the exhibit runs through at least mid-January I believe, so if you are in the area during that time, I highly recommend checking it out (be sure to buy your tickets online though; the line was insanely long for non-ticket holders).

Now onto this evening.
I think I mentioned in my introductory post (or in one of those early posts in any case) that part of my research involves going to see live theatre in the city, and trying to see what – if any – trends seem to be making headway. Because of this, I will periodically be posting my thoughts on what I see because it’s always good to share and open a discussion on live theatre, even if its ephemerality means that no one who is reading this will probably ever see the show(s) I am talking about. In any case, I’m not sure if it’s the slight optimist in me that is managing to peak out again just a little bit (surprising considering last evening was…not good mentally to say the least), but I am really hoping that tonight’s experience is a sign that things can only go up from here.
Because if not…then I am in for hours of misery and annoyance.
Tonight’s performance was an adaptation/reworking of Georges Feydeau’s Occupé-toi d’Amélie (Keep an Eye on Amelie, 1908) titled Une Hache pour briser la mer gelée en nous (literally : an axe to shatter the frozen sea within us), directed by Grégoire Strecker and performed on the main stage at the Théâtre des Amandiers, Nanterre. I had chosen to come to this show primarily because the blurb I read on it in A Nous, Paris, emphasized that the potential for disorder and chaos that underlines Feydeau’s work would be brought to the forefront, and that the mise-en-scène would see the action extracted from a turn of the century bourgeois setting to something more closely reflecting modern sensibilities.
Now look, Feydeau is fine, I suppose. He is not my favorite writer, but his plays do still carry some humor in them that can still translate well to a modern audience. Would I go out of my way to see a production of one of his plays? No. But, when I first studied abroad as an undergrad, I remember going with my theatre class to see two of his shorter works and having an enjoyable, if not particularly theoretically stimulating, evening.
Why do I say this? Because I think a reworking of Feydeau that emphasizes the trouble lurking beneath the surface, the tension that threatens to boil over and consume every one, could be an excellent way not only to revive his work, but rethink it even in its own context of théâtre du boulevard. What it does not entail, however, is 3 – yes…3 – hours of what can only be described as a frenetic mess of a play that was not even sure what it wanted to be. Oscillating between affected/stylized and more ‘realistic’ performance styles – hell, there were even some sci-fi elements thrown in with an inexplicable giant orb that showed up towards the end of act one and then just…hung out – the production struggled to find its footing for the majority of the evening, making it difficult to connect with anything that was happening. People were talking over each other at times, making the few crowd scenes almost impossible to follow, scenes involving characters switching back and forth from French to what can only be described as vaguely Slavic gibberish were set so far upstage, I almost wondered if we were supposed to be following what was happening. But, for me, the biggest offense came towards the end. One of the final images of the play is intended to be rather violent : Amelie gets manhandled and has very rough, I would say consentually ambiguous, sex with the valet of Leprince-Collette while the latter watches. Normally, something like this – especially considering that what happens immediately before is her sham(?) wedding, and so she comes before the two men in a wedding gown – would deal a final punch, but in order to do so, work had to be put in building the tension on everything that came before that moment : lingering on certain gestures, speaking deliberately, conscious of the rhythm of the words coming out, aware to an extent that it is only through personal willpower that the snap into chaos is kept at bay. Unfortunately, this work did not happen. There was, in fact, a lack of urgency or energy through much of the evening, resulting in moments meant to act as energetic bursts of built up tension reading as nothing more than following a stage direction to yell. Hell, the fact that the audience was unsure about when to clap at the end – not out of wanting to keep the suspension of disbelief hanging on for a bit, but out of genuine confusion – should say more than enough.
On the bright side, the theatre at least did provide shuttles back to Châtelet, so getting home was not as annoying as it could have been.
Tomorrow, I am actually seeing play number 2, this one hitting a liiiiiiiiittttle closer to home. Hopefully, it is an improvement on this evening.
In the meantime, here’s one last picture from the Dior exhibit :