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“Jérôme Bel”

Measured against his own criteria, French dance maker Jérôme Bel would seem a failure. In the eponymously named show that opened the L’Alliance New York Crossing the Line Festival last week, Bel professes he has no desire to entertain an audience. “I don’t want to produce emotion or seduction,” he states. He wants the audience to think, not feel. As a case in point, his first dance made in 1994 features stationary household objects including a vacuum cleaner—and a complete absence of movement. In his next work, completely nude performers grab awkward rolls of their flesh and relax their muscles so that saliva and urine pour onto the stage. The audience reacted violently, he reports, and the resulting scandal increased demand for the show—to his dismay. Despite his best effort, the audience was moved.

Performance

“Jérôme Bel,” created by Jérôme Bel, directed by Steve Cosson

Place

Florence Gould Theater at L’Alliance New York, New York, NY, September 27, 2024

Words

Karen Hildebrand

“Jérôme Bel” by Jérôme Bel. Photograph by Beowulf Sheehan

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In 2024, Bel continues to buck convention. For one thing, he refuses air travel out of concern for the environment. “Jérôme Bel” is designed to be reproduced, rather than toured, with a local director and actor to narrate a script translated into whatever language is native to the location. In the iteration for L'Alliance, Broadway actor April Matthis channels Bel’s voice with flawless timing and intonation; Steve Cosson directs. Bel states at the outset that if we get bored during the two hour duration, we should feel free to leave, but from the moment Matthis, a Black woman, opens her mouth with, “I am Jerome Bel,” I am riveted. A monologue that serves as both artistic retrospective and personal memoir, “Jerome Bel” is thoroughly entertaining. Delivered by Mathis who sits behind a desk and reads from a computer screen, the script is full of wry wit and astute self-awareness. Bel talks about himself, without seeming full of himself. 

Through monologue and a series of video excerpts, Bel invites us into his process and the thinking behind a selection of his most representative works. One feels that Bel is looking for that sweet spot where he avoids manipulating an audience—like movies that overlay a musical score to heighten emotions, for instance—and instead initiates a genuine response. It’s not that he doesn’t want an audience reaction. “A piece is not complete without it,” he says. “I know that you see and understand things I do not. And that’s art.” Of the work showcased in “Jérôme Bel,” the two pieces I liked the most are performed by professional dancers; the two that most touched me were not.

“Jérôme Bel” by Jérôme Bel. Photograph by Beowulf Sheehan

In 2004, the Paris Opera Ballet commissioned a work from Bel, with ballerina Véronique Doisneau, as she prepared to retire from the stage at age 42. In the video clip he shares, she performs a section from the corps de ballet in “Swan Lake.” The dancers, as swans, are required to remain still for a torturously long time. They serve as visual background for the featured principals. We hear the wildly emotional music of Tchaikovsky as Doisneau takes a tendu to the back, and stands with her arms crossed at the wrists and held low in front of her hips, her back to the audience in absolute stillness. This is interrupted a few times by a brief series of hops in arabesque to one side then the other, standing in for the activation of the corps. It’s like a redacted document, where sensitive information is crossed out—and a compelling statement about a ballet career. 

Potentially controversial is Bel’s “Disabled Theater,” for people with Downs Syndrome. He invited each performer to dance to music of their choice. During each solo, the others watch from behind, fidgeting and swaying to the music. One woman sprawls in her chair and stares into space without changing expression the entire show. All kinds of bells go off in my head about appropriation and exploitation. But as I watch the excerpt, I’m as moved as Bel himself as he looks back on this in the script. He points out that the performers are fully in the moment and hide nothing. The pure joy of these dancers is infectious.  

“Jérôme Bel” by Jérôme Bel. Photograph by Beowulf Sheehan

This project beget the work, “Gala,” where a group of amateur dancers follows the same format (each dancer makes a solo to music of their choice), with the added instruction that the other performers spontaneously join in and follow along as best they can. It reminds me of a follow-the-leader exercise from modern dance 101, but on steroids. Bespangled in disco wear and an array of leotards, the performers are enthusiastically unselfconscious and I can’t help but grin. When the group gamely attempts a backflip, the results are laugh-out loud funny. In both of these works, Bel questions the power a choreographer holds over performers who submit to his vision. As a utopian alternative, “Gala” is his idea of complete equality. “I emancipate myself from my authority,” he says. An admirable social experiment, I agree, but is it art? 

The final excerpt of the evening, “Isadora Duncan,” is performed live by noted dance educator and Duncan historian, Catherine Gallant. Based on Duncan’s autobiographical work, “Ma Vie,” the piece is a tribute, honoring Duncan as mother of modern dance. It makes sense that Bel would appreciate the way Duncan defied traditional dance norms of her day. Bel and Gallant created the piece long distance, via Skype, before we ever imagined the need for Zoom in making and presenting dance. Gallant is warrior like, striking poses that evoke Athena as archer. She performs the sequence twice, the second time, narrating the meanings of the fierce symbolism—another way that Bel invites us behind the curtain,

Afterward, what lingers of “Jérôme Bel” is the dance maker’s philosophical ideas. I consider his rebellion against the power structure that has produced some of the most beautiful dance works I’ve had the privilege to witness. His own work is not what I would consider beautiful. Instead he delivers insight into the pleasure of making art without the burden of considering its result. That seems the definition of pure artistic freedom. As he states at the end, “Having an idea is the greatest joy my practice gives me.” 

Karen Hildebrand

Karen Hildebrand is former editorial director for Dance Magazine and served as editor in chief for Dance Teacher for a decade. An advocate for dance education, she was honored with the Dance Teacher Award in 2020. She follows in the tradition of dance writers who are also poets (Edwin Denby, Jack Anderson), with poetry published in many literary journals and in her book, Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn.

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