Going too far

A festival of interdisciplinary works blurs the lines.

By Gia Kourlas

While We Were Holding It Together

With Crossing the Line 2008: Transfiguring Cultures, the French Institute–Alliance Française’s Lili Chopra and Arizona State University’s Simon Dove broaden the definition of dance in a showcase of mainly French artists. The series is one of the most exciting festivals to hit New York in years. (Give BAM’s Joe Melillo a festival pass—maybe he could pick up a few tips.) Meet the creative minds behinds three of this year’s standout productions.

The Snow White Project

Catherine Baÿ
The Snow White Project: Sept 16
What it is: A site-specific happening in which multiple Snow Whites converge in outdoor locations.

What intrigued you about the fairy tale? It is the story of the mirror. It really points out an issue in our modern society, especially in the West, where narcissism is predominant. Moreover, the stone face of the Snow Whites is like a mirror for the spectator. These kind of mirror illusions are everywhere in my work. Snow White gets endlessly multiplied, whether it is through the video work by Thomas Courcelle, or through the games with mirrors.

What are the Snow Whites doing in New York? The idea of The Snow White Project is to travel around the world and to confront this character with many different cultures, to develop an antivirus against mass consumption. In New York, the difference is that the United States is the birthplace of this Snow White, which became a product of consumerism. It is as if she is coming home.

Diptyque

Rachid Ouramdane
Diptyque: Oct 3, 4
What it is: Back-to-back performances of With My Own Hands, a monologue directed by Pascal Rambert, and A Standing Boy, choreographed by Ouramdane for Rambert.

Does the experience of watching the two works together create a new work entirely? Yes. With My Own Hands was created more than ten years ago. Pascal developed a recent version of this piece with [actor] Kate Moran—the one that will be presented in New York. A Standing Boy was created in France in 2006. So With My Own Hands was written in a totally other context. I’d say that A Standing Boy is a second episode for the main character in the monologue.

A Standing Boy was created after Rambert asked you to make a piece for him. What was your initial impulse? I took it as an opportunity to try to know more about him. This was just before I came to perform Discreet Deaths in New York. On the plane, I read With My Own Hands. By chance, I was traveling from Paris to New York; the monologue is based on someone leaving Paris for New York. I decided to respond by making a portrait of him based on the reading. I planned a video environment, which would make him disappear from the stage as a metaphor of the suicide of the main character of his book. The notion of time is blurred and the notion of reality is more and more unclear.

While We Were Holding It Together

Ivana Müller
While We Were Holding It Together: Sept 24–26
What it is: The performers are frozen, but talk to one another trapped within a tableau vivant.

What themes are you trying to convey? One is about the relationship to movement. How can I work with something that’s completely still, but that can still produce movement? The movement is happening using thoughts and ideas. The movement is happening in the voices and in the kind of traveling of different identities. The body has an inherent or physiological urge to move; actually, after 20 minutes they start to shake. In that sense it’s almost like a little revolution that the body is constantly proposing: to disobey this idea of an image.

Tell me about the shaking. Remaining still for so long is a virtuosic act. It’s interesting how the spectator perceives this physicality. A lot of people tell me they feel really bad, kind of nauseated, because of this constant stillness. I didn’t anticipate that. It’s important to say that when they shake, it doesn’t hurt. In the beginning, it was happening after 15 minutes, but with time, they got much better. After 20 minutes, one person fainted. We really had to think about how to deal with that.

Crossing the Line 2008: Transfiguring Cultures runs Sept 16–Oct 5 at various locations. Visit fiaf.org or call 212-355-6160 (for information) or 212-307-4100 (for tickets).

NEXT: The odds »

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Will and grace | Highlights from Mearns’s past season | Videos of Mearns rehearsing | Three to tango | Going too far | The odds

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