Yesterday I caught a performance of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet at the Joyce. As always with this company, the program was well-executed and thoughtful, but the standout piece was Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter's "The Fools." This ballet was a New York premier - expanded and tweaked from the original commission set on Bern Ballet in 2008. "The Fools" opens with eight dancers (the Shadows) dressed in gray, military-like garb and violently thrashing their bodies up and down to percussive music. This scene repeats throughout the piece abruptly beginning and ending with black-outs and lights. From that point on, you're in for an unsettling 15 minutes. Seven other dancers appear (presumably the Fools) and their movements are hunched and pained. Their stiff bodies and other-worldly claw-like arms and legs convulse as if being electrocuted.
If it sounds crazy, you got it. I've never seen anything quite this raw, grotesque and powerful. I wasn't able to find a video online of "The Fools," but to get an idea of Shechter's unique voice and vocabulary, check out this video HERE of another ballet "Uprising."
In honor of Halloween, I thought I would write about the scariest artwork I've seen -- Maurizio Cattelan's HIM. I first encountered the sculpture at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and it was a jarring experience. The work is meant to be approached from behind so when I first peeked into the gallery I thought it was a perfectly innocuous sculpture of a sweet, innocent boy. But upon entering further and turning around to look closer at the boy, I was surprised to see the adult face of Hitler. It's not clear whether he is praying, begging for forgiveness, contrite or steely-eyed. Cattelan's combination of man/boy qualities in this sculpture too make me wonder whether nature or nurture is more to blame for evil. It's a powerful experience that raises a lot of questions for me. What do you think? What's the scariest artwork you've seen?
I'm dying to get my hands on an issue of Apartamento magazine. It's a relatively new, Milan-based mag that has a pretty interesting take on how a shelter mag should look and feel. Instead of featuring the mostly fussy and staged interiors of an Elle Decor-type spread, Apartamento takes informal shots of real peoples homes as they are on an everyday basis. As the editor states, “Apartamento is there to capture the moment in life you start living in your own home and you want it to reflect your own personality." From what I can see, there is a lot of soul in these shoots, and they seem to capture what's missing in how we think about interior design today - that it's less about materialistic aspirations and more about personal expression. Apartamento is a very welcome addition to the shelter magazine line-up out now.
