Festival closes spectacularly
The 10th Kalamata International Dance Festival may be coming to a close on Sunday, but the festival’s final shows promise to be more than exciting: French conceptual choreographer Jerome Bel will present his work «The Show Must Go On» tonight, while Belgium’s multifaceted artist Jan Fabre will stage «Angel of Death» tonight to Sunday. The festival will close with three performances by the Trisha Brown Dance Company on Sunday, Trisha Brown being this year’s guest of honor, since the festival was dedicated to her. Set against a minimalist stage design, Jerome Bel’s show combines music, dance and humor and poses questions about the importance of spectacles in today’s society and the relationship between art and life. Twenty performers appear on stage wearing casual clothes and act naturally, without resorting to complicated movements, to the sound of older pop and rock hits (including compositions by David Bowie, Nick Cave, the Beatles, Queen, Edith Piaf and others). «The Show Must Go On,» presented in collaboration with the French Institute in Athens, will be staged at 10 p.m. today, at Kalamata’s castle. Jan Fabre, so far mostly known in Greece as a visual artist, is one of the leading personalities of the Flemish dance scene. In «Angel of Death,» he uses words, live music, video and dance to highlight the anxiety of the human soul as it struggles between the pressure to succeed and the need to be alone. The performance combines the art of Andy Warhol, great choreographer and director of the Frankfurt Ballet William Forsythe and Fabre and will be staged today at 8 p.m., tomorrow at 8 and 11 p.m. and Sunday at 8 p.m. at Kalamata’s Gymnasium. The Trisha Brown Dance Company will stage «Set and Reset,» Brown’s legendary 1983 choreography which established her on the international dance scene, as well as two more recent creations, «Present Tense» (2003) and «Groove and Countermove» (2000); the show will close the festival at 10 p.m. at Kalamata’s castle. Brown, a leading choreographer of the postmodern era, first presented her work with the Judson Dance Theater during the 1960s; along with other Judson group colleagues, she changed the shape of contemporary dance by incorporating movements which so far had not been considered choreography material. In 1970, she founded her own dance company and created choreographies for alternative spaces, like roofs and walls. Her experience in opera after choreographing «Carmen» motivated her to move toward classical music and led to her hugely successful production of Monteverdi’s opera «Orfeo.» Trisha Brown is the first woman choreographer to receive the coveted McArthur Foundation Fellowship. Her numerous awards also include five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and two John Simon Guggenheim fellowships. For further information, contact the Kalamata International Dance Center, situated at 6 P. Kaissari, Kalamata (tel 27210.83086/90886). For ticket information and credit card bookings, call 27210.85015/85034. Tickets are also available at the Kalamata Municipal Cultural Center, open Mondays-Saturdays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tickets cost 20 euros (15 euros for students).
