body movement tuesday :: atempo circ

Atempo Circ
Marilen Ribot Cloudswing
Miguel Soto Chinese Pole
Matias Marre Roue Cyr
Jose Arias Cello

oddities and magik monday :: henry cyril paget

Henry Cyril Paget
Henry Cyril’s nickname was ‘The Dancing Marquess’, and was probably used less than affectionately by the rest of his family.  He was born in 1875 and brought up in France, largely in the company of theatrical people. These formative years clearly instilled a deep love of showing off, and, sure enough, his first fait accompli upon entering the family seat at Plas Newydd was to convert the centuries old chapel into a theatre.  From 1901 onwards, he staged a series of productions whose scale and cost were boundless.  Casts of 50 or 60 were clad in luxurious, fantastic costumes and large amounts of jewellery.  Paget was especially fond of Aladdin, and it is believed this light opera was the most performed work by his company.  He played the part of Pekoe, and during the interval would perform his celebrated Butterfly Dance. What this actually consisted of is unclear, although large gossamer effect wings and huge clusters of colourful jewels, and a great deal of running around with arms flapping can be guessed at, hence The Dancing Marquess.
excerpt taken from here

oddities and magik monday :: rossum's universal robots

R.U.R.
Rossum's Universal Robots
A science fiction play in the Czech language by Karel Capek.  It premiered in 1921 and is noted for introducing the term robot.
The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people called robots. Unlike the modern usage of the term, these creatures are closer to the modern idea of androids or even clones, as they can be mistaken for humans and can think for themselves.  They seem happy to work for humans, although that changes and a hostile robot rebellion leads to the extinction of the human race.
There are descriptions of kneading troughs for robot skin, great vats for liver and brains, and a factory for producing bones.  Nerve fibers, arteries, and intestines are spun on factory bobbins, while the Robots themselves are assembled like automobiles.  Capek's robots are biological machines, but they are still assembled, as opposed to grown or born.

body movement tuesday :: the lucent dossier experience

The Lucent Dossier Experience
What Lucent does best is create wonderlands
for their guests to lose themselves in,
so let them be your guide into a fantastical realm
where brilliance and insanity fuse together
in an exotic kind of ecstatic bliss.

body movement :: dancebloggers.com

Cloud Gate


Wayne McGregor


JVC Yesterday


Dance COLEctive

DanceBloggers.com
A central hub for people who blog about dance.
Includes choreographer, dancer, dance teacher, dance student,
dance scholar, dance critic, dance notator, dance presenter,
dance observer.

the folies bergère paris

The Folies Bergère is a Parisian music hall which was at the height of its fame and popularity from the 1890s through the 1920s. As of May 2009, the institution is still in business. It opened on 2 May 1869 as the Folies Trévise, with fare including operettas, comic opera, popular songs, and gymnastics. The Folies Bergère on 13 September 1872, named after a nearby street, the rue Bergère (the feminine form of "shepherd").
The Folies Bergère catered to popular taste. Shows featured elaborate costumes; the women's were frequently revealing, practically leaving them naked, and shows often contained a good deal of nudity. Shows also played up the exotic of persons and objects from other cultures, obliging the Parisian fascination with the négritude of the 1920s.
In the early 1890s, the American dancer Loie Fuller starred at the Folies Bergère. Nearly thirty years later, in 1926, Joséphine Baker, an African-American expatriate singer, dancer, and entertainer, became an overnight sensation at the Folies Bergère with her suggestive "banana dance", in which she wore a skirt made of bananas and little else. French writer Colette and Charlie Chaplin were two of the many notable performers to grace the stage.
excerpt taken from the Folies Bergère

brassaï

Brassaï (1899-1984)
Among the numerous means of expression open to him, Brassaï chose photography as it allowed him to capture the atmosphere of the Parisian nights for which he became famous. Henry Miller called Brassaï a "living eye". Paris became a theatre set where the subject dominates the composition, in which he captured a dimension that lay between journalistic account and poetic vision. The graffiti engraved on the walls captured the attention of this photographer obsessed by the reality of man and matter. "The surrealism of my images was nothing more than reality rendered fantastic by the way I saw it".

ultima vez

Ultima Vez was founded in 1986 as the company and organization of choreographer, director and filmmaker Wim Vandekeybus.
Since its foundation, Ultima Vez has intensively developed its activities as an international contemporary dance company with a strong base in Brussels and Flanders.
While, during the first years, Ultima Vez focused mainly on the production, promotion and distribution of the artistic work of Wim Vandekeybus (dance, theatre, film), the organization has integrated many other activities.



Ultima Vez has always functioned as an autonomous and independent structure,
relying however on a network of co-producers and partners to realize its projects.

Currently the activities of Ultima Vez are focused around the following pillars:
- the creation, production, the national and international distribution & promotion of the artistic work of Wim Vandekeybus (dance/theatre creations, film & video, kids & youth projects, …);
- the organization of art educational activities (classes, workshops, repertory projects…) for various target groups (professional dancers, performers, dance amateurs, children, …);
- the ulti'mates programme: the support and counselling of choreographers/theatre makers on the level of (financial) management, administration, production, promotion and/or distribution.

For more information about the different Ultima Vez activities, we refer to the respective pages on this website.
An overview of the partnerships and networks Ultima Vez relies on or is member of can be found on the synergies pages.

aubrey beardsley

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley 
21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898
An English illustrator and author.  Aubrey Beardsley was the 
most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned 
for his dark and perverse images and the grotesque erotica,
which were the main themes of his later work.  Some of his 
drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga, featured 
enormous genitalia. His most famous erotic illustrations were 
on themes of history and mythology.

 





















Beardsley illustrated Oscar Wilde's play Salomé - the play 
eventually premiered in Paris in 1896.  He also produced 
extensive illustrations for books and magazines (e.g. for a 
deluxe edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur) 
and worked for magazines like The Savoy and The Studio. 
Beardsley also wrote Under the Hill, an unfinished erotic tale 
based loosely on the legend of Tannhäuser.  
Beardsley's emphasis of the erotic element is present in many 
of his drawings, but nowhere as boldly as in his illustrations for 
Lysistrata which were done for a privately printed edition at a 
time when he was totally out of favor with polite society.