A Guest Blogger
Happy Spring!
We’ve just returned from an intense, but ultimately gratifying week of performances Paris’s La Maison des Arts in Créteil. My fears about the American nature of Blind Date in France at this time have proved unfounded. The piece was wonderfully received and has refreshed my insight into the French public. Still there is a mystery to every engagement and part of that mystery is that the world of the company and the city, the country where it performs are seldom clearly joined.
In my blog, I am often the sole protagonist. I have decided to try and expand this role by inviting in guests. This blog entry showcases company dancer Charley Scott, an avid Francophile and aspiring writer.
Charley Scott performing in Chapel/Chapter. Photo by Paul B. Goode
Charley has graciously responded to the request I made of him to talk about a couple of things:
On Paris:
“On this tour to France I am reminded again how much this country, this culture, has been a part of my way of appreciating life and words, how it has informed my aesthetic: in very small things like the logical progression of courses at a meal or in the formality of common interactions on the street or with people you meet - which is not to say the arrogance or coldness that Americans expect of the French - but rather a respect for the privacy of the other and for time itself which allows a relationship to unfold in a more patient and realistic way. Here there is a different sense of time and what is expected of it, how quickly it advances and retreats.”
Tough Questions:
“Walking around down by the old center of town, Ile de la Cité near the Palais de Justice, I saw a paper posted on the wall of a building. It was a reproduction of the call to arms made by de Gaulle in June 1940 after the Vichy government surrendered to the German army and began its collaboration with the Nazis. I was filled with pride reading the triumphal language: "France has lost a battle! But France has not lost the war!...I invoke the French people to unite with me in action, sacrifice, and hope...VIVE LA FRANCE!" and wondered again to myself what I would have done in the early 1940s if I had been a young French man with big dreams of my own, or a German father afraid of risking his children's lives to oppose the national insanity.
In post-performance discussions following our shows Bill has talked about the source material for and the process of making Blind Date. In this process he asked the dancers "What would you fight for? What would you be willing to die for?" Seeing de Gaulle's call posted in the streets of Paris, I quickly came to the decision that as a Frenchman in 1940 I would have gladly fought and given my life for France and its incredible culture of "liberty and grandeur," as de Gaulle himself described it. And then against that certainty, I knew that I would also not be willing to die in the present war in Iraq, at least not for its official reasons, or for its declared goal of spreading a particular brand of liberty. I wonder what it would take for me at this moment in time to take up arms and fight for America: another disaster? a personal attack on my family? What would it take for me to fight for the people being raped and dismembered and burned daily in Darfur? Apparently it will take more than them being raped and dismembered and burned.”
A Final Resting Place:
“I spent one morning in Paris in the Père Lachaise cemetery. I like being in cemeteries, and this one in particular is spectacular with mausoleums the size of small homes, beautiful tributes to the dead in a range of 19th and 20th century styles. I had actually wanted to see the tomb of Marcel Proust, having recently embarked on what will certainly be a life-long journey of reading the Proust novel in French, and needing for my trip some objective so as not to wander too aimlessly in a sea of tombs. This cemetery is full those who created art, or designed social policy, or earned honor for the country at war, and it made me wonder when my culture would devise such a resting place for its assorted heroes including artists (imagine if we could have buried James Brown in Arlington Cemetery!) As I sat and looked at Colette's simple resting place I thought about the US and its confused relationship with art and artists. I wondered if it would ever be able too commit to supporting its art community in the way that France and Germany and much of Western Europe have. But it also occurred to me that despite this lack of support, there is a thriving and progressive art culture in the US which may actually play off of, depend upon, and be inspired by an active rejection of the effect of national fear and a return to fundamentalist values.
If we were too comfortable with ourselves as artists or as members of society would we still feel the need to talk and work?”
Before the Show:
“Bill, watching me backstage every night before our performance, asked me recently about my warm-up routine. He often sees me frantically preparing for a show back stage wherever there is room, usually thrashing about in the dark with my headphones on. We all have such different ways of preparing. I feel like the vigorous warm-up is required to jolt me out of what often feels like a nerve-induced hibernation before a show. When I get nervous I tend to turn inward, and physicality, physical exertion, is my way out of that situation. I've always used movement as a way of connecting myself to the world, exertion as a liberating agent, freeing me from self-criticism and energizing me. So my warm-up works best when it is structured to convert nervous energy into a calm confident weighted exhaustion.”
Charley Scott – NY, March 25, 2007
-- Bill T. Jones (Monday, March 26, 2007)
