JÉRÔME BEL - Gala

Resumption of the Vienna Version / TQW co-production

Tue 25. Oct. 2016 - 19.30 TQW / Halle G
Thu 27. Oct. 2016 - 19.30 TQW / Halle G
Sat 29. Oct. 2016 - 19.30 TQW / Halle G

“‘Gala’ forces audience expectations to the fore, and blurs the lines between failure and success in performance as it suggests that theater is community, both onstage and off. It’s a tour de force, wildly entertaining, and through the deliberate exploitation of conventional form, truly radical.” (NY TIMES)

There is reason to suspect that “gala” can be traced back to Old French, and meant “enjoyment”. It becomes even more suggestive of enjoyment when one goes to Jérôme Bel’s Gala. The tireless French choreographer invites a colourful group of people to join in an evening of dance. The twenty-person ensemble includes young and old, lay and professional dancers, gymnasts, people with different conditions. And despite this range of heterogeneity, it is not the debate about the theatre as an inclusive venue or a participatory project that is being conducted here. The evening belongs to devotion to dance, the devotion to what it means to be human in its uniqueness and the possibility of discovering it, experiencing it in its existence in dance. “I think that the imagination of dance is more important for this work than its execution, that every dance is a a report to the world . . .”, says Jérôme Bel. During the evening tales thus develop through the various snippets of dance and scattered dance forms, where otherwise nothing is spoken, nothing is related. A richness emerges in the cacophony, in the thicket of voices and the jumble of different movement postulates, the crashing of choreographic expectations. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better,” wrote Samuel Beckett. Most recently William Forsythe, with his “Yes, we can’t”, worked on the Becketian ode to misfortune. Jérôme Bel, too, is an uncompromising advocate of the difficulties that so-called failure means, and recognises that failure makes it possible to question anew.

What perhaps has never happened, has never been experienced, the novel, the idiosyncratic repeatedly flares up again in his “gala” evening, like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. The mischievous, the gay, the gaining of perspectives may be a secret recipe for success as to why the evening has already touched and moved people in many venues.

And virtuosity? Yes, this is there too. However, it becomes a side issue, a detail – it is after all just one feature of many in this evening of the “gala”. Because where skill hits its limits, enjoyment definitely begins.

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CONCEPT: Jérôme Bel
ASSISTANCE: Maxime Kurvers, Chiara Gallerani
PERFORMANCE BY: Adjoa Noemi Chana Ackwonu, Nana-Gyan Ackwonu, Marlies Drmola, Hannelore Jarvis Essandoh, Berit Glaser, Leonie Hegyi, PLENVM, Susanna-Claudia Krasny, Johnny Mhanna, Dante Murillo, Christian Polster, Vera Rebl, Iva Rohlik, Luis Thudium, Anna Toth, Manaho Shimokawa, Nilo Correa Vivar, Yuri Correa Vivar, Chris Yi, Markus Zett
COSTUMES: the dancers
CO-PRODUCTION: Dance Umbrella (London), TheaterWorks Singapore/72-13, KunstenFestivaldesArts (Brussels), Tanzquartier Wien, Nanterre-Amandiers Centre Dramatique National, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Theater Chur (Chur) and TAK Theater Liechtenstein (Schaan) – TanzPlan Ost, Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), La Commune Centre dramatique national d’Aubervilliers, Tanzhaus NRW (Düsseldorf), House on Fire, with the support of the European Union cultural programme
PRODUCTION: R.B. Jérôme Bel (Paris)
WITH THE SUPPORT OF: Centre National de la Danse (Pantin) and Ménagerie de Verre (Paris) in the framework of Studiolab for providing studio spaces
THANKS TO: Maguy Marin, Boris Charmatz, Jeanne Balibar and the partners and participants of the Dance and voice workshops, NL Architects and Les rendez-vous d’ailleurs
ARTISTIC ASSISTANCE AND COMPANY DEVELOPMENT: Rebecca Lee
PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT: Sandro Grando
TECHNICAL SUPPORT: Gilles Gentner
SUPPORTED BY: for its international tours R.B Jérôme Bel is supported by the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Ile-de-France, French Ministry for Culture and Communication, and by the Institut Français, French Ministry for Foreign Affairs

Born in France in 1964, Jérôme Bel studied contemporary dance and performed with various choreographers, including Angelin Preljoçaj, Daniel Larrieu, Joëlle Bouvier and Régis Obadia. After working as assistant director to Philippe Decouflé on the opening ceremony for the 1992 Winter Olympics, Bel realised that he preferred directing to performing. So he took a two-year career break, living in Paris and reading Barthes and Foucault. “I felt the only way to be a choreographer,” he explained, “was to read philosophy and dance history.” Bel has gained an international reputation for being a philosopher, a provocateur and an enfant terrible. (theguardian.com)
The Show Must Go On, created in 2001, brings together a cast of twenty performers, nineteen pop songs and one DJ. Jérôme Bel received a Bessie Award for the performances of The Show Must Go On in New York in 2005. The piece was revived and re-produced with a cast of only Viennese performer and shown at Tanzquartier Wien / Hall E in 2012.
In 2004, the Paris Opera commissioned a theatrical documentary by Bel about Véronique Doisneau, a dancer in their corps de ballet. In 2005, a residency in Thailand resulted in Pichet Klunchun & Myself, a choreographic dialogue between Bel and the traditional Thai dancer Pichet Klunchun. In 2010, he collaborated with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker to create 3Abschied. In 2013, Disabled Theater (2012) was selected for the Theatertreffen in Berlin and won the Swiss Dance Awards – Current Dance Works.