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Choreographer of Two Cultures
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19588 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
1,959 Words |
| Author
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Maya Wallach
Maya Wallach is a dance writer, critic, and photographer
currently based in Los Angeles |
Angelin Preljocaj pronounces his name with a French accent; the second n and l are both silent. Born five days after his parents escaped from Albania to France, Preljocaj can be considered both a foreign immigrant and a native Frenchman. As a child he learned how to mix and separate his two cultures. As an adult, he has extended this ability to his art, mixing and recasting not only cultural references, but also diverse styles of music, design, literature and--of course--choreography.
Preljocaj's dances have much of Balanchine's mathematical logic without his coldness. Preljocaj takes William Forsythe's pulse-pounding speed and gives it purpose. He may rework Balkan folk dances with a provocative French sensuality or reset Shakespeare in an Orwellian 1984. He is unabashedly violent without being gratuitous. He is currently being presented on French television, and toured from Africa to Japan to the United States.
Preljocaj studied, performed, and abandoned classical ballet before discovering modern dance. He trained with Karin Waehner and Merce Cunningham, and danced with Viola Farber and Dominique Bagouet. Four months after he founded La Compagnie Preljocaj in 1984, his first piece of choreography won the prestigious Concours International de Bagnolet, the Cannes of dance in France. Awarded numerous further prizes and commissions, Preljocaj may well be France's most sought-after choreographer.
In the last months of 1990 Preljocaj had three premieres. His first movie, a film of his Noces (1989), was screened in a Paris theater in preparation for upcoming broadcast on France's seventh channel, La Sept. He choreographed Amer America for Lyon's Biennale de la Danse and Romeo and Juliet for the Lyon Opera Ballet.
Set to Stravinsky's choral score, Preljocaj's Noces is a brilliant and disturbing distillation of the traditional marriage ceremony. Five brides meet five grooms on five benches. They are at once terrified and resigned. Their wedding--their meeting, their future together--is not a matter of choice but a ritual that is imposed upon them. It is as alien and unwelcome as the five white lace mannequins that Preljocaj strews across the stage.
Veiled and dressed in wedding gowns, the dummies are blunt symbols of what the women are to become. The brides run away, screaming. But there is nowhere to run, no way to run. In the men's eyes the women are already one with the dolls. What matter if one half of a wife is running around the
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