Anyways, this post is about Marina Abramovic and her somewhat controversial work - personally I love her work but I think she is one of those artists that I like to refer to as Marmite Artists, you either love them or hate them. And I happen to really like Marmite!
I have long been a fan of her work - both her performance art and her photography. But recently she did a collaboration (which is something she has only recently started doing) with Belgian choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet for her latest piece, a new ballet of Maurice Ravel’s famously erotic 17-minute composition Boléro, based on the Spanish dance. Her close friend Riccardo Tisci was head of the costume design and decorated the dancers in lace costumes reminiscent of skeletons - it brings up notions of darkness and romanticism (two words that give anything the strange illusion of beauty and shivers down my spine)
The costumes, to me, are the attraction of this work, the figures dance across the stage like ghostly spectres, barely there and yet standing out from the back of the stage which is cloaked in black. It is incredibly hypnotic and I use Abramovic's words here, as she seems to say everything with a rawness that I find hard to duplicate:
"For me, Boléro is about love, death, hate and passion. It’s just like electricity: pure energy. When I was designing the scenography, I thought about the field of static one sees when a television isn't properly tuned. The sceneography became a cosmic image with black holes. There are suspended mirror panels to reflect reality and a dreamlike state. It’s basically a cosmic orgy."
(Extract from Dazed and Confused Magazine - http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/16836/1/marina-and-tisci-dancing-on-the-edge)
You can see a video of the performance below (although I guarantee it doesn't beat being there, seated in the Palais Garnier in Paris watching it premier for the first time)
Marina Abramovic is also currently crowdfunding a performance and education centre in New York. Lady Gaga is even part of it and the amount you pledge can get you a hug from Abramovic herself or various other goodies :) You can, and should, pledge for the Marina Abramovic Institute here: http://www.marinaabramovicinstitute.org/noqt
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