マイケル·クラーク·カンパニー

Tate Project Part I

source: highlike

Photographer: Hugo Glendinning
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source:kaleidoscope-press

In a square of white light projected onto the floor, a male dancer knots his body into angular shapes: arms rigid, fists clenched, and head to one side. He curves forward through his back to assume what looks like a stretching position, holding his legs beneath bent knees, but pauses only for a split second before rolling again, one crooked leg pressing to the floor against the direction of his torso. Set within the opening moments of Michael Clark’s project for Tate Modern, part I (2010), the continuous unfolding of movement in this sequence makes it hard to quantify its compositional elements as discrete units. Each movement is exquisitely unpredictable, truncating our expectations for the movement phrase that it begins. There is a cubist quality to the dancer’s striving to fully inhabit the space marked out by the flat white square on the floor, pressing his body’s surfaces to the ground, at times into near impossible contortions. But to think only of analytic cubism’s geometries detracts from the work’s extraordinary emotional intensity. The choreographed exposure of the dancer’s body—set to the charged strains of David Bowie’s Sweet Thing—is almost painful in its intimation of psychological restlessness, as though the dance is a search, without apparent end, for a still place to be.
O (2005), the first work in Clark’s recent “Stravinsky Project,” (completed 2007) opened with the image of a single dancer inside a mirrored cube. Like the patch of white light in part I, this image summoned the enclosed space of the studio, nodding reflexively to the solipsism of a dancer’s, or an artist’s, endeavor. By proposing an image of the studio as part of his performances—the wooden ballet barre also features in recent work—Clark challenges performance’s necessary publicness (and the inevitably social aspect of choreographing for a company), exploring the aspect of learning and making dance that is a fundamentally private activity. In fact, one of the most compelling things about Clark’s work is the sense that it derives from an inner and innate impulse towards movement.
At first, I understood the daily theater of the Michael Clark Company studio, relocated to Tate’s Turbine Hall during their seven-week residency, as a revelation of process. Looking at the broken-down steps and phrases performed often at walk-through speed brought me to a new understanding of Yvonne Rainer’s famous statement from the 1960s: “Dance is hard to see.” Through the warm-up, daily classes (Cunningham or ballet technique), and rehearsals, the lexicon of physical movement and training of the dancers’ capacities, which are often spectacularly subsumed by the speed of changing form onstage, were demonstrated with new clarity.
But if the entirety of Clark’s work is taken into account, the notion of “process” is fundamentally inadequate to describe what is happening when we see his choreography’s mechanics laid bare. Process art in the 1960s or 1970s involved actions, usually repeatable and often not requiring skill, that constituted the principles that had brought an object into being. A key example was the action painting of Jackson Pollock, and his treatment of the canvas as “an arena in which to act” via his famous drip technique. The process art object was not necessarily the principal focus of the work, but its outcome, understood as having an almost accidental status.
In Clark’s work, it is not process, but the less fashionable—or more old-fashioned—notion of practice that is key. This factor, a staple of his daily approach to making dance, is at odds with the popular image of Clark as a rebel, a “dance anarchist.” Clark’s residency, and its revelation of the rigor of his company’s daily regime, made me think about the deeper issue of a studio practice—that is, a form of making that involves returning to the same space, the same rituals, the same practical exercises on a daily basis, to serve the upkeep or development of a skilled form or language—and what studio practice means for artists today.

Practice is a notion familiar to dancers, painters, and classical musicians. In contemporary art terms, studio practice has been significantly challenged on two levels in the past fifty years. Firstly, by Andy Warhol’s notion, beginning in the 1960s, of the studio as a “factory,” with its refutation of the importance of individual skill and adoption of a model of production borrowed from industry (an attitude spectacularly mimicked by Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, and the like in later years). Secondly, through a position associated in the 1970s in the USA with conceptual artists such as John Baldessari and Michael Asher on the West Coast of the US, and their famous “post-studio” program at CalArts. Since they— like many other conceptual artists of their generation—were making art out of ideas (“Work that is done in one’s head,” as Baldessari put it), which might pop up at any time, the physical space of the studio, and the repetitive ritual of making that studio practice implies, was seen as irrelevant for that kind of work.
Early on, Clark’s work made visible, often satirically, the clash of worlds between the refined space of the ballet academy (he trained with the Royal Ballet) and his ordinary life outside of ballet, crossing over into the post-punk 1980s scene. The Charles Atlas fantasy documentary, Hail the New Puritans (1984–85), splices footage of Clark’s choreography, featuring dancers in cheeky butt-cheek-revealing leotards and face paint, with Michael and friends (notably, Leigh Bowery) attired in outlandish costumes, dancing in a club or walking London’s grimy streets. In the film, London’s Chisenhale Dance Studio is re-cast as Michael’s loft apartment, and through Atlas’s playful vision, we see him practically dance his way out of bed before joining in a group routine.

Michael Clark Company, Tate Project Part I, 2010
Photography by Hugo Glendinning
Such an idea of the blurring of art and life was a playful one—and one that Clark, too, has drawn upon in his choreography—but the film’s irreverent subcultural exterior masked Clark’s truly alternative approach to the notion of art’s embeddedness in the everyday. Although the studio connotes a sense of remove from the outside world, from everyday life—whether from the ordinary movements of walking or running or carrying things that Steve Paxton, Rainer, or Simone Forti put on stage in the 1960s, or indeed from the dance moves of the 1980s nightclub scene—practice accumulates as a facility that becomes rooted in the practitioner’s body; as a manner of being. While Rainer conceptualized the mind as a muscle in deadpan terms, attempting to submerge the anxiety of analytic thought in straightforward physical activity, Clark’s dance practice is grounded in a ritual that pushes the movements it incorporates into a space that precedes thinking. For the artist, this means that the daily repetition of the studio is taken for granted prior to thinking about what to do and what to make. In other words, creative process follows from physical training and physical capacity. Such pre-conscious immersion in a discipline is the opposite of Baldessari’s self-aware and witty video showing himself assuming a series of different positions, I am making art (1971), or indeed from Ryan McNamara’s recent work, Make Ryan a Dancer, in which McNamara “tried on” a wide variety of dance styles, from hip-hop to salsa to striptease, throughout a three-month period. The practice of going through the same motions repeatedly lends the practitioner a different form of art-into-life: formal fluency. For Clark and his dancers, the discipline of dance is assimilated through their bodies to such a degree that the learned forms and movements are a part of the dancers as a latent, organic capacity, even when they are walking down the street.
The first of Clark’s pieces for the Turbine Hall was choreographed to Kraftwerk’s Hall of Mirrors. His dancers, dressed in black workout clothes, stepped across the space in diagonals lines, pacing forward on the beat but languidly dragging one foot behind them. The dancers carried deadpan demeanors. Doll-like, their limbs seemed to swing as though hinged from the shoulder or hip, yet their arms occasionally arced in the air with extraordinary lightness, before bodies slackened at the knees, forcing their stiffened upper bodies into tilted slants. The movements, like Kraftwerk’s music, owed much to the readymade industrial forms of the 20th century: the repetitive sounds and motions of factory machinery or workers, an aesthetic very much at home in this former power station.
But as my distinction between practice and process attempts to make apparent, Clark’s mode of production has as much to do with industrial modernism as with the emblematic status of folk dance within a close-knit community. Towards the end of Hall of Mirrors is a part of the music that sounds like the electronic equivalent of pealing bells, calling the inhabitants of a village to prayer. In Clark’s community of dancers, the figures spin, turn, step, and jump in dynamic configurations, sometimes mirroring each other, but always with just enough asymmetry. There is an incredible thrill to this apparently disparate but entirely coherent and choreographed group activity: an intricately plotted transposition of the unformed mass of a crowd milling in a public square.

Michael Clark Company, Ellen van Schuylenburch, Julie Hood and Matthew Hawkins, New Puritans, 1984
Photography by Chris Harris
Writing on the “entanglement of the gestural and the political” in Giorgio Agamben’s Notes on Gesture, Dieter Roelstraate observes, “In favouring interiority (‘content’, personality, psychological states) over exteriority (‘form’, exchange, propriety), contemporary society not only strikes us… as formless and disorderly on a purely political level, but ultimately also as a rather uninspiring, uncouth mess, divested of all sense of ‘theatre’, and with very little opportunities left for the nurturing of various artful ways of living.”1 Clark’s Hall of Mirrors poetically counters this impression by grafting the meditative introspection of the dancer in his or her mirrored studio —the space of interiority—onto the vast public scale of the Turbine Hall, connecting the pre-consciousness of practice with the outward expression of gesture as a form of public life. Set in the center of a crowd gathered around the edges of the Turbine Hall’s planed floor, his choreography created an extraordinary compression of the pedestrian activity to be found there through forms of movement that occupied a different order of space and time. The movement in the work packs infinitesimal detail into the execution of each sequence and each transition, and the resulting work appears as a hallucinatory refraction, re-imagining ordinary activity through the palpable expression of the dancers bodies, seen at close hand. Taking a cue from Roelstraate’s observation, Clark’s approach to practice offers an evolution of the blurring of art and life by “nurturing an artful way of living” and, so, working form into the disorder of reality.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: tateorguk

Michael Clark Company returns to Tate Modern to present the world premiere of th, a new commission for the Turbine Hall. Iconic British choreographer Michael Clark has worked with movement, film, light and sound to create a site-specific work to be performed Wednesday 8 June – Sunday 12 June 2011.
The new commission, created in response to the monumental architecture of the Turbine Hall, follows from the company’s residency last year. This unique event provided an extraordinary opportunity for Tate Modern visitors to witness the artistic process behind Clark’s choreography. Using the first part of the project as an opportunity to explore and experiment, Michael Clark Company has embedded this research into a new piece. Clark has worked with long-standing collaborators Charles Atlas and Stevie Stewart. The sound design is by Martyn Ware and Andy Pink.
Building on last year’s success, the company once again invited members of the public to take part in a series of weekly workshops. This unique opportunity has allowed non-professional dancers to become a part of the artistic creation and contribute to the final performances.
Clark recently presented the work come, been and gone at the Venice Biennale (2009), The Edinburgh Festival (2009) and the Barbican Centre (2009 and 2010) to great critical acclaim.
Michael Clark Company is an Artistic Associate of the Barbican Centre and supported by Arts Council England.
Tate Modern Live is curated by Catherine Wood, Curator (Contemporary Art and Performance) and Kathy Noble, Curator (Interdisciplinary Projects), assisted by Capucine Perrot, Assistant Curator, Tate.
Notes to Editor
Michael Clark was born in Scotland and trained at the Royal Ballet School in London (1975–9). In 1979 joined Ballet Rambert, working primarily with Richard Alston. Later, attending a summer school with Merce Cunningham and John Cage led him to work with Karole Armitage, through whom he met Charles Atlas.
The first concert of his own choreography was in 1982 at London’s Riverside Studios, where he became resident choreographer. By 1984 Clark had made 16 original pieces.
Michael Clark and Company was launched in 1984. The company was an immediate success and toured internationally. During this time Clark collaborated with fashion designers BodyMap, artists Leigh Bowery and Trojan, as well as The Fall, Laibach, and Wire.
Clark’s commissions for major dance companies include the G.R.C.O.P., The Paris Opera, Scottish Ballet, London Festival Ballet, Ballet Rambert, Phoenix Dance Company and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Clark has produced considerable work for film and video, including Hail the New Puritan (1984) and Because We Must (1989) with Charles Atlas. He also choreographed and danced the role of Caliban in Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books (1991).
After three years of commissions and solo work he created the original version of Mmm… (1992) and O (1994). In 1998 he presented a new full-length work, current/SEE, in collaboration with Susan Stenger, Simon Pearson, Big Bottom, and Hussein Chalayan which became the subject of a BBC documentary directed by Sophie Fiennes, The Late Michael Clark.
Before and After: The Fall (2001) was Clark’s first major collaboration with the visual artist Sarah Lucas. In 2003 Clark created the first Satie Stud for William Trevitt of George Piper Dances, produced an evening entitled Would, Should, Can, Did, for the Barbican Theatre in London, and choreographed a solo for Mikhail Baryshnikov. In the same year, OH MY GODDESS opened London Dance Umbrella’s 25th anniversary season. In 2004 Rambert Dance Company revived SWAMP, which received the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production in 2005.
In 2005 Michael Clark Company became an Artistic Associate of the Barbican Centre, London, and Clark embarked on the Stravinsky Project, a three-year collaboration to produce a trilogy of works to seminal dance scores by Igor Stravinsky. He radically reworked O and Mmm… for this project, and in 2007 he premiered the final installment, I Do. The Stravinsky Project had its US premiere at the Lincoln Center, New York, in June 2008.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: theguardian

Michael Clark, choreographer, ex-heroin addict, and pin-up boy of the 1980s Blitz kids, is 50 next year. And while his work continues to develop and refine within the abstract micro-sector that he has made his own, his deep subject remains himself and his life. Last week, in the colossal emptiness of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, he presented th, a 10-piece programme set to songs by David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Pulp and others. These were performed by his loyal gang of professional dancers, and by a chorus of four dozen amateurs.

The professionals are sleek in Stevie Stewart’s black and white all-in-ones, and later dramatic in black and silver. As the music rolls from the speakers, and Charles Atlas’s icy lighting picks them out from on high, they map out the 50-yard floor space with Clarke’s wary, hyper-reductive steps. All the familiar tropes are here: the nodding-dog heads, the tight couronne arms, the karate-stiff hands, the banking turns. There’s no amplitude, no curved line, no surrender to the music’s sweep and billow. But then it’s the very narrowness of the bandwidth to which Clark confines himself that gives the work its intensity, and there’s a humming interplay between his stark choreographic glyphs and the airy vastness of the hall.

There’s a relaxing of tension at the end, as Kate Coyne and Oxana Panchenko punch out the opening riffs of Bowie’s “The Jean Genie” with stabbing little prances on pointe, and the other dancers swing into the number’s sexy mannequin strut, but the main impression is of an artist endlessly reworking the same material in the hope of resolution, and perhaps redemption. For me, numbers like “Aladdin Sane”, with their repetitive circuits and overwound toy dynamics, find a parallel in the scratchy self-portraits and neon epigrams of Tracey Emin. There’s the same introversion, the same codifying of personal experience, the same close-focused search for meaning. A delicate, momentarily-held frieze of dancers at the end of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” is almost painful in its vulnerability, its blink-and-you-miss-it beauty.

Which is not to say that Clark doesn’t respond to the Vatican-like scale of the place. Deploying his dancers at the greatest possible distance from one another, he plays stylish perspective tricks. Here’s Benjamin Warbis, inches from the audience, performing a slow développé. And there, high on the walkway, so far away they don’t seem to be part of the same event, are the others, stretching and throwing shapes against the darkness. Clark usually appears in his own programmes, if only for fleeting, Hitchcockian moments, as if to emphasise their autobiographical subtext. And there he is, as Bowie mugs to “Heroes” on a screen, all but invisible in a dark hoodie on the floor.

The chorus is a nice touch. Of all ages, visibly thrilled to be taking part, they advance and retreat in waves, dressed in Monty Pythonesque towelling tunics. Sometimes they lie down, legs paddling, pinned to the floor like great black moths. And if it’s clear that not all of them could do the steps blindfold, their tentativeness is very human, and highlights the fluency, accomplishment and all-round otherness of the dancers.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: serralvespt
A Companhia de Michael Clark iniciou a sua actividade em 1984, com dois projectos: Do You Me? I Did e New Puritans. A Companhia tornou-se um sucesso imediato e viajou por todo o mundo apresentando Not H. air (1984) e Our Caca Phoney H. Our Caca Phoney H (1985). Através de colaborações com designers de moda Bodymap, Leigh Bowery e com o artista Trojan, Clark trouxe um elemento visual enriquecedor ao seu trabalho. O uso de música contemporânea e a integração de bandas como The Fall, Laibach e Wire expandiram quer o seu trabalho quer o seu público. No decorrer deste período, Clark desenvolveu trabalhos únicos, de grande escala para a sua companhia: No Fire Escape in Hell (1986), Because We Must (1987) e I Am Curious Orange (1988). Estes trabalhos foram apresentados em sessões esgotadas no Sadler’s Wells Theatre, em Londres e internacionalmente. Adicionalmente, a sua contribuição para companhias de dança de maior dimensão inclui projectos como Le French Revolting (1984) para G.R.C.O.P., Angel Food (1985) para a Ópera de Paris, Hail The Classical (1985) para o Ballet Escocês, Drop Your Pearls and Hog It, Girl (1986) para o London Festival Ballet, Swamp (1986) para o Ballet Rambert, Rights (1989) para a Phoenix Dance Company e Bog 3.0 (1992) para a Deutsche Oper Berlin.
“Durante quase 25 anos, Michael Clark tem vindo a redefinir a natureza e os limites da dança contemporânea. A sua coreografia perversamente prodigiosa e anárquica e a encenação escarnecida das suas performances vieram radicalizar a relação da dança consigo mesma e com o seu público. A chave do seu trabalho consiste na abertura às possibilidades consagradas pela música e pelas artes visuais. O conjunto de coreografias rigorosamente controladas e a música vibrante e pulsante é uma parte do modo como Clark trabalha com o vocabulário formal da dança clássica, reestruturando-o de fora através de um bombardeamento quase sensorial. A sua abordagem é cacófona, uma confusão explorada, uma contaminação visual e uma ruptura. O seu trabalho é igualmente rigoroso e magistral, sugerindo uma manobra palpável do seu meio, de uma forma que vai para além do puro movimento para envolver uma plasticidade extensa.” Suzanne Cotter.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: kochi-bunkazaidanorjp

Michael Clark /マイケル・クラーク プロフィール
スコットランド出身のマイケル・クラークは1975年 から1979年までロンドンのロイヤル・バレエ・スクールで学んだ後、1979年、ランバートバレエ団に所属し、リチャード・オールストンとともに活動する。彼の振付による初演は1982年、自身がレジデンスしていたロンドンのリバーサイドスタジオで行われ、その後、1984年までに16のオリジナル作品を発表している。1984年、マイケル・クラーク・カンパニー創立。創立後、カンパニーは即座に成功し海外ツアーを行うに至る。この期間に、ファッションデザイナーのボディーマップ、アーティストのレイ・ボウリーやトロージャン、また、ザ・フォール、ライバハ、ワイヤーといったバンドとも共同制作を行う。 2005年、クラークはバービカン・センター（ロンドン）の芸術共同経営者となる。2010年、カンパニーはテート・モダン（ロンドン）で2年間のプロジェクトに取り掛かり、2011年6月、タービンホールにて大規模な新作‘th’の発表を行った。2011年、クラークはその振付とダンス分野における目覚ましい功績を称してロバート・ゴードン大学から芸術名誉学位を与えられた。
マイケル・クラーク・カンパニー