Christian Rizzo/l'association fragile: b.c, janvier 1545, Fontainebleau-The Kitchen

After witnessing Stephen Petronio walking down the wall of the Whitney Museum as part of a re performance from Trisha Brown, I headed south to the Kitchen to experience b.c, 1545, Fontainebleau from The French choreographer, Christian Rizzo.

There, the master of ceremony, wearing lousy jeans and a ruffled shirt with a rabbit mask, Christian Rizzo himself, welcomed the spectators to this stunning performance. His outfit and the extreme silence required before entering the room already immersed us in a cinematographic atmosphere from an undefined time and space like David Lynch or Donnie Darko movies.

In a white square box, lying on an altar stands Julie Guibert, the classical dancer from the Lyon Opera Ballet, who inspired Rizzo this solo piece, by her “incredible intelligence on stage” and her personality. For one hour, she will perform an astonishing dance ritual where she contorts herself in a non human way with very sharp slow paced moves emphasized by her steel high heels shoes and her cold face that looks like an old Flemish painting.

In this religious ceremony, she evolves in the space where organic dream catchers and hairy fetishes are hanging from the ceiling and random disposed tea candles are slowly moved to the altar by the rabbitman.

The music suddenly breaking the silence in the second part gave impression of echoes and watery sounds from a cave.

The mysterious title of the performance is actually referring to The Nymph of Fontainebleau, a sculpture of Benvenuto Cellini that you can see at the Louvre Museum. In this sculpture, the woman personalized a source surrounded by forest animals. Cellini also introduced the automat with this piece by putting a simple movement and lightning in the sculpture.

Hence, Rizzo is looking way further in time to avoid the inevitable reference in dance history to what happened in the 50’s/60’s with pioneers like Trisha Brown, Pina Bausch or Merce Cunningham. However, it would be difficult to avoid the link between those precursors and the representatives of the “non dance” movement as Rizzo, or Jerome Bel, recently seen at the JoyceTheater. Even if this heritage is unconscious, it certainly influenced them, from interdisciplinary work to the interaction with the audience or the way of using the space.