{dance} – Page 14 – { feuilleton }

Soundsuits by Nick Cave

No, not the Australian singer. Soundsuits are wearable artworks by an American artist, dancer and fashion designer. Bigger pictures here while the Jack Shainman gallery has details of a recent exhibition.

Metal armatures adorned with a range of objects including painted ceramic birds, flowers, brass ornaments, and strands of beads, top the figures and serve as headdresses that activate the sculpture and provide a visual and textural contrast to the soft bodysuit. Soundsuits, named for the sounds made when the sculptures are worn, are as reminiscent of African and religious ceremonial costumes as they are of haute couture. A multitude of references bring to mind not only disparate cultural traditions but they also highlight Cave’s diverse background and artistic training. Cave studied and danced with Alvin Ailey and created his own clothing line which he featured in a shop he opened and ran for ten years. He is as interested in fashion and cultural, ritualistic and ceremonial concepts as he is in politics, a domain that has always been part of his work as demonstrated by acts of collecting and reconfiguring elements and concealing the identity, race, and gender, of those who wear his suits.

Le Sacre du Printemps

Backdrop for the League of Composers’ production, Philadelphia, 1930.

Something for the vernal equinox. The painting is a stage design by artist, writer and theatre designer Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) for an American production of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Roerich designed the costumes and decor for the riotous Paris performance of 1913 and the Roerich Museum has a selection of designs for this and subsequent performances. Stravinsky’s fiercely primitive ballet has long been a favourite musical work of mine so it’s especially satisfying when one enthusiasm bleeds into another. I’ve noted before HP Lovecraft’s praise for Roerich’s paintings of whom he wrote in 1937:

There is something in his handling of perspective and atmosphere which to me suggests other dimensions and alien orders of being—or at least, the gateways leading to such. Those fantastic carven stones in lonely upland deserts—those ominous, almost sentient, lines of jagged pinnacles—and above all, those curious cubical edifices clinging to precipitous slopes and edging upward to forbidden needle-like peaks!

Roerich is also mentioned in At the Mountains of Madness and some of his designs for the Rite—which are, after all, backdrops for a ritual sacrifice—might easily serve as a scene of Cthulhoid invocation. Writer Mike Jay has a fascinating piece about the artist which proposes that he should perhaps be given more credit for the origin of the Rite of Spring. He’s not the first to note that it was the stage designer who nurtured a lifelong passion for mysticism and esoteric ritual, not the composer.

Finally, some slightly more contemporary music: Can performing Vernal Equinox for the BBC in 1975.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• HP Lovecraft’s favourite artists

Eonism and Eonnagata

The Chevalier d’Eon wins a fencing bout.

I’ve known of the cross-dressing Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Thimothée d’Eon de Beaumont—or the Chevalier d’Eon (1728–1810) to give him his title—for some time thanks to a typically witty and informative entry by Philip Core in Camp: The Lie that Tells the Truth (1984). The nobleman rubs shoulders there with the equally flamboyant Henry Paget (1875–1905), Fifth Marquess of Anglesey, known as “the Dancing Marquess”, and Romain de Tirtoff, better known as illustrator and designer, Erté, who we see in a photo dressed as “Claire de Lune”. Aside from his status as a historical curio, and a failed attempt by Havelock Ellis to borrow his name to describe transvestism—Eonism, the Chevalier seems less celebrated than he might be. So it’s a pleasure to hear that theatre director Robert Lepage has created a new stage production, Eonnagatta, based on the Chevalier’s colourful life:

For a long time now, the actor and experimental theatre director Robert Lepage has been fascinated by the life of the Chevalier d’Eon, an 18th-century French soldier who had a flamboyant career as a diplomat and secret agent for Louis XV, and spent much of his adult life dressed as a woman. Officially, the Chevalier’s skirts were worn as a professional disguise: his exceptionally fine features allowed him to pass easily for a woman, and thus move around undetected as a spy. But the Chevalier didn’t just do it for the job. He was a genuine cross-dresser, an 18th-century transvestite.

Lepage’s fascination has now led to Eonnagata, a daring collaboration inspired by the life of the Chevalier that gets its British premiere next week. The work has been put together by four very different, and internationally acclaimed, artists: there’s Lepage, the choreographer Russell Maliphant, the dancer Sylvie Guillem and the fashion designer Alexander McQueen. That’s quite a team – and the result is a unique hybrid of their art forms. How would they describe it? Maliphant gives it a go: “It’s not pure dance: it doesn’t have Sylvie doing splits or amazing falls. But it’s not pure theatre, either.” (More.)