Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece

Transcription

1 Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion Cheap Lecture is a rhythmic spoken performance set to music. In a rant about empty hands, audience, time, repetition and dancing, Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion reflect upon and continue the journey begun in their earlier trilogy of work, Both Sitting Duet (2002), The Quiet Dance (2005) and Speaking Dance (2006). Veering from the philosophical to the humorous and back, Cheap Lecture gently reveals how the two artists work while drawing us into ever more unexpected digressions. It is accompanied by The Cow Piece, a chaotic meditation upon dance, music and mortality. Cheap Lecture was selected for the 2009 'best of the year' Het Theaterfestival in Brussels. 'Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion have created a performance that dances in your head. It's superb' De Morgen, Belgium, on Cheap Lecture 'There are few performers who can hold an audience captive like this double act the timing of every note, shrug, laugh and gesture is awesome. Five stars.' The Guardian, London, on Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece 'The funniest, richest, most life-enhancing evening I ve had at anything associated with the 'dance' label this year (probably since their last one).' theartsdesk.com on Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece ' for the past several years their affirmative vote has generated startling moments when they and their audiences exclaim, 'Ooh!', and has hurled lightning bolts of sudden realization toward that which does not take place, e.g. virtuosic dance.' Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich Cheap Lecture was commissioned by Cultureel Centrum Maasmechelen and Dans in Limburg and first performed at the Cultureel Centrum Maasmechelen. The Cow Piece is co-produced by Kaaitheater, Brussels. Management: Nigel Hinds nigel@nigelhinds.co.uk Duration of performance 60 minutes, no interval.

2 Both Sitting Duet, The Quiet Dance, Speaking Dance, Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece have had over 200 performances since 2002 across the following countries: Belgium, Germany, UK, Canada, Japan, Portugal, Italy, Austria, France, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Spain, Croatia, Ireland, USA, Finland, Lithuania, Brazil, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, South Korea, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Turkey and Australia. Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece 2010 Maasmechelen, Belgium, CCM, Febrary 22 Toronto, Dancemakers Centre for Creation, March 6 Mechelen, kc nona, March 13 Amsterdam, Frascati, April 9/10 Munich, Muffathalle, May 11/12 Bremen, LIME, June 8 Olomouc Czech Republic, Divadelni Flora, June 15 Poznan, Poland, Stary Browar, July 2 Vienna, Impulstanz Festival, August 8/9 Riga, The New Theatre Institute of Latvia, August 27 Graz, Steirischer Herbst Festival, October 8/9 Florence, Cantieri Goldonetta, October 10 Modena, Scena Contemporanea Festival, October 11/12 London, Dance Umbrella Festival, October 13/14/15 Dogheart 2010 Brussels, Kaitheater, February 12/13 Maasmechelen Belgium, CCM, February 23 Vienna, Impulstanz Festival, August 1 London, Dance Umbrella Festival, October October 25/26 Both Sitting Duet, The Quiet Dance and Speaking Dance 2010 Toronto, Dancemakers Centre for Creation, March 5/6 Hamburg, Kampnagel, May 27/28 Both Sitting Duet, The Quiet Dance and Speaking Dance and Cheap Lecture 2009 Maasmechelen, Belgium, CCM, March 17/18/19 Dartington, Dartington Arts, April 22/23 Perth, Pica, April 26 Stockholm, Weld, May 7/8 Chalon, La Comete, Scene National, May 12 Istanbul, idans Festival, May 19/20 '

3 Essen, PACT Zollverein, June 26/27 Santarcangelo, Santarcangelo Festival, July 3/4/5 Findhorn, Scotland, Bodysurf Scotland, July 10 Brussels, Het Theaterfestival, Kaaitheater, September 2 Budapest, TRAFÓ - House of Contemporary Arts, October 12/13 Bucharest, explore Dance Festival, October 15/16 Alkanena, Portugal, Festival Materiais Diversos, November 20 Brussels, Kaaitheater, December 17/18/19 Both Sitting Duet, The Quiet Dance and Speaking Dance 2008 London, Sadlers Wells Theatre, January 11/12/17/18/25/26 Zurich, Theaterhaus Gessnerallee, January 15/16 Berne, Kulturhallen Dampfzentrale, January 27 Royal Holloway, The Boilerhouse, January 30 Frankfurt, Mousonturm, February, 22/23 Leicester, De Motfort University, February 26 Bremen, Tanz Bremen, March 5 Leipzig, Euroscene, March 9 Brussels, Kaaitheater, April 19 Umea, MADE Festival, May 8 Lisbon, Alkantara Festival, June 3/4 Florence, Goldoni Theatre, June 14 Montpelier, Festivales Des Promenades, July 12 Kalamata, Kalamata Dance Festival, July 20/22 Munich, Tanzwerkstatt Europa, August 15 Amsterdam, Frascati Theatre, September 26/27 Bergen, Oktoberdans, October 28 Leipzig, Euroscene, November 5/6 Parma, Festival Natura Dei Teatri, November 15 Dieppe, Too Much Festival, November 18 Lyon, Maison De La Danse, November 20/21/22 Eastleigh, The Point, November 27/28 Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, December 5 The Stop Quartet 2008 Brussels, Kaaitheater, October 10/11 London, Linbury Theatre, ROH, Dance Umbrella Festival, October 21/22 Both Sitting Duet, The Quiet Dance and Speaking Dance 2007 Brussels, Kaaitheater, February 8/13/17 Maasmechelen, CCM, February 15 Cesana, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, March 3/4 Paris, Dessus Dessous, April 13/14 Utrecht, Springdance Festival, April 27/28

4 Milan, Ouvo, May 15 Seoul, MODAFE, June 4/5 Madrid, in-presentable, June 16/17 Poznan, Stary Browar, June 30/July 1 St Etienne, Festival de 7 Collines, July 6/7 Vienna, Impulstanz, July 13/20/21 Nyon, Festival Des Arts Vivants, August 15/16 Berlin, Tanz Im August 25/26 Tallin, August Dance Festival, August 31 Riga, International Festival Of Contemporary Theatre, September 27/28/29 Lille, UKMoves, October 6 Marseille, Marseille Objectif Danse, October 10 Nottingham, NottDance Festival, October 12 Aberdeen, Citymoves, October 13 Modena, Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, October 17/18 São Paulo, SECS, October 30/31 Rio de Janeiro, Panorama Festival, November 3/4 Leipzig, Euroscene, November 7/8 Dartington, Dartington Arts, November 19 Both Sitting Duet and The Quiet Dance 2006 Barcelona, Sala De Beckett, January 20/21 Bologna, Galleria d'arte Modena, April 21 Nottingham, NottDance Festival, May 2 Florence, Cantieri Goldonetta, June 5 Vienna, ImPulsTanz Festival, July 26 Vilnius, National Theatre, September 24 Brussels, Kaaitheater, October 11 Helsinki, Moving In October Festival, Oct 28/29 Oulu, Cultural Centre, October 31/Nov 1 Modena, Scena Contemporanea Festival, October 24 Royal Holloway, The Boiler Room, November 8 Both Sitting Duet 2005 Cardiff, Wales Millenium Centre, January 6/7 Genk, Culturcentrum Genk, January 14 Rome, Auditorium, February 13 Chicago, Links Hall, March 4/5/6 Strasbourg, May 12/13 Harstaad, June 18 Munich, Muffathalle, August 7 Brussels, Kaaitheater Studios, October 13/14 London, Dance Umbrella Festival, The Place Theatre, October 17/18 Bristol, Arnolfini, December 2

5 Both Sitting Duet 2004 New York, The Kitchen, March 11/12/13 Antwerp, CCB, April 28 Dublin, International Dance Festival Ireland, May 20/21 Zagreb, Dance Week Festival, May 26 Marseilles, Marseilles Objectif Danse, June 3/4/5 Madrid, La Casa Encendida, June 17/18 Fribourg, Switzerland, Belluard Bollwerk International, July 6 Amsterdam, Julidans, July 7 Munich, Tanzwerkstatt Europa, August 6 Geneva, Theatre du Grutli, September 2/3 Val De Marne, Biennale Nationale de Danse du Val-de-Marne, September 23 Bergen, Teater Garasjen, October 11 Maasmechelen, Belgium, CCM, October 28 Dartington, Dartington Hall, November 2 London, Royal Opera House Clore Studio, November 10/11/12/17/18/19/24/25/26 Huddersfield, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, November 22 Brighton, The Dome, December 3 Florence, Dec 7/8 Bologna, Raum, December 9 Both Sitting Duet 2003 Brussels, Kaaitheater, January 8/9 Stockholm, Panacea Festival, January 26 Nottingham, NOTTDance Festival, May 17th Paris, Menagerie De Verre, June 6/7 Vienna, ImPulstanz Festival, July 18/20 Berlin, Tanz Im August, August 29/30 Milan, Uovo Festival, September 13 Lisbon, Gulbenkian Centre, September 19/20 Yokohama, Yokohama Arts Foundation, September 27/28 Montreal, Festival International de Nouvelle Danse, October 5 Leuven, Klapstuk Festival, October 12/13 London, Dance Umbrella Festival, The Place Theatre, October 15/16/17 Chester, Chester College of H.E., October 22 Both Sitting Duet 2002 Brussels, Kaaitheater, October 10/11 Frankfurt, Mousonturm, November 2/3

6 Jonathan Burrows was born in He danced with the Royal Ballet for 13 years, rising to the rank of soloist, before leaving in 1991 to pursue his own choreography. After touring with his own company for some years he decided in 2001 to concentrate on one to one collaborations with other artists, who would share the conception, making, performing and administrating of the work. His first collaboration was Weak Dance Strong Questions (2001), made with the theatre maker and performer Jan Ritsema, which toured to 14 countries. This was followed by a series of duets with Matteo Fargion, beginning in 2002 with Both Sitting Duet, followed by The Quiet Dance (2005), Speaking Dance (2006). Cheap Lecture (2009) and The Cow Piece (2009). The two men have now given over 200 performances across 28 countries. Both Sitting Duet won a 2004 New York Dance and Performance 'Bessie' Award, and Cheap Lecture was chosen for the 2009 Het Theaterfestival in Belgium. In 2010 he also made Dogheart, with the dancer Chrysa Parkinson. Other high profile commissions include Sylvie Guillem and William Forsythe s Ballet Frankfurt, and in 2008 he was Associate Director for Peter Handke's The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other at the National Theatre, London. Burrows has been an Associate Artist at Kunstencentrum Vooruit in Gent, Belgium ( ), London s South Bank Centre (1998/9) and Kaaitheater Brussels (2008 -). In 2002 he received an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts In New York, in recognition for his ongoing contributions to contemporary dance. He is a visiting member of faculty at P.A.R.T.S, and is also Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University Of London, Hamburg University and the Free University Berlin. He holds an Honorary Doctorate from Royal Holloway University of London. 'A Choreographer's Handbook' (2010) by Jonathan Burrows is available from Routledge Publishing. Matteo Fargion was born in Milan He studied composition with the composers Kevin Volans and Howard Skempton, and after graduation played bass guitar for a time in the rock band headed by Chris Newman, a formative experience of live performance. His interest in contemporary dance began after seeing the Merce Cunningham Dance Company perform at the Sadler's Wells Theatre in London, returning the following evening to give flowers to the dancers. This experience encouraged him to apply for the International Course for Choreographers and Composers, where he first wrote music for dance, and through which he met the choreographer Jonathan Burrows with whom he has collaborated for more than twenty years. Since 2002 Burrows and Fargion have made a series of five duets conceived, choreographed, composed, administrated and performed together. Both Sitting Duet (2002), The Quiet Dance (2005), Speaking Dance (2006), Cheap Lecture (2009) and The Cow Piece (2009) are still touring, and the two men have now given over 200 performances across 28 countries. Both Sitting Duet won a 2004 New York Dance and Performance 'Bessie' Award, and Cheap Lecture was chosen for the 2009 Het Theaterfestival in Belgium. Fargion has written music for other choreographers including Lynda Gaudreau and Russell Maliphant. Most importantly over the past fifteen years he has developed a strong collaboration with the leading English choreographer Siobhan Davies, writing music for some of her most significant recent work including The Art of Touch (1995), Two Quartets (2007) and Minutes for the Collection (2009), in which he also performed. Fargion writes also for theatre, particularly in Germany, where he has worked over a number of years at the Residenz Theater Munich, and at the Berlin Schaubühne under the direction of Thomas Ostermeier, for whom he wrote music for the prize winning 2004 production of Jon Fosse's new play The Girl on the Sofa. Matteo is a visiting member of faculty at P.A.R.T.S.

7 Review of Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece Judith Mackrell, The Guardian, London, 14th October stars 'We'd make work like Pina Bausch if we could,' says Jonathan Burrows, 'But this is what we're good at.' As their 2009 piece called Cheap Lecture demonstrates, what he and Matteo Fargion are brilliant at is turning the eccentricities of their shared creative world into irresistible theatre. The idea for the piece, they tell us, was initially stolen from John Cage. Taking off from Cage's inspired logic of subversion, the two men deliver a performance that's neither dance, music nor even a lecture. It's a 40-minute standup set in which they talk in fast, rhythmic, musically shaped phrases about the nature of composition, the mysteries of theatrical time and space, and the complicity between audience and performer. Some of it is startlingly wise, some of its preposterously funny, and all of it effortlessly transcends pretension. There are few performers who can hold an audience captive like this double act Burrows with his terrier intellect snapping at the heels of Fargion's comic, Italianate dolour. In their second offering, The Cow Piece, they veer off into wilder ranges of fantasy. They stand behind tables, laid out with 12 model cows, and start weaving 'stories' around them. Fargion croons out their names in Italian, plays war games and serenades them. Burrows enacts their fate in ballet mime, a Morris dance and an old cockney song. It's all wildly, unclassifiably bonkers postmodern music hall or performance art in a house of mirrors or a tower of Babel. But the timing of every note, shrug, laugh and gesture is awesome. The nonsense has a shining clarity. Judith Mackrell

8 Review of Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece Ismene Brown, 14th October 2010 It s hard to believe that Burrows was once a major Royal Ballet artist, on the character side, because his choreography so rapidly abandoned the conventions of ballet (actually I don t remember his works having much about ballet except a whiff of its fluidity in certain windblown whirls and lifts). It travelled for a while towards the William Forsythe school of almost scientifically fascinating movement, broken up and examined in masterpieces like Our and The Stop Quartet, before stopping - and we were left Burrows-less for a long, worrying while. Then it returned 10 years ago, wholly unpredictably, in an odd duet with a Dutchman in which Burrows started talking. After that, there was no stopping him. He found a new co-worker, the composer Matteo Fargion, and they made three startling and hilarious duets, examining rhythm from all sorts of angles, applying speech like an abstract percussive instrument to stumbling little dances, patting, whistling, yelping, seriously eccentric amusements. And they are back this week for three precious days, with an hour s entertainment that continues the trilogy s ideas in the funniest, richest, most life-enhancing evening I ve had at anything associated with the 'dance' label this year (probably since their last one).part one, Cheap Lecture (pictured right, by Herman Sorgeloos), is a cheeky tribute to John Cage and the happenings that bust open ideas about dance in American theatre in the early 1950s. It is a delightfully crazed dual lecture, playing off one character against the other (lugubrious clown Fargion, perky professorial Burrows), just as surely as it plays the natural rhythms that give sentences meaning off against insistently different and sometimes warring rhythms. This is not, as they admit, a new idea. One of their lines is: 'We don t know what we re doing, but we re doing it - (shrug) - everything is stolen anyway.' They make their thefts clear in their script, no less funny for that. The lines jibe at the con-trick that performers play against their audience by feeding the audience s willingness to believe in them (no matter how vacant the performers are feeling). Yet when the lines are fractured by 'wrong' rhythms (rather like Shakespeare s Mechanicals in 'Pyramus and Thisbe' in A Midsummer Night s Dream), words become mad lost creatures looking to join up with others and acquire a meaning in the gap. This sounds too serious. but it s the serene intellectual curiosity underlying even the cheapest gags that makes this so enjoyable a Cageian homage. One has known about the imminent cows all along, as there are 12 little plastic Friesians lined cutely up on the tables behind the pair in the first part; but the uproarious use of them in The Cow Piece is an explosively funny surprise. Like competing costermongers, Burrows and Fargion demonstrate their toy cows,

9 creating tight little suspense dramas about their fates - some of them gruesome - snatching up musical instruments, a ukulele, a harmonica, a modest little squeezebox, an accordion, a piano, and dragging poor Schubert in there somehow. Fargion lards it lavishly with Italian capriciousness, strumming Neapolitan ditties, blowing a football ref's whistle and pointing accusingly between two guilty plastic cows, 'Wasn t me', 'Wasn t me', or crying 'Muoio! Muoio!' ('I'm dying') like Scarpia in Tosca while Burrows cuts a caper. Burrows, who s a brilliant music-hall stooge, counters with a mock-victorian song about a baby that meets an unfortunate end. How do they notate such complex interlockings of gesture, sound, word, props and movement, allying logic ad absurdam with subconscious association-games? How long does it take them to create this diabolical puzzle? Never mind - just please go and see this tonight or tomorrow. It could be years before they re back. Ismene Brown

10 Review of Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece Jann Parry, Ballet.magazine, October 2010 'You can't call us minimalists any longer', says Jonathan Burrows of his and Matteo Fargion's latest double-bill. The second part, The Cow Piece, is a cul-de-sac in the series of duets he's been doing with Fargion since 2002, starting with Both Sitting Duet, which did more or less - what its title described. The Cow Piece ends with the performance area almost as littered as one of Pina Bausch's messier works: reams of paper, a dozen tortured model cows, miniature nooses and an array of musical instruments. The hour-long set starts off deceptively austerely with Cheap Lecture, recited in turn by both performers. They admit that they borrowed the structure from John Cage's 1959 Lecture on Nothing (which Fargion has performed as a 'rhythmic reading'). Where Cage would pronounce 'I have nothing to say and I am saying it', Burrows and Fargion claim 'We don't know what we're doing and we're doing it and stealing it'. The result is a 40 minute patter song, a rap about rules and audience responses, delivered deadpan. They discard the pages of their 'scores' one by one. If the pages are anything like Cage's lecture script, they're printed in 48 units of 12 lines, spaced so that the rhythms don't necessarily correspond with the sense (if any) of the sentences. It amounts to a kind of collective brain-washing, patterning our expectations and alerting us to repetitions without giving us time to think. We're so busy laughing and trying to keep up that we can't think. Think what? While we're still befuddled, they launch into The Cow Piece, a Mornington Crescent game that disrupts the rules established in Cheap Lecture. They seem to operate in parallel universes, following inner rhythms that happen to coincide and which they acknowledge with a smile of surprise. Cows get serenaded and abused. Fargion, their executioner, croons Dido's Lament to one of them; Burrows sings them a comic song, foretelling their fate in ballet mime, fists crossed. Together they play a jig or reel on a ukelele and accordion. Burrows, of course, was a folk-dance expert during his years with the Royal Ballet, as a dancer, musician and teacher. Still nimble at 50, he comes across as a music-hall artiste in the style of Dan Leno, who used to cut Irish capers while reciting mournful Cockney ballads. Burrows and Fargion make a superb po-faced double act, complementing each other as highly intelligent clowns. They're perfectly serious about their work, investigating the boundaries of postmodern dance and music while entertaining themselves and us. Jann Parry, 2010

11 The music is virtuosic Lieve Dierckx, from the Flemish Theatre Institute, Corpus Art Criticism 2009 Vilain XIIII is a castle situated in the village of Leut, in the Belgian province of Limburg. It harbours a magnificently restored Nanette Streicher pianoforte from 1826 that, in the latest of its nine lives, appears to have prompted a three-day festival round the work of choreographer Jonathan Burrows and his associate, composer Matteo Fargion. These two gentlemen have hatched their very own idiosyncratic language in the overlap between music and dance, a far cry from the idea of dance as moving to music. Rhythm, timing and attitude are their common terrarium for creating a compelling vocabulary that all at the same time succeeds in enhancing a democratic relationship with the public. Both the pianoforte and the duo share the keen interest of Hugo Haeghens, director of the local cultural centre of Maasmechelen. At some point in the past, during a residency at his centre, Burrows and Fargion had solemnly promised him to do something with his cherished pianoforte. Much more than something it has indeed not become, because the old instrument, so lovingly restored to its original state, is not put to use for much more than five minutes throughout the festival. All the while, the pianoforte does serve as a symbol of the duo s working method in the sense that they tend to take as a starting point the reformulation of historic dance and music material. Burrows himself describes their interest in scores and translation as an answer to the post-modern dilemma on the impossibility of creating something new, but one might just as well find a niche for that idea in the hipper and more recent ecological recycling mood that seems to have expanded into a renewed interest for repertory and re-enactment in the arts of the stage. A festival round one choreographer or one company is quite unusual in Flander s contemporary dance scene. Organizer Hugo Haeghens is one of the few programmers who dares take that kind of risk and in the past he has shown excellent judgment on smaller work of interest. Burrows and Fargion cannot be counted among young talent in any sense but their careers did take some quite unexpected turns.

12 The duo met in London, at the time that Burrows worked as a soloist for the venerable Royal Ballet which he was part of for the better part of thirteen years. In 1995 he asked composer Matteo Fargion to write the music to a small choreography Hands that was in its turn to be used in a film. They worked together in a classical constellation of choreographer/composer until 2002 when their relationship took a radical turn with Both Sitting Duet in which they went on stage on completely equal footing. At this point we return to Maasmechelen because Burrows and Fargion open the first night of their festival with Both Sitting Duet, a work that was later on to become the first part of their trilogy of duets. The other parts, The Quiet Dance and Speaking Dance, were performed on the second evening as a double bill. This intensive submersion engenders a clear image of the evolution in the duo s language. Both Sitting Duet, executed on two chairs, is a movement transcription for four hands of a score that composer Morton Feldman dedicated to John Cage. But the only sound we hear is that of the hands dancing and the rustle of the score s pages that Burrows and Fargion each keep in front of them on the floor. In The Quiet Dance the sound of voices is introduced: while Burrows executes a repetitive movement phrase in which he walks forward from an erect posture to a low bow in eight counts, Fargion produces with his voice a sighing sound that rises higher on each of the same eight counts. The inspiration is a music scale, from high to low. In Speaking Dance, the last part of the trilogy, the movement has moved to paper altogether. Again, the two performers sit on two chairs next to each other and commence a game of word and sound rhythm that is based on dance instructions they have in front of them in a score. Once in a while Fargion erupts into old Italian songs or produces some old chimes on a mouth organ. The trilogy might be seen as a shifting in focus from movement to music, but in the end the shift comes down to an extraction of its common denominators: musicality, rhythm and timing. Manifesto Only on the third day does the festival move from Maasmechelen s cultural centre to Castle Vilain XIIII. In the late afternoon Burrows and Fargion start off with a lecture performance on their sources of inspiration that range from Nijinska s Les Noces, over folkdance from Oxfordshire and South-Africa, to bottle music, chaos and order in the work of Tadeusz Kantor, Max Wall, the musical A Chorus Line, Samuel Becket, the music of Morton Feldman, Steve Reich and John Cage, dub reggae and shared autobiographical experiences. The key words in this amalgam are again rhythm and timing, next to dignity and the quality of contact with the public as well as with the performance itself. The centre piece of the festival, the première of Cheap Lecture, is then performed later on the same evening in the former reception hall of the castle. Cheap Lecture

13 proves to be a manifesto on the duo s work and their relationship with the public, framed in a format of an incongruous, impossible, absurdly comical waterfall of rhythmicalized thoughts. In the back of the stage the pianoforte is being discreetly beautiful. To the front, on the right, two microphones are waiting. The two gentlemen come on stage, each carrying their obligatory bunch of score papers. In one big step they are behind their microphones, and without the slightest nanomoment of introductory sauntering they launch on a sustained rhythmical drive of spoken phrases which they read from their papers: 'We apologize', and 'We have come with empty hands'. In the background we hear a sound-scape with a few simple Schubert chords that they have recorded earlier in the week on the fortepiano. Only at the end, in the last minutes of the performance, the pianoforte is allowed on leave from its imposed decorative role. Fargion installs himself in front of the keyboard and replays some of the Schubert-chords while Burrows reinforces the procedure with a rhythmically repeated boum, boum, boum. The torrent of voiced phrases of Cheap Lecture does not involve any movement phrase. Real music is reduced to some lost notes and real dance never exceeds the one step forward. It is the words that dance, the mutual exchange of looks and glances between the two performers, between them and the public, it is the leaves from the bunch of papers in their hands as they throw them with a small sway to the floor after each spoken word or sentence, it is the humour that dances through the score. Likewise all of those elements are turned into music. The performers do not play with pitch or volume: everything is centered around the force of rhythm and timing. Timing It is this sense of timing that Cheap Lecture shares with the trilogy the previous two festival days. Burrows and Fargion command timing as few others do, they can stand the comparison with the world s best clowns or comics. One critic called them the Laurel and Hardy of avant-garde dance - but that would do injustice to their added value as dance and music performers. Their work does have that comical aspect that is present in the perfect placing of a glance, a sigh or one of those typical movements of the head with which they conclude a voiced phrase or a movement phrase. Fargion especially is good at that, he also has the classical physiognomy of a clown, a somewhat melancholy expression that matches his short and sturdy build. All in all, the kind of physical appearance that discerning women swoon for. On the other hand, Burrows and Fargion shrink back from an excess of humour because they want their public to keep in touch with the fact that their work is a serious proposal.

14 Their humour is indeed part of a broader range of significance in their work work which for that matter is quite indescribable. When watching Burrows and Fargion on stage for the first time I was quite happy not to have to write about the event. My only attempt at putting into words what I had seen stopped at a comparison with watching a game you do not know the rules of, but that is clearly so much fun that you would absolutely love to be part of it. That description still goes in Maasmechelen. There is something in what these two performers do that entices one to keep on watching expectantly in order to see what they will be up next in their intricate game that one cannot, as yet, make head or tail of. And it is exactly that created sense of expectancy that is, according to musicologists, at the core of timing. Music scientist Henkjan Honing proposes that timing (the playing with time between two notes of music) is what keeps the attention of the listener going at a primitive cognitive level and in a more fundamental way than what harmony or tone setting can bring about. Even more intriguing is the fact that Honing makes the link with the human body. Here is a citation from the scientist in a letter on his project for computergenerated music: (...) I believe we have overlooked something very crucial. Timing of course not only has to do with the placing of notes, it is also about the musician himself, about what some refer to as "embodied music"'. Attitude That certainly goes for Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion: it is the way in which they physically use timing that catches and holds attention. Their specific attitude towards their movement material, their movement and musical score constitutes a significant added value in their work. On the one hand the makers deliberately use movement and sound material that is impossibly intricate, nipping any attempt at perfect execution skilfully in the bud. This self-imposed impossibility is then turned into the motor for their performance, which they execute with high concentration and sharp focus because, yes, the will to excel is there. 'The best we can' was one of the rhythmically spoken phrases from Cheap Lecture. On the other hand, within this format, they allow themselves mistakes. In their more movement-oriented performances the result is a laid-back way of moving, and even when they do not move, their relaxed self-relativism results in infectious fun that effortlessly generates the spectator s direct involvement. One might describe this attitude as a kind of work ethos with a highly hospitable tinge. In the hierarchy between the spectator and the performance it helps to pull down the glass wall of

15 authoritative complexities. The distance with what is shown on stage is bridged, however abstract or incomprehensible the performance may be. In the virtuosity of the movement material or in the lack of it, Burrows and Fargion again play with the element of attitude. Their technical skills are very different: Burrows incorporated ballet background gives him a physical control that is much more finely tuned than that of Fargion; Burrows tends to do more, to repeat movements more often or to execute them faster. Fargion is not a trained dancer and adds rest to the whole through a certain slowness. Within those differences their execution puts forward the dignity of their individual qualities. The informal crashing into the formal a music principle of John Cage they quote in Cheap Lecture is thus applicable at several levels the virtuoso ballet alignment of Burrows versus the lack of it on the part of Fargion, their virtuoso scores that clash with the use of everyday movements. What they bring about on stage can be summarized from the phrases they keep on throwing at the spectators during Cheap Lecture: 'If we accept that our hands are empty then something usually turns up to fill them.' or also, 'Composition is about making a choice, including the choice to make no choice. Music is a negotiation with the patterns your fingers are thinking.' Is it any surprise that the chief source of inspiration for Cheap Lecture is John Cage s Lecture on Nothing? After the festival in Maasmechelen the duo stated that Cheap Lecture was to be the first part of a new trilogy that they want to put on stage before the end of On top of that Jonathan Burrows is planning a theoretical publication that clarifies his work. Something to look forward to impatiently. A new perspective What Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion do is quite effective. They show a happy, open and intelligent mode of being on stage that has no need of intricate elucidation or big technical means. Body language and sound do the trick. Their specific attitude opens a space for resonance between the work, the performers and the spectators without having to make artistic concessions. That is impressive. Lieve Dierckx 1 Henkjan Honing in: Flemish Theatre Institute, Corpus Art Criticism 2009.

16 Review of Cheap Lecture Pieter T'Jonck, De Morgen, September 2nd 2010 A daring exercise in watching and listening A lot of people were surprised by the choice of Cheap Lecture, a piece by Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion, for the 2009 Theatre Festival. Burrows is a London choreographer who moved to Brussels only recently, but who has been highly acclaimed in the Belgian dance world for some time. Fargion is a musician from London. But what were they doing at the Theatre Festival? It certainly wasn t because there is so little actual dance in this piece, but rather because they have a special way with words and meaning. Burrows is a special case for two reasons. Firstly, few people have successfully moved from a career as a soloist with the Royal Ballet to one as an avant-garde choreographer. Secondly, it is equally remarkable that in each successive work he does more with less. Yet this does not mean he pursues a highly-distilled, austere style. This work has nothing to do with the less is more principle espoused by Mies van der Rohe, but more with the stillness in the work of John Cage. Take Cheap Lecture. The title is a salute to Cage s Cheap Imitation, which in its turn is a loose interpretation of music by Erik Satie. Two men stand at a microphone with a pile of paper in their hands and read aloud, sometimes alone and sometimes together. Each time they finish a page, they let it flutter to the floor where an untidy heap of paper soon accumulates. Their words are not easy to follow because they speak them in a highly rhythmical fashion. Cage was also the source of this rhythm, specifically his Lecture on Nothing. Here too, the coherence of the sentences is often broken apart by rhythm. The same words also appear on a screen behind Burrows and Fargion, but with a different beat, and therefore not always in sync. This too makes it difficult to follow their arguments. You nevertheless realise that Burrows and Fargion are saying meaningful things about what a performance does, and what makes watching a performance worthwhile. They talk about simple but essential ideas, such as the tension between the structure of a piece and the content you put into it, and how you might make it absorbing to watch. They also bring up such fundamental questions as the relationship between performer and audience. But it is also about the way these two performers approach performance: best we can, maximum strength is a slogan that constantly recurs, like a mantra they use to buck themselves up for their seemingly pointless undertaking.

17 We hear the sound of a piano from a couple of loudspeakers, and if you listen carefully you will hear an overfamiliar piece of Schubert. So there s not much dance to be seen, except when Burrows occasionally sticks up his arm with a laugh, as a sort of concession to anyone who was expecting more movement. So what is the significance of all this? Cheap Lecture is an exercise in watching and listening without immediately making a judgement. It's all about the power of the moment, about the breath and the rhythm of the performance, of which you as the spectator become a part, whether you like it or not. With their sometimes amusing, but intense performance, Burrows and Fargion help you considerably in this respect. In the end your head starts dancing of its own accord, which is marvellous. It is theatre, but not what could be expected or foreseen. Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion have made a piece that dances inside your head. Pieter T'Jonck

18 Review of Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece Sabine Leucht, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 18th May 2010 The Rhythm is the Boss Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion in the Muffat Hall The sluggishness of perception is the sad thing about the short evening with which the dancer and choreographer Jonathon Burrows and the composer Matteo Fargion enchanted the Muffat Hall. First the contents of their spokenword performance Cheap Lecture galloped off, then we were confused by the breakneck speed with which plastic cattle were executed in The Cow Piece, by shouted words such as 'paranoia', 'shock' and 'coma', and by the simultaneous overlapping of awkward movements and knocking, whistling and clicking noises. The Cow Piece, however, is also hilariously wacky, even if one cannot determine whether or not the rhythm of the torpedo reading at the beginning comes from a prerecorded track. Furthermore, these two nice middle-aged gents have already absolved us: they assure us that we re on the right track if our inability to follow a train of thought makes us feel desperate: because in the art of 'empty hands', only the present counts. Burrows and Fargion are a well-rehearsed duo. Though their disparate sets of talents overlap to yield only a small intersecting set, they fortunately know how to make a virtue from this necessity. The one performer cannot dance and the other cannot make music, so they necessarily decided to do something that both can: namely, heroically say 'yes' to minimalism. In this specific form, and for the past several years, their affirmative vote has generated startling moments when they and their audiences exclaim, 'Ooh!', and has hurled lightning bolts of sudden realization toward that which does not take place, e.g. virtuosic dance. Take The Quiet Dance for example: already in 2005, the individualistic had surprisingly emerged from their spasmodic striving toward synchrony. This insight also flowed into the pool of mnemotechnic sentences from which Burrows and Fargion ladle ideas in Cheap Lecture, in which they rhythmically recite, chop and rap sequences of words, with and against one another, between the lines and to the accompaniment of Schubert s music. At some point in that piece too, the audience hears the phrase 'a wall of rhythm against which our thoughts can lean'. Ah, yes, the rhythm: they need it, they both agree, because they re admittedly not the world s greatest improvisers. Therefore they assemble a rhythm in the first part, which they appoint to be their boss in the second part. All this occurs

19 without drawing distinctions: mellifluous Italian names for the cows, the noise of cows being shoved toward the edge of a table, the clunking thuds when cattle fall to the floor, the turning of the arms or a Neapolitan love song. Thus one is prompted to take a new look at the hierarchies in one s system of concepts and values, as well as at Burrows definition of counterpoint as 'love between the parts'. Thoughts dance and, not without rhythm, the diaphragm dances too. Sabine Leucht