Abstract dance, with a French twist

French choreographer Christian Rizzo's performance at On the Boards next week will be an unusual chance for Seattle audiences to have the first glimpse of an artist making a stir in Europe, but who hasn't yet performed in the United States.

Last September, a New York Times article lamented that the impetus for exciting new dance was coming not from New York but from Europe, and cited Rizzo in observing, "There is still a wealth of choreographers who need to be seen in New York for the first time."

The same article mentioned On the Boards as one of the few presenting organizations that "deviate from the same old crusty mold."

Lane Czaplinski, On the Boards artistic director, discovered Rizzo while in France on a cooperative venture with the National Dance Project and French Cultural Services in 2004. Czaplinski saw the works of more than 30 French choreographers but was struck by videos of Rizzo, whom he describes as "a small guy, kind of ornery looking." The videos detailed a piece Rizzo had created for Theatre de la Ville, pushing at the definition of dance and raising questions about the human body as art object.

Rizzo uses his background in fashion design, rock music and visual art to create pieces that are as much body art or performance art as dance.

"He essentially did a window-dressing piece for what I remember to be the better part of two hours. He arranged dancers on a large rotating disk. He rearranged them and re-costumed them and just kept walking out onto the stage and kind of moving them around," Czaplinski said. "It was a very, very conceptual work, the kind of work that, among other questions, raises the question, 'Is this dance? Does this qualify as dance?' "

Later that year, Czaplinski traveled to Montpelier to see the piece that he chose to bring to Seattle.

Dance preview


Christian Rizzo, "autant vouloir le bleu du ciel et m'en aller sur un ane," 8 p.m. Thursday-May 20, On the Boards, 100 W. Roy St.; $22 (206-217-9888 or www.ontheboards.org).

It's a one-man show, although Rizzo is on stage with lighting designer Mael Iger and sound artist Gérôme Nox. This time, the artist arranges his own body in space much as he arranged the dancers on the rotating disk in the earlier piece.

Rizzo has said that he prefers thinking of his work as dance rather than performance art because dance is the most open discipline at this point. Rizzo approaches his work not so much in terms of moving his body through space or as a sculptor of the body, but in psychological terms, arranging what he calls "the empty spaces inside the body."

The piece is titled "autant vouloir le bleu du ciel et m'en aller sur un ane." ("I might as well want the blue of the sky and ride away on a donkey.") The name comes, in part, from the response of an older poet in a story by Yukio Mishima, in which a young poet asks him how to write good poetry.

"It starts dark and very abstract, and you don't understand how it's working on you, and then by the end you've been through this visual spectacle with this really powerful house music — and you are just kind of left sitting there confounded and moved by what you've experienced," Czaplinski said.

Mary Murfin Bayley: marybayley@aol.com