Crying Over Broken Eggs

Originally published in the April issue of the Brooklyn Rail

Crying Over Broken Eggs
By Jesi Khadivi

Known for his glacially paced, emotionally violent films, Michael Haneke has become one of contemporary cinema’s most loathed and feted directors. The Austrian takes on issues that many viewers would prefer to ignore—violence, class difference, power, guilt and sado-masochism.

He wowed American audiences with his 2001 film The Piano Teacher, his adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek’s novel about a masochistic piano teacher who becomes romantically involved with her much younger male student. Teacher won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. Caché (2005), a thriller about a wealthy couple tormented by mysterious home surveillance tapes and crudely scrawled drawings, won Haneke an even broader American audience. The film also won at Cannes and Haneke nabbed the Best Director, FIPRESCI Prize, and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. Last October, MoMA celebrated his career with a retrospective that included all of Haneke’s theatrically released films plus his work for Austrian-German television, calling him one of contemporary cinema’s “most provocative and incisive film makers” and citing a cinematic style “at once musical and mathematical.”

For Haneke, the medium is the message. As with Hitchcock, many of his films toy with the passive voyeurism of film spectatorship. Unlike the British auteur, however, Haneke largely denies his audience visual pleasure. In a typically sadistic fashion, viewers will be punished if they take delight in what they see. And that’s the best case scenario. At his worst, Haneke borders on being didactic and preachy. His films are masterfully constructed but far from visually breathtaking; Haneke remains obsessed with the hidden mechanisms of film rather than the pleasures movies elicit. Many of his films are comprised of long static shots punctuated by brief eruptions of violence, tedious bouts of ennui punctured by flourishes motivated by desperation (A neck slashing suicide in Caché). Each film is a taut, beautifully constructed trap and Haneke feels like a cat playing with his prey before devouring it.

Haneke’s recent American English-language remake of his echt-disturbing 1997 German-language film Funny Games has generated a fair amount of controversy. Critics challenge Haneke’s use of violence and voices have been raised in a superior moral tone, ad nauseum. Funny Games’ plot is simple, timeless even. An eloquent, self-assured young man and his awkward, winsome sidekick show up uninvited at a bourgeois family’s country home and proceed to physically and mentally torture them, all the while displaying impeccable manners.

Most of the violence occurs off-screen and much screen time is devoted to lengthy deliberations and emotional abuse that leaves viewers fidgeting in their seat. The deferral of violence is painful and the classic villainous duo of sadist and buffoon heightens the discomfort.

The “action” begins when a nervous, well-dressed young man named Peter (Brady Corbet) comes to the family’s door. He needs some eggs. Ann (Naomi Watts) is happy to oblige. Peter breaks the eggs before he is out the door. Ann gives him more. He breaks her cell phone by dropping it in a sink full of water. Now Ann’s pissed. Approximately 34 minutes and ¾ of a carton of eggs from the film’s start, the golf clubs come out and the funny games begin. That’s a long-ass time to get some action in a thriller, especially within the lexicon of big budget American movie wherein heads roll within the first 15 minutes of the film. It’s impressive that Haneke preserved his pacing, but the film suffers in other ways. The acting is solid, not stellar. Naomi Watts shows impressive range as Ann, but she reads too friendly and cheerful to play high WASP (That is, until the strangers start beating her family with golf clubs and chairs). Tim Roth and Devon Gearheart give impressive performances, but the sociopaths killers fall flat. This is unfortunate, because the strength of the film relies on their performance. In the original the pair of villains have a creepy In Cold Blood meets Kafkaesque vibe. Peter is a bumbling decoy, and Paul the sadistic genius. The fearsome logic of Arno Frisch (the original Paul and Benny from Benny’s Video) had me trembling in my seat. His trim, dark long-legged physique and steely deadpan demeanor showed a deeply disturbed, repressed psychotic mind. Michael Pitt never becomes his character; he’s in it for the shits and giggles. Funny Games is only the latest example of how the actor shows excellent taste in directors and material, but consistently fails to bring the necessary depth to his roles.

While the look and pacing of the film are still fresh and engaging, other elements haven’t held up so well. It’s tiresome when Peter and Paul break the fourth wall and address the camera. One of Haneke’s great successes as a director is how effortlessly he builds meticulous environments and distills emotions and gestures. He reduces cultural compulsions to their bare essence, though the cheap mechanism of direct address in his films seems like overkill. In an art house German film from the late ’90s, the renowned “remote control scene” packs a bit more punch. It lacks the same gravitas in a Hollywood movie, whose audience is accustomed to trickery. After 11 years, Haneke’s conceptual flourish seems gimmicky.

Haneke said that he originally made Funny Games with an American audience in mind. He comments on the remake: “When I first envisioned Funny Games in the middle of the ’90s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American Cinema, its violence, its naïveté.” Funny, because the “Americanness” of the violence is one of the least interesting things about the film. What was so riveting about the original Funny Games and what inspired my partner to demand that I “turn that damned film OFF” is how cultural repression and proper manners dovetail so seamlessly with violence.

The thought of letting a stranger, however well dressed he may be, into a German home on such a flimsy pretense is hard to believe. To demand the remainder of a carton of eggs after already breaking 3/4 of them in a culture where people discuss and formally agree to use du, the informal form of you, is virtually unthinkable. Manners are written into the German language. The unrelenting “darf ich...” (may I?) posed by the intruders makes Anna, Georg and Schorschi players in the game more than Ann, George and Georgie. Linguistically, the Germans are sanctioning their own demise.

While script, shot sequence, production design and score are virtually the same, something gets lost in cultural translation. When Funny Games is divorced from its cultural context, it takes on the air of a beautifully constructed, Germanically pretentious exploitation film. If you take Funny Games at face value it’s not very interesting, not much more than a film school exegesis on voyeurism, complicity and pleasure. Haneke is a director steeped in European history and aesthetics; he fails at telling an American story. I was hopeful about his first mainstream Hollywood film, even excited. If Haneke attempts another American film he needs to build an American story from the inside out, rather than fix a pedantic European hawk’s eye to the failures of American culture. Because without subtext Haneke will remain a pompous outsider looking in.

A Fair Man: Stephen Cohen Talks About the LA Art Scene

Photo Ted Cleve

My interview with LA gallerist Stephen Cohen has been published in the second issue of Fabrik Magazine.

Stephen Cohen casts his net wide. His galleries, the Stephen Cohen gallery in LA and Cohen Amador in New York, represent a staggering number of international photographers working in a wide variety of genres. As if running two internationally renowned photo galleries weren’t enough, he is the founder and driving force behind photo l.a., photo MIAMI and artLA. His fairs have not only been instrumental in drawing attention to the LA art scene, but have broadened the appreciation of photography by serious collectors. Cohen was named one of the “Top 100 most influential people” by American Photography Magazine and included Art + Auctions 2004 “Power List.” He spoke to Fabrik about the evolution of the bourgeoning LA art scene and art fairs while traveling in Europe.

FABRIK: How did you begin your career as an art dealer and how did you choose to focus on photography?

SC: I majored in Art (photography and sculpture) and Theater as an undergrad and went to USC film school for my graduate degree. Art dealing began by accident. I needed to work after graduating from film school, so I augmented whatever film jobs I could get with selling photography books, which I had been collecting since college. Eventually I started selling 19th century prints to dealers in LA. Soon I was doing road trips cross-country selling pieces I had on consignment that dealers in LA and NY considered unsellable. I got a reputation for moving inventory for dealers because I was able to sell them.

After a while I decided I needed to find more clients in LA, so I started photo l.a. which is now in its’ 18th year. My work on the fair allowed me to open a small gallery.

FABRIK: Your gallery has an outstanding artist roster. I’m impressed not only by the quality, but also the range of work you have chosen to represent. It seems that many galleries run the risk of overspecializing. What are the merits of representing such a wide range of artists and what are the potential challenges?

SC: My gallery directors and I feel strongly about our artists. I love vintage work but it’s getting harder to find and it’s very expensive. Contemporary photo-based work has become increasingly desirable for collectors. It is good to have a variety of work to offer them.

We are going through a period of letting some artists go as we add new ones. It is always a challenge to present new work to the public, but it’s satisfying when the response and sales are strong.

FABRIK: LA is quickly becoming an arts destination. At the same time, California galleries and artists often have a regional identity. Do you consider yourself a “California Dealer?”

SC: I am a dealer in California. We work with artists and clients from around the country and the world.

Photo: Ted VanCleave

FABRIK: Tell me about the evolution of the LA art scene and how being a dealer in LA has changed. Do you feel that LA is becoming an international center for the arts? If so, how do you perceive that transition?

SC: LA has a long history of artists coming out here for the weather, cheap rents and the light. The city was a cowboy town and was much more innocent in the past. It allowed artists freedom for experimentation since it wasn’t a center of the art world. Now people recognize that LA was a major force in presenting the work of young artists in the 60s and 70s that are now established in the art world. Ed Ruche immediately comes to mind. The Nick Wilder Gallery was in the forefront of this movement.

Now Los Angeles is back in the art world and stronger. Many established artists call the Southland their home and an increasing number of artists are moving here. It’s hard to pinpoint an LA style because it is a city of immigrants from other States.

Younger galleries have come on the scene over the past ten years and have made a significant impact internationally. Many curators and gallerists come here to grab the young artists at Cal Arts, UCLA, USC and Arts Center before they even have a gallery representing them. LA is hot in that sense.

FABRIK: How did photo l.a. begin?

SC: photo l.a. began in January 1992. I was traveling around the country and had more clients outside of the city than in LA. I initially planned to do the fair for a couple of years, get a good client base and move on. I opened my first small gallery with money from the fair.

As photo l.a.’s fame and reputation spread across the country, we had more dealers wanting to be involved. Eventually our first venue, Butterfields Auction House on Sunset Blvd., was bursting at the seams. After eight years we moved to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium where we were able to expand the size and scope of the fair. This year we moved to the Barker Hangar, which was a huge step up for the size and quality of the fair.

A local dealer suggested that I start a contemporary art fair, so I started ArtLA in 2004. Over the past four years, the fair has grown in stature and attendance. This year had an amazing group of impressive
dealers. Our committee was headed by Doug Hug, who was just appointed the Director of Art Cologne.

FABRIK: How do you think the art fair scene in LA differs from its New York and European counterparts?

SC: Fairs in New York and Europe have a longer history, not to mention the cache of art collecting in Europe. The fairs are much larger and attract a huge audience. US fairs like the Armory and Art Basel Miami Beach have become bigger players in the world and are anxiously awaited each year. While LA’s art scene is much more active than in the past, it doesn’t have the history of New York City or Basel.

FABRIK: Have collectors’ attitudes changed towards photography in your time as a dealer?

SC: Yes. There are more of them collecting photo-based work. On the whole they are becoming much better acquainted with photography through the photo and art fairs.

FABRIK: What do you have planned for your upcoming season?


SC: We are working hard on photo MIAMI which has become a benchmark for contemporary photography and one of the must see fairs during Art Basel Miami Beach after only two years.

We always have something of interest: new galleries, artists and special projects.

FABRIK: What are some LA based artists and emerging spaces to watch?

SC: Many of the young galleries in Culver City and Chinatown are exciting: Jail, in Chinatown; Roberts & Tilton and Blum & Poe, in Culver City and Acme in Los Angeles.

FABRIK: Do you have any advice for artists that are just starting out?

SC: Keep your day job. There are sacrifices if you are serious about your work and life as an artist. Nothing is owed to you and there are a lot of “outrages and injustices“ over what art becomes popular. I think an artist
always needs to look at other art and be a good editor of their own work.

In One Word Emotion

In One Word Emotion
By Jesi Khadivi
Originally published in the April issue of Brooklyn Rail

Pierrot Le Fou opens with a lengthy voice-over explanation of Velasquez narrated over shots of a tennis game and a man leafing through paperbacks in an outdoor Parisian bookshop. Cut to the same man sitting in a bathtub with a cigarette dangling from his lips reading an art history text aloud to a pig-tailed child. Describing Velasquez’s paintings, he tells his daughter, “a spirit of nostalgia prevails, yet we see none of the ugliness or sadness, none of the gloom or cruelty of this crushed childhood.”

Our narrator Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a buttoned-up dreamer, a self described “huge question mark dangling over the Mediterranean horizon.” The acme of Godardian male protagonists, Ferdinand deplores and delights in his own alienation. Despite his shortcomings, his yearning for transcendence and depth is palpable, visible even through his veil of neuroticism and obvious need for control. In other words, Ferdinand’s ripe for self discovery. He wanders around a party—where guests communicate solely in advertising lingo—without saying a word to anybody until he strikes up a conversation (through a translator, no less) with a lone American. In a historic cameo, pulp director Samuel Fuller tells Ferdinand that “a film is like a battleground; It has love, hate, action, violence and death. In one word, emotion.” Pierrot Le Fou proves Fuller’s definition of cinema to be spot-on.

Pierrot follows Ferdinand and his ill-fated love for his former flame Marianne, a fun-loving con artist (the exact nature of her underworld connections remains shady, even after multiple viewings). Ferdinand and Marianne leave Paris on the run with a suitcase full of stolen money and proceed to rob, cheat and charm their way to the South of France. Marianne calls herself “a sentimental girl.” She likes flowers, animals, blue skies and music. A cunning woman-child, Marianne is as loveable as she is amoral. She can kill a man without blinking, but walks around for much of the movie swinging a well-worn stuffed dog. While she may not subscribe to traditional, or even sub-cultural ideas about right and wrong (ultimately she betrays everyone she meets, a big no-no in the underworld), she remains a woman in thrall to her emotions. This is due in equal parts to Ms. Karina’s evocative performance and the director’s complex adoration of his actress/wife Anna Karina. Velasquez’s spirit of nostalgia; its “open spaces and silences” pervade the film, which proves to be Godard’s paean to his fading youth (he was 35) and deteriorating relationship with his Karina, his long time collaborator and great love. Pierrot depicts lovers of the worst kind: a man who’s too hard-hearted to love effectively and who desperately needs to be loved, and a woman brimming with love and vitality who cannot be trusted.

The peaks and valleys of Marianne and Ferdinand’s love are punctuated with fine art and comic stills, flashing neon and excerpts from Ferdinand’s journal. This mélange of melodrama, road movie and crime film establishes the bold visual style that Godard continues to explore in Weekend, La Chinoise and Two or Three Things I Know About Her. It’s a poppy film, teetering on the brink of adulthood; a film about wanting to be seen, negotiating what it means to be alive, and the distance between feelings and ideas.

The Revolutionary Art Of Emory Douglas

Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas
MOCA Pacific Design Center
October 21st, 2007 through February 24th, 2008

By Jesi Khadivi
Originally published in Whitehot Magazine, February 2008

For better or worse, style plays a significant role in propelling social movements and historicizing their images. The seductive, bomb throwing chic of the Baader-Meinhof Gang and Hanoi Jane’s power fisted mug shot have spawned numerous fetishist coffee table books and fashion magazines spreads. (Prada Meinhof, anyone?) Revolutionary groups live on in our popular consciousness because of the radical style they embody as much as their politics.

The Black Panther Party is no exception. Founded by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in Oakland, California in 1966, the Panthers espoused the importance of self-determination in the wake of a government that oppressed, neglected and exploited African American people. They started programs offering breakfast for school children, free food, free clothing and free shoes. Not only did they serve their community, they made being black look powerful. Their uniform of afros, berets and leather jackets perfectly encapsulated the Black Power movement of the 60s and 70s.

The Panthers built their brand beautifully. They were brilliant self-promoters. An integral part of the Panther “By any means necessary” image is the work of their Minister of Culture, Emory Douglas. Douglas joined the party in 1967 at the age of 22. His lithograph posters, collages and drawings were featured prominently in the party newspaper, The Black Panther. MOCA Pacific Design Center has mounted an impressive exhibition of Douglas’ work thanks to the generous assistance of collectors Alden and Mary Kimbrough, as well as other private collectors and cultural institutions. The exhibition features lithograph posters in both black and white and eye-popping color, an extensive selection of The Black Panther papers and a wall sized reproduction of Douglas’ design for Afro-American Solidarity with the Oppressed People of the World.

The right to self-defense was a critical component of the Panther credo. Huey P. Newton chose the metaphor because the cat never attacks unprovoked, but will fight to its death. Douglas’ representations of this ethos fuse Russian Constructivism, psychedelic poster design and FAP style propaganda. The overall tenor swings between the quasi-evangelical progressivism and aggression. Many of Douglas’ designs feature inspirational quotations like “We shall survive. Without a doubt.” As many, if not more, show the possession of a weapon as a vital step on this road to liberation. Douglas’ iconic use of women, children and firearms showed that the movement was nurtured, growing and nothing to fuck with.

Everybody Gets Screwed

Everybody Gets Screwed
By Jesi Khadivi
The Yacoubian Building (2006), Dir. Marwan Hamed, Strand Releasing
Originally published in the Brooklyn Rail, February 2008

This good old-fashioned melodrama explores political corruption, sexual coercion, poverty, religious fundamentalism and the deep-rooted melancholia at the core of contemporary Egyptian life. At $6 million, Marwan Hamed’s directorial debut had the highest budget of any Egyptian film to date. The anxiously awaited adaptation of Alaa Al Aswany’s best selling novel tells the story of the Yacoubian Building, an elegant, old world building in downtown Cairo that has fallen from grace.


Once the home of well-heeled families, it now houses faded dignitaries, a homosexual newspaper editor and a rooftop teeming with dispossessed migrant workers from the countryside. Everyone has his or her cross to bear. Bothayna, a beautiful and conservative young woman, must help her mother support her siblings after her father’s death while dodging the leering eyes and wandering hands of her employers. Her childhood sweetheart, Taha, an earnest and studious janitor’s son, buckles under social pressure and shame at his poverty, and becomes a religious fundamentalist. Even the rich don’t have it so easy. Hatem Rachid, a cosmopolitan newspaper editor, lures young soldiers into his bed with bottles of fine wine. His smug countenance barely disguises the deep loneliness and isolation that he feels in a culture leagues away from accepting his sexuality. Haj Azzam, a millionaire drug lord/politician, takes a secret second wife after recurring wet dreams. Perhaps the most tragic figure in this social tableau is Zaki El Dessouki, a wealthy, foreign educated engineer from a distinguished Egyptian family. His neighbors still call him by the ceremonial title “pasha”, the rough equivalent of an English lord. His poorer neighbors revere him and ply him with requests for advice. Zaki’s social equals, however, see him as a skirt chaser fueled by copious amounts of alcohol.


At first glance, the film is a morality play with high dramatic flourishes. It’s shot like television and has the narrative engine of a soap opera. In spite of, or perhaps because of these traits, the film is surprisingly compelling. The power dynamic between men and women, rich and poor and urban and rural plays out between the sheets. Sex is the common currency driving the film and it provides insight into characters that would otherwise be lost beneath layers of schmaltz and melodrama. The sympathy that the simple, broad smiling soldier Abdo Raboh elicits as he unwittingly begins to succumb to Hatem Rachid’s advances is quickly complicated as he boasts that he frequently takes his wife by force when she is too tired to make love. The political and social ills of contemporary Egypt are expressed via sexual humiliation; everybody is screwing everybody else, but no one comes out on top.

Sister Act

Originally published in Pitch


by Jesi Khadivi

Getting around late at night in Brooklyn can be a drag. Things have improved over the years, but back in 2000, commuters were known to throw things out of frustration waiting for the G train. It was a total buzz kill.

Imagine my delight when I was offered a ride in a pink Buick to a Madagascar Institute party in Cobble Hill. My lovely driver was Miss Tanya Gagné, one half of the amazing Wau Wau Sisters (the other is the fabulous Adrienne Truscott). Not only did I get a ride, I showed up in style. This fantastic pink whale of a car (complete with dice on the locks) is a perfect summation of Wau Wau style: a careful attention to detail, a deep understanding of genre and retro accoutrements, and a razor-sharp wit.

In her canonical Notes on “Camp”, Susan Sontag describes “camp” as an aesthetic phenomenon, a way of seeing the world. “Camp sees everything in quotation marks…to perceive camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.” The Wau Wau Sisters have built a deliciously cracked myth around their personas as performers that colors every aspect of their impressively varied and physically demanding act, which includes trapeze artistry, off-kilter hipster circus routines, and country and heavy metal songs played on matching guitars.

The Sisters tell the tale of their humble beginnings in the short Super 8 film, Wau Wau Sisters Meet! According to the legend, three strangers met “…somewhere off route I-95 in 1969,” and had a romp in the sheets together. “A few months and a few cocktails later,” the sisters were born. They lived unaware of each other until a chance meeting in knee socks and hot pants exploded into an impromptu dance routine with the neighbors that could put even the Sharks and the Jets to shame.

Adrienne and Tanya really are half-sisters, but they grew up separately. “Adrienne grew up with her mum on the golden shores of New Jersey and I grew up with my mum in the Live Free or Die State of New Hampshire,” Tanya explains. Performers from day one, they both independently took a shine to dance and gymnastics, and would regale family and neighbors with their respective routines. “We would even make colorful programs, charge admission and make weird snacks to give out,” says Tanya. The sisters began circus and trapeze work in their teens and twenties, and even worked for the same two groups: Circus Amok, a political one-ring circus/theater troupe; and LAVA, a Brooklyn-based dance group. “When we both found ourselves living and working in New York as performers,” Tanya says, “AND found out that we both wrote dirty songs and played guitars, the Wau Wau Sisters were born.”

I first saw the Wau Waus perform Sister Christian, a gymnastic strip-tease chock full of lesbian innuendo, set to the Night Ranger power ballad of the same name, at Galapagos, a bar and performance venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2000. Clad in Catholic school-girl uniforms and knee socks (a Wau Wau costume staple), Adrienne and Tanya naughtily read the bible, smoke cigarettes, guzzle booze from chalices and tear each other’s clothes off during a series of handstands, splits, and assisted balancing acts.

The Wau Wau Sisters may prove the exception to Sontag’s point that “…camp which knows itself to be camp is less satisfying.” Sister Christian is more than a goofy, spicy strip tease by two beautiful women: it’s a deft interplay of bold physical comedy and high concept. The Sisters purposefully undermine their gymnastic prowess with cornball flourishes reminiscent of a middle-school talent show. The cheeky crucifixion at the end of the piece pokes fun at the prurient sensuality of passion plays, a sensibility that reached its pinnacle in Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ.

The act is laugh-out-loud funny and oozing with sex appeal. But these women aren’t just hot; they could probably beat you up. As anyone who has suffered through a yoga class can tell you, it’s hard enough lifting your leg straight up in the air, let alone dangling from someone’s toes or somersaulting on a trapeze.

The subversiveness of the Wau Wau Sisters’ acts is due in no small part to the self-aware sexuality that the new burlesque movement embodies at its best. “I think the neo-burlesque movement has been a pretty amazing opportunity for women performers, women in comedy and for performance art in general,” Adrienne told me. “There is a small element of the movement that is very retro and focused on being sexy. For me, that isn't enough to keep it interesting.” Adrienne acknowledges that there is tremendous potential for burlesque; indeed, the Wau Wau Sisters’ ingenuity as pioneers of the movement in New York City is a testament to just how interesting it can be. Although classics like Sister Christian are still included in their act, the Wau Waus are always working on new material—they’ve come a long way from the Galapagos days. Constant touring has required that they hone their routines, and they regularly incorporate new elements and surprises into their act. “We refuse to become bored or content as performers,” Adrienne explains. “I think we add a lot more new material and improvisation than the average touring show.”

Throughout all of their acts (and there are over 80 of them), the sisters combine physical comeliness with jaw-dropping physical dexterity, all in a variety of perfectly turned out costumes and props. As guests on the Sharon Osbourne Show, Adrienne holds a perfect handstand for over a minute in a skirt with a bull’s eye on her butt while Tanya sings her song Easy Target. Adrienne then sings the next song, a hilarious lament about being shunned by a boyfriend’s Texan parents, which ends, “The good Lord he protects us/from girls like you/who are poor,” while perched on her sister’s feet. They regularly perform with matching guitars while sitting on each other’s shoulders. Their trapeze routine, set to rock classics like The Clash’s London Calling and Guns N’ Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle, manages to be both spectacular and funny. Who knew it was possible to be witty while dangling upside down?

New Traditionalist

New Traditionalist
Originally published in Pitch Magazine, October 2007

Seven male dancers take the stage, moving rapidly from left to right, with swooping arms set to a thunderous Beethoven piano sonata. Their gestures spring from classical ballet, but the emphatic lateral arm thrusts have the urgency of African dance. The company drops to the floor for a quick push-up reminiscent of butoh, a Japanese performance art that melds traditional Japanese dance with various Western influences. After the men’s athletic, aesthetic grab-bag, the female corps are a bit more refined, almost demure. Still, the pumped up score and the dancers’ quick, taut movements give both performances equal intensity.
The Sacramento Ballet performs Amaranthine in 2006, Helen Pickett’s first commission after Etesian, her break out piece for the Boston Ballet earlier that year. Because of Pickett’s longtime involvement with William Forsythe and the Wooster Group, I confess to her that I had expected “difficult” dance: deconstructive work with multi-media stage elements. ” You didn’t expect something so traditional?” she interjected, and burst out laughing. She hooked me with her choice of Beethoven for Amaranthine, whose compositions are difficult enough to play, let alone dance to (his piano sonatas are full of lightning-paced runs countered by abruptly slow phrasing with pregnant pauses). This astute choice of score speaks to the rigorous and emotive quality of Pickett’s choreography. It also speaks to her confidence as a new choreographer, which she has in spades.

Pickett’s pieces to date contemporize ballet via her distillation of gesture; the grace, agility, and rigor traditionally associated with the form remain. She is a dancer’s choreographer and gives her dancers the creative space to explore and push the boundaries of movement. Some movements are slightly off-kilter, imbuing her choreography with a richness that is akin to dissonance in music. The vivacious, loose-limbed male soloist in Amaranthine channels a loopy, unhinged nutcracker. His performance is joyous; I rewound and watched him on repeat.

No doubt Pickett’s confidence – and talent – is due to her rich and varied background; Her career signature is interdisciplinary collaboration and improvisation. Pickett is a transmedia flirt. She has worked with the some of most exciting and innovative names in dance, theater, and fine art: William Forsythe and the Ballet Frankfurt, the Wooster Group, the artist Eve Sussman and The Rufus Corporation, among others. While schooling me in the intricacies of dance and choreography via the telephone, Pickett dropped references to Paul Virilio, Iggy Pop, Baudelaire, and various mind-body integration techniques. Yet one of her greatest charms is how humble she remains for such an accomplished and heavily referenced woman. Her quest for knowledge, like her art, is a work in progress. “The more education you have the more you can riff…it’s an addictive personality,” she says.
As a student of the San Francisco Ballet, Pickett danced with the company under the direction of Michael Smuin, Lew Christensen, and Helgi Tomasson. After meeting William Forsythe, director of the Ballet Frankfurt (now the Forsythe Company), in San Francisco while he was choreographing New Sleep, Pickett went to Germany to audition for the company. It was an important move, Forsythe being a major innovator of contemporary ballet; his highly cerebral, intuitive choreography and inventive use of non-traditional scores stretch the limits of the genre. In 1991 Pickett became a lead dancer for the Ballet Frankfurt. Her working relationship with Forsythe lasted until the late 1990s, when she was forced to leave the company due to a recurring injury. The two remain fast friends. “I owe a lot to William Forsythe,” Pickett says. “I consider him one of my greatest mentors.”
After leaving the Ballet Frankfurt, Pickett joined the Wooster Group, the renowned genre-bending downtown Manhattan theater company known for its incorporation of dance, movement, and multimedia elements in its performances. She performed in a number of productions directed by Elizabeth LeCompte, including the Obie-winning House/Lights. One night, Pickett met the artist Eve Sussman in the lobby after a Wooster Group show. Sussman, who Pickett describes as “hyper-energetic,” told Pickett, “you look like the queen of Spain.” This mysterious compliment led to Pickett being cast in the role of Queen Mariana in the video installation 89 Seconds at Alcázar, a poetic meditation on the creation of Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas that blurs the boundaries between painting, appropriation, and video. The piece was a favorite at the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

Pickett didn’t rush to break out on her own as a choreographer. “If you‘ve worked with a bright light, it’s hard,” she told me. “But when I got into that studio and started choreographing, I felt like I was dancing again. When I left, I called my husband and said ‘I feel the completion again.’” She has an exploratory approach to choreography. A piece only takes shape once she has met the company. “I need to see personalities,” she explained. “I need to see the dancers’ strengths; to see them shine. Music is important; I need to see how people listen. I construct (the piece) as I go.”

All of Pickett’s commissions begin with a two- or three-day improvisation session with the dancers. She acknowledges that improvisation can be extremely difficult for classically trained dancers. Her improvisational approach, rooted in William Forsythe-based techniques and mind body integration exercises, is designed to help. “Improv is hard to do, period,” she says. “As people we are told what to do all the time.” The freedom Pickett offers is rare in the regimented, hierarchical world of ballet. It is the performing arts equivalent of giving employees stock in the company. It works. Pickett’s pacing is sublime; her choreography feels like a conversation. Tight movements are countered by expansive, interpretative gestures, and the tension generated between the two combines ethereal grace with restrained primal dissonance.

Following the making of 89 Seconds at Alcázar, some members of the cast (Pickett included) went on to form The Rufus Corporation, a loose conglomeration of artists, actors, dancers, and musicians. The Corporation’s most recent film, The Rape of the Sabine Women (a mod feature-length reinterpretation of the early Roman legend) will be presented concurrently with the premiere of Pickett’s commission for the Louisville Ballet on November 2nd & 3rd. The film will be shown in the atrium of the 21c Museum Hotel, part of a film program jointly sponsored by the 21c Museum Hotel, the Louisville Film Society, and the University of Louisville.

Pickett is a star in her own right, no easy task considering the experimental super-stars she’s collaborated with in the past. Her influences are synthesized and filtered through the prism of collaboration. Her work is unencumbered and liberating; It is a pleasure to discover.