Random notes and Wuppertal whispers: Throw your body into the fight...
Let me quote Robert Pacitti quoting Raimund Hoghe quoting Pier Paolo Pasolini: "throw your body into the fight."
Thread 1: here am I, an Australian quoting a Briton (of Italian ethnicity) quoting a German writer and man of theatre (born in Wuppertal) quoting the late Italian poet, intellectual, film director and writer.
The only thing I can guarantee [okay, okay, "assert with confidence" then] is that I heard Pacitti correctly and wrote it down legibly as he spoke. But one assumes Pasolini's original line was Italian. And Raimund Hoghe picked it up in translation into German...
Thread 2: the significance of the line to Hoghe -- dramaturge for Pina Bausch for a decade -- is quite lost in quotation. When Hoghe, the hunchback [as the Goethe-Instit in Canada styles him], took up Pasolini's challenge, he took it rather more literally than everyone further down the chain. He formed Compagnie Raimund Hoghe to question "our conceptions about abnormality and our expectations about dance."
Back to Robert Pacitti.
After a theatrical pause, he added: "But I'm not trying to make theatre."
Pacitti was speaking after a performance of his signature work Civil -- inspired by "the naked civil servant" Quentin Crisp -- which had a lightning fast tour of Australia this month. Pacitti no longer performs the work. He now directs Richard "Dickie" Eton (the flag-wearer, above, click on the image to enlarge) in the thing he devised a dozen or so years ago.
It has got to be said, Robert Pacitti's monologue to the audience after the show[? installation? set of formal opportunities?] was far more compelling and coherent than the mannered, romantic and really rather dated Civil. [And don't get me started on the shitty sound!!]
Other relevant and amusing snorts from his address:
And, wonderfully:
Hoo-bloody-ray for that.
Thread 1: here am I, an Australian quoting a Briton (of Italian ethnicity) quoting a German writer and man of theatre (born in Wuppertal) quoting the late Italian poet, intellectual, film director and writer.
The only thing I can guarantee [okay, okay, "assert with confidence" then] is that I heard Pacitti correctly and wrote it down legibly as he spoke. But one assumes Pasolini's original line was Italian. And Raimund Hoghe picked it up in translation into German...
Thread 2: the significance of the line to Hoghe -- dramaturge for Pina Bausch for a decade -- is quite lost in quotation. When Hoghe, the hunchback [as the Goethe-Instit in Canada styles him], took up Pasolini's challenge, he took it rather more literally than everyone further down the chain. He formed Compagnie Raimund Hoghe to question "our conceptions about abnormality and our expectations about dance."
Back to Robert Pacitti.
Just as risk is relative, culture's relative.
I wouldn't call my work activist. Of course it's partial.
I make really bad theatre.
After a theatrical pause, he added: "But I'm not trying to make theatre."
I think I make quite bad dance too.
Pacitti was speaking after a performance of his signature work Civil -- inspired by "the naked civil servant" Quentin Crisp -- which had a lightning fast tour of Australia this month. Pacitti no longer performs the work. He now directs Richard "Dickie" Eton (the flag-wearer, above, click on the image to enlarge) in the thing he devised a dozen or so years ago.
It has got to be said, Robert Pacitti's monologue to the audience after the show[? installation? set of formal opportunities?] was far more compelling and coherent than the mannered, romantic and really rather dated Civil. [And don't get me started on the shitty sound!!]
Other relevant and amusing snorts from his address:
Crap work is crap work... We try to make alright work.
Great work can happen in any form. [Including bog ordinary naturalism.]
I am a git.
And, wonderfully:
If I didn't want it to change [i.e. from performance to performance] I'd make a bloody film.
Hoo-bloody-ray for that.
Labels: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pina Bausch, Quentin Crisp, Raimund Hoghe, Robert Pacitti
posted by Chris Boyd at 1:46 PM
5 Comments:
Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote of throwing the body into the fight. These words inspired me to go on stage. Other inspirations are the reality around me, the time in which I live, my memories of history, people, images, feelings and the power and beauty of music and the confrontation with one's own body which, in my case, does not correspond with conventional ideals of beauty. To see bodies on stage that do not comply with the norm is important - not only with regard to history but also with regard to present developments, which are leading humans to the status of design objects. On the question of success: it is important to be able to work and to go your own way - with or without success. I simply do what I have to do.
Raimund Hoghe
Did you see the real Quentin Crisp when he was here?
No, but I did see Divine when he toured. (I've gone down in your estimation, haven't I?)
When did QC visit?
you saw divine??!?! oh definitely up in my estimation… what about sylvester?
Sylvester James, Queen of Disco? The Cockette herself? Came to Oz?!!! They d'na tell me.
That said, apart from Labelle c. Nightbirds, the really early stuff, I avoided disco like plague. (I believe Sylvester and Patti LaBelle were friends.)
Divine told some scandalously funny jokes about Derryn Hinch, LOL. It must have been late 1984.
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