Yelle!

Facebook as inspiration? The success of social networking?

My friend Donia posted a link to this video:

French Fry glasses. Dinosaurs falling over. Unitards with puff sleeves. Bolero jackets with nothing underneath. Stripes. LOTS of stripes. Amazingness. What does this have to do with my thesis? Likely, nothing. Possibly? Everything. It made me want to dance. I bought the song “Ce Jeu” off I-tunes, and on the following Sunday morning generated a phrase in the middle of my living room. A phrase where I made it a point to subvert my habits in sequencing movement organically. The phrase is quirky, and a hell of a lot of fun to perform.

In rehearsal that afternoon we tried it to the Yelle song. I like the idea of ending the entire dance with an upbeat anthem, but initially was not convinced that the French pop song was going to be just right. In a sense I felt like I might be emulating Cecilia Bengolea & Francois Chaignaud’s use of a Spice Girls song at the end of their work “Sylphide”. But my dance isn’t loaded with the severe oddness of S&M sensory depravation bags or the heavy metaphor of a life/beyond life cycle. So we tried the phrase to a number of pieces of music. The other overall winner was a song by Lee “Scratch” Perry, and it is certainly in the running for ultimate dance section.

The nice thing about the Yelle song is that in the opening there is percussive sound that would need to coincide with a head jerk – and it makes it so that the head jerk is not on the anticipated first count, but on an “and four”. I’m not sure if that makes sense the way I’ve written it, but it is clear kinesthetically & aurally to the dancers.