Premiere November 29-30th 2002 - Tanz performance, Cologne, Germany. Second series of the ’distinguished pieces’ interpreted by Anna Williams. Written and Directed: La Ribot. Performer: Anna Williams. Lighting: Daniel Demont. Costumes: Pepe Rubio. Music: Erik Satie, Javier Lopez de Guereña, Ruben Gonzalez, Carles Santos. Photos: A Basta. Tour Management: Michel Quéré. Technical Manager: Sarah Gilmartin. Management: Jo Hughes. An Artsadmin project. Produced by La Ribot, 36 Gazelles, London. UK tour presented with the support of the Arts Council of England.
Show/ Dance/ Theater
In 2002 the dancer Anna Williams and La Ribot began work on a new interpretation of Más Distinguidas,1997, with Williams as performer. La Ribot’s plan was to explore the piece’s images and ideas in a new context, distanced from her own performance identity. Anna y las Más distinguidas premiered in November 2002 in Cologne, Germany, and toured to Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and the UK in the subsequent year.
Having collaborated previously on Pressed Daily, 1999 (a solo choreographed by La Ribot as a commission for Williams) the two artists knew they had a good rapport – based not least on their shared sense of humour. At the outset, Williams recalls, there were both practical and psychological challenges to overcome. Learning to manipulate the clothes and other items used by La Ribot in the original performances took a surprising amount of time: “It’s amazing” Williams notes, “how an inanimate object can have a life of its own”. Trickier still was dealing with the sheer sense of exposure that came with the work: performing alone, unclothed and at times more or less “inactive”, in the sense of presenting stillness rather than movement to the audience. Key to the “slow but fascinating” learning process was understanding how to “be present but not perform” – to enact rather than interpret each of the work’s thirteen parts. “Holding the space” and the audience’s concentration required patience and generosity, Williams found, but the effort was worth it; in sum, she says, the skills she learned during the project significantly reinforced her capacities as a performer.