Beware of Imitations!

2014
Video installation Beware of Imitations! is filmed in a blacked-out set containing the piece’s three “performers” and nothing more: La Ribot herself with her hand-held video camera; the experimental Catalan musician-performer Carles Santos; and Santos’s habitual instrument, a gleaming black grand piano. Chicago-born dancer and theatre pioneer Loie Fuller (1862-1928) is probably best known for […]

Video installation

Beware of Imitations! is filmed in a blacked-out set containing the piece’s three “performers” and nothing more: La Ribot herself with her hand-held video camera; the experimental Catalan musician-performer Carles Santos; and Santos’s habitual instrument, a gleaming black grand piano.

Chicago-born dancer and theatre pioneer Loie Fuller (1862-1928) is probably best known for her flowing costumes made from yards of silk and long hand-held batons. Swirling the silk around her head and body she created a distinctive repertoire of striking organic forms – inspiration to countless Art Nouveau artists and designers. However Fuller’s innovations went far beyond this particular effect. She experimented widely with new lighting technologies and on-stage colour effects and was the first artist to define the empty, blackout drape stage. Thus, it was arguably Fuller who first rendered the scene of modernist dance fully abstract, and when La Ribot was invited by La Casa Encendida, Madrid, and curator Aurora Herrera to contribute a new work to the exhibition Scenarios of the "Escenarios del cuerpo, la métamorfósis de Loie Fuller (Febrero a  Mayo 2014)", it was this dimension that formed her starting point.

La Ribot took her title from early twentieth-century cigarette cards, adorned with Fuller’s image and the slogan “beware of imitations”. She characterises the piece as a femmage to the innovatory American, and she contrasts Fuller’s hard-won stage effects with the complex digital technologies and compact electronic apparatuses, readily available to artists today, that are employed in her piece. In addition to this, though, Beware of Imitations! is also a tribute to the maverick Santos, who was 74 at the time of filming. His musical improvisations are dramatic and introspective, and overall the piece has a submarine quality. Ribot’s camera pilots around the pianist and under the piano as if exploring the ocean floor. Fragmentary glimpses of the two human protagonists and the piano loom out of the darkness, and Santos’s intense musical improvisations reinforce the piece’s sombre atmosphere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

credits

Duration: 15min. Written and Directed: La Ribot. Corps-opérateur: La Ribot. Music and Piano: Carles Santos. Director of photography: Valentín Álvarez. Assistant of photography: Javier López. Set Director: Soledad Seseña. Special effects: Camilo de Martino. Production Director: Paz Santa Cecilia

 

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