Liberty, equality and fraternity

THE ANNUAL FRENCH-Thai cultural festival will bring down its curtain for the last time this Saturday and if one French artist’s name is familiar to the festival’s fans, it’s probably Pierre Rigal. In the short but significant history of this festival, his works have been staged here four times.
“Each time I’m proud to present my work to the Thai audience,” says Rigal.
“Even before I started performing here, I’d been to Bangkok many times. I love this city – its energy, colours and atmosphere. I have some very good memories of the different theatres here – ‘Press’ at the Aksra Theatre in 2009, ‘Micro’ at the Patravadi Theatre, which unfortunately no longer exists, in 2011, and ‘Erection’ at the Sodsai Pantoomkomol Centre for Dramatic Arts in 2013. Each and every time I enjoyed fantastic contact with the audience. So for me it’s easy and such a pleasure to accept the invitations from La Fete. And I hope I’ll be able to maintain this relationship with Bangkok in the future and present some other pieces. I’d also love to shoot a movie here.”
While “Press” and “Erection” were solo performances, Rigal demonstrated his artistic range in “Micro”, which looked and sounded like a rock concert. For “Standards”, which he created in 2012 at the Marseilles Festival, he ventures into yet another new territory.
“It’s a piece for eight hip-hop dancers, so it’s a new kind of energy for me. I’ve been very interested in working with this acrobatic way of creating dance. Linking it with fun and pleasure is very important too, as the piece deals with some serious topics.”
Using the red, white and blue colours of the French flag as the key image, he explains, “I want to reflect on the debate about national identity. I want to show that for me it’s not possible to define, at any particular point in time, what is national identity. It’s something that moves with time. It’s a dynamic and subjective notion. The law cannot give a definition: it is strongly linked with feeling, philosophy and poetry. The words of the law are ineffective in providing any definition.”
Rigal invited some of dancers he had earlier worked with to join his team and auditioned for the rest. “I was particularly looking for the ability to ‘play’ in addition to very good dance skills,” he explains
To date “Standards” has been staged 80 times, in France and Germany, as well as in the US and the UK. On Tuesday, the troupe was in Surabaya, after appearances in Jakarta, Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur.
Describing “Standards” at the Southbank Centre in London, dance critic Lise Smith wrote, “The piece takes its musical and visual cues from clubbing; neon flashes on the dancers’ grey costumes are picked out by ultraviolet lights; dancers flock together in strobe-lit clumps, and a banging electronic score by Nihil Bordures keeps the athletic cast busy for an hour. The piece largely takes place on an area of the stage marked out by three strips of lino which gradually resolve, via a series of colourful lighting states, into the blue, white and red stripes that spell out the triple ambitions of the French republic.”
“It’s easy to see how fraternity finds expression in the tribal nature of clubbing; this general feeling of harmony is elevated by dancers falling easily into step with one another, locking and rocking and generally upjumping the boogie in their colourfully confined space,” Smith continued.
“Pairs and trios moving in unison might be said to do so in the spirit of equality; those looking for more liberty break away into contrasting solos, which are again picked up by other dancers to become new expressions of fraternity. And so on and so on; as dance-based explorations of national ideals go, ‘Standards’ has energy and readability on its side.”
Rigal adds, “We performed ‘Standards’ in Paris just after the [Charlie Hebdo] march in France and it was very emotional. The piece has regained its strong effect and tackles, with more emotion, the question of how and why we are living together, with our particularities and differences.”
Closing the last edition of La Fete on a festive note, the dancers of “Standards” will also join the hip-hop battle the following afternoon. After the battle, the French-Thai cultural festival aims to get everyone on their feet as DJs Dookie and Maehappyair from “GO GRRRLS’ riot grrrl house” man the decks.
 LAST DANCES
- Compagnie Pierre Rigal’s “Standards” will be performed at 8pm tomorrow at Chulalongkorn University’s Sodsai Pantoomkomol Centre for Dramatic Arts (BTS Siam, Exit 6). Tickets are Bt250 (Bt150 for students) at ThaiTicketMajor. For more information, visit www.PierreRigal.net.
- “Hip Hop Battle and Go Grrrls Party” runs from 2pm until late on Saturday at Live House Studio Bangkok, JJ Green Market (BTS Mo Chit, Exit 1). Admission is free.
- Check out www.LaFete-Bangkok.coml.