A Summer of Counterpoint
Summer of 2022 program of events directed by Enrique Pardo
July 17th – August 25th, 2022
Last Session Online Thursday August 28
At Malerargues , Roy Hart Centre (Southern France) and ONLINE (via Zoom)
Events included practice and theory, laboratories, master classes, lectures and panel discussions towards A Summer of Counterpoint, with an offbeat, narrative and musical version of Psyche’s Task , which was the theme of the postponed Myth and Theater 2022 Festival.
RECORDINGS / VIRTUAL LIBRARY
Almost ALL program events were recorded on video and will be made available through Pantheatre’s VIRTUAL LIBRARY.
All ONLINE events (Master Classes, Laboratories and Talks) are already online (the last one will be online soon after.)
Recordings of ON SITE events (at Malerargues) were also filmed and will be made available.
EVENTS
« The summer offerings look great! deep, stimulating and multi-faceted. I like the variety of types of experiences and learnings and the different scheduling times also.
Great that participants will be able to pick and choose what suits them best. Especially with summer schedules… »
Cynthia M. Bugaret, singer and psychologist
This last session will combine the formats of
Laboratory / Master Class / Oratory
THURSDAY 28/08, 7:00 to 9:00 pm France
= 1 to 3 pm NYC.
Single session: 25€
SIGN UP HERE
Last ONLINE session
Enrique will present his ‘Fetish Performance Video’
only one minute long !
with detailed analysis and commentaries
The session will including practical participatory work, especially of text inclusion and counterpoint (even contra-diction)
required 3 or 4 lines of a text, learnt by heart
(contemporary, please: no Shakespeare!)
The following announcements are now ARCHIVE material
TALK
Dionysos: Counterpoints
by Enrique Pardo
« I met Dionysos and Roy Hart in 1968… »
How can invoking a Greek divinity like Dionysos be made sense of, today? I wish to turn an obstinate critical look at my own encounters with Dionysos, centering on one of the most tragic events in my life: the death of Roy Hart in 1975.
This talk stems from dialogues with Kaya Anderson who is exploring the theme of Dionysos. It highlighted for me the complexity of the use of mythology in performance. Especially Dionysos’ unfathomable (« greedy ») depth and his own brand of divine psychopathy.
Sunday, July 17th
19h-21h France | 1-3 PM NYC
Note: lecture in English, and later in French & Spanish.
INTERVIEWS with Xavier Papaïs
A series of three interviews with the most inspiring and original thinker in France, certainly for artists. From an early age he was interested in the notion and history of magic. He came first at the ENS entrance exam, France’s top doctoral school, but then was not allowed to undertake a doctorate on magic. He bypassed academia.
The title « Psyche’s Task » came from a book that Xavier Papaïs recommended, by J.G. Frazer (Of The Golden Bough fame.)
His lecture at the 2021 Festival On Superstition remains one of the most memorable (and entertaining) ones in festival history, and will be available via the Virtual Library. Check also The Ethnological Club.
Interviews in French on Sundays at 5 p.m. CET (between July 17 and August 28 – specific dates to be confirmed).
With some informal translation into English. Video registrations with subtitles will be made at a later time.
SYMPOSIUM
The Role of Music
in Choreographic Theatre
A Working Symposium
Preliminary articles and discussions will be published in The Virtual Library.
A symposium was a banquet with speeches, dialogues and music, become today, in principle, a convivial gathering with good conversation.
The aim is not to (re)define what music is or should be, but to reflect on its role in performance. Check Counterpoint Editorial
August 23 to 28 – planning & fees TBC
in principle:
Mornings: voice performance & music
Afternoons: laboratory synthesis work
Evenings: talks and discussions
INFORMATION
Newsletter mid-July or email to Enrique
OTHER EVENTS
The summer program is open to other events, including Sarmen Week (scheduled for August 15-21): Mexican composer and vocalist, Sarmen Almond, is expected in Malerargues for the ratification of her Roy Hart Teacher Certificate. She will present her work and participate in discussions.
If time allows there will also be conversations with special friends, and presentations of work videos from the 2021 2022 Cycles.
General Notes
All events are On-Line via ZOOM and on Site at Malerargues, Roy Hart Centre, Southern France.
Discounts are available for Cycle Participants and Active Members.
If you wish to participate in person, please write to us directly at pan@pantheatre.com
EDITORIAL
A Summer of Counterpoint
Enrique Pardo
The notion of COUNTERPOINT belongs to Music: “… the relationship between two or more musical voices that are harmonically interdependent but independent in their rhythms and melodic contours.” The Baroque built its glory on counterpoint. Modernity turned it into a highly creative, though sometimes ‘quite contrary’ tool.
The summer of 2022 program will explore our cultural perceptions of Music through narrative modes: fiction, myth, dramaturgy. The goal is, first, to figure out and identify the “voices” of music, so as to confront a fundamental question: “WHO is the Music?” – and, from there: what is it saying, and, what is its role in a choreographic theatre?
Philosophically the project has three source-figures. Jacques Derrida, who published his seminal book, La Voix et le Phénomène (Voice and Phenomenon), in 1967. Roy Hart, who founded his Roy Hart Theatre in 1968, in London. (As far as I know, they never met nor heard of each other.) And American psychologist James Hillman, who became Pantheatre’s honorary president and a generous friend. A note on each:
Jacques Derrida: his take was summarized by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben: “Listening to the voice in speech is what thinking is all about”.
Roy Hart, whose favorite quote, taken from American Romantic poet Henry Longfellow, was: “The voice is the muscle of the soul”.
James Hillman, who wrote two of Pantheatre’s founding books, Pan and the Nightmare (1968), and The Dream and the Underworld (c. 1972).
There is a key notion in these counterpoint proposals, and it belongs to Apollo, God of poetry and oracles. He was qualified as braxilogos, oblique. This implies that his speech operated by side-shifts, cleavages, allusions, associations and double-entendres. The prefix ob corresponds to the Latin contra: think of objection and obstruction, of obscure, obscene and obsessive, and the whole family of creative ob contrarians.
The work is complex but not necessarily complicated. It enhances intuition, play and expressivity. More a matter of personality and risk-taking than of technique, musical or acting (both welcome.) And it gives a strong place to cultural studies.
IMAGE : Chef d’Oeuvre / Hors d’Oeuvre
Photo of a laboratoire, with Anne-Dominique Bouille, Eloïse DeNayer, Marie Pictet and Carla Beccarelli.
Montage Enrique Pardo.
Un déjeuner sur l’herbe
After Manet, after Marcantonio Raimondi, after Raphaël, after The Judgment of Paris: a succession of scandals in counterpoint.
Note the look and the listening of the actress in the center, who says the text (le chef d’oeuvre, the « masterpiece »), and the rather casual attitude of the actresses on the right (in hors d’oeuvre), which gives the scene its spice. The actress seated in front, lends a double ear: she holds up a microphone in her hand. EP