“PARAdistinguidas” is a startling dance and live art installation, and the latest in the series of “Distinguished pieces”, produced by La Ribot since the 1990s, a project which has had a great impact on the performing and visual arts world. Lasting from 30 seconds to 7 minutes, the pieces were short solos, adaptations of concepts, poems in motion, or living pictures performed by the artist herself. In these pieces, La Ribot reveals herself stark naked, “distinction being the only protection against offense”. Up for sale, the distinguished pieces, ephemeral and live art works, were purchased by distinguished proprietors like other art objects. Planning to create one hundred pieces, La Ribot only produced 34, between 1993 and 2003, and presented them in an ongoing series.

With “PARAdistinguidas” La Ribot starts the 4th series of distinguished pieces. She combines several themes and interests which have been a constant in her artistic work: the questioning of formal, conceptual and economical aspects of performing arts, and the collaboration with extras as a heterogeneous and compact human group.

Using the strategy of juxtaposition, accumulation, multiplicity and transmission, La Ribot invites four performers, Marie-Caroline Hominal, Ruth Childs, Laetitia Dosch, Anna Williams and 20 local extras to accomplish a new and surprising series of distinguished pieces.

“PARAdistinguidas” is presented through the kind support of Pro Helvetia.

More information:
La Ribot said in an interview held in 2001 :
“Each of my pieces states in a more lively and eloquent way what I could try to say in words about visual art and dance. In concrete terms, I prepare these pieces like a painter in his workshop and not like a choreographer in a studio. The space in which I work is not empty; I remain in contact with all the things that make up my familiar environment, whereas in dance, space is much more neutral. That sort of work, even if it is derived from the influences of, or my interest in, the plastic arts is fairly elementary, direct. Ultimately each piece is influenced by whatever my artistic thoughts are at the time.”

Of course, given where I come from, I use my body, I work on temporal and spatial aspects and I treat movement as I treat music and objects. When I prepare a piece, I think only of the concept, how to fix it, give it my vision. The movement evolves from the concept, it comes from different places, it is organic, physical. Then it is the situation which provides the surprise element, creates the emotion. When I perform, I do not have to interpret. I must remain faithful to the concept for I have an obligation to the ‘distinguished proprietor’ who has bought me; it is in fact a spatial concept. I am simply the concept, my body creates the concept. I play with the ephemeral, but, the concept is a fixed one !”

About La Ribot:
A dancer by training, choreographer and visual artist Maria Ribot has contributed to the development of contemporary dance in Spain since the mid-80s, the period when she started her choreographic work.

In 1991, under the name of La Ribot, the artist from Madrid engaged her work into a new process by creating scenic works at the moving intersection of live art, performance and video. Humour characterizes her work, which covers a broad artistic field and questions the economy of the spectacular, the art market, the role of the artist or the topicality. La Ribot exposes and questions the eye, from the perspective of the body, the space, the image and the movement. Based in London from 1997 to 2004, she mainly produced solo performances, giving her distinguished project a peculiar amplitude which lead her to being nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for plastic arts in 1998, to be awarded with the National Prize for Dance by the Spanish Ministry of culture in 2000, and to present Panoramix, a meta-performance of three hours which combines all the distinguished pieces at the Tate Modern in 2003, at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others.

Her short pieces, varying from 30 seconds to 7 minutes in the three distinguished series, or the long ones, from 4 to 8 hours in the case of Laughing Hole, favour the playful side and unseemly associations. Uncommon use of words, objects and bodies, extreme sobriety or shimmering of colours, are all part of this conceptual work. In the works of La Ribot the body is exhibited, both as a chosen subject and as living matter.

Living in Geneva since 2004, she taught at HEAD (Geneva University of Art and Design) until 2008, and has pursued her research with different media. Having given to her career an international stance, La Ribot has opened up her work to other forms of artistic encounters, within the very essence of her works. As with Gustavia, a duo co-created in 2008 with French choreographer Mathilde Monnier, or a video piece with Spanish dancer Cristina Hoyos for In_ter_va_lo, a cycle of contemporary art and flamenco.

With llamame mariachi (2009) she pursued, in the first half of the show, the kind of video research she had been developing through previous works such as: Despliegue (2001), Travelling (2003) and Cuarto de Oro (2008). Videos in which the interpreters capture the movement, in a single travelling shot, from the viewpoint of the body. A process that offers us a visual experience that relativizes our perception of space. The second half of the show articulating issues related to text and speech.

With her last creation, Walk the Chair (2010), La Ribot comes back to her old folding wooden chairs, this time with texts written on them, making the reading by the visitors some sort of spontaneous choreography. Walk the Chair is presented as an installation at the Hayward Gallery in London for the exhibition MOVE: CHOREOGRAPHING YOU.

La Ribot’s work is organized as a system allowing her to do research, and to develop and question the temporal, spatial, and conceptual limits of dance.

http://www.laribot.com/

Tweet

No comments yet on ‘PARAdistinguidas’

Seen the show? Tell others what you think

1. Name (required)
2. Email (required)
3. Website
4. Your comment (required)