Raimund Hoghe: Bolero Variations September 19, 2009

Raimund Hoghe's uncategorizable work is driven by Pier Paolo Pasolini's words "Throw your body into battle." Hoghe's physical limitations due to severe scoliosis, paired with his pristine and deceptively minimal choreography, reveal what the artist calls "the power and beauty of music and confrontation with one's own body." Here he employs a host of recordings of the melancholy-drenched Spanish/Cuban bolero song form along with a broadcast soundtrack of Ravel's iconic, slow-build classical masterwork that accompanied Torvill and Dean's gold medal ice-dancing performance at the 1984 Olympics. In 'Bolero Variations,' Hoghe, who served as the late Pina Bausch's dramaturge from 1980 to 1990, creates his own form of ritualized tanztheater, by turns meditative, funny, and electrifying.