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ON AUDITIONS IN GENERAL, AND SOME IN DETAIL
By Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz
L'image du corps
Pierre Sorlin proposes a very interesting reading of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive[i]. He claims that the director brings into light the unequal fight between the actors and the camera – symbol of the director's eye. Its meaning can be easily extended to the audience's selective and cruel process of perception.
In Sorlin's opinion, actors would be constantly forced to re-negotiate their place in the Hollywood film industry. The unjust status of stars and starlets, constant comparison between them, and an ongoing agreement to fulfill the directors', producers', and spectators' desires actually defines both the actor's work and life. Vulnerable, their only shields and swords would be their bodies. Bodies that are, according to Sorlin, constantly "mis a l'épreuve".
We can see Betty at least three times in an audition situation. Each uncovers at least one side of this uncanny process. Her first rehearsal in the kitchen, starring Rita, is willingly to be taken as a "real" dialogue at first sight. The end is blurry. After being complimented, Betty keeps on pretending to be a movie star. Naomi Watts clearly is one.
For the actual audition, Betty/Naomi has her hair done wonderfully and wears a short costume. A bit of mobbing, boredom, "out of place" feeling and finally some risk-taking that creates satisfaction and expectation.
And off we go to the third audition, an (un)expected opportunity for a big production. In this case, although "there is something in the air", Betty doesn't pick up the gauntlet and escapes. For some reasons, the possibility is not turned into fact.
Graduating from a dance school and moving to Paris, I found myself confronted with the situation of ‘corps mis a l'épreuve' more than 20 times this year. While auditioning for Wim Vandekeybus, Crazy Horse and no-lines roles in Kung-fu movies, Betty/Diane/Naomi's behaviors infiltrated my own.
This is the girl
"… just an actress' photo, everybody's got one" says Diane. This seems like an ultimate truth. A CV, a motivation letter, a portrait and a full body picture constitute the first step in the long and tiring process of selection. But before questioning how to become "the girl", one has another challenge to face – information.
One is on a constant chase after information. What in principle should be widely spread – vacancies on a job market – is often highly protected in the contemporary dance field. Very seldom, dancers run around informing their peers, who might as likely be their competitors as their collaborators, about upcoming auditions. Information is a rare commodity.
Assuming one found out on a French website about a Wim Vandekeybus audition scheduled to take place in London, the next step would be to create, within a very limited time frame, an outstanding dossier.
I have as many varying CV's as there were times I had to introduce myself to anyone. If Betty/Diane are two different sides of the same person, my identity is not more defined than theirs. I have already been an Algeria-born young pedagogue for teaching sports and dance to difficult and disabled children, a Polish ballet dancer, who after a severe car accident has reoriented herself towards cinema and has played in some of Kieslowski's early movies, or a French Jewess who basically earned her life table-dancing in Le Flamingo in Paris.
What to choose, where to start, information is once again needed to be able to select the best match to the current context.
There is no beginning nor an end to the audition process. The language of the motivation letter, the tone of the e-mails that confirm one's arrival, the first greetings in the studio on the audition day, the way one walks, talks, is dressed, the cigarette breaks, one's social behavior; if the process takes a couple of days, one is in constant tension, "aux aguets" say the French. And then, when it comes to leaving the place, a special thank-you, handshake, maybe a quick blowjob would do. All methods are on the market.
And the most important thing definitely is to knit some new connections, to establish some links hoping to get closer to some new information which one might have overlooked.
Betties, Dianes interchange with Camillas and Ritas. They will soon probably meet in some other constellations.
The chronology
A false feeling of development is strongly present in most auditions. The more parts one has been through, the more "exercises" one has done "successfully", the final success remains as much a vague vision as it was at the beginning. Like on foggy Sunset Boulevard, candidates can hardly predict whether they will still be in the game at the next corner. A universe with no clear, visible rules. A world where consequence does not follow cause and a sense of common logic is hardly palpable.
Around 100 dancers and performers (Camillas/Dianes) were present at Jean Marc Heim's audition in the Centre de Developpement Chorégraphique in Paris. Some just graduated from the Parisian Conservatory, others were in their mid-forties and had recently been working with Jerôme Bel. But Heim seems to know what he is looking for. A simple system of pluses and minuses reduces the group to 20 persons at the end of the day. Those are asked to come back tomorrow. Not knowing how many will be taken in the end, each exercise is a battle for a plus, a new battle with no obvious dominant power. Apparently, the summing up is not a mathematical process.
8 are invited for a week-long working period to Lausanne. Only then, the chosen ones get to know that they will again compete with 7 others chosen earlier in Switzerland. 8 hours per day for 6 days, each one will do his/her best, not knowing if the best is good enough and what exactly for. The number of required dancers won't be officially confirmed until the end.
They will have done everything. Dancing obviously, singing, talking in their mother tongues, getting undressed … They will try to avoid thinking in plus and minus categories also when outside of the dance studio. But would drinking alcohol in the evening rather be rewarded as a sign of easy going, a maybe somewhat crazy attitude, or marked as a negative quality …? Whatever they did, they always found themselves at the beginning. At the top of an empty column of a spreadsheet ready to be filled with pluses or minuses. Mulholland Drive offers at least two beginnings; it doesn't matter where we start watching, there is always a story going on right in that place.
"very good, really, I mean it was forced maybe, but still humanistic"
Tights and high heels, baggy jogging trousers and an old T-shirt, thinking conceptually about choreography, trying to look sexy or looking for original moves, citing Nijinski or Sarah Kane, or at least lifting the leg higher …
A contemporary dancer nowadays can be asked to do everything. The most widely spread anecdote I came across was Vandekeybus' last year demand. He addressed a fresh group of volunteers after a couple of minutes, saying something like: "Come on, surprise me, I am so bored." So a guy took off his pants, and took a shit in the middle of the studio. Therefore he made it to the next round.
In my group, the choreographer did not even show up.
Silentio
Lynch's ending is a reprise of Godard's final sequence in "le Mepris". However Brigitte Bardot got the role because of the producer's concern about bringing in some sex appeal – guarantee of success back in the 60ies, in the contemporary world sex is simply not good enough.
"Le film mise bien sur ses actrices, mais a la différence de nombreuses autres productions Hollywoodienne, loin de les donner a contempler ou de se servir de leur sex-appeal, il les traite comme des visages et des corps mis a l'épreuve, leur impose des expressions et des gestes calcules, exige d'elle un investissement de toute la personne, une performance au sens anglais du terme."[ii] says Sorlin.
Is there a "good enough" notion at all? I doubt it. We could go further now. Questioning the sense of such a question. One fits or one doesn't, say many dancers I've met. But matching or not matching expectations brings us right back to the beginning, to the topic of identity. The time of individual geniuses is passé, that of identical factory-like bodies and minds as well, a toti-potential, renaissance model again. Which identity to pick today … in order to get a job?
Auditioning has much to do with Sisyphus work to me. No matter how far one goes, sooner or later he'll find himself right at the bottom again. Whether it be a 30 minutes ballet class or an improvisation task of the sort "present yourself in whatever way", the selection show must go on.
The last instruction I got was written on a piece of paper: "teil 2, improvisation – waschvorgaenge darstellen, jeweils 1 min. – leiser betrieb und handwaesche"[iii] But Camus taught us to perceive Sisyphus as happy, by the mere fact of constantly simply trying to accomplish an impossible imposed task. So, legs up?
[i] Corps à l'épreuve, Pierre Sorlin in Mulholland Drive, Les éditions de la Transparence, Chatou, 2007
[ii] The film posts strongly on its actresses, but contrary to many other Hollywood productions, it does not put them at stake to be contemplated or use their sex appeal, it treats them as faces and bodies "mis a l'épreuve" (put into challenge?), it imposes calculated expressions and gestures on them, it claims an investment of the whole person, a performance in the English sense of the term. In Corps à l'épreuve, Pierre Sorlin in Mulholland Drive, Les éditions de la Transparence, Chatou, 2007, p. 83
[iii] part 2, improvisation: for one minute perform/re-enact the washing machine program – silent mode and hand-wash.
(16.12.2007)
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