Project Description

La Guinguette de la Marne (2004)

Music by Jean Gabin, Marie José, Jacques Bolognesi and Léo Petit, George Guetary, and Lina Margy.

Costumes by Virginie Mecene and Karen Young.

“Everyone is so desperate for young choreographers, for both the concert stage and Broadway. Well, here’s one: Virginie Victoire Mécène”.

“Set to a collection of French cabaret songs by Jean Gabin, George Guetary, and other French songwriters, her dance was very unlike what one might expect from a Graham company member: a suite showing Impressionist-era young people at leisure, flirting and falling in love, playing games, and otherwise gobbling up a lovely, entirely unpressured and essentially undarkened afternoon.

 The dancing featured lots of steps, refracted and repeated with tweaking changes; elegant partnering, again using a theme-and-variations approach and often initiated by a ballroom sensibility; and some fantastical acrobatics for the men in one number involving hats—possibly the greatest dance I’ve witnessed for dancers and active hats since Twyla Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove. When one of the dancers restored his hat to his head by performing a back flip into it, the audience could hardly believe it just seen what it had seen. Everyone is so desperate for young choreographers, for both the concert stage and Broadway. Well, here’s one: Virginie Victoire Mécène”.  Mindy Aloff – Dance View New York