Hailed by the media as “one of the most exciting festivals to hit New York in years,” the French Institute/Alliance Francaise's “Crossing the Line: Transfiguring Cultures” festival returns for its second year -- and with students from Columbia University, New York University and the city’s 59 other institutes of higher education flooding back into town, prime tickets are selling fast.

“Crossing the Line, FIAF's annual fall festival, presents inter-disciplinary contemporary works by artists who are transforming cultural practices on both sides of the Atlantic,” says Festival co-curator Simon Dove.

Sub-titled “Transfiguring Cultures,” the festival aims not only to present critical new artistic practices from the rapidly shifting cultural landscapes of Europe and North America but also to transgress the established notions of culture in France and New York.

New this year, FIAF and Crossing the Line have co-produced and commissioned a number of new pieces for the festival. The first commission is a new work by the jazz trio The Bad Plus, which will be based on a song by French icon Serge Gainsbourg and performed in concert at FIAF on September 20.

A new dance piece, co-produced by FIAF, by acclaimed French choreographer Christian Rizzo, will have its world premiere this summer in the Avignon Festival’s acclaimed “Le Sujet a Vif” dance program and its New York premiere at Brooklyn’s new CPR - Center for Performance Research September 25 – 27.

And another commissioned piece is by Paris-based performance artist Ivana Müller, who will create a special video work for the lobby of Dance Theater Workshop which will run throughout the festival.

“Food Futures,” a weekend of culinary-based programs hosted by French television personality and chef Julie Andrieu is also new to this year’s festival and will explore new techniques in the culinary arts with top innovative chefs from New York and France on September 27 and 28.

Inter-disciplinary in nature, the festival includes programs that originate in the disciplines of film, dance, theater, music, performance art, visual art, happenings, and cuisine but that incorporate each other to create dynamic ways to engage with and explore the new realities of the world we all share.

This migration through genres is typified in a special "festival prelude" lecture-performance by French dancer / choreographer Jérôme Bel, The Last Performance (a lecture) on September 10 at FIAF. His lecture on a poorly-received dance piece, that he once performed, becomes a performance art piece in its own right.

Director Arthur Nauzyciel’s US premiere production of “The Image,” which will be presented at FIAF September 18-20, to cite another example, merges music, dance, and theater into a unified whole for a dynamic delivery of a one-sentence work by Samuel Beckett.

“Crossing the Line: Transfiguring Cultures” will take place from September 16 through October 5, at various venues throughout the city including FIAF (Florence Gould Hall, Le Skyroom and the FIAF Gallery), Center for Performance Research, Dance Theater Workshop, Performance Space 122, and The Spiegeltent with additional locations to be announced.

The second edition of Crossing the Line is co-curated by Lili Chopra, FIAF Vice President of Cultural Affairs, and Simon Dove, Department Chair, Herberger College of the Arts at Arizona State University.

The full festival program is available on-line to the public www.fiaf.org

Co-Presenters for the festival are CPR-Center for Performance Research @ Greenbelt; Dance Theatre Workshop; Luxe Gallery; and Performance Space 122.

Festival Sponsors include Axial Capital Management LLC; BNP Paribas; Cultural Services of the French Embassy; CulturesFrance; Étant donnés: the French-American Fund for the Performing Arts, a Program of FACE; FUSED (French-US Exchange in Dance); General Consulate of the Netherlands; The Goethe Institute; Goldman, Sachs & Co.; IREO; Fondation Jean-Luc Lagardère; The Laura Pels Foundation; SACD (Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques); Tiger Vega Management, LLC. American Airlines is the official airline of FIAF; The Florence Gould Foundation is a season sponsor. Cinéma programs are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Here is a brief listing of some of “Crossing the Line’s” top events:

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World Premiere: Outtakes by Marie Losier

Opens Sun, Sept 7 through October 8, 2008

Co-presented by the Luxe Gallery

A celluloid portrait-in-progress is transformed into a riotous playground for cinema’s past in Outtakes, beloved underground filmmaker Marie Losier’s endlessly creative, hands-on installation at the Lower East Side’s Luxe Gallery devoted to industrial rock pioneer Genesis P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle).

Constructed almost entirely of unused clips and sound bites from Losier’s upcoming feature, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, Outtakes puts the forlorn footage to work in the service of a whimsical retelling of film history—one in which the transformative Genesis is its unlikely star. Peephole boxes, antique lenses, a campy music video machine from the early 60s (called a Scopitone)—each historical device brings film off the big screen and down to eye level, providing the audience with an incredibly intimate encounter with their cinematic and musical past.

Presented at the Luxe Gallery in conjunction with Crossing the Line, Outtakes defamiliarizes and recontextualizes its way to an astounding personal tribute—all the while returning the obsolete and abandoned to center stage.

Special thanks to collaborators Nathalie Angles, Stephan Stoyanov, Jean Barberis, Sebastien Santamaria, and Bernard Yenelouis.

Luxe Gallery

53 Stanton Street

Between Forsyth and

Eldridge Streets

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Talks

Paul Auster

Presents Céline Curiol Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 7pm

Acclaimed novelist Paul Auster will introduce the French writer Céline Curiol and her debut novel, “Voice Over,” to the New York public. “Voice Over” (Seven Stories Press) has already been translated into fourteen languages and Auster has declared it “the arrival of a major new talent on the literary scene”. Curiol’s first novel describes a disaffected young woman who works at the Gare du Nord. Everyday she is surrounded by people yet separate from them, esperately seeking a connection. Céline Curiol lives in New York City and is currently at work on her third novel.

Join FIAF for an intimate dialogue between the two authors followed by a book signing.

In English

Le Skyroom

22 East 60th Street

Ticket Price

FIAF Members $10

Non-Members $15

Call 212 307 4100

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U.S. Premiere: Dance

Crossing the Line Prelude

The Last Performance

(a lecture) by Jérôme Bel

Wed, Sept 10 at 7:30pm

"The show lives and therefore dies with each performance" — an insight that informs every second of “The Last Performance,” choreographer Jérôme Bel’s now-infamous philosophical foray into the essence of performance.

As a special prelude to the Crossing the Line festival, Mr. Bel presents an intimate lecture/ discussion, examining with profound insights and humor the very nature of performance.

Referencing the evocative work of critics Roland Barthes and Peggy Phelan, Mr. Bel proposes that every performance is a last performance, an ephemeral moment populated as much by the spectator’s ghostly projections as by the maker himself.

“I am Andre Agassi,” a dancer declaims, and instantly the spectator is implicated in the performance. Inscribing the characters on stage with their own past experiences, the audience becomes co-author of Bel’s fleeting drama—and final witness to its passing; the living memory of its death.

Le Skyroom

22 East 60th Street

Ticket Price

FIAF Members $15

Non-Members $25

Buy Tickets

Ticketmaster.com

Call 212 307 4100

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U.S. Premiere

The Snow White Project

Catherine Baÿ

Opens Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Mirror, mirror on the wall, which Snow White do you recall? For the ever-reflective artist Catherine Baÿ, the answer is undoubtedly the flutter-voiced, porcelain-skinned domestic popularized by Walt Disney in 1936 and etched into collective memory ever since.

Adapted from the macabre world of the Brothers Grimm and scrubbed clean for mass consumption, Walt Disney’s Snow White is a folk tale-turned-Technicolor.

Through a series of site-specific performances in public spaces around New York City, Catherine Baÿ interrogates the public’s relationship to the raven-haired, ruby-lipped beauty by removing her from the animated world and placing her in the contemporary world.

Appearing in department store windows to construction sites, Ms. Baÿ’s flesh-and-blood Snow White will work to subvert traditional expectations associated with her cartoon persona, catalyzing a renewed relationship to a character imprisoned by her own image.

http://www.fiaf.org for information.

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Alloy

Virginie Yassef

Tuesday, September 16–Sunday, October 4, 2008

The videos, photographs, sculptures, and installations of Virginie Yassef reveal the poetry of everyday life, emphasizing the subtle gap between perception and reality. In her universe, the strange, sometimes even the supernatural, always surface where least expected.

Ms. Yassef’s project, Alloy, will be the central piece of this exhibition when she brings her work to the FIAF gallery, as part of Crossing the Line. Also, Ms. Yassef will create a new site-specific piece to be presented at this exhibition.

Currently, Ms. Yassef is represented by the Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois Gallery in Paris, where she recently held a private exhibition. Her work has been shown at the Jeu de Paume and the Modern Art Museum in Paris, among others. In 2006, a jury led by CulturesFrance, selected Ms. Yassef to participate in Location One’s residency program in New York.

FIAF Gallery

22 East 60th Street

Tue–Fri, 11am–6pm

Sat, 11am–5pm

Free and open to the public

In partnership with

Galerie Georges-Philippe

and Nathalie Vallois

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U.S. Premiere

The Image

Conceived by Arthur Nauzyciel

Written by Samuel Beckett

Thursday–Saturday, September 18–20, 2008 at 7pm

“The tongue gets clogged with mud” — and Samuel Beckett’s enigmatic, little-known short story “The Image,} begins. In a much-anticipated U.S. Premiere by rising star director Arthur Nauzyciel, Mr. Beckett’s radical foray into the limits of communication leaps to life, translated afresh for three vivid performers: actress Lou Doillon, dancer Damien Jalet, and musician Mileece.

But how to translate the untranslatable? A single sentence stretched to the absolute breaking point of language, Mr. Beckett’s pockmarked text careens from corner to dim corner, carving out a space in which meaning is always only the yet-to-be.

In the grass-covered Le Skyroom, Mr. Nauzyciel’s brilliant production gives sound, flesh, and form to Beckett’s vertiginous sentence. This production honors The Image’s alluring strangeness while offering a prolonged glimpse over the edge of its infinitely dark abyss.

Le Skyroom

22 East 60th Street

Ticket Price

FIAF Members $15

Non-Members $25

Call 212 307 4100

Fax the order form (pdf)

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Public Discussion

Why Do Politicians Need Artists?

Saturday, September 20, 2008 4–6pm

Moderator: André Lepecki, Associate Professor of Performance Studies (NYU)

Panelists:

Ralph Lemon, Independent Artist (New York)

Julia Mandle, Independent Artist (New York)

Arthur Nauzyciel, Artistic Director of National Dramatic Center of Orléans (France)

Americans, and the world, will remember 2008 for its historic presidential election. As the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain move into full gear, little is said about the candidates’ positions on the arts, or their views on the role of artists in contemporary society.

This panel brings together independent artists from France and New York whose work engages with social and political issues. They will examine what role artists already play in relation to building a healthier society, and what value and function Americans place on a vibrant artistic community.

Join Crossing the Line for this pertinent and timely round-table discussion on the role of the artist in society including an opportunity for audience members’ questions and observations.

In English

Tinker Auditorium

55 East 59th Street

Free admission by

reservation only

RSVP by Sept 18

rsvp@fiaf.org

646 388 6681

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World Premiere: Jazz

The Bad Plus

and Benoît Delbecq

Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 8:30pm

Whether burning through lucid deconstructions of ABBA and Nirvana, complex thickets of improvisation, or simply relishing a beautiful melody, powerhouse trio The Bad Plus never played a lick that wasn’t madly enticing or entirely original. For their FIAF debut, bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King pair their wildly eclectic sound with another like-minded artist—the brilliant French pianist Benoît Delbecq—for an evening of jazz turned inside-out.

The perfect compliment to the trio’s exuberant style, Delbecq’s sound-world is populated by beautifully austere, crystalline structures rooted in electronics and a meticulously prepared piano.

Delbecq begins with a solo set, followed by a duet with Bad Plus drummer David King before the full trio converges to perform a set that will include a special FIAF commission based on “Ballade de Melody Nelson,” by French singer/songwriter, actor, and provocateur Serge Gainsbourg.

Florence Gould Hall

55 East 59th Street

Ticket Price

FIAF Members $15

Non-Members $25

Call 212 307 4100

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U.S. Premiere

Marie Losier’s Film Portraits

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 7pm

Co-presented by the Luxe Gallery

Q&A with Tony Conrad following the screening

A woman gives birth to a pair of hands. An animated figure tries in vain to eat her fist. Twenty people climb out of a 280-pound pot of spaghetti—all indelible moments in the work of celebrated underground filmmaker Marie Losier, from her remarkable set of short films.

Exuding an infectious love for the medium, these bizarre, beautiful portraits combine a whimsical nostalgia for cinema’s past with a surrealist touch.

Each film focuses on a specific artist, including Richard Foreman, George Kuchor, Guy Maddin, Genesis P-Orridge and Tony Conrad, reverently immortalizing—in celluloid—creativity and eccentricity at its most endearing. The multifaceted concept artist and minimalist Tony Conrad will join Ms. Losier in presenting these films, including Tony Conrad DreaMinimalist (N.Y. Premiere), followed by a Q&A session. An indisputable force behind the American Avant-Garde film and music movements, Mr. Conrad’s works underscore the overarching themes of multi-disciplinary talent and curiosity that permeate Ms. Losier’s films.

In English

Florence Gould Hall

55 East 59th Street

Ticket Price

Members Free ($2 advance)

Non-Members $10

Students w/ID $7

Buy Tickets

Ticketmaster.com

Call 212 307 4100

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U.S. Premiere

Thinking of Each Other

Like Good Friends Would

Ivana Müller

Opens Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Co-presented by Dance Theater Workshop

To complement While We Were Holding It Together, Crossing the Line has commissioned a new video work by Ivana Müller specifically for the lobby of Dance Theater Workshop. This piece will run continuously 24/7 throughout the festival.

Dance Theater Workshop

219 West 19th Street Between 7th and 8th aves.

Mon-Sun, 24 hours a day

Free and open to the public

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U.S. Premiere

While We Were

Holding It Together

Ivana Müller

Wednesday–Friday, September 24–26, 2008 at 8pm

Co-presented by Dance Theater Workshop

Post-performance discussion on Wed, Sept 24

From Paris and Amsterdam-based choreographer Ivana Müller comes the multiple prize-winning While We Were Holding It Together, a mind-bending theatrical excursion into the richly interpersonal nature of perception. Five actors strike motionless poses on stage, frozen like monuments. “We are statues in a museum,” one muses, “soldiers in a mine field,” another asserts, as this tableau vivant quietly begins to interpret itself. While We Were Holding It Together offers a profound and genuinely funny testament to the unspoken conversations that transpire between art and interpreter.

Wednesday evening’s performance will be followed by a post-performance discussion with choreographer Ivana Müller and Crossing the Line co-curator, Simon Dove.

While We Were Holding It Together is produced by LISA in co-production with Sophiensaele Berlin, Productiehuis Rotterdam (Rotterdamse Schouwburg), Dubbelspel (30CC and STUK Kunstencentrum Leuven), and financially supported by the Dutch Funds of the Performing Arts, the Goethe Institute, and the Mondriaan Foundation.

Thinking of Each Other Like Good Friends Would: To complement While We Were Holding It Together, Crossing the Line has commissioned a new video work by Ivana Müller. This piece, Thinking of Each Other Like Good Friends Would, will run continuously 24/7 throughout the festival in the lobby of Dance Theater Workshop.

Florence Gould Hall

55 East 59th Street

Ticket Price

FIAF Members $15

Non-Members $25

Buy Tickets

Ticketmaster.com

Call 212 307 4100

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