UNESCO Courier articles from January 1996

UNESCO Courier archives from January 1996

Maurice Bejart: a journey of initiation. (dancer and choreographer)(Interview)
January 1, 1996... * When you started out in the 1950s, ballet was still very much in the classical mould. You gave it shock treatment as Nijinsky had done. He shocked in order to rejuvenate dance. Maurice Bejart: My aim has never been to shock, but rather to...

An impulse from within. (dance)
January 1, 1996... Dance renews the bonds that unite us to the world Modern people have a paradoxical relationship with space. They may have reached to the stars, explored the ocean depths and fathomed the unfathomable, but they have also cut themselves off from...

The language of body and soul. (dancing)
January 1, 1996... People dance to celebrate big occasions and express the pleasure of being together People dance to celebrate existence at festive moments which are cut off from ordinary time and bring them into contact with a timeless world. This experience...

Drama's hidden depths.
January 1, 1996... In African and Latin American cultures dance is the vehicle that brings human beings close to the gods. While the gods do not necessarily dance themselves, dance is the elusive area, on the border of the physical and the spiritual worlds, in...

Nijinsky's requiem. (dancer Vaslav Nijinsky)
January 1, 1996... On 19 January 1919, in a Swiss hotel, a dancer dressed in white silk pyjamas advanced towards an audience of some two hundred people. The career of Vaslav Nijinsky, the century's greatest dancer, would shortly end. Thirty years of mental illness...

Post-modern dance.
January 1, 1996... "Post-modern" must be the hardest term to define in the world of dance. The notion of "modern dance" was already unpopular enough, and Martha Graham, for instance, never accepted it as a description of her art. But at least we knew what it meant...

Reinventing the body. (Japanese dance styles)
January 1, 1996... JAPAN No and Buto are two very different forms of expression united by a common philosophy In No, the most typical form of traditional Japanese dance drama, there are no acrobatic leaps, no pirouettes, no movements intended to surprise the...

The Arab world: steps to emancipation. (Arabic dance)
January 1, 1996... Women dancers in the Arab world are both admired and rejected by society Some years ago, at a wedding in Morocco, I was invited to go and see the hired dancers perform for the men (the women of the house having retired to their own quarters to...

A living museum. (Dora Stratou Theatre of Greek Dances)
January 1, 1996... GREECE A unique theatre is preserving a nation's folklore On the pine-covered Philopappus Hill opposite the Acropolis in Athens stands an open-air theatre that has become an institution now almost as famous as its neighbour across the road....

India: the dancer's dilemma.
January 1, 1996... Can the sacred language of Indian choreography be adapted to the modern world? Indian classical dance reveals a world that is normally beyond the reach of our senses. Every aspect of it has a sacred dimension, reflecting its origins as a...

A new outlook for humanity.
January 1, 1996... The construction of peace must begin at the moment when life begins. More than ever before, we must struggle to ensure that the inalienable principle of the right to rights applies to all citizens; more than ever before, societies must reject...

The temple of Apollo the Helper.(Heritage)
January 1, 1996... On a grandiose and lonely site in the Peloponnese, the majestic ruins of an ancient Greek temple registered on the World Heritage List in 1986 I first set eyes on the temple of Apollo Epicurius (the Helper), at Bassae in Arcadia, in the late...

The master puppeteer Huang Hai-Tai. (Interview)
January 1, 1996... Ninety-four-year-old Huang Hai-Tai, who comes from Yunlin in central Taiwan, bears the secrets of a very ancient tradition. He is probably the oldest hand-puppeteer still at work, and has trained and influenced many others. His wife and some of...