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Theatre Journal 55.3 (2003) 584



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Artist Statement

[Figures]

Machismo has been at the heart of my investigations as an artist for several years now. Trying to understand communities of men and how they interact is of key interest to me.

I first thought of this new series of work Pas de deux on the eve of September 11, 2001 as I was installing the now controversial series of paintings War (2001) at the Watts Tower Arts Center in Los Angeles. This idea that dance could be used as a metaphor to understand—and somehow erase—hatred is of great interest to me. I began looking at photographs from early ballets in old books on the Kirov, the American Ballet Theater, and the Royal Ballet. These frozen postures from choreographies long since forgotten seemed the perfect ground in which to root this new project. Classical ballet contains a notion of the sublime imbedded in a persistence toward perfection (or idealism), all the while resisting change.

This painting, Abdullah and Sergeant Adams (2003), is based on an early ballet called La Fille Mal Gard�, which was revived by the choreographer Frederick Ashton for the Royal Ballet. In this new work, a US Marine partners an Iraqi soldier who joyously holds an arabesque position while flinging the American's military issue shirt to the wind. This painting was commissioned by David Rom�n for this special issue on dance.



Alex Donis
Los Angeles, June 2003

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