This is a review of Jerome Bel's "The Show Must Go on" which wrote as a work in the danceWEB programme in 2006. Original web site and other reviews written by my friends are here. --------------------- Jul 29, 2006 Jerome Bel & Association R.B. The Show Must Go On What is the power of POP songs? To see "The Show Mus Go On", the biggest question appeared on my head. After the performance, my friend, who asked Jerome once, told me that he tried just to play with POP songs. However, structure of this work caused a strange emotional action of the spectators in a theater. Someone began to dance with a voice of Edit Piaf. Some people began to swing fire of a lighter while playing Imagine. Or sang Sound of Silence in a dark. What happened on the stage was simpler than what on the audience. About 20 or less dancers were waving a waist with the rhythm, having easy steps or taking tiny acting as the lyrics. There is no feeling of so-called 'groove', dance itself did not cause an emotional action of the spectators at all. But also, at the same time, it is rare that the dance disturbed the spectators hearing songs. They could surely hear the songs not as BGM. In the daily life, at first Pop songs appeal the public widely and aim to seep in them(or as a result, seeped in them). For example, in order to be memorized and be sympathized with easily, they uses the simple melody and rhythm, and the lyric emphasize our common topics such as love, family, teenage and so on. This means they try to make a emotional feeling in listeners. And if they find a crossing point in the listener's individual situation or his/her history, that feeling will be larger, then that crossing point becomes a intense knot. In addition, as listening the songs, sometime we are involved to move, step with the rhythm, shaking, shouting.... That knot entangle this kind of movements too. So in the each person, a particular POP song represents to drag wide range of his/her memory out when he/she hear it again. I think what happened in "The Show Mus Go On" is caused according that each spectator's memory was called back in this way by the Pop songs. Perhaps Jerome did not expect so, even he wanted to make the show very strange, he imagined that it would be realized just as the "performance." However, the construction of the show itself destroyed the form of that, "performance." In other words, it promoted us to see as the "Phenomenon." There, POP songs, dancers on the stage, choreographer sitting on front and selecting CDs, spectators singing/dancing/swinging/.... We hear so many songs, not only POP songs, recoded in the CDs, MP3s, etc, in the theater. Most of them is used of making the atmosphere. But in fact, any "Performance" are also "Phenomenon". They are certainly in the social, relating so many things. We tend to see the show as in the small world, as in the rule of theater, though there is little strict rules, we are just missing or forgetting most of time. "The Show Mus Go On" made us to be noticed that. We know sometime the art work is praised for one aspect which was not expected by the artist. I think "The Show Mus Go On" is also, so we should praise Jerome and his talents to offer a such amazing opportunity for us. Hajime Fujita |