Your stick on my head
"Le Théâtre contemporain de la danse (TCD) is preparing to launch with a flourish a Year Of Dance from France. 4,000 spectators are expected for an exceptional evening bringing together the cream of contemporary choreographic creation on stage at the Zénith in Paris. The company was just created and rehearsals are at the Ménagerie de Verre studios.
“The rose billionaire,” Masako Ohya from Japan, the extraordinary patron of classical dance now deceased, requested that the prima ballerina of the Osaka Ballet participate in this production in return for her financial contribution.
It was in this context that one week before the event I met the beautiful and talented Katsue Hirochi with whom I would dance a brief duo. I asked the composer Gilles Grand to compose 4 minutes of music.
The title of the work, Ton bâton sur ma tête, was an expression of my surprise at receiving this commission. The work depicts a frantic chase accompanied by the explosive sounds of the V cylinders of the composer’s motorcycle."
Michel Kelemenis, autumn 1987
Echos
Pierre Bossatti
1987
4 minutes of pure visual delight. If Kelemenis dances in the footsteps of Dominique Bagouet, he nevertheless returns to the arena of atonic abstraction playing with the dysfunctional aspects of narrative and symmetry. Never without humor, the soundtrack of Gilles Grand authoritatively interweaves the rumbling or roaring of automobile engines ; however, with Katsue Hirochi, Kelemenis is preoccupied with other means of locomotion, other connections. Refined and without pretention, Ton bâton sur ma tête is nonetheless more than just a hit.