Paris Update What’s New in Paris
PACK MENTALITY
Gallim Dance’s “Wonderland.” Photo © Yi Chun Wu
Gallim Dance, a New York-based contemporary dance company, will perform for the first time in France Dec. 5-7 at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, presenting founder Andrea Miller’s Wonderland, which premiered in New York in 2010. The piece conjures a powerful science-fiction universe, described by Miller herself as a brutal creation, inspired by the artist Cai Guo-qiang’s installation “Head On,” which builds a scenario around a pack of wolves, investigating pack mentality as an inherent and dangerous element of human instinct. Imagery from sports, war and communication are used to reveal the psychology of a herd acting as a unit through the uncoordinated behavior of self-serving individuals. A key theme throughout Miller’s career has been the question of what separates humans from animals. The answer, to judge from this piece, may be “not much and nothing good.” Claudia Barbieri
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