NAU NUA: PATRICK KING

To live one hundred lives to express one

Patrick King
© Michael DePlaen courtesy Salon K

Salon K Privé is presented as a unique experience to satisfy your senses, “an open door for you to indulge in multiple levels of aesthetic pleasure by offering a unique time and space to form new perceptions and connections.” It’s a project created in 2010 by dancer & choreographer Patrick King, creative director, and his partner Johan King Silverhult, managing director, inspired by the freedom and elegant decadence of Berlin in the 1920s and ‘30s. It features dance, songs, poetry, incorporating various artistic languages including dance, acrobatics, music, and musical theater, alongside champagne & dinner, with the only purpose of opening your minds. Salon K is staged in a luxurious private setting in Berlin City West until November 29th, with the next season planned for February 2015. Patrick King is an international famed choreographer, director and dancer born in the British West Indies and his career has covered a large part of the globe from his early days in the Dance Theatre of Harlem to the film Alan Parker’s film Fame and Le Cirque de Soleil. Now he presents the project Salon K Privé which he defines as “a conceptual dance installation”.

Why did you choose the body expression as your artistic way?

I did not really choose it. It chose me.

You were born in Antigua, in the Caribbean Sea. How important is the Caribbean culture for you and your dance?

In the Caribbean we dance out life. From the time a child is born he/she dances. There is a rhythm in the sun in the wind and the trees and the ocean. We dance from the cradle to the grave. There is always a reason to dance.

Or maybe your training at the Dance Theatre of Harlem has had a deeper influence on you.

At Dance theater of Harlem I got the best training a dancer could have. I was trained by some of the legends of dance. Tanaquil LeClercq was the prototype for what one looks for in a Classical ballerina, long limbs and an allure of mystery. She was one of George Balanchine's wives and George Balanchine was one of those legends. She was my teacher every day for eight years.

Your career as a choreographer, director, and performer spans several decades and has covered a large part of the globe. Looking back how do you see your artistic evolution and what do you expect from the future?

When I was a young dancer all my teachers would urge us to live, live, live. One must live at least one hundred lives to express one. We were required to see all different types of dance and art and theater. There was a difference between being a dancer, just a dancer, and an artist. An Artist with a capital A that is. I lived and lived and along the way I tried many different approaches to my art. I danced in film, I danced in television, I danced in videos when they arrived on the scene, I danced for fashion, I danced on Opera stages and I danced in clubs from New York to Hong Kong, Paris, Milan and Rome ... My artistic evolution has been directly entwined with living. Now as I prepare the Salon K Privé evenings I see this as one of the expressions of the wonderful and varied experiences I have lived. In the Salon K Privé I bring the classical ballet face to face with the contemporary dance and I place that in a container which could be a composite of clubs and theater where people gather to share in an extraordinary experience. Add to that some amazing artists who guide you along a wonderful journey into your own story and you have a good picture of parts of my life and art.

Patrick King Xi'an Fashion Week
© Maria La Torre courtesy Salon K

You’ve worked with Alan Parker and choreographer Louis Falco to dance in the original film Fame. How that experience was and what’s your opinion about dance on cinema?

FAME is now a classic. I felt that already when we were there filming. They were recording the life of young artists of the time. New York was full of energy and we were all young and full of excitement about the future. Both Alan Parker and Louis Falco were marvelous to work with. I was very close friends with Gene Anthony Ray a.k.a Leroy. We were constantly competing. What fun! The business has changed and the public has changed. Dance on film now is often just sensational. As in everything needs to have wow. Dance is so much more than that. I work more and more with video collaborations with a great guy just out of school. Am looking forward to doing more and to move gradually towards full length films where dance is the motor.

You’ve worked also with Le Cirque de Soleil one of the major entertainment companies in the world. How to balance entertainment and art?

Working with Cirque du Soleil was a very intense experience. I learned a lot about human nature and it's extremes. After a long career in major theatres and eventually working in Las Vegas where I was not only a featured performer on stage but also one of the creators of the show Zumanity with Cirque I needed to do something more intimate. And that is when I formulated the idea of Salon K. Entertainment and Art? Come to the Salon K Privé there you will find art disguised as entertainment.

What’s Salon K Privé and how that project was born?

The project was born as an artistic exercise to challenge myself and the artists that I work with.Conceived as a full evening affair, the Salon K Privé is constructed as: a conceptual dance installation. Using the salon as the overlying structure of the evening, Berlin of the thirties inspires the atmosphere but the time is suspended. Somewhere between the mystical mythological and the temporal. We are neither here nor there but right where we are.The underlying theme of the evening is the tug and pull of Eros and Thanatos: the tension between desire and the fact of our mortality; the contemplation of this tug and pull, which urges one to live fully ...Though each scene is thoroughly choreographed, there is no fixed story line. Each individual of the public creates their own story out of the experience which unfolds each evening with them right at the center of the flow. Guided by the performers, the scenes tumble out of conversations or framed by a song.

The whole is placed in an elegantly appointed intimate space. Nothing is ever just precisely what it seems. Cradled in a playful approach the public is taken on journey to their own version of "reality".

Salon K Privé
Jeanna Serikbayeva und Sébastien Thill
© Urs Kuckertz courtesy Salon K

The complete title of the show is Salon K Privé: A unique experience. Satisfy your senses. Isn’t it a risk in a society constantly unsatisfied?

Mankind is constantly unsatisfied. The Salon K Privé is an inspiration to live fully as one wishes.

Talking in freedom terms, do you think our society is improving in that sense?

Even some moments when walking down the street in New York Greenwich Village in 1979 you had to be careful not to offend someone for being gay. Today I am married to my male partner since 1997 and we have been together for 25 years. I spend time with his family and my father adored him and my mother would prepare our room when we visited.

What's your favourite music piece to dance? And why?

Afternoon of a Faun by Debussy. It marks very special moments in my life. The stories would take up too much space. But there is a film of the same name. A ballet was created by another legend of dance, Jerome Robbins. He created the piece for Tanaquil LeClercq. I danced it as a young artist in the making, created by another choreographer, Vittorio Biaggi, who was a close disciple of another legend, Maurice Bejart

Could you tell us a dream?

My life has been a dream ... But taking The Salon K Privé around the world could qualify.

An interview by Juan Carlos Romero

Photos and video courtesy of Salon K Privé

Salon K Privé website www.salonkexperience.com