The last performance (1998), Jerome Bel

title : The last performance (1998)

concept : Jerome Bel

choreography : Susanne Linke, excerpts from Wandlung (1978)

music : Franz Schubert, excerpts from Death and the Maiden

creation : Brussels (Belgium), on November 12th 1998, at the Kaaitheate

with : Claire Haenni, Antonio Carallo, Frederic Seguette, Jerome Bel

production : Centro Cultural de Belem (Lisbon), Kaaitheater (Brussels), R.B. Jerome Bel (Paris)

with the support of : CNDC / l'Esquisse (Angers), la Ferme du Buisson (Marne-la-Vallee), la Menagerie de Verre (Paris) and the Internationale Tanzwochen (Vienna)

thanks to : Pascale Paoli and Jean Torrent

duration : 60 minutes

subsidies : R.B. Jerome Bel is supported by the Direction regionale des affaires culturelles d’Ile-de-France (French Ministry of Culture and Communication) and by the Institut Français (French Ministry for Foreign Affairs) for its international tours

websites : www.jeromebel.fr

Performance's only life is the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations : once it does so, it becomes something other than performance. To the degree that performance attempts to enter the economy of reproduction, it betrays and lessens the promise of its own ontology. Performance's being, like the ontology of subjectivity proposed here, becomes itself through disappearance.

Peggy Phelan in Unmarked the politics of performance Routledge Ed.