Marching Band (Paris) Project

A project by Marquis Revlon (Baltimore) & Frédéric Nauczyciel (Paris)
With New Edition Legacy Marching  Band Baltimore & The Band Marching Band Baltimore
With the participation of Zoe Charlton

Parades & films in between Baltimore and France (Paris, Valenciennes, Bretagne)

The Marching Band (Paris) Project was filmed on a football field in metro Paris in 2016 - this film was the first intention of this on-going project, before it was invited to perform in different areas over the years: Galerie Lafayette Department store in Paris with pop egery Beth Ditto, Palais de Tokyo national art center in Paris, VAFC soccer team in Valenciennes in the north of France, the French Embassy in Washington DC for the Night of Ideas, and finally in various traditional britan dance and music festivals in Britany in France...

This project involved vogue dancers in Paris, French musicians, The Band Marching Band in Baltimore, French and Baltimore artists such as Marquis Revlon, Zoe Charlton...

Marquis Revlon is a well known vogue dancer and Marching Band choreographer in Baltimore. He introducedme to his Marching Band, the New Edition, lead by Miss Anna.

After I met with Marquis Revlon, I decided to explore existing relations between the reality of the urban territory of Paris —cradle of the 2005 uprisings —and its preconceived images. I wanted to legitimate a space for femininity and for cross-communities (or trans-communities). I had expressed a similar desire going in 2011 to Baltimore, as I had the intuition that the city acted as a metaphor of the French suburban clusters: one which would represent the potentials of the French suburbs, coiled up in the overlooked foldings of their recent, postcolonial history. In France, what is defined as the outskirts is defined as urban in the United-States of America. I had therefore in mind to create images, which would cause a breach in our European vision of urbanity, through some kind of an inner torsion. Meanwhile, I could reconsider the determinism of the American urban ideas through a European and candide vision. Urbanity, femininity, community; all these are themes which I consider to be eminently contemporary. It is also an assertion of a political posture of the anti-visible, of the lack of determination, which creates an organic, ever-moving way of inhabiting the world.

Upon returning from Baltimore, I decided to explore existing relations between the reality of the urban territory of Paris —cradle of the 2005 uprisings —and its preconceived images. I wanted to legitimate a space for femininity and for cross-communities (or trans-communities). I had expressed a similar desire going in 2011 to Baltimore, as I had the intuition that the city acted as a metaphor of the French suburban clusters: one which would represent the potentials of the French suburbs, coiled up in the overlooked foldings of their recent, postcolonial history. In France, what is defined as the outskirts is defined as urban in the United-States of America. I had therefore in mind to create images, which would cause a breach in our European vision of urbanity, through some kind of an inner torsion. Meanwhile, I could reconsider the determinism of the American urban ideas through a European and candide vision. Urbanity, femininity, community; all these are themes which I consider to be eminently contemporary. It is also an assertion of a political posture of the anti-visible, of the lack of determination, which creates an organic, ever-moving way of inhabiting the world.

Meeting the Baltimore voguers, then the Parisian voguers necessarily led me to question the political and ethical implications of representing a racial group and the necessity of collaborations. There is a paradox: while there are more and more opportunities for worlds and cultures to cross paths, with larger number of diverse representations and a larger flux of images, there are also more cases of identitarian closures. But this identitarian closure also derives from the withdrawal from the center, from the dominant culture, and a new balance, or a pendulum movement, needs to be found. This led me to the decision to share my creative process.

In a way, all these factors are at the origins of the Marching Band Project.

My friend and brother, Marquis Revlon, a legendary voguer from the transgender Black American scene — a scene which, since the 1960s, has turned the symbols of White Americans’ supremacy upside down by performing the postures of models posing for the cover of Vogue — were joking together and we set ourselves a challenge.

There is something a priori subversive in trying to mix together two cultures like the Voguing and the Marching Band. Voguing is confined to clubs while Marching Bands take the streets. It is a general comment: femininity is not at liberty in the public space; masculine or neutral, desexualized forms are the only ones admitted in the streets. As it turns out, Marquis discovered the Voguing scene through the dancers of his neighborhood’s brass band. He comes from those two worlds. The neighborhood’s marching brass bands, set within communities, and not the colleges’ brass bands. In Baltimore, fifteen can be counted, set in different Black neighborhoods in the city.

Wandering together through the Seine-Saint-Denis [Paris’ urban territory], we decided to give life to this utopia — a performative Marching Band unifying voguers, musicians, deaf young adults and dancers — and to create a pathway between two cultures and two countries: a trans-community. Marquis and I have set our eyes on an amateur orchestra with very young musicians, still in their learning process, as well as older ones. One could not have found a musical ensemble further away from our universe. We were then in May 2015, right at the start of the Baltimore uprisings.

We walked in the Marching Band the way one walks in a Tower of Babel, where everyone speaks a different language.

But a language carries within itself its references, its geographies. The Afro-American spoken in Baltimore has its specificities, and so does the language spoken by young white French musicians from music school, the young black transgender dancers of Paris, the adolescent hip-hop and circus dancers, or the deaf kids that became part of the band thanks to the workshops led by the French Voguer Vinii Revlon. We had to build a common language. Which means to spring a miracle.

The next challenge was to build a Marching Band from scratch, not as an end per se, but as a real walking trans-community, for the necessity of an art film. Those lines and ensemble of walkers that come together, separate and come together again into formation evoke to me those who decide to cross boundaries — symbolic or real, cultural, administrative or military — together, images which were broadcast by recent European news during the Syrian conflict or with the #BlackLivesMatter movement of which Beyoncé became the ambassador, singing hymns like Formation.

To summon this symbol, this Marching Band had to feature people who were not mere extras in a movie but real entities; the coming together had to work and the pleasure of walking together had to become visible. In order to do so, I asked Marquis to share some of the culture, which is typical of American amateur practices, places to learn and surpass oneself, which do not exist in France. We also invited Mike Barksdale, the lead percussionist of the New Edition Marching Band of Baltimore, along with one of its youngest percussionists, Jamel Gunn, for them to give consistency to the project. Regular practice sessions led by Diva Ivy — the lead walker, a Parisian Fem Queen voguer started to take place outside of the rehearsals, in order to forge other relationships between the Marching Band members.

A movie sequence was shot last June 12th in an American football stadium. Footballers joined the public rows, insufflating the Marching Band with their life. As a response to their enthusiasm, the Band ended up integrating the tiers, in an unpredicted and exuberant scene of jubilation.

Here lies the paradox of such an experiment: the piece we created is the Marching Band itself, and not the movie, which would be its trace or pretext. The work only exists when activated. The movie is a mise en abyme, a realistic fiction.

Singulis et Simul (2020-2022) - Dance Piece with Studio House of HMU (Paris / Baltimore)

Dance piece, French Tour 2021-2022

Singulis et Simul  mixes together voguing, marching and baroque music.

« Singulis et Simul » is the inversion of the Comédie Française motto, the national theater company created by king Louis XIV in Paris. In Latin, the original motto proposes to be together and thyself. We propose here to be thyself in order to be together.

The piece synthesizes Frédéric Nauczyciel’s research with Studio House of HMU: the relationship between image and live performance; between baroque and voguing ; between highbrow and urban.

The piece is designed like a perfomative installation on stage. The stage becomes a space of accidental proximity. It is like a street. The audience is invited on stage in proximity with the orchestra and the performers. The videos projected will bring inside urban spaces where creative subcultures like voguing and marching are born.

Featuring

Paris
Vinii Relvon, Ivy Balenciaga, Blaise Cardon, Sylvain Cartigny, Honeysha Khan

Baltimore
Marquis Revlon, Kory Goose Revlon, Dale Blackheart, Jamal Gunn

Cincinnati
Central States University Marching Band

Songs & voice
Abdu Ali

Created for CSO - Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 2020

In partnership with CAC – Cincinnati Art Center

Conductor Keitaro Harada

Film, 2012, 40 minutes

« You have to know yourself. That's all I do. It's the hood. »
« Connais toi toi-même. C’est ce que je fais. C’est la vie du ghetto. »
Dale Blackheart (Baltimore)

« I understand, if I'm too much or not enough, for you. »
« Je comprends, si je suis trop ou pas assez, pour toi. »
Ezra Swan (Baltimore)

Video installation produced by MAC/VAL, contemporary art museum in Val de Marne, metro Paris (France)
The film was screened in Centre Pompidou Paris, Distrital Mexico, Bunn's Baltimore, Hot Dox Toronto...

The Fire Flies, Francesca, Baltimore is an urban tale, a road movie on the tracks of  Omar,  an homosexual man from the ghettos, the iconic character from the HBO  TV Show The Wire.     

It opposes a driving through Baltimore and an immersion in the underground  vogue scene - homosexual and trans gender performers from the black ghettos of  the city –  with sophisticated intrusions of Francesca from New York.     

The fireflies, that Pasolini was seeking in the outskirts of Naples,  are the voguers,  and their flamboyance when competing at night in Balls. Omar popularized the  ‘Banjee Realness’, this posture of pride  adopted by homosexuals in the ghettos, a  kind of deliberate concealment  designed to cofound expectations.    

I discovered a vivid voguing scene, a performative dance  that came into being in  black quarters such as Harlem in the late 1960s.  Appropriating the poses of  models on the cover of Vogue magazine,  it laid claim to cultural signs.    

The movie operates like a hidden door, an invitation to penetrate a hidden world.  The fragmentation of the editing, consisting in a succession and a superposition  of raw sequences filmed with an Iphone, defies sight, and conveys in a  deliberately incomplete way a reality that cannot be grasped entirely.   

The film is not a documentary per say about Voguing;  rather it documents a  work of art with the voguers of Baltimore in the set and the reality their city.  After the first quarter of the movie, a long sequence on a parking lot  introduces  the characters that escort us in this journey, that narrates the fictional encounter  between the voguers, Francesca and Omar.     

A poetics of survival.  

Ft. 
Francesca, IamLuciole, Emanuel Xavier, DDM   Marquis Revlon, Lil David Revlon, Kory Goose Revlon   Julian, Everett aka Kurt Ragin Jr, Kevin Jz Prodigy   London , TJ Milan Carrington, Leggo PinkLady La'Beija   Darryl Illuminati & House, James Boom Rowe, Ezra Swan   Lo Bell Gabrielle, John Hall Bonez Revlon, Trebra Taylor   Smiley Key, Jerbrae Monstar Ninja Roles, Michael Peele Revlon   Nicole honeycomb bradford, Sin’ceaa Prodigy   Mook RedeyeBlacc Ebony, Deyonce Ebony, Lil Bam 007   Banjee Evisu, Lil James Khan, Justin Winston   House of Revlon & Baltimore Ballroom Scene