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What Do you Know about Vincent van Gogh?
A new dance symphony from Peter Fox and Seanie Blue, “Vincent & Johanna” shows you everything you didn’t know about the painter who cut off his ear and and died insane and penniless.
A legend in all our lives, of how Vincent van Gogh was loyally supported by his brother Theo despite any lack of artistic recognition, turns out like many legends to be untrue. The reality is grotesque. How can I tell this story properly, to honor all those people who do art because they love the process and do not care about the profits? On the brink of extinction, we begin to see how money kills as we chase the profits in poison and murder. But the clues to our greedy nature are best shown in the history of art, and particularly in the amazing story of Vincent van Gogh and the woman who saved his paintings from oblivion.
Sean’s video of the first movement is below:
Video of the first movement is here!
Music by Peter Fox & Seanie Blue
Video Produced by Blue & Sandra Bishop
Courtesy Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
The Dance Video
As performed by Caitie Belle Yevoli, the dances shown in this video attempt to portray Vincent’s realization that he cannot stay in Holland or Belgium, that he will not make a fortune selling Japanese prints with his brother Theo, and that he will die soon if he doesn’t get into a warmer climate where he can paint. He heads to the south of France, looking for female models and sunshine, but finds a cold place with skies made feverish by a faraway volcano eruption, and he commits himself to an asylum as a last act to stay alive. This is the person who fascinates the young woman from Utrecht who marries Vincent’s brother Theo. Her name is Johanna Bonger. And hers is a tale made for Hollywood.
Johanna Bonger
Caitie Belle Yevoli . . .
. . . the dancer in Vincent’s dreams
