ABSTRACT
When Robert Wilson was staging Mozart’s The Magic Flute for the Opéra Bastille in Paris in 1991, he was simultaneously working on an exhibition entitled ‘Mr Bojangles’ Memory ... Og, Son of Fire’, which would open at the Centre Pompidou by the end of the same year.1 Two weeks before the premiere of the opera, some six months before the opening of the exhibition, Umberto Eco asked Wilson about the rationale of the project, which would feature the legendary tap dancer Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson in a staging that involved a mise en espace with intricate pathways, gates and open spaces reminding us of labyrinthine urban structures.2 Mr Bojangles’ adventures were shown on video screens mapping out the staging like illuminated beacons. The videos transcended the significance of mere indicative signs, however. The animations, in which Mr Bojangles met the prehistoric character Og, enhanced the fictional nature of Wilson’s exhibition stage.3 The scaled contrasts produced an experience of a dream-like nature, which became the anchor point of the exhibition’s symbolism. Mr Bojangles himself acted as the virtual memory of a narrative environment in which the spectator became involved like an actor having entered the stage to do an improvisation.
