She comes from a family of fourteen, and still her class journey hasn't given her any authenticity points. No one embodies bad taste as she does. Therefore it is only logical that two current projects, a book and a dance piece, makes precisely Celine Dion the protagonist in an analysis of concepts of taste in our present times.
Celine Dion does Esperanto Muzak. Her sexless power ballads, belonging to a tradition of European sleaze rather than american R'n'B, are recorded in all possible languages in order to achieve the deepest possible market penetration. The lyrics, as if straight out of a self-help book- are affirmative and falsely comforting. Love comes to those who believe it. Life is about attitude. Think right and good things will come your way. On stage she is slightly fidgety, making clown like gestures and secret signs to her manager and husband Rene Angelil, who allegedly gambled away all her millions on casinos.
Some of these movements have been picked up by choreographer Jessyka Watson-Galbraith who is behind a dance project called "Let's Talk About Love". When Jessyka Watson-Galbraith decided to create a consciously bad, and really cheesey piece, the choice of soundtrack was obvious: Celine Dion. Together with dancers from all over the world she has produced an on-line performance, a dance mass-movement of home recorded videos that are uploaded on YouTube. The project has been presented on stage on two different occasions, most recently as the closing performance for the Tanztage Festival in Potsdam. In the videos the dancing is solely to Celine Dion and the movements is of the spastic, sweeping and dramatic sort that we do at home when no one is watching, a dance equivalence to singing in the shower.
"Let's Talk About Love" is as much about exploring the choreography of the people as it about creating a work that plays with the conventions of the contemporary dance scene, at the same time an ironic and declaration of love to Celine Dion. Jessyka Watson-Galbraith is not only deeply fascinated by Dion as a person, she has also started to appreciate some of her songs.
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