ロサンゼルスを拠点とするアメリカ人アーティスト、アレックス・プレガー（Alex Prager）の作品集。本書は、映像作品「La Grande Sortie」（2015）の制作時に撮影された写真作品を元にニューヨークのギャラリー「Lehmann Maupin」で開催された展覧会に併せて出版。「La Grande Sortie」は、パリ・オペラ座バレエ団からの依頼で制作され、デジタルプラットフォームで公開された映像作品。フランス人エトワール（バレエ団ダンサーの最高位）、エミリー・コゼットが演じるプリマ・バレリーナの物語で、原因不明の挫折からカムバックしたダンサーの、舞台に対する恐怖心とオーディエンスの中でエスカレートする無関心や敵対心を表現している。コゼットの恐怖は一連のダンスに表れており、引退したバレエ団のダンサーや講師陣が演じる粗野なオーディエンスが徐々に客席から舞台に上がり共演する。幻想的に消え去るラストシーンが象徴するように、成功の陰に隠れて多くの人が日々葛藤する普遍的な不安を体現。本作の挿入曲はストラヴィンスキーのバレエ音楽『春の祭典』をもとに、レディオ・ヘッドのクリエイティブディレクター、ナイジェル・ゴッドリッチが編曲。作者は、過去の作品で映画的なシーンを演出し作り出す中で、群衆と個人の間に垣間見える不安や孤独など深い精神的な部分に触れてきたが、本作では舞台上のパフォーマーとオーディエンスの二つの視点と、この両者間に内在する緊張した関係性で精神面の揺らぎを提示する。この「二つの視点の移りかわり」、舞台上の「フィクションとリアリティの二元性」、そしてその両者の間を行き来しながら、作者はさらにこの境界を作り出す舞台とオーディエンスとの間にある目に見えない「第4の壁」を壊す。視覚的な芸術における、作り物（フェイク）とリアルの概念をいかにして人間が受け入れるかを考えさせる作品となっている。

Published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘La Grande Sortie’ by Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Alex Prager, at Lehmann Maupin, New York, on view from September 7 - October 23, 2016. Velvet-feel hardcover. Includes a fold-out insert, an essay by Anna Stothart, and a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the series. The photography series featured Prager’s newest film, La Grande Sortie, in its US premiere, along with a new series of photographs shot on location during the film’s production in Paris. In this body of work, the viewer is confronted with the dual perspectives of performer and audience and asked to consider the underlying tension inherent in this relationship. In her film La Grande Sortie (2015; 10 minutes), commissioned by the Paris Opera Ballet and debuted in September 2015 on its digital platform 3ème Scène, Prager tells the story of a prima ballerina, played by French Étoile (star) dancer Émilie Cozette. The film’s score, sampled from Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” was composed by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, with choreography created in collaboration with the Paris Opera Ballet, adapted from Creative Director Benjamin Millipied’s iconic piece, Amoveo. Shot in the renowned Ópera Bastille, the setting is opening night of Cozette’s return to the stage after an unexplained hiatus. The performance is fraught with the dancer’s stage fright and the indifferent and hostile reactions that escalate in the audience. Cozette’s fears manifest in a series of awkward dances, each accompanied by a boorish audience member—played by a mix of retired Paris Opera Ballet dancers and dance teachers—who are magically transported from their seat to the stage. Culminating in a fantastical vanishing act, La Grande Sortie embodies a universal anxiety around performance and success that many people struggle with on a daily basis. The photography series delved further into the dynamics between artist and viewer through the opposing lens of performer and audience. Given the vantage point of the performer looking out onto the audience, the viewer is forced to be the focus of self-conscious awareness, and must interpret the variety of expressions of the theatergoers that range from boredom and judgment to concentration and enjoyment. An audio recording of ambient theater crowd noise played on a loop further heightens this illusion. As a final unsettling device, mannequins are interspersed among the audience members, creating a surreal and somewhat terrifying juxtaposition between actor and prop. As Prager oscillates between these shifting points of view and duality of artifice  and reality, she breaks the “fourth wall,” an invisible barrier between the stage and audience, creating a liminal space that invites consideration of how we absorb notions of truth and fiction within visual culture.