Tree of Codes

source:theguardiancom
Tree of Codes opens with a magical world: a pitch-black stage with moving lights decked out on the costumes of unseen dancers.

It could be a starry constellation or fragments of a city as seen from an aeroplane at night, or a group of robots powered by a playful AI operating system.

Whatever it is, the opening piece of Tree of Codes enchants. The music by Jamie xx adds to the AI feel: the aural equivalent of tiny pinpoints of lights bouncing around the stage.

The next piece is also sweet and clever. Dancers line up in a row, giant blossoms obscuring their faces. Images, limbs and lights move out from inside the blossoms as they shift and open and close. Once again, the music, movement and light work together in an almost orchestral way. There are brain-bending hints of psychedelia.

Tree of Codes, which premiered in Australia on Wednesday night as part of the Melbourne festival, has collaboration and shape-shifting in its DNA.

The work is inspired by a short, strange book by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of Everything is Illuminated. In this book, Safran Foer took another text, Bruno Schulz’s 1934 short story collection The Street of Crocodiles, and literally – with scissors – cut words out of the book, changing the text on each page you flipped to. In doing this, a new story was created.

The Olivier award-winning choreographer Wayne McGregor has gone even more meta with this, and created something new and strange out of Safran Foer’s experiment, in collaboration with xx, visual artist Olafur Eliasson and the Paris Opera Ballet, who have loaned two dancers – Lucie Fenwick and Julien Meyzindi – to the Melbourne show, with a cast rounded out by Company Wayne McGregor.

Jamie xx composed the score using an algorithm that turns the text into music, often to great effect, although some of music towards the end has echoes of Philip Glass – all the staccato pips and pops of strings and synths. I preferred the more sweeping, epic score of the earlier part of the show.

The dancers, mostly wearing unobtrusive nude costumes, are flawless. The piece runs at 75 minutes without interval and without pause, and the stage is constantly alive with movement, refracted light and evolving sets.

McGregor has said his biggest influence is architecture, and there is something architectural about the shapes the dancers make – fluid then freezing into sublime patterns.

But after the first two promising opening sequences, the rest of the work fails to live up to its early daring.

Parts of it had a nightclub feel: this could be thanks to associations with Jamie xx’s work in his band the xx, and partly due to the alternately dark and sweeping lights.

And despite the dancers’ technical perfection (or perhaps because of it), they can seem too removed from the audience as they move behind or are distorted by Eliasson’s spectacular set.

There was something cold about the performance: it failed to emotionally have it.

The sold-out crowd gave it a standing ovation – but while I was also dazzled, this diamond-cut precise work lacked warmth and heart.

In troubled times art gives us solace, but I did not find that solace here.
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source:metalocuses
The contemporary ballet is inspired by Jonathan Safran Foer’s book of the same name. Safran Foer’s novel is literally carved from the text of Bruno Schulz’ Street of Crocodiles; words and phrases are cut from the pages to produce an entirely different story. The creative team worked together over two years to make a contemporary ballet that responds to this remarkable and beautiful artwork. The cast includes soloists and dancers from The Paris Opera Ballet and Sadler’s Wells Resident Company, Company Wayne McGregor.

The performance is based on, and named after, an artwork in the form of a book by Jonathan Safran Foer, published in 2010. Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson used a combination of mirrors and coloured screens to create different abstract scenes for Wayne McGregor’s Tree of Codes ballet.

“To me, books have always been about more than just print on paper. Tree of Codes addresses the book as a space that relates to our body. I look at the book as vibrant matter. It doesn’t explain ideas, but vibrates them. It embodies a space and a narrative – or various narratives – within it,” he continued. I tried to translate this feeling into the visual concept.” Olafur Eliasson

“The story and the poetry in [Jonathan Safran Foer’s] Tree of Codes are so magnetic, conjuring a whole range of visual, sonic and kinaesthetic im ages. I felt it would really be a phenomenal project to try and translate this book in some way through dance, imagery and sound – a new iteration.” Wayne McGregor

Tree of Codes, the much – anticipated collaboration by choreographer Wayne McGregor, artist Olafur Eliasson and musician Jamie xx, first was in Manchester and last week received its London premiere at Sadler’s Wells.

Next step wil be in the Danish city of Aarhus. This city and the 18 other muni cipalities in Central Denmark Region celebrate 2017 as European Capital of Culture. The performance of Tree of Codes on 27 – 29 April 2017.

McGregor’s dynamic style and ground – breaking collaborative approach across dance, film, music, visual art, technology and science has seen him create an exceptional body of work. A Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist, McGregor is renowned for his physically testing chor eography and highly innovative collaborations. He has created new works for Paris Opera Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, New York City Ballet, Australian Ballet, English National Ballet and Rambert, among others. He recently celebrated 10 ye ars as Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet.

Jamie xx is a composer, performer, music producer and remix artist, and is one of three members of The xx. The group formed in London in 2005. In 2015, following the release of several singles under his own name, he released In Colour, his first solo album, which was shortlisted as one of the 2015 Mercury Music Prize Albums of the Year and received nominations at the 2015 BRIT Awards and 2016 Grammy Awards. The xx recently released their third album I See You.
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source:ffwuolcombr
É aliando-se a pessoas na vanguarda de seus campos criativos que o coreógrafo Wayne McGregor tem transformado as noções comuns de dança clássica e alcançado um público mais amplo. Criou balés com a colaboração de gente de diversas áreas: Thom Yorke, Matthew Williamson, Kevin Spacey, Max Richter, Mike Newell. Em 2012, escalou Mark Ronson e Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow) para criar a trilha de Carbon Life, com performances ao vivo de músicos como Boy George e Alison Mosshart (The Kills) e figurino assinado por Gareth Pugh. Sua nova produção Tree of Codes, que estreou em 2015 no Festival Internacional de Manchester e desembarca em 06 de fevereiro na Ópera de Paris, não é diferente.

O conceito visual é do artista islandês-dinamarquês Olafur Eliasson; a música original é de Jamie XX, da banda The XX. Juntos, os três criaram um espetáculo imaginativo e cheio de plasticidade. A inspiração foi o livro de mesmo nome, do romancista americano Jonathan Safran Foer, que tomou emprestada a coleção de contos O Rio dos Crocodilos, de Bruno Schulz, e recortou a maior parte das palavras, criando assim uma nova obra literária. Cheio de buracos, Tree of Codes é tão sobre espaços e camadas quanto é sobre palavras e, no palco, torna-se uma belíssima brincadeira visual, muito mais formal do que narrativa.

“Com a reinvenção do próprio processo de leitura e sua trama pós-apocalíptica, o livro catapulta nossa imaginação a estados estimulantes”, explica Wayne. “Esse universo desorientador é um poderoso ponto de partida para nossa colaboração – onde constelações de luz, sombras, corpos, objetos e som dançam à beira da escuridão. Queremos conduzir o público em uma aventura sensorial”.

Usando texto, camadas e espaços nas páginas do livro de Foer, Jamie XX criou um algoritmo computadorizado para dar a estrutura rítmica da trilha. O resultado é música minimalista e cerebral com sobreposição de cordas, piano e batidas marcadas e pitadas de eletrônica. McGregor criou a coreografia página por página. Olafur Eliasson recriou as esculturais páginas do livro em um cenário refletivo e translúcido, com direito a enormes paredes giratórias, espelhos e efeitos de iluminação. “O espaço, a arquitetura e os corpos são interativos. Mais do que dançar em um espaço, podemos dançar um espaço”, pondera o artista. “A música de Jamie não pode viver sem movimento e espaço. A coreografia de Wayne não pode viver sem som e espaço. Minha arte não pode viver sem som e movimento. Claramente, criatividade pode mudar o mundo”.

Étoile do Balé da Ópera de Paris, a incrível Marie-Agnès Gillot (estrela da campanha de Verão 2015 da Céline ao lado de Joan Didion), é uma entre os 15 bailarinos do balé parisiense e da companhia de McGregor que dão vida à criação do diretor dançando em diversas configurações, seja em total sincronia com seus próprios reflexos ou vestindo pontos de luz pelo corpo, formando constelações no palco. “Tem sido inspirador desenvolver movimentos nesse contexto e amalgamar diferentes universos. Eles criaram verdadeiras obras de arte”, conta a francesa, que pela primeira vez deixou os muros da Ópera para apresentar o balé em Manchester e Nova York, em 2015, e segue em seguida para o Reino Unido e Dinamarca.

“Já se passou o tempo em que um gênio central inventa coisas totalmente sozinho. Fazer arte tem mais a ver com ‘nós’ do que com ‘eu’. Sempre foi assim, mas agora estamos celebrando mais essa ideia”, arremata McGregor, determinado a tornar o balé uma arte mais pop. “Todas as pessoas são experts em corpo. Creio que a dança deve ser uma forma de arte com a qual todos podemos nos conectar”.
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source:timeoutfr
Inspiré du roman de Jonathan Safran Foer, lui-même imaginé à partir de ‘The Street of Crocodiles’ de Bruno Schulz, ‘Tree of Codes’ scelle l’union éphémère et fantastique entre des danseurs du Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris et de la Company Wayne McGregor. Un ballet polysémique d’une heure quinze créé en juillet 2015 au Festival de Manchester et qui réunit les deux compagnies de danse, le plasticien superstar Olafur Eliasson et la jeune vedette de l’electronica britannique Jamie XX.

« L’espace, l’architecture et le corps sont interactifs. Plutôt que de danser dans l’espace, on peut danser un espace » raconte le scénographe. Organisé autour de duos, trios, quatuors ou ensembles, ‘Tree of Codes’ conjugue les jeux de miroirs et de couleurs à une écriture de la lumière précise et ingénieuse.