Parades & Changes

source: www2mcachicago

…aesthetic rigor, intense emotions, it speaks to everyone, nothing is missing. – Le Monde

parades & changes, replays is a full scale re-creation of the masterpiece Parades & Changes, a major 1965 work of American postmodern dance legend Anna Halprin. The provocative Parades & Changes, Halprin’s first “collective creation” dynamited the codes dominating dance by exposing the process of performance: improvising around several “scores,” dancers dress and undress, inventing gestures and vanishing naked in rolls of skin colored paper. This “ceremony of trust,” as it was named by Halprin, seeks to utilize dance as a medium for being together: her prolific composition addresses the process, the place, the action, and the performer as both unique and corresponding entities.

Now, in collaboration with Halprin, French choreographer/performer Anne Collod seeks to reactivate the revolutionary piece with parades & changes, replays. With an exceptional team of contemporary American and European performers, parades & changes, replays examines the original message of collectiveness through a contemporary lens: in what way and to what extent does being together invented then and there, concern us now?

Anne Collod:
In dialogue with Anna Halprin, concept and artistic director Anne Collod brings parades & changes, replays to the MCA Stage. Since beginning their research in 2003, Collod and Halprin have collaborated in both performance and workshops, including the March 2006 inauguration of the Anna Halprin exhibition Anna Halprin à l’origine de la performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, France. A graduate in biology and in the development of natural spaces, she chose to train in contemporary dance and then started performing with Pierre Deloche, Philippe Decouflé, Stéphanie Aubin and La Camionetta. She co-founded the Quatuor Albrecht Knust (1993-2001), dedicated to recreating choreographic works from the early 20th century (by Doris Humphrey, Vaslav Nijinsky, Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton, among others).

Anna Halprin:
Anna Halprin is one of the most important and original thinkers working in performance, as she has been since before the 1960s. Her impact on dance, theatre, and ritual is immense, positive, and life-giving. – Richard Schechner

Working in a field obsessed with surfaces, she plumbs the motive for movement, seeking and finding ways to heal the world. – Village Voice

A pioneer of postmodern dance and performance, Anna Halprin has profoundly influenced and renewed dance, music and the visual arts for more than 60 years. Ever-willing to adapt her work to the present moment, her approach has led to a broad redefinition of dance. In 1945, while a choreographer and a soloist with Doris Humphrey, she left New York and settled on the west coast of the United States, thus starting one of the 20th century’s most radical and fertile artistic adventures, whose effects continue to inform many fields of art. Her summer workshops were the meeting-place for artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Simone Forti and Robert Morris, who in particular practised the famous “tasks”, a novel concept that introduced everyday gestures into the realm of dance and decisively influenced American post-modern dance. Anna Halprin has unstintingly explored and encouraged the creative process, especially in its collective form. She challenges ways of thinking as well as aesthetic and political norms, using scores, collective creation, improvisation and experimentation in natural surroundings. She has been involved in antiwar protest movements, and has undertaken long-term artistic work with AIDS and cancer patients. Halprin is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a lifetime achievement in choreography from the American Dance Festival, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She has created 150 full-length dance theater works, which are extensively documented in photographs, books and on film. At the age of 88, she is still dancing, teaching and producing new work with fervor.
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source: mcnbiografias

Bailarina, coreógrafa, profesora y directora estadounidense, nacida en Winnetka (Illinois) el 13 de julio de 1920, cuyo nombre original es Anna Shumann.

Estudió danza bajo la tutela de Margaret H’Doubler, y debutó en 1945 con la compañía de Charles Weidman y Doris Humphrey. En 1948 se estableció en California, y en 1955 abrió su propia escuela de danza en San Francisco, a la vez presentaba en Nueva York su coreografía The Prophetess. Como maestra, Halprin se caracterizó por no seguir ningún método ni técnica, simplemente proponía a sus alumnos la improvisación como principio básico para la creación. Así nació en 1959 el San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop, en el que colaboraron pintores, músicos, arquitectos, psicólogos y bailarines del momento, entre estos últimos Trisha Brown, Nancy Meehan, Meredith Monk e Yvonne Rainer. De los trabajos presentados por este grupo, muchos de ellos creados por los propios bailarines, destacan: Birds of America (1963), Esposizione (Berio, 1965), presentado en Venecia, Parades and Changes (1967), suspendido tras una intervención policial por aparecer desnudos los bailarines, Myths (1967), Ceremony of Us (1968), coreografiado junto a James Wood, Bo’u’lu Bo’ici Bo’ee (1971), New Time Shuffle (1971), representada en la prisión de Soledad, y Rites of Pasages (1973).
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source: newyorkliveartsorg

“The performers are engaging, wanting, being, and embracing an emotion; what they seem to be saying is that if human sexuality has a façade, then it’s a sensual desire that breaks it. – The Transport

“I’ve spent a lifetime of passion and devotion probing the nature of dance and asking why it so important as a life force.” – Anna Halprin

In 1965, postmodern dance legend Anna Halprin’s Parades & Changes shook the dance world by challenging conceptions of nudity, stillness, and the “ceremony of trust” (as Halprin named it) between performers and audience. Originally banned in the United States, Parades & Changes has not been staged here since 1967. Today, French choreographer Anne Collod, in dialogue with Anna Halprin and original composer Morton Subotnick, is restaging this seminal work, bringing a highly acclaimed group of American and European performers together to relive this masterpiece in its new form, parades & changes, replays.

Performa 09 (November 1-22, 2009, New York City) is the third edition of the internationally acclaimed biennial of new visual art performance presented by Performa, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. www.performa-arts.org”
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source: kaaitheaterbe

Avant de faire date à New York, des danseuses comme Trisha Brown ou Yvonne Rainer ont étudié en Californie chez Anna Halprin, âgé de 88 ans aujourd’hui. Dans les années 50, elle était en quête de nouvelles manières de chorégraphier et a posé les jalons d’innovations radicales qui, jusqu’à aujourd’hui, influencent des artistes : des « tâches » physiques comme point de départ de l’improvisation ; l’usage de mouvements quotidiens, banals ; l’élargissement de la scène à un environnement plus étendu ; la collaboration avec des artistes de disciplines différentes. Entretemps, et en partie à cause de son propre cancer, l’enseignement de Halprin a évolué vers des ateliers de danse thérapeutique et ses spectacles traitent de la nature, de la vieillesse, de la maladie et de la mort.

Parades and Changes (1965) est la première création « collective » et la plus commentée de Halprin. Le spectacle, interdit pendant vingt ans aux États-Unis à cause des scènes de nudité, s’appuie sur une structure ouverte, circonscrite par un réseau complexe de partitions. Les danseurs exécutent une série de parades, selon des partitions ou « scores », un jeu de construction dont il/elle choisit des instructions simples qu’il/elle exécute : la parade où l’on s’habille et se déshabille rituellement, la parade des dialogues, la parade d’un paysage sonore en papier. Parades and Changes dissèque jusqu’à la substantifique moelle le processus du spectacle, son environnement, l’action et l’interaction et le performeur lui-même.

Aujourd’hui, un groupe de performeurs aguerris – dont la Portugaise Vera Mantero, régulièrement à l’affiche du Kaaitheater avec ses propres œuvres – recrée pour la première fois l’ensemble des scénarios de cette « cérémonie de la confiance ». parades & changes, replays analyse la force de la création originale et mesure la pensée utopique de la collectivité à l’aune de la réalité actuelle..
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source: annahalprinorg

Anna Halprin’s diverse career has spanned the field of dance since the late 1930s, creating revolutionary directions for the art form and inspiring fellow choreographers to take modern dance to new dimensions. James Roose – Evans author of “Experimental Theatre” called Anna one of the most important theatre artists of the 20th century.

Anna founded the groundbreaking San Francisco Dancer’s Workshop in 1955 and the Tamalpa Institute in 1978 with her daughter Daria Halprin. Her students include Meredith Monk, Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Dohee Lee, Dana Iova-Koga, Shinich Iova-Koga, Isak Immanuel, G Hoffman Soto and others, some of who become involved in the progressive and experimental Judson Church Group. Over the years, her famous outdoor deck has been an explorative haven for numerous dancers and choreographers, including Merce Cunningham, Eiko and Koma, and Min Tanaka and Anne Collod who reconstructed Parades and Change; composers such as John Cage, Luciano Berio, Terry Riley, LeMonte Young, and Morton Subotnick; visual artists such as Robert Morris and Robert Whiteman; poets such as Richard Brautigan, James Broughton, and Michael McClure; and countless others.

Halprin is an early pioneer in the expressive arts healing movement. She has led countless collaborative dance programs with terminally ill patients, long committed to a belief in the connection between movement and the healing power of dance. Halprin has also investigated numerous social issues through dance and through theatrical innovations. For the past decade, she has led “Circle the Earth”, a contemporary community dance ritual to confront real-life issues facing participant communities around the world. Her “Planetary Dance: A Call for Peace” between peoples and the earth was staged in Berlin at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Potsdam Treaty to end World War II, and involved over 400 participants. In 1995, she was invited by Mikhail Gorbachev to present an invocation at the State of the World Forum in California.

Halprin has recognized new directions for dance and courageously followed those paths into unknown territories, ever-willing to adapt her work to the present moment, a philosophy that led to a broad redefinition of dance.

Halprin has created 150 full-length dance theater works, which are extensively documented in photographs, books and on film. She is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including a lifetime achievement in choreography from the American Dance Festival. She is the author of three books and has released numerous videotapes about her work. She has received numerous honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Dance Guild, and many others. In 1997, Anna received the Samuel H. Scripps Award for Lifetime Achievement in Modern Dance from the American Dance Festival. The Dance Heritage Coalition has named Anna Halprin one of “America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures.”

Halprin continues to make revolutionary work exploring the beauty of the aging body and its relationship to nature. Recent works include the award winning video Returning Home. In September 2004, she performed the confronting Intensive Care: Reflections on Death and Dying at the Festival D’Automne in Paris. In 2005 dance Anna developed a filmed performance called “Seniors Rocking”. In 2006 The Museum of Contemporary Art presented a major one-woman exhibition of her life’s achievements. In 2009, the film “Breath Made Visible”. a documentary of Anna’s life and work premiered and has since been showing in cities around the world. In 2009 Anna presented “Spirit of Place” a tribute to Lawrence Halprin for his gift to the city at Stern Grove in San Francisco. In May of 2011 she presented “Song of Songs” the first in a trilogy called “Remembering Lawrence” ,her husband and long time collaborator, at her Mountain Home Studio in Kentfield Ca

Anna continues to perform, travel and teach with fervor. Anna gets the most out of her life, living by her adage “Aging is like enlightenment at gunpoint”
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source: annahalprinorg

Statement

I have an enduring love for dance and its power to teach, inspire, heal and transform. I’ve spent a lifetime of passion and devotion probing the nature of dance and asking why it so important as a life force. I find great excitement in sharing my deep love of dance with ordinary and diverse people. Their unique creativity inspires me to make dances that grow out of our lives. I want to integrate life and art so that as our art expands our life deepens and as our life deepens our art expands.

As I sit on the bench overlooking my dance deck, a flood of questions arise. What next? Where am I going? What is my work now that I am 93? What do elders in other cultures do? Teach the young, heal the sick, care for the land, hold the rituals, speak with the ancestors, and maintain the family. I take all these actions, and call upon the spirits, wherever they may be, whatever that might mean, and however they may appear, to lead me further into this evolution of dance to which I have committed my life. I continue to believe in the shining potential set forth by all of this work, in its evolution from rebellion to expansion to community to healing and back again to the natural world.