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Iris van Herpen & Dutch National Ballet

Biomimicry
For the ‘Biomimicry’ film, Iris van Herpen and Dutch National Ballet explore the symbiotic relationship between the metamorphic force in which fashion and dance interlace. The film, directed by Ryan McDaniels, sees the mesmeric dancer JingJing Mao undulating into liquescent shapes and transcending into graceful figures that reflect her myriad of movements. The concept of the creation stems from the notion of biomimicry — the design and production of materials and systems that are modelled on biological processes. In line with Iris van Herpen’s continuous pursuit to materialise the invisible forces that structure the world, the film focusses on the bond between humanity and nature.

IRIS VAN HERPEN & DUTCH NATIONAL BALLET

Biomimikry
Für den Film “Biomimicry“ untersuchen Iris van Herpen und Dutch National Ballet die symbiotische Beziehung zwischen der metamorphen Kraft, in der sich Mode und Tanz verflechten. Der Film unter der Regie von Ryan McDaniels zeigt die hypnotisierende Tänzerin JingJing Mao, die sich in flüssige Formen verwandelt und in anmutige Figuren übergeht, die ihre unzähligen Bewegungen widerspiegeln. Das Konzept der Kreation basiert auf dem Begriff der Biomimikry – dem Entwurf und der Herstellung von Materialien und Systemen, die biologischen Prozessen nachempfunden sind. In Übereinstimmung mit Iris van Herpens kontinuierlichem Bestreben, die unsichtbaren Kräfte, die die Welt strukturieren, zu materialisieren, konzentriert sich der Film auf die Verbindung zwischen Mensch und Natur.

Ballet Preljocaj

AND THEN, ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE
And Then, One Thousand Years of Peace is a huge, ambitious monolith of a work. First created by Angelin Preljocaj for the Bolshoi Ballet in 2010, it takes inspiration from the vision of apocalypse conjured by St John in the biblical Book of Revelation.There are no horses galloping across the stage or horned beasts. But Preljocaj sets himself a barely less daunting task: choreographing the essential meaning of apocalypse, as a cataclysm so profound it lays bare the very essence and history of human nature.Preljocaj launches his work with a shattering opening sequence. Ten women drive through hard, slicing, geometric formations; lights flash, electro-percussive music reverberates; and the air becomes as thick and swarming as a tropical thunderstorm as the movement accelerates towards its convulsive climax.Out of this intensity emerges a Garden of Eden tranquillity, where men lope and flutter in delicately animalistic moves, and two women in white tunics play like lazy cherubs.

STRAVINSKY FIREBIRD BALLET

Michel Fokine
Nina Ananiashvili

L’Oiseau de feu (The Firebird) is a 1910 Igor Stravinsky ballet based on Russian folk tales about the brilliant magic bird  that is such a blessing. like a doom for your captor.
The music was first presented as ballet by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the first of his productions made with music specially composed for the company. Ballet has historical significance because it was the piece that gave Stravinsky the first great success, and because it was the beginning of a collaboration between Diaghilev and Stravinsky that Petrushka and Le Sacre du Printemps would also result.

METAMORPHOSIS TITIAN 2012

A multi-faceted experience celebrating British creativity across the arts, ‘Metamorphosis: Titian 2012’ brings together a group of specially commissioned works responding to three of Titian’s paintings — ‘Diana and Actaeon’, ‘The Death of Actaeon’ and the recently acquired ‘Diana and Callisto’ — which depict stories from Ovid’s epic poem ‘Metamorphoses’. Featuring new work by contemporary artists Chris Ofili, Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger, including sets and costumes for three new ballets at the Royal Opera House. Leading poets including Seamus Heaney, Wendy Cope, and Patience Agbabi have also responded to Ovid’s text and Titian’s paintings.

Sharon Eyal

Soul chain
“La pièce qui semble inspirée d’un numéro de music-hall ou de cabaret qu’elle pervertit aussitôt ne cherche pas l’élégance, ne tire pas vers la séduction aguicheuse et facile. Le geste est moins poli. Il déjoue les attentes et se moque des apparences. Le groupe transpire en permanence d’un irrépressible désir de résistance et de transgression, d’autant d’états, de sentiments intérieurs que Sharon Eyel et ses danseurs cherchent à extraire, à faire s’extirper et se libérer des corps qui exultent dans l’urgence.” Christophe Candoni
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Salt Womb
“Laut Programm bewegt sich die Ballett-Compagnie in „Salt Womb“ als Ganzes wie eine Maschine. Und wirklich: im 1. Bild dieses Stückes mit dem enigmatischen Titel stehen die Tänzer und Tänzerinnen des Basler Balletts in einem großen Halbkreis, der zu Ende gedacht wie ein Zylinder wirkt, in dessen Mitte sich ein riesiger Kolben auf und ab bewegt. Die Körper der Tänzer:innen, die sich breitbeinig stehend immer wieder auf und ab bewegen, wirken wie gefangen in einem nicht enden wollenden Kraftakt: die minutenlange, fast stoische Wiederholung einer einzigen Bewegung zu hämmernden Technobeats hat tatsächlich etwas Inhumanes… Nach und nach formieren sie sich zu einer pulsierenden Gruppe in Dauerbewegung, zu einem unheimlich wirkenden Superorganismus, aus dem sich einzelne Tänzer:innen in kurzen Solopassagen herauslösen, aber immer wieder vom Sog des Gruppenpulses aufgesogen werden.” Renate Killmann

Pam Tanowitz

“Gustave Le Gray No. 1”
In 2019, Ballet Across America was put together with the inspiration of women’s leadership in ballet and dance. To mark the celebration, the Center commissioned choreographer Pam Tanowitz to create a world premiere work for the week’s two participating companies, Dance Theatre of Harlem and Miami City Ballet; both are companies led by visionary women – Virginia Johnson at DTH and Lourdes Lopez in Miami.
Tanowitz set the work on two dancers from each company, with a pianist on stage playing a solo work by the composer Caroline Shaw. The piece had its world premiere during Ballet Across America on May 31, 2019. This video captures the premiere performance.
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Pianist: Sylvia Jung
Dancers: Renan Cerdeiro, Lauren Fadeley, Anthony Santos and Stephanie Rae Williams

OSKAR SCHLEMMER

أوسكار شليمر
奥斯卡·施莱默
אוסקר שלמר
オスカー·シュレンマー
오스카 슐 렘머
Оскар Шлеммер
Triadic Ballet
1-Margarete Hastings, Franz Schömbs, Georg Verden
1970
2-Super 16mm colour film, directed by Helmut Ammann.
Oskar Schlemmer saw the human body as a new artistic medium. He saw ballet and pantomimes as being free from the historical baggage of theater and opera and, therefore, capable of presenting his ideas of choreographed geometry, the man as a dancer, transformed by his costumes, moving in space. He saw the puppet and puppet movement as superior to that of the human, as this emphasized that the average of all art is artificial. This device could be expressed through stylized movements and the abstraction of the human body. Schlemmer saw the modern world being guided by two main currents, the mechanized (man as a machine and body as a mechanism) and the primordial impulse (the depths of creative urgency). He claimed that choreographed geometry offered a synthesis; the Dionysian and emotional origins of dance become rigid and Apollonian in its final form.
3-Bayerisches Junior Ballet München

THOMAS LEBRUN

Lied ballet

“Lied, a word of German origin and gender neutral, which represents classical music sung about strophic poem, and Ballet. Lieder’s romantic themes are transformed into movement, creating choreographic writing that begins with mime and ends with abstraction. In the end, everything comes together in a great chorus challenging genres and categories, fundamentally expressing the artist’s confidence in the dancing body”. Marcia Peltier

COMPAGNIE MARIE CHOUINARD

Мари Шуинар
BODY REMIX GOLDBERG VARIATIONS
Durante los primeros pasos de esta creación, los bailarines y yo trabajamos sobre las Goldberg Variations de Bach, tal y como las interpretó Glenn Gould en 1981, así como la voz del pianista, con sus cadencias orales durante una entrevista de radio dedicada a esta particular interpretación.
Emprendí el trabajo con una mezcla de los cuerpos de los bailarines, a través del uso de varios elementos de apoyo: muletas, picos, arneses, etc. Una barra de ballet fue trasformada en un material musical. Pedí también al compositor Louis Dufort que usara un “apoyo”, concretamente una interpretación de Gould y su voz, y a proponer variaciones sobre las Variations. Diez de las treinta variaciones, así como las dos Arias, fueron remezcladas o incluso recompuestas (1, 2, 4, 11, 15, 16, 21, 23, 25 and 29). Otras tres variaciones (5, 6 y 8) se ofrecerán en su versión original.

PEEPING TOM

32 rue vandenbranden
The script of physical actions is inspired by the Japanese film A ballad de Naraiama (1983), by Shohei Imamura, the one with tearing images, like that of the son carrying his mother on his back, embraced by the wind, climbing the mountain to put her on the summit until death, as the local tradition says that every septuagenarian must have an equal destiny. In the same village in the late 19th century, parents used to sell babies to survive. These material and spiritual miseries do not bring literals to the stage. Rather, they are essentials that make the show a fabulous visual poem written in and with the body and the scenic space. The song is also celebrated at the height, with moments such as Stravinski’s The Bird of Fire suite, and the song Fline on you crazy diamond, by the band Pink Floyd.

LOIE FULLER

Danse Serpentine

La Serpentine è un’evoluzione della gonna dance, una forma di danza burlesque arrivata da poco negli Stati Uniti dall’Inghilterra. La danza della gonna era di per sé una reazione contro le forme “accademiche” di balletto, incorporando versioni addomesticate di danze popolari e popolari come il can-can. La nuova danza è stata originata da Loïe Fuller, che ha fornito diversi resoconti di come l’ha sviluppata. Secondo il suo racconto, che è ampiamente riportato, non avendo mai ballato professionalmente prima, ha scoperto accidentalmente gli effetti della luce del palcoscenico proiettata da diverse angolazioni sul tessuto di garza di un costume che aveva frettolosamente assemblato per la sua performance nella commedia Quack MD, e spontaneamente ha sviluppato la nuova forma in risposta alla reazione entusiasta del pubblico nel vedere il modo in cui la sua gonna appariva alle luci. Durante il ballo ha tenuto la sua lunga gonna tra le mani e l’ha agitata, rivelando la sua forma all’interno. Nelle parole dello storico della danza Jack Anderson, “Il costume per la sua Serpentine Dance consisteva in centinaia di metri di seta cinese che lei lasciava fluttuare intorno a lei mentre gli effetti di luce suggerivano che stesse prendendo fuoco e assumendo forme che ricordavano fiori, nuvole, uccelli ., e farfalle. “

HeeWon Lee

INFINITY III
Infinity III est une invitation à un voyage mental perturbant créé à partir d’images de synthèses. Dans la continuité de son travail autour des cycles naturels (avec la série d’installations « Infinity »), HeeWon Lee nous projette au coeur de nuées d’oiseaux lumineuses et évanescentes… En évoluant dans ce ballet animal, la notion de temporalité et d’espace s’effacent.

Ricardo Barreto and Paula Perissinotto

CYBERDANCE

This net art by Ricardo Barreto and Paula Perissinotto offers us a split, fragmented, impossible dance, in a divided, multiplied space. Cyberdance consists of the combination and recombination of elements that represent the different parts of the human body. A mannequin was photographed as a model in different positions. These images were later converted to the animated form, allowing users to combine them in different ways, as well as link them to different dance terms, to the names of postures and positions of classical ballet. On a page divided into frames containing fragments of the mannequin, we can see his head, legs, torso and arms rotating, while allowing us to subdivide each frame by clicking on it, each frame composing an aberrant doll whose fragments dance, silently, independent one from the other. There is no music, no rhythm, no space. It is a digital dance, a dance in which time and space have become a platform.

Michael Clark

マイケル·クラーク·カンパニー
Come, been and gone

Ballet meets punk, and neither comes out the same. In its highly anticipated first visit to Chicago, the electrifying Michael Clark Company provocatively pays homage to the decadence and unbridled fun of 1970s club culture. British dance iconoclast Michael Clark sets his choreography in come, been and gone to the music of fellow rebel David Bowie, and collaborates with video artist and dance film pioneer Charles Atlas. Clark’s dancers don Bowie-style leather jackets and echo his unique body language, building up to a detonation of jumps and kicks. “Come, been and gone” pulls off a remarkable feat—matching the cool, alien beauty of the singular singer, who makes a cameo appearance here thanks to 1977 film footage of his track “Heroes.”

Sanja Marusic

Moonflight
The fashion short was inspired by the symbolic abstract forms and geometric shapes of the avant- gardist Triadic ballet. Sanja Marusic simplied bodily shapes by substituting them with cylinders and circles, she made her own costumes and then abstracted the human form even further by incorporating stylised dance movements by filming herself dancing. The result is a surrealist symbiosis of the human body moving through time and space.

Jesper Just

CORPORÉALITÉS
Corporealités is a large-scale work exploring the autonomy of ballet through the immersive elements of sculpture and video. At the heart of a piece is Just’s film, displayed across a series of LED-panels strewn about the space, where close up shots of dancers from the American Ballet Theatre show their bodies affixed to electrotherapy patches. As the muscles displayed on the panels contract, notes of Fauré’s Op. 50 seem to play in tandem, providing an ominously invisible link between the film and physical space.

Alexander Ekman

Play
Invited to the Palais Garnier for the first time, the choreographer Alexander Ekman lived a dream: working with the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet! In order to plunge them into the universe of his piece, he invited them to play. After all, isn’t dance also entertainment, amusement, practice, exercise and manipulation? Here, play is everything and everywhere. From the props to the sets. For, as the choreographer repeats, play makes us happy; one should never stop being a child. In the Massenet and Blanchine studios, photographer Anne Deniau focusses on certain emblematic props from this production, whilst playwright Nicolas Doutey reflects upon these new visual compositions.

Douglas Lee

Naiad
“Douglas Lee’s Naiad takes the audience on a fascinating journey to the depths of the ocean. Fragments of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem The Kraken, a mysterious Naiad and a swarm of undulating dancers evoke the depths of an element which has long captivated the human imagination.” Stuttgart Ballet

THE MOST INCREDIBLE THING

NYC Ballet

Was auf den ersten Blick verspielt und poetisch erscheint, hat einen ernsten Hintergrund: Inspiriert vom Deutsch-Französischen Krieg von 1870 schildert Andersen in dem Märchen den Kampf zwischen Kultur und Aggressoren so eindringlich, dass dieses den Dänen im Zweiten Weltkrieg als Widerstandslektüre diente. Und auch heute noch ist diese Parabel aktuell: „Die ganze Geschichte handelt davon, wie die Kunst über Tyrannei oder Zerstörung triumphiert“, so Marcel Dzama. „Ich kannte sie vorher nicht und las sie genau in den Tagen, als Palmyra von der ISIS zerstört wurde. Dabei dachte ich ständig: „Oh, das passt genau in die Zeit.“

Haegue Yang

Boxing Ballet
Yang’s Boxing Ballet turns one half of the gallery into a reworking of Oskar Schlemmer’s 1922 costumed dance work Triadisches Ballett, with replicas of five of the Bauhaus teacher’s bulbous and exaggerated figures, from a female figure made of hoops to a circle that looks like a flattened stickman. Here, Schlemmer’s figures are reimagined as golden bell-covered shapes on wheels or wire frames hanging by a wire from the ceiling. As they all come with handlebars, it seems we are meant to provide the choreography, stiffly pushing, say, a giant roosterlike creature around like an awkward shopping trolley.

Lera Auerbach

Post Silentium
Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra
Jens Goerg Bachmann

24 Preludes for Piano, Op. 41
Performed by Hyeri Choi

Ludwig’s Nightmare
Performed by Yael Weiss

Born in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on the border of Siberia, Russian-American composer,
concert pianist, poet and visual artist Lera Auerbach has become one of today’s most sought
after and exciting creative voices. She has published more than 100 works for orchestra, opera
and ballet, as well as choral and chamber music.

Thierry Mugler

Anatomique Computer
Thierry Mugler, geboren in 1948 in Straatsburg, is een Franse modeontwerper. In zijn jonge jaren was hij balletdanser, maar daarnaast studeerde hij design en maakte hij kleding voor vrienden. Als 20’er verhuist Thierry Mugler naar Parijs waar hij ervaring opdoet als etaleur en stylist in diverse modehuizen. Mugler presenteert zijn eerste collectie in 1973 en 2 jaar later begint hij zijn eigen label.

MICHAEL CLARK COMPANY

マイケル·クラーク·カンパニー
Tate Project Part I ]

The choreography rehearsed and performed in 2010 paired the rigour of classical steps with contemporary movement, a juxtaposition that paralleled Clark’s training as a ballet dancer at the Royal Ballet, and his later anti-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian choreographic experiments. Balletic poses, jumps and steps were isolated from traditional narrative sequences and made strange through repetition. The graceful leaps and turns of the trained dancers seemed awkward and uneven, just as they were often out of sync and oriented in different directions. This choreography paralleled the performance space, which was demarcated by geometric and striped floor mats designed by Charles Atlas, which resembled the large windows at the back of the hall and the black beams that extend vertically from floor to ceiling.

IANNIS XENAKIS

Янис Ксенакис
ヤニス·クセナキス
ANTIKHTHON

In 1971, Iannis Xenakis composed a work called Antikhthon. Commissioned by Balanchine for the New York City Ballet, this overwhelming composition refers to a hypothetical planet, proposed in the 5th century BC. by the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus. “Antichthon” is the name that the Greeks gave to a hypothetical celestial object, the Counter-Earth, located between the Earth and the center of the Universe to prevent man from looking directly at Zeus, who had his throne there.

George Balanchine

The Nutcracker
Waltz of the Flowers
New York City Ballet

“You don’t think of choreographers as mathematicians — yet group dances involve arithmetic and geometry. Nobody mastered those aspects of the art more brilliantly than George Balanchine.
See what he does with the “Waltz of the Flowers” in “The Nutcracker,” as in this short detail:As it begins, 14 women, arrayed in four rows, face front. The two demi-soloists start: They dance from our right to left, with two turning jumps at the end of the phrase. Then a row of four women behind them take up the same phrase — but now the first two women repeat the phrase in the opposite direction, from left to right.It’s like seeing screens sliding in opposite directions. Then the next row takes it up; then the next; suspense and excitement build. It’s an accumulating canon — not spread out across the stage but at close quarters”. Alastair Macaulay

Hans van Manen and Toer van Schayk

Dutch National Ballet

Seventh symphony / choreography, Toer van Schayk ; music, Ludwig van Beethoven ; produced by Anh Muller ; directed by Jellie Dehher (1989) — Grosse Fuge / choreography, Hans van Mannen ; music, Ludwig van Beethoven ; produced and directed by Thomas Grimm (1984) — Piano variations / choreography, Hans van Manen ; Sarcasms music by Serge Prokofiev ; Trois Gnossiennes music by Erin Satie ; Pose music by Claude Debussy ; directed by Thomas Grimm (1983).

video

Geoffrey Drake-Brockman

The Coppelia Project
via highlike submit

The Coppelia Project is inspired by the story about a clockwork girl from the 1870 ballet ‘Coppelia’ by Saint-Léon, Nuitter, and Delibes, based on a story by Hoffmann. It also draws the commonplace metaphor of clockwork music boxes, with the little ballerinas that pop up and rotate in front of a mirror when you open the lid. Coppelia is part of the traditional classical ballet repertoire and is performed frequently by ballet companies around the world. It belongs to a small group of enduring stories in Western Culture that directly address the limits of humanity when confronted by our creations. The Coppelia story is unusual in approaching this theme through love and attraction, rather than horror and revulsion, as emphasised by Mary Shelly in ‘Frankenstein’. The Coppelia story deals with some of the issues at the edge of humanity; machines interchangeable with persons, love and attraction confused at this boundary.

Mourad Merzouki

Répertoire#1
A la manière d’un chef d’orchestre, Mourad Merzouki a adapté Têtes d’Affiche pour le mêler à l’intensité de Douar, la force intérieure de In The Middle et l’énergie de Urban Ballet. Dans cette pièce à la frontière des styles, les signatures sont exaltées, chaque esthétique se trouve sublimée. En tricotant les passages les plus forts des pièces de ses confrères avec les siennes, le directeur du Centre chorégraphique national de Créteil contribue à créer la mémoire vive du hip-hop.

Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker

アンヌ·テレサ·ドゥ·ケースマイケル
АННЫ ТЕРЕЗЫ ДЕ КЕЕРСМАКЕР
Drumming Live

In 1998, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker created “Drumming” for the dancers of her company “Rosas”. This intense and jubilant piece is set to haunting music by Steve Reich, a pioneer of minimalist music. On stage, nine dancers perform an exhausting choreography with swirling rhythms that reveal a deep and vital energy. Today, almost twenty years later, it is the turn of the Paris Opera Ballet’s dancers to adopt it. For the occasion, the choreographer talks to us about this extreme piece.

OSKAR SCHLEMMER

أوسكار شليمر
奥斯卡·施莱默
אוסקר שלמר
オスカー·シュレンマー
오스카 슐 렘머
Оскар Шлеммер
TRIADIC BALLET
Video of the reconstruction of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet by Margarete Hastings in 1970. This version was advised by Ludwig Grote and Xanthi Schawinsky (students of Schlemmer at the Bauhaus) and Tut Schlemmer, Oskar Schlemmer’s widow. The music is by Erich Ferstl. It is divided into three sections: yellow, pink and black. This version is a reconstruction based on the documentation on the Triadic Ballet.

Sasha Waltz

Orfeo

The renowned choreographer Sasha Waltz has been very successfully involved in crossovers between opera and ballet in recent years. She will come to the Dutch National Opera for the first time with her own company to direct Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo.

Isabelle Andriessen

Dissonant Equilibrium
Isabelle Andriessen is a visual artist born in the Netherlands (1986). She studied at the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (NL), where she received her BFA in 2013. Currently she is an MFA candidate at Malmö Art Academy (SE). She lives and works in Amsterdam and Malmö. She is a recipient of the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Fellowship. Her work consists sculpture, installation and performance and has been presented in places like Optical Pavilion, Moscow, Unfair, Amsterdam and Mediamatic Amsterdam. Her work has been presented in online art magazines like Metropolis M and Mister Motley. In July 2014 her work has been mentioned in VOGUE Russia. Recently she has been collaborating with the Dutch National Ballet. Her recent work concern the sensory experience examined through light installations and performances.

Cod.Act

振り子の合唱団
CYCLOID-E

This piece, which comprises a series of tubular pieces arranged horizontally and activated by a motor, generates a particular sound through its movement, which is unexpectedly harmonic. The artists have taken their interest in the mechanisms that generate wave motions as a starting point to create this sculpture: five metal tubes joined together feature sound sources and sensors that allow them to emit different sounds based on their rotations.
The sculpture runs through a series of rhythmic movements, like a dance, creating, in the words of the artists themselves, “a unique kinetic and polyphonic work, in the likeness of the “Cosmic Ballet” to which the physicist Johannes Kepler refers to in his “Music of the Spheres” in 1619.” This work is part of the reflection on the possible interactions between sound and movement developed by the artists since 1999, using electronic devices and inspired by the aesthetics of industrial machinery.

LEON THEREMIN

ליאון טרמין
레온 테레민
Лев Термен
théremin

he invented an electronic device known as the theremin, which was a unique musical instrument that could be played without physical contact. Rather than plucking strings or pressing keys, the musician need only move their hands around antennas located on the device.The device became a popular curiosity and he proceeded to tour Europe in order to demonstrate it. In 1928, he moved to New York City in the United States, where he played a theremin in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1928. In 1929, he was granted a patent for the device by the United States. He decided to give RCA the rights to manufacture and sell the theremin for a lump sum payment and a percentage of the sales.In the early 1930s, Theremin purchased a laboratory in New York that he used for experimenting with electronic musical instruments. One of the products of his lab was the Rhythmicon, which was purchased by Henry Cowell, a composer. In 1930, a group of ten “thereminists” performed at Carnegie Hall.Theremin also began researching a method to cause lights and sound to respond to the movement of dancers. His system became popular with ballet and dance clubs throughout the country.

MARIN MAGUY

Маги Марин
マギー・マラン
May B
May B, chorégraphié par Maguy Marin en 1981, n’en finit pas d’être. Plus de cinq cents représentations à ce jour. La pièce, étrange ballet-théâtre d’humains aux masques plâtreux fait le tour du monde depuis près de trente ans. Sans doute un fond de commerce pour la compagnie. Mais au-delà, cette pièce inspirée par l’oeuvre de Samuel Beckett est devenue un morceau culte d’anthologie de la danse contemporaine. May B est à nouveau en tournée à l’occasion du centenaire de la naissance de l’écrivain.“Ce travail sur l’œuvre de Samuel Beckett, dont la gestuelle et l’atmosphère théâtrale sont en contradiction avec la performance physique et esthétique du danseur, a été pour nous la base d’un déchiffrage secret de nos gestes les plus intimes, les plus cachés, les plus ignorés. Arriver à déceler ces gestes minuscules ou grandioses, de multitudes de vies à peine perceptibles, banales, où l’attente et l’immobilité “pas tout à fait” immobile laissent un vide, un rien immense, une plage de silences pleins d’hésitations. Quand les personnages de Beckett n’aspirent qu’à l’immobilité, ils ne peuvent s’empêcher de bouger, peu ou beaucoup, mais ils bougent. Dans ce travail, à priori théâtral, l’intérêt pour nous a été de développer non pas le mot ou la parole, mais le geste dans sa forme éclatée, cherchant ainsi le point de rencontre entre, d’une part la gestuelle rétrécie théâtrale et, d’autre part, la danse et le langage chorégraphique” explique Maguy Marin.

JIRI KYLIAN – STEVE REICH

イリ·キリアン – スティーヴ·ライヒ
יירי קיליאן – סטיב רייך
Иржи Килиана – Стив Райх
Falling Angels
Falling Angels was created in 1989 as one Kylián’s Black and White Ballets. The Black and White ballets consisted of six pieces, with Falling Angel being dance 6. It is choreographed to Steve Reich’s Drumming (Part One) created in 1971, which was based on ceremonial ritual music from Ghana (West Africa). Throughout Fallen Angels there is the use of mesmeric choral movement and repeated phrases. Falling Angels is for 8 women and depicts female dancers in their aim to achieve perfection but succumb in various stages to the human female psyche and female events such as ambition, seduction, pregnancy, birth, death, motherhood and self-awareness. Kylián was influenced by surrealism and minimalism during the creation of this work and the ‘black and white ballets’. In this ballet we see the combination of classical lines and sharp percussive movements that give unpredictability to the piece as a whole