The 44th edition of the Paris Autumn Festival opened on September 9, but the event’s very best dance shows took to the stage only last week, and will run through to December 8. Here are our Top 5 to watch.1. Available LightThe postmodern choreographer, Lucinda Childs, looks back in time and reconstructs - together with architect Frank Gehry and composer John Adams - her “Available Light” (1983). Adam’s purified form of repetition channeled through post-minimalist compositions, along with Gehry’s architectural imagination through his constructivist, split-level set reflects Child’s minimalist transparency through pure geometrical shapes in this landmark, pioneering piece.John Adams / Lucinda Childs / Frank Gehry, “Available Light,” runs at Théâtre de la Ville, October 30 to November 7, 2015.2. Proscenium WorksTrisha Brown is known for her bare, unadulterated movements, which she constructs with the mathematical precision of an architect. “Proscenium Works” is a repertory evening comprised of four pieces, covering a period from 1976 to 2011. Two works that utilize inverted movement are: “Solos Olos,” first performed in 1977, and starts with a solo dance, building up to an ensemble of five dancers, and a complementary work, “Son of Gone Fishin’” (1981), with six dancers in constant motion intersecting in four opposing directions, with three moments of stillness forming a kind of altered state - what Brown calls the “apogee of complexity.”“Rogues” (2011) is a short duo with two dancers like two shadows, embarking on a game of hide and seek and, finally, “PRESENT TENSE” (1960), which although was designed in silence, found rhythmic resonance with John Cage’s “Sonatas and interludes” for piano. Seven dancers perform in unison, synthesizing an abstract dance with emotional narration.Trisha Brown Dance Company’s “Proscenium Works” at Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris, France, 4-13 Nov 2015.3. The Lay of the Love And Death of Cornet Christoph RilkePremiered this year at the Ruhrtriennale. Performed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Michael Pomero, with on-stage live flute by Chryssi Dimitriou, it draws from Rainer Maria Rilke’s romantic prose-poem of the same name (1912). With simple movements forming geometrical shapes in three dimensions, the performers inhabit the space between dance and text, song and poetry, love and death, exploring also issues of gender. De Keersmaeker, who approaches the text as a musical score to build her choreography, explains: “I wanted to explore the subtle nuances between breathing, speaking and singing, between the male and the female, the lyrical and the prosaic.”Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Rosas, “The Lay of the Love And Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke,” at T2G – Théâtre de Gennevilliers, 25-29 November 2015.4. GalaAfter “Disabled Theater” (2012) - performed by a group of actors suffering from learning disabilities - dance rebel Jérôme Bel’s latest work, “Gala” (2015), brings together twenty dancers, both amateur and professional. A patchwork with no particular dance qualities, it gives the opportunity to those who are usually excluded from being part of a spectacle to perform their true selves.Placing the audience in a position where they view body-movement as a universal language, “Gala” stages dance as a primitive form of expression diverse in styles, transforming technical and aesthetic prejudice inherent to traditional, homogenous criteria by which an audience typically judges dance performance. “Gala” is a celebration of the culture of dance as opposed to the art, emphasizing the right to express oneself through movement, whatever the physical abilities and fragilities. “Ultimately, it is a declaration of love for the performing arts,” Bel explains.Jérôme Bel’s“Gala” runs at Théâtre de la Ville 30 November – 2 December 2015.Excerpts of “Gala” will be performed at Musée d’Art Modern de la Ville de Paris on 10 December 2015, and at Palais de Tokyo from 10 December – 6 January 2016.5. UmweltBy employing the technique of montage, Maguy Marin’s “Umwelt” mixes professional and non-professional dancers in order to achieve an anthropomorphic landscape, with the amplified sound of three guitars in the backdrop. With sets comprised of doors and mirrors, serving both as portals and closures, the performers are constantly in conflict with their own image. Music, text, theatre and dance come together harmonically to form something between a dream and a nightmare which explores various ontological ideas, from Becket’s notion of exhaustion, to Benjamin’s concept of aura, and Spinoza’s interrogation: “What can a body do?”Maguy Marin,“Umwelt,” at Théâtre de la Ville, 4 - 8 December 2015.The Paris Autumn Festival runs at various venues across Paris, to 31 December 2015.
↧