sofia dance week 09 » en_program

ASPHALTE

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:56:55 +0000

Asphalte scoops big, raw and real chunks of street life and dumps them right on stage. Five hip hop dancers take on from there to replicate the tales and legends of the city – against a giant block of light, in a comics-like sequence, they project, turn upside-down and shake all popular urban myths, cliches and stereotypes. The only weapons they have are humor, irony, cynicism, poetry and grace. In a precise-to-the-millimeter choreography, the young and restless street kids dance their eternal stories of love, war, revolutions, glory, passion, beauty…

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Pierre Rigal started dancing at 29 quite by chance. Before that he was a promising international athelete in 400-meter hurdles, but he actually studied mathematics and economics in Barcelona and cinema in Toulouse. Upon graduation he started directing documentaries and music videos, got injured in the meantime and had to put a stop to his sports career. For no apparent reason he chose contemporary dance as a substitute for sports. His true inspiration came from Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus and Bosnian director Mladen Materic who were combining theater, dance and technology in their work. 2002 saw Rigal already as professional dancer in the company of Swiss choreographer Gilles Jobin. Two years later in Toulouse he founded his own Compagnie Dernière Minute to further explore the intersection between dance and high technology.
His spectacles are typically staged on the border of dance, theater, circus, installation and visual art, but he usually sticks to the definition of “theater dance”. Asphalte is a fine example of Rigal’s approach where all elements – light, sound, sets – move together with the dancers to create a stunning choreographic composition.

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Asphalte
dance: Mathieu Hernandez, Hervé Kanda, Yoann Nirennold, Camille Regneault, Julien Saint-Maximin
conception, choreography, lights: Pierre Rigal
artistc assistant, costumes: Mélanie Chartreux
set builder, lights: Frédéric Stoll
music : Julien Lepreux
co-production: Compagnie Dernière Minute, Suresnes Cités danse 2009 and TGP – CDN de Saint-Denis
created: 2009

Compagnie Dernière Minute is supported by Fondation BNP Paribas for its project development.

NUDO.NUDA

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:56:46 +0000

nudo.nuda is the second performance from the trilogy The Physics of the Soul: Francesca Stern Woodman – a project which tells one story in several artistic languages – dance, music, light, photography. The key to the story is called Francesca Stern Woodman – an American photographer whose haunting black-and-white images revolutionized the understanding of photography in the 70’s. Woodman used mainly herself and her naked body as model. She was 22 when she committed suicide. Alessandra Cristiani’s starting point is the photographic material of Woodman – a powerful narration of the inner world of women in their most delicate transition – from puberty to early adulthood. All alone on stage with her naked body, Cristiani probes the urgency of a primary identity – the body. She follows all its dark desires, the ambiguity, the extravagance of its visions, the need to open, reveal, and just be Cristiani summons the deepest roots of life, the understanding of the authentic “me”, hidden from the eyes of the others. “You cannot see me from where I look at myself”. The audience is made witness to an intense inner search in progress, not just spectator of a choreography.

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Actress Alessandra Cristiani entered the world of dance after a personal exploration of the physical training of actors. She studied contemporary dance, mime techniques, breathing and posture, Qi gong, ideokinesis and Butoh dance (with the phenomenal Masaki Iwana). The latter two were a powerful inspiration – Cristiani wrote an experimental thesis on the subject, created (together with Lios dance company) the international Butoh performance Trasform’azioni, and her first solo was in the field of White Butoh – inspired by Iwana’s dance research Non si può rubare la luna. She has danced in Italy, Bosnia, France and the USA with Silvia Rampello’s troupe Habille d’eau. “Originality” and “creative approach” are the most common award categories in her dossier. Her last shows are the trilogy Io è un otro, nudo.nuda, Miele from the project The Physics of the Soul – Francesca Stern Woodman.

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nudo.nuda
II studio
tribute to Francesca Stern Woodman

original music: Claudio Moneta
light: Gianni Staropoli
stage production: Barbara Bessi
photographic exhibition: Lina Fusaro
choreography and dance: Alessandra Cristiani
production: ZTL-pro/Teatro Furio Camillo
created: 2008

ÉRECTION

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:56:32 +0000

Érection. A man, lying on the stage, struggles to stand up on his feet in the course of 45 long, loaded with suspense minutes. The story of human evolution, directed by Aurélien Bory and danced by Pierre Rigal – two of the great conceptual artists in contemporary French dance. Between an Odyssey, a philosophical tale and science fiction, Érection follows the long journey from the animal-man to the social man through all its twists and turns, trials and errors. On stage, together with Rigal, dance the light (with a surprising and radical use of saturated color), and sound- and video effects produced in real time.

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Aurélien Bory is founder, artistic director and choreographer of the phenomenal CIE 111 dance company (see Sofia Dance Week 2008) and a pioneering figure in contemporary French circus. After studying physics, architectural acoustics, and cinema, he completed his training with Mladen Materic of Théâtre Tattoo, where he studied acting and juggling. When Bory gathered the troupe of CIE 111 he had one project in his head (Trilogy of Space, inspired by basic geometry concepts) and a master plan to mix contemporary art, cinema, music, painting and technology in a unique and never-tried-before manner until the boundaries between them are completely lost. And that is the artistic language of CIE 111 – the gestures of modern urban life, kinethics, optical illusions, juggling, acrobatics, dance, theater, weird scenography, all sprinkled with a fine sense of humor.

Pierre Rigal and Aurélien Bory were friends long before they became colleagues. Their collaboration started when Bory invited Rigal to produce a video installation for one of his shows (Plan B). It was much later that Rigal turned to contemporary dance (after receiving degrees in mathematics, economics and cinema, and competing as an international 400-meters hurdles runner) and they naturally got involved in each other’s projects. Bory and Rigal created Érection in 2003 in a small studio in the National Theater of Toulouse and predicted it would be a total success for an audience of “two or three geeks interested in minimalism”. Six years later they have performed it 120 times all over the planet; no signs of interest fading away.

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Érection
conception, choreography, interpretation, video creation: Pierre Rigal
conception, art production: Aurélien Bory
sound creation, music : Sylvain Chauveau, Joan Cambon, ARCA
costume design: Sylvie Marcucci
stage manager and sound engineer: George Dyson
video engineer Nihil Bordures
created: 2003
co-production: Compagnie Dernière Minute / TNT – Théâtre National de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées
with the support of: DRAC Midi-Pyrénées, the Conseil Régional Midi-Pyrénées, the Conseil Général de la Haute-Garonne, la ville de Toulouse and the CDC Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées

Compagnie Dernière Minute is supported by Fondation BNP Paribas for its project development.

REVERB/DUCTUS

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:56:19 +0000

Reverb (The Body in Crisis). In this project the Wound-Body is in search of its images through the dance. The Wound-Body is the body of crisis. It is the state where people discover the world of flesh and lose their bounds by sinking into that world – resounding bodies which reverberate upon each other. They infect each other with movement which creates an endless external acoustics of the body. Re-echoing massive bodies – bodies without a beginning and without an end, bodies from which the man has been chased away.

Ductus (A Guide to Riding Dead Horses) presents the comprehended notion of the human body in a process of disintegration to its components, to particular functions, in search of new associations, creating new havens of desire.
Although being mechanical in their nature the convergences of the two restless bodies are well desired – as a result they form together a new organism, an odd physical complex – no longer the body of a man, nor the body of a horse. This is a process which has started in a state of extreme devotion, a dehumanizing obsession which gradually replaces reality with an unnatural partnership.
Ductus is the first part of a long-term project devoted exclusively to solo performances. Part two is already in progress – it investigates the consequences of the meeting between St. Sebastian and Japanese writer Yukio Mishima in the body of the young dancer of Arabesque Ballet Valeri Milenkov.

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Kinesthetic Project is a group of young dance professionals and creative partners who already have on record a couple of internationally acclaimed performances and one Sofia Dance Week. They are choreographers Violeta Vitanova and Stanislav Genadiev, visual artist Miroslav Yordanov, set designer Ognyana Serafimova – Peneva and cultural studies graduate Diana Papazova. Kinesthetic Project was founed in 2006. Vitanova and Genadiev were just back from Switzerland and the troupe of Linga dance company. For their first independent project – the multimedia performance Imago – they gathered the above-mentioned crew and overnight turned into “the big hopes of Bulgarian contemporary dance”. After Sofia Dance Week 2008, where they presented Imago and Void, they have appeared at Masdanza (Spain), Tanec Praha (Czech Republic) and Balkan Dance Platform (Serbia). Their plans for the future include visual art projects as well as dance.

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Reverb
(The Body in Crisis)
idea: Miroslav Yordanov
choreographers: Violeta Vitanova, Stanislav Genadiev
music: Emiliyan Gatsov-Elbi
costume Design: Miroslav Yordanov
performers: Teodora Stefanova; Daniela Ivanova; Angelina Gavrilova; Alexandra Savova; Kristine Enkov; Teodora Drumeva; Assen Nakov; Leander Yanes; Valeri Milenkov; Ivan Ivanov
coproduction: Arabesque Ballet

Ductus
(A Guide to Riding Dead Horses )
idea: Miroslav Yordanov
choreographer: Stanislav Genadiev
assistant choreographer: Violeta Vitanova
music: Yuri Bondjukov
set/costume design: Miroslav Yordanov
performer: Assen Nakov
coproduction: Arabesque Ballet

GAUTHIER DANCE

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:56:05 +0000

Gauthier Dance present a show of seven miniatures;

Pression is a fascinating game of contrasts. It brings together two completely different pieces of music – the first (Pression) is from the 60’s, written by Helmut Lachenmann, who, following his earlier involvement with pointillism and structuralism, has moved on to a determined analysis of the substantive quality of sound itself; the second (Death and the Maiden) is that famous, much loved piece brimming with emotional significance and feeling that has inspired so many choreographic interpretations. Against that background Mauro Bigonzetti – with his highly expressive, sculptural choreography – puts two men and two women on an empty stage in an an electrifying pas-de-quatre between the sexes.
18 min

Ballet 101 is Eric Gauthier’s humorous “crash course” in classical ballet. Using the basic five positions as his starting point, he creates 100 positions with tongue-in-cheek references to famous ballets and choreographers, leading up to the surprise ending.
solo, 8 min

Björk Duets. To the somewhat wild, bizarre and, at the same time, moving songs of the Icelandic singer Björk, Gauthier explores the subject of relationships.
9 min

PAUSE

Solo. Dutch choreographer Hans van Manen choreographed this sparkling gem for three male dancers to Johann Sebastian Bach’s lively partita for solo violin. Avoiding big jumps and spectacular turns, van Manen nonetheless challenges the dancers with hundreds of tiny, precise steps, a breathtaking pace and a sublime musicality which leaves the audience with the intoxicating feeling of having drunk a glass of good champagne.
8 min

Air Guitar is Eric Gauthier’s humorous homage to his favorite instrument. In 1996 18-year-old Gauthier came to Stuttgart, Germany, from Montreal to join the Stuttgart Ballet. He spoke no German and knew no one in the city. After his rehearsals in the theater, he spent his time with his guitar, practicing and writing songs. In 2001, parallel to his dancing career, he founded a band for which he writes the music and lyrics, sings and plays guitar. The band has released two CDs and has become a permanent fixture in the rock and pop scene in Stuttgart. About the world premiere of Air Guitar in 2007 for the Noverre Society’s “Young Choreographers” program, Tanznetz wrote: “Eric Gauthier is bound to go down in ballet history as the inventor of the cabaret-ballet… [his] ballet satires are a wonderful enrichment of this usually much too serious genre.”
8 min, solo

The Sofa is a short but hilarious excerpt from the evening-length work Through Nana’s Eyes by Israeli choreographer Itzik Galili. He creates a romp for two dancers,which takes one surprising turn after another. To Tom Waits raw, smoky voice, the dancers pull out all the stops and inevitably bring the house down.
6 min

Susto by Paul Lightfoot and Sol León reflects the current Dutch dance aesthetic, with a pinch of British humor (Lightfoot) and a shot of Spanish temperament (León). It‘s central theme is time: time which is running out, time which we can‘t stop, time as something precious and valuable. The piece is also a tongue-in-cheek commentary about the brevity of a dancer’s career – ironically meant in the case of the “senior” dancers for whom the work was created in 1994, but just as applicable for the young dancers in the 2006 revised version, who – like all dancers – are in a race against time and want to (and must) dance as much as possible in as short a time as possible. The impression of time running out – the inescapable fate which awaits us all – is enhanced by Beethoven’s frenetic, driving music.
12 min

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Gauthier Dance is a young and dynamic company of highly individual, versatile dancers, directed by the dancer, choreographer and musician Eric Gauthier. As the Resident Dance Company of the Theaterhaus Stuttgart, Gauthier Dance presents exciting contemporary dance by Gauthier and internationally acclaimed choreographers such as Mauro Bigonzetti, Itzik Galili, Paul Lightfoot/Sol Léon, Hans van Manen and Charles Moulton.
One of Mr. Gauthier’s primary goals is to present and create content-oriented dance, which will move, disturb, elate or inspire even audiences experiencing their first encounter with contemporary dance. (See for instance Eclipse – a Transformers-meets-House-of-Flying-Daggers action-ballet about two species which meet on a faraway planet.) Gauthier Dance Mobile is the next step in that direction – an extensive educational and community outreach program, which literally mobilizes dance, takes it out of the theater and brings it into new spaces and to new or disadvantaged audiences – schools, community centers, retirement homes, rehabilitation centers for people with physical or mental disabilities.

Eric Gauthier was born in Montreal, Canada. He received his initial ballet training at the school of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in his hometown and subsequently studied at the National Ballet School in Toronto, where he also received music and voice lessons. In 1995 he became an apprentice with the National Ballet of Canada under the artistic direction of Reid Anderson. When Reid Anderson was appointed Director of the Stuttgart Ballet in 1996, he invited Eric Gauthier to come to Stuttgart with him as a member of the corps de ballet. In 2000 Eric Gauthier was named demi-soloist, and in 2002 he was promoted to Soloist.
In Stuttgart Gauthier danced many classical and neo-classical roles, but it was his abilities as a contemporary dancer, which were instantly noted by every choreographer who worked with the Stuttgart Ballet between 1996 and 2006. For ten years, Eric Gauthier danced in almost every world or company premiere and worked with an impressive roster of internationally acclaimed choreographers. He especially made a name for himself as an outstanding interpreter of the works of William Forsythe, dancing five of his ballets and working often with the American choreographer both in Stuttgart and in Frankfurt.
During his time in Stuttgart, Gauthier also inspired a number of choreographers to create roles for him, most especially Christian Spuck, resident choreographer of the Stuttgart Ballet. Other choreographers who have created roles for Eri Gauthier include Mauro Bigonzetti, Itzik Galili, Kevin O’Day, Marguerite Donlon, Daniela Kurz, Dominique Dumais, Nicolo Fonte, Matjash Mrozewski, Douglas Lee, Marc Spradling, James Sutherland, Pascal Touzeau and Trey McIntyre.
In 2005 Gauthier made his debut as a choreographer in the famous “Young Choreographers” program of the Stuttgart-based Noverre Society. In 2006 he was invited back and created Ballet 101, which won the Critics as well as Audience Prizes at the 21-st International Choreographic Competition in Hannover, Germany.
Since October 2007, Eric Gauthier is director and choreographer of Gauthier Dance. The company premiered in January 2008 to unanimous critical praise and 18 sold out performances with two world premieres by Gauthier as well as works by Itzik Galili, Paul Lightfoot/Sol Léon and Charles Moulton.

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Gauthier Dance
Gauthier Dance
Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart
in co-production with Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg
in co-operation with Schauburg Munich

Pression
choreography: Mauro Bigonzetti
music: Helmut Lachenmann, Pression; Franz Schubert, excerpts from Der Tod und das Mädchen
costumes: Kristopher Millar & Lois Swandale

Ballet 101
choreography: Eric Gauthier
music: Jens Peter Abele
world premiere: 2006, Noverre-Gesellschaft Stuttgart

Björk Duets
choreography: Eric Gauthier
music: Björk
lighting: Mario Daszenies
costumes: Marianne Illig, Eric Gauthier

Solo
choreography: Hans van Manen
music: Johann Sebastian Bach, Partita Nr. 1 for Solo Violin
set and costumes: Keso Dekker

Air Guitar
choreography: Eric Gauthier
music: Jens-Peter Abele
costumes and lighting: Eric Gauthier

The Sofa
excerpt from Through Nana’s Eyes
choreography: Itzik Gallili
music: Tom Waits
costumes: Natasja Lansen
set: Janco van Barneveld

Susto
choreography: Paul Lightfoot/Sol León
music: Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony Nr. 5 in c-minor, Opus 67, First Movement
set and costumes: Paul Lightfoot/Sol León
lighting: Tom Bevoort
world premiere: Nederlands Dans Theater III, 1994
revised version : Introdans, 2006

WAITING

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:55:50 +0000

Waiting. loss loneliness abandonment remembering jealousy lack of self-confidence looking back sorrow diffidence jealousy and then day waiting for the evening dark night they’re watching i feel relief nobody sees me jealousy i am alone nobody is here jealousy i fell good i fell relief nobody watches

Life has dispersed somewhere, fled just a moment ago. The realization that it was just a moment ago is the worst. It is not even emptiness, not even despair, not even nothingness. But it has the strength of an injured dog and something horribly primeval, embryonic. God does not help. After all, who likes to repeat the same gesture twice. “I myself have to create myself. But how, when with every breath my body creates thousands of antibodies against itself? Nevermind, I said, come on, let’s try living.”

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Mikołaj Mikołajczyk graduated from the ballet school in Poznań and started his career there as soloist and choreographer with Teatr Wielki. Next followed: legendary Henryk Tomaszewski and his Wrocław Pantomime, Polski Teatr Tańca, and a couple of seasons in Karlsruhe and Berlin. He danced in performances by choreographers Mats Ek, Birgit Cullberg, Olaf Schmidt, Anatol Fodor and many others. Mikołajczyk also created choreographies for a number of theater performances by some of the most acclaimed Polish directors. In 2000 – 2001 he ran his own dance company Teatr DNA.
All of this experience – theater, dance, mime – gracefully waeaves together into his performances. If one could collect all his work, one could easily draw a map of interrelations, citations and inspirations. Mikołajczyk also belongs to that specific category of artists who like to talk mainly about themselves. But his egocentricity acts more like a “dream catcher”, capturing the visions of the audience.
Currently Mikołaj Mikołajczyk is a freelance dancer and choreographer. Waiting (2006) is his first solo as a choreographer. It was followed by With You I Want To See the World (2008), inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

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Waiting
choreography and dance: Mikołaj Mikołajczyk
music: Bartłomiej Frank
light: Lukasz Kedzierski
created: 2006

SOLO#2 – FREQUENCES

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:55:36 +0000

Solo#2 – frequences. Total darkness. 100 metronomes. One dancer. All possible movements of the human torso… With mathematical precision and the virtuosity of a composer Brice Leroux explores the physical forces involved in human movement and the relations between space and rhythm. Light, sound and movement merge to the point where it is impossible to explain where they come from. Illusion? Or not? The darkness opens the eyes. The dance absorbs the senses beyond space and time. The spectator is a discoverer in a journey with no predictable end.

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According to the critics Brice Leroux is a “category of his own”. One of the basic elements in the core of new physical theater. The ultimate innovator both in his artistic expression and minimalist body language, and the effacing of the actor presence and his interaction with the audience which is never merely a passive observer of his performances.
He borrows inspiration directly from quantum mechanics in the form of repetitive patterns and infinite looped series of movements. His choreographies (often described as “scores”) are invariably built on compositional principles and analytical precision.
In 1992 Brice Leroux graduated from the Conservatoire National Superieur in Lyon, took part in the Paris International Dance Competition and was awarded the prize for best contemporary dancer and the Gold Medal of the city of Paris. This is where he first met Krassen Krastev (see below). Two years later he settled in Brussels and in 1999 founded his own dance troupe – Continuum. Quantum – Quintet (2006) is their most acclaimed work so far, they have been performing it for three years on all major festival scenes. Solo#2 – frequences is Brice Leroux’s latest piece. He is now working on a performance for seven dancers, the premiere is expected in 2011.

Krassen Krastev – the second dancer of Solo#2 – frequences* – is probably the most acclaimed Bulgarian name on the international contemporary dance scene. He is currently based between Brussels (with Leroux’s troupe) and Lausanne (with his own Compagnie Krassen Krastev). Ten-years-old he enrolled at the National School of Dance in Sofia, at 18 he was in the troupe of Arabesque Ballet, at 19 – a finalist in the Paris International Dance Competition. At 20 he was the youngest Bulgarian choreographer and together with Teodora Ivanova and Lilia Stefcheva founded the first contemporary dance company in the country – Amarante Dance Studio. 1994 saw Krastev at the Ecole-Atelier Rudra Bejart in Lausanne. Two years later he joined Swiss dance company Linga – Theatre Octogone. In 2002 Compagnie Krassen Krastev was founded in Lausanne. Krastev’s collaboration with Brice Leroux began in 2005, absorbed him completely and put his own projects on stand-by. SHIFT_ (une pièce pas terminée) from 2005 is his last (so far) work as choreographer.

*The solo will be preformed by Leroux and Krastev as follows:

30 Sept, 22:00 – Krassen Krastev
01 Oct, 18:00 – Krassen Krastev
01 Oct, 20:00 – Brice Leroux
01 Oct, 22:00 – Krassen Krastev

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Solo#2 – frequences
choreography and concept: Brice Leroux
dance: Brice Leroux or Krassen Krastev
artistic assistant: Krassen Krastev
music: Poème symphonique pour 100 métronomes by György Ligeti
concept stage design, light, costumes: Brice Leroux
costume design: Eugénie Poste
assistants costume designer: Caroline Côté, Bertille Gibourdel, Clémence Canel, Marie Otin, Sophie Galamez
set up stage design: Vincent Malstaf, Philippe Baste
techniques: Antonin Chaumet, Fabrice Moinet
With thanks to Jan Maertens for his technical advices.

production & distribution: Caravan Production vzw for Continuum vzw (Brussels, BE)
co-production: Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels, BE), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris, FR), Rotterdamse Schouwburg (NL), Theater der Welt 2010 Essen/Mühlheim (DE) & PACT Zollverein Essen (DE), Maison de la Culture d’Amiens (FR), CCN du Havre – Haute Normandie (FR), Théâtre National de Bordeaux en Aquitaine (FR), STUK – Leuven (BE), La Rose des vents C.A.C. – Villeneuve d’Ascq (FR)
Residences De Pianofabriek – kunstenwerkplaats (Brussels, BE), Les Brigittines (Brussels, BE)
With the support of the Flemish authorities

This project is supported by the European Union (NXTSTP).