Ola Maciejewska
Dance Concert
Dance Concert © Martin Argyroglo ©
Dance Concert © Taichung National Theatre ©
Conceived and choreographed by Ola Maciejewska
With Keyna Nara, Julia Plawgo, Frida Gulia Franceschini
Sound manipulation, Alberto Novello with the dancers
Lighting and technical direction, Rima Ben Brahim
Musical supervision, Dorit Chrysler (New York Theremin Society)
Costumes, Valentine Sole
Props, Aapo Nikkanen, Ola Maciejewska
Production, distribution, Elodie Perrin
Artistic assistant, Judith Schoneveld
Thanks to, Wilco Botermans, Lydia Kavina, Giacomo Sponzilli, Andrew Todd, Blanca Añón
A So we might as well dance production
With support from the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès as part of its New Settings programme
A coproduction with National Taichung Theater ; Centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie ; Productiehuis Rotterdam ; Ballet National de Marseille – Centre chorégraphique National ; Veem Huis voor Performance (Amsterdam) ; Centre Pompidou (Paris) ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
In association with Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou (Paris) ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
With support from Arcadi
Thanks to GMEM Centre National de Création musicale, Teatro Municipal do Porto Rivoli. Campo Alegre, La Ménagerie de Verre (StudioLab), Montévidéo Marseille, CN D.
First performed on 7 April 2018 at National Taichung Theater
What happens when dancers and musicians become one and the same thing? In this new production, Ola Maciejewska invents, with the aid of the theremin, one of the earliest instruments of electronic music, a new genre of dance concert.
Onstage, music and dance have always played a game of cat and mouse. With Dance Concert, Ola Maciejewska at long last gives dancers the means by which to control the music they dance to. For this purpose, she enlists the help of the theremin, an instrument developed in the wake of the Russian revolution in 1917. John Cage and Merce Cunningham later adapted it for their own uses. Invented by Léon Theremin, the theremin produces music without physical contact. Instead, the theremin responds to the performers’ gestures in a sound wave passing between two antennae. In her first solo work, in 2011, the young Polish choreographer took us back in time with a show inspired by the work of one of the earliest performers of modern dance, Loïe Fuller. In Dance Concert, the title of which refers to the Judson Dance Theater’s ‘Experimental Dance Concerts’, she continues to plunge into the past, using it, this time around, to investigate the links between music and dance. Set to a score composed by the dancers, and overseen by Dorit Chrysler, co-founder of the New York Theremin Society, Ola Maciejewska dissects choreographic fragments of dance history and brings out the interplay between them. The sparse staging is in unison with this sound-based laboratory work, in which movement becomes music - and vice versa.
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Running time: 1h
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