Merce Cunningham
Cunningham x 100 Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris
Choreography, Merce Cunningham
With one hundred dance section students and percussion section students from the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris
Music, John Cage
Produced by Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris
In association with La Villette – Grande Halle (Paris) ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
First performed on the 30th novembre 2019 à La Villette – Grande Halle (Paris), with Festival d’Automne à Paris
The first Merce Cunningham event took place in 1964, and was a means for presenting dance extracts in interaction with other activities carried out live. In order to revive this principle, the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (C.N.M.S.D.P) brings us a large-scale event involving all the dancers from the Conservatoire.
One hundred dance section students from the CNSMDP will be taking over the stage of the Grande Halle de la Villette for a choreographic happening spanning different repertory pieces, from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. It will be the opportunity for its director, Cédric Andrieux – a former dancer in Cunningham’s company who trained at the Conservatoire –, to evoke the close ties between the CNSMDP and the American master, and the importance of the Cunningham technique in its contemporary dance program.
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Running time : 1h
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By way of a statement of intent for the events, Merce Cunningham wrote: « Events consist of complete dances, excerpts of dances, and often new sequences arranged for the particular performance and place, with the possibility of several separate activities happening at the same time – to allow for not so much an evening of dances as the experience of dance. »
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