Merce Cunningham, Petter Jacobsson, Thomas Caley
Sounddance / Fabrications For Four Walls CCN – Ballet de Lorraine
Sounddance © Laurent Philippe ©
Petter Jacobsson et Thomas Caley / Ballet de Lorraine, "For Four Walls" © Laurent Philippe ©
Petter Jacobsson et Thomas Caley / Ballet de Lorraine, "For Four Walls" © Laurent Philippe ©
Petter Jacobsson et Thomas Caley / Ballet de Lorraine, "For Four Walls" © Laurent Philippe ©
Sounddance :
Choreography, Merce Cunningham
Music, David Tudor, Untitled (1975/1994)
Lighting, costume and stage design by Mark Lancaster
Restaged by Thomas Caley, and Meg Harper
With five male dancers and five female dancers from CCN – Ballet de Lorraine
First performed on the 8th March 1975 at Detroit Music Hall
Original production by Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1975) © Merce Cunningham Trust. All rights reserved. // Produced by CCN – Ballet de Lorraine (Nancy)
Fabrications :
Choreography, Merce Cunningham
Music, Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta, Short Waves, SBbr
Lighting, Josh Johnson
Costumes and set, Dove Bradshaw
Restaged by Thomas Caley
With seven male dancers and eight female dancers from CCN – Ballet de Lorraine
First performed on the 21st February 1987 at Cyrus Northrop Memorial Auditorium, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis)
Original production by Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1987) © Merce Cunningham Trust. All rights reserved. // Produced by CCN – Ballet de Lorraine (Nancy)
For Four Walls :
Choreography, Petter Jacobsson, and Thomas Caley
Music, John Cage, Four Walls
Lighting, Eric Wurtz
Scenography, Petter Jacobsson, and Thomas Caley
Costumes, Petter Jacobsson, and Thomas Caley with Martine Augsbouger, and Annabelle Saintier
With twenty-four dancers from CCN – Ballet de Lorraine
Piano, Vanessa Wagner
First performed on 23rd May 2019 at Opéra national de Lorraine (Nancy)
Produced by CCN – Ballet de Lorraine (Nancy)
Coproduced by Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse (Paris) ; Théâtre de la Ville-Paris ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
In association with Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse (Paris) ; Théâtre de la Ville-Paris ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris for performances at Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse (Paris)
In partnership with France Inter and ARTE
In accompaniment to two major works by Merce Cunningham, Sounddance and Fabrications, Petter Jacobsson and Thomas Cale have put together a show in the form of a tribute. Performed by the pianist Vanessa Wagner, its interplay of mirrors and infinite reflections will be set to the score of Four Walls by John Cage.
This first programme presented by the CCN – Ballet de Lorraine offers certain keys for understanding the founding principles of Merce Cunningham’s art – the importance of sound, chance occurrences and the taking into account of context. Is this a dance of sound, or the sound of dance? David Tudor’s composition for Sounddance has a revelatory effect on the bodies of the dancers. In a space divided up by a gold-coloured curtain of baroque drapes, the different phrases follow on from each other in interweaving movements of torso and feet in a way which deconstructs the order of ballet. Fabrications uses a system of divination inherited from Yi Jing, in which the succession of phrases and number of dancers is determined at random, giving rise to a mise en abyme of the creative act. For Four Walls by Petter Jacobsson and Thomas Caley, the two directors of the CCN – Ballet de Lorraine, draws upon Four Walls, the first collaboration between Merce Cunningham and John Cage. Rather than recreating the original piece, they have used the score for piano and voice as the driving force behind this free interpretation. Performed live by the pianist Vanessa Wagner, the melancholic atmosphere of John Cage’s music hovers over the interplay between the mirrored movements.
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