Merce Cunningham
Summerspace / Exchange / Scenario Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon
© Scenario © Michel Cavalca ©
© Summerspace © Michel Cavalca ©
© Exchange © Michel Cavalca ©
Summerspace :
Choreography, Merce Cunningham
Music, Morton Feldman, IXION
Lighting, Aaron Copp
Costumes and set, Robert Rauschenberg
Restaged by Banu Ogan
Piano, Agnès Melchior, and Futaba Oki
With two male dancers and four female dancers from Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon
First performed on the 17th August 1958 at American Dance Festival, Connecticut College (New London)
Exchange :
Choreography, Merce Cunningham
Music, David Tudor; Weatherings
Set, costumes and lighting, based on original design by Jasper Johns
Restaged by Patricia Lent, and Andrea Weber
With seven male dancers and eight female dancers from Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon
Sound, Phil Edelstein
Musical interpretation, Jean-Pierre Barbier, and Phil Edelstein
Technical advice, Davison Scandrett
First performed on the 26th September 1978 at City Center Theater (New York)
Scenario :
Choreography, Merce Cunningham
Music, Takehisa Kosugi, Wave Code A-Z
Costumes, Rei Kawakubo
Set, lighting, Rei Kawakubo
Restaged by Andrea Weber, Jamie Scott, and Banu Ogan
With seven male dancers and eight female dancers from Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyo
Concept, Technical advice, Davison Scandrett
First performed on the 17th October 1997 at Brooklyn Academy of Music
Original productions by Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Summerspace (1958), Exchange (1978), Scenario (1997) © Merce Cunningham Trust. All rights reserved.
Produced by Opéra national de Lyon
In association with Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris) ; Théâtre de la Ville-Paris ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris for performances at Théâtre du Châtelet
With support from Fondation d’entreprise Hermès as part of its New Settings programme
In partnership with France Inter and ARTE
In line with its strong affinity to the work and style of Merce Cunningham, the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon presents three pieces that have recently entered into its repertory. Together they provide us with an overview of the infinite variations and nuances of his relationship to movement, the musical, pictorial and choreographic elements of which laid down the foundations of a new form of abstraction.
Taking into account the multiple facets of dance which has been unceasing in its exploration of the formal possibilities of the human body, the amplitude of Merce Cunningham’s range of work makes it difficult to grasp in a global way. In order to provide a panorama of the various transformations that his work has undergone, the Ballet de l’Opéra is giving us a cross-section: three flagship pieces dating from 1958, 1978 and 1997, which together reveal the new territories opened up by the American master.
Summerspace is a perfect illustration of the lyrical abstraction of his debut works. It has clear links with the credo of the modernist painters, not only because of the artist Robert Rauschenberg’s set design, but also in the way the dancers project themselves onto the bare stage - as if they were bursts of colour or dots being projected onto a canvas, redefining the coordinates of the space as they move about the stage.
Twenty years later, Exchange reaffirmed this focus on the abstract, but on a larger scale. The stage became a platform for exchanges in which flows of movement organised according to different geometric models circulated in the space, unveiling a gestual-based architecture of extreme complexity. Lastly, Scenario testifies to the attention to detail that Merce Cunningham paid to all forms of creation: in addition to a composition comprised of thirteen modules, developed with the aid of the Danceforms software programme, and clothes by Rei Kawakubo – the Comme des Garçons designer – came the strange, stylised offset movements of the onstage bodies.
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Estimated running time : 2h20 with intervals