Meg Stuart CASCADE
[Dance]Each project by the choreographer Meg Stuart seeks to create the necessary conditions for a radical, perceptive experience. Following on from Celestial Sorrow, a bewitching work in which we are transported by different voices, CASCADE invents a transient place in time and space. Carried along by a series of domino effects, a fragile collective seeks to resist the entropy which takes over bodies and space alike.
In this piece, we witness a cascade of bodies racing against each other, tumbling all the while. With each new sequence, the bodies seem to lose their points of reference, and attempt to regain their balance. The rules governing the space begin to oscillate, and the different principles interrupt and transform themselves. In collaboration with the director and scenographer, Philippe Quesne, and the musician Brendan Dougherty, Meg Stuart’s starting point in CASCADE is an ensemble of physical principles aimed at multiplying the intensity of the onstage flow of movements. Similar to a machine spiraling out of control, the different reference points progressively go out of synch, and as a result the onstage spatial and temporal organization constantly changes. The dancers have to adapt their movements, and invent alternative circuits, thereby giving rise to new modes of entering into dialogue with each other and of moving around the stage. Subjected to extreme physical conditions, such as fatigue, repetition and pushing themselves beyond their limits, the dancers attempt to synchronize their rhythms, and to construct temporal islands in which to shelter from the chaos.
