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Alliance Francaise dance film fest
The Alliance Francaise of Madras is holding a Contemporary Dance Film Festival in Chennai till
February 28.
The festival will be on at the
Alliance
Francaise auditorium every evening at 1900 hrs.
Screening Schedule:
25.02.04 - 'Korper', Sasha Waltz. 59'
26.02.04 - Screening 1: 'The Moebius Strip', 26'
27.02.04 - Screening 2: 'Under Construction', 46'
28.02.04 - 'Sharira', 56'20"
23.02.04
Grand Ecart
A propos de la danse contemporaine francaise, Duration: 93'
Charles Picq has freely composed a panorama dedicated to the birth and development of French contemporary dance, skimming over 20 years of dance through several extracts of performances inserted with interviews with choreographers and celebrities of the dance world, including: Francoise Dupuy, Maguy Marin, Mathilde Monnier, Laurence Louppe, Domique Dupuy, Regine Chopinot, Regis Obadia, Joelle Bouvier, Boris Charmaz, Dimitri Chamblaz, Jose Montalvo, Jean-Caude Gallotta, Jean-Paul Montanari, Karine Saporta, Jer6me Lecardeur. Having witnessed the expansion of contemporary dance during the 80s, his explicit approach is from a historical point of view. The film describes the opening of the new field by completely breaking away from the past and the relationship of the creators of this breakaway with the source of inspiration.
24.02.04
Screening 1: Roseland
Directors: Walter Verdin, Wim Vandekeybus, Octavio Iturbe Choreography: Wim Vandekeybus
Music: Thierry De Mey, Peter Vermeersch
Duration: 46'08"
In 1990, in collaboration with the Belgian director Walter Verdin, Vandekybus created his first video dance, Roseland, as a new staging of his first three theatre pieces. In the decaying Brussels dance hall which gives the video its name, the piece was staged specifically for the view of the camera. Freed from the one-sided set-up of the stage, the camera can move through space with the dancers in all directions. Through its subjective view, the observer is involved directly in all the dancers' action that is possible on stage, so that he eventually has the feeling that he himself has to get out of the way of the stones thrown by the actors. Through editing, the spectator continually finds himself in new positions in relation to what is happening, or he virtually changes the location of what is happening in the middle of a movement. In film or video Vandekeybus can realize what fascinates him about dreams: "Dreams inspire me, because they carry on: in one moment you're in one place, in the next you're someplace else; another. You don't have to adapt yourself: you recurringly lose the certainty and the safety of the usual.
Roseland is made from the material of Vandekeybus' first three choreographies: What the Body Does Not Remember (1987), Les porteuses de mauvaises nouvelles (1989) ,The Weight of a Hand (1990). Placing these choreographic works in the remarkable setting of a dilapidated Brussels cinema, the video uses vivid cinematic language to recreate the excitement of a live performance. It was justly honoured with the Dance Screen Award 1991 (IMZ, Frankfurt) and the Prague d' Or for "transforming the theatrical energy of the stage choreography into a dynamic screen experience, using a full range of cinematic techniques."
Screening 2: Silver
Choreography / Direction: Wim Vandekeybus
Music: Thierry de Mey
Photography: Wim Vandekeybus
Editing: Rudi Maerten
Performers: Ultima Vez
Production: Ultima Vez, Quasi Modo Belgium
Duration:14'55"
Silver is the fifth scene of the performance of 7 for a Secret Never to be Told. "One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, and four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret ne'er to be told". The day I found this rhyme I decided to use it as a script for my new piece. A script of seven words. A theatre-text or a dictionary containing seven words only: two extreme emotions, the two sexes, two precious metals and a secret. The dancers and myself took the freedom to give to these seven words an existence through movement, through people. For each scene we developed a specific scenography and different movement material. I wanted to bring these words on stage in a human way, in a passionate way." Wim Vandekeybus
25.02.04
Korper
Duration: 59'
Choreography & production: Sasha Waltz
Featuring: Davide.Camplani, Lisa Densem, Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola, Luc Dunberry, Annette Klar, Nicola Mascia, Grayson Millwood, Michal Mualem, Joakim NaBi, Olsson Virgis Puodziunas, Claudia de Serpa Soares, Takako Suzuki, Laurie Young
Music: Hans Peter Kuhn
Stage design: Sasha Waltz, Heike Schuppelius, Thomas Schenk
Costumes: Bernd Skodzig
Dramatic art: Jochen Sandig
Lighting: Valentin Galle, Martin Hauk
Production: Schaubuhne am Lehniner Platz - Berlin
co-production: Theatre de la Ville-Paris
Born in Karlsruhe in 1963 Sasha Waltz trained with a former co-disciple of Mary Wigman then at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam. In 1986 she went off to New York to learn contact-improvisation techniques. She returned in 1988 to join Mark Tompkins' La Plaque tournante, a multi-disciplinary project that has spread throughout the cities of Europe before starting to create her own choreographic works and founding her own company with Jochen Sandig, 'Sasha Waltz and Guest'. In 1996, they opened an alternative venue called the Sophiensaele in the former East Berlin where she developed her project and became a place of expression for artists of the new generation. Sasha Waltz took over as co-director of the prestigious Berlin Schaubuhne in 1999. An emblematic figure of German "post-dance-theatre", Sasha Waltz is not afraid to delve into the cracks in society to roots out what is really on peoples' minds and their suppressed desires in her own inimitable way which involves distorting the rituals of daily life and exalting the emotional energy of the dancers. Her relationship with the world is expressed via the body.
Her goal is always to transport or penetrate a certain content or an important question through movement, by means of a multi-faceted language of the human body and dynamic energy. The work of Sasha Waltz fuses abstract American-based post-modern dance with a narrative, episodic "physical theatre". She rigorously seeks a specific form and aesthetic realisation for each piece. Close collaboration with artists from other disciplines is essential for her work. Contemporary composers write original music for her pieces, video artists create new visual spaces, artists and architects provide fundamental inspiration for her creativity. Jochen Sandig (Kunstlerische Leitung der Schaubuhne am Lehniner Platz).
Thirteen bodies, often bare or nearly so, make up the materials for Korper, and it's clear that while they're human, they have no role in nature anymore. An industrial ethos seems to govern the stage as we watch bodies obediently disintegrate. Now and then, a dancer steps forward and recites a story about himself or herself, pointing to an ear, an elbow, or a foot as the story proceeds. Invariably, they affix the wrong name to each part they mention. Or two women set about annotating one another, marking their organs in red and shouting out a price. "Lungs, $77,000! Kidneys, $54,588.01!" In an interlude that's the closest this dance comes to charming, a woman whose bottom half is a pair of male legs that happen to be turned around backward encounters a man with the same affliction. Meanwhile, a sound score by Hans Peter Kuhn emits clangs and hisses that turn the opera house into a factory.
RR
Published on 25th Feb, 2004
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