Les assistantes
ATTENTION: Jennifer Lacey’s new show Les assistantes, scheduled for April 25 and 26 at the Kaaitheater, is cancelled, due to health problems of one of the collaborators. We hope to present it next season. |
Works by the American choreographer Jennifer Lacey previously shown at the Kaaitheater include $ Shot (2001) and mhmmmm (2005). The French artist Nadia Lauro worked on both these productions (last season she built the ‘mental rock-garden’ Tu montes? I hear voices in our foyer).
Their new production, Les assistantes, has modest beginnings: a simple curiosity about the shared space between the soloist and the group, the individual absorbed by the group, the voice by the chorus, and vice versa: the group sucked into the individual.
Lacey seeks her inspiration in historical ‘utopian’ experiments with communes and suchlike. Charles Fourier (the founder of the ‘phalanstères’), Anne Lee (of the Shakers), the Marquis de Sade, Roland Barthes and others are astonished to find themselves sitting together around the same campfire. They sing and dance together, knowing that the time-span of a performance is brief but perhaps ideal for a utopia.
Les assistantes is based on the simple question underlying all others: ‘How does one want to spend one’s time?’
Nadia Lauro’s stage setting is a continuation of her previous work; her aim is to create an ‘energetic space’, an ‘Experimental House for Emotions’. The score is by Jonathan Bepler, who has also worked on past Lacey productions.
choreography Jennifer Lacey
visual concept Nadia Lauro
with Alice Chauchat, Audrey Gaisan, Jennifer Lacey, Barbara Manzetti a.o.
music Jonathan Bepler
lights Yannick Fouassier
technical direction Christophe Le Bris
delegated producer Carole Bodin
production Megagloss (F)
co-production (in progress) Le Consortium - Département Nouvelles Scènes (F) in association with l’atheneum, Centre culturel de l’Université de Bourgogne, Centre chorégraphique national de Caen Basse-Normandie, Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne, Centre national de danse contemporaine-Angers, Kaaitheater (B), Festival Montpellier Danse 08, Centre Pompidou - Les spectacles vivants (F),…
special support ImPulsTanz - Vienna international dance festival (AT)
