Works by 3/1

The democratic principle of contemporary dance

Although the career of the French choreographer-dancer Jean Luc Ducourt, who works in Brussels, has always been in the field of contemporary dance, he continues to be deeply interested in aesthetics and the strictly coded idiom of movement in classical ballet. In 2002 he carried out a research project with several classical dancers of the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich. In July 2008 Works by 3/1 will have its opening performance at the Szene festival in Salzburg: several previews have been given of this final stage of his explorations, including one in the Kaaistudio’s in June 2008.

In Works by 3/1 a trio of classically trained male dancers appear on stage together with one female classical dancer as a counterpoint. In this production Ducourt aims at achieving a sort of anatomy of the classical movement idiom, an idiom he wishes to ‘contaminate’ with the abstract and architectural qualities of modern dance. What draws him to classical dance is not only its constant pursuit of perfection but also its never-ending attempt to ‘fill’ that formal arsenal of steps with expressiveness. Ducourt’s aim is to confront the hierarchic ideas of classical ballet with the democratic principle of contemporary dance, in which each step is of equal value.  

The dancers move in the area of tension between extreme control of the dance material and free choice with regard to the sequence, repetition, position in space, rhythm, intensity and so on, with which this material is executed.