Flip book

In his latest project, Flip book, the French choreographer Boris
Charmatz is using the work of Merce Cunningham, the great American
master of postmodern dance. The starting point for this piece is
David Vaughn’s book Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years, containing
photos and drawings of all his creations and portraits of him and
his dancers too.

Charmatz: ‘All these pictures together represent almost his
entire oeuvre, but also form a piece of choreography in
themselves, in a way that is very similar to the method Cunningham
uses in his creative process: dance is to be found between two
poses or positions. I think it must be possible to create a piece
that starts from this sequence of images, performed from beginning
to end.’

In this way, Flip book is ‘the story of a life’s work captured
in a book which in its turn is transformed into a performance by a
handful of dancers’.

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‘On Merce Cunningham’: 12/2, 22:00