L'Après-midi - a solo for Emmanuel Eggermont

Hot-blooded woodland god

A hot-blooded woodland god spies on two naked nymphs. In a nutshell, this is the plot of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem L’après-midi d’un faune (1876). In 1894 Debussy composed his Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune, for many the starting signal for modern music. In 1912 this music was the backdrop for Vaslav Nijinsky’s legendary choreography. A hundred years later Raimund Hoghe produced his version of the subject, set to Debussy’s music and several lieder by Gustav Mahler.

● L’Après-midi is danced by Emmanuel Eggermont, who also appeared in Hoghe’s Boléro Variations (2007). This amazing solo is part of Hoghe’s cycle on the history of classical dance (Sacre – The Rite of Spring (2004), Swan Lake, 4 Acts (2005) and Boléro Variations).

Press quotes on L'Après-midi

‘Mr. Eggermont evoked the essence of Nijinsky.’ – The New York Times

‘A Cubist painting of a dance…: a meditative, deliberate deconstruction and reconstruction of the famous bas-relief positions from Nijinsky’s Après-midi d’un faune that eventually causes them to overlap and superimpose themselves in the mind, reverberating with meaning, history and contained emotion.’ – The New York Times

Focus Raimund Hoghe

On Friday, October 15th, Johan Reyniers (editor of Etcetera) will guide you through the oeuvre of Raimund Hoghe (talk in Dutch). Between the talk and the show we will satisfy your other appetites with soup and bread. Info & tickets >>