Diffraction

The Swiss-Flemish choreographer Cindy Van Acker creates performances like sculptures. Her materials are bodies and light, movement, space, time and sound. In 2005 no less a person than Romeo Castellucci invited her to represent Switzerland at the Venice Biennale. After that she created the choreography for Castellucci’s Inferno (Avignon Festival, 2008) and Parsifal (La Monnaie, 2011).

• Diffraction (2011) is a performance for six dancers plus one: the
extra one being light, which here takes on the air of a figure.
Diffraction is the bending of light or sound waves around an
impenetrable obstacle. The dancers occupy the position of obstacles that
direct the movements of the light. An extremely precise piece of
choreography of breathtaking beauty.

• Nixe (2009) is a hypnotic ballet for arms. Van Acker moves around in the neon light like a mermaid through water. In Obtus (2009) Tamara Bacci pushes her body and balance to extremes in almost meditative movements. She makes use of the range of the neon lights and occasionally allows her body to vanish into the darkness.

• In Diffraction music is provided by Mika Vainio (of the Finnish electro band Pan Sonic) and performed live by Franz Treichler.

EXTRA: Cindy Van Acker has made an interpretation in film of all the dance solos she has created. Both the visual aspect of the choreography and the accompanying soundscape are in a very personal way processed into images in which space – a quarry – plays a leading part.


• 1/6 (SOLO OBVIE) is a metaphor for the cycle of a single day, a lifetime, life itself.
• 2/6 (SOLO LANX) tells the story of our state as individuals in the world.
• 5/6 (SOLO NIXE) zooms in on the sensual, almost dreamlike relationship between the dancer and her surroundings.
• 6/6 (SOLO OBTUS) draws the viewer into a timeless space where an animal body gradually tries to free itself from its inorganic environment.