The Parliament of the Invisibles

A contemporary dance of death

In 2008, the French choreographer Anne Collod was our guest here at the Kaaitheater with parades and changes, replays, a fantastic reworking of Anna Halprin’s legendary 1965 piece. In The Parlement of the Invisibles, she once again presents a contemporary interpretation of an important historical dance.

The origins of the danse macabre or dance of death can be traced back to the Middle Ages. In 1935, the German choreographer and teacher Kurt Leeder, a colleague of Kurt Jooss, created his version of 18 dancing skeletons set to music by Camille Saint-Saëns.

For The Parlement of the Invisibles, Anne Collod creates a filmic re-enactment of Leeder’s dance. The five dancers relate to his film and to the original archive footage. Whilst the performance is a resurrection of a forgotten work, it also seeks to be a dialogue between the living and the dead. The place of the dead in our life today is portrayed in various forms: processions, carnivals, rituals and trance. Anxiety and grief stand shoulder to shoulder with the collective celebration of death. The music of Pierre-Yves Macé also alludes to both the music of Saint-Saëns and to brass bands, carnivals and lamentation.

• Through her study of Laban dance notation, Anne Collod became interested in the re-enactment of 20^th-century chorographic works. To this end, she helped set up the Quatuor Albrecht Knust collective (1993-2001) and then worked with Anna Halprin on parades & changes, replays (2008), for which she won a Bessie Award in New York in 2010.

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RE:THINK TALK at 7 PM | Philosopher Vinciane Despret talks about the relationship between the dead and the living and how they are an inexhaustible source of stories and art.