Programme 2: Dates: July 29, 30, 31 - August 1, 2 at 9.30 pm « Toot »
Choreography: Didy Veldman
Music: Dmitri Shostakovitch / Suite No.2 for Jazz Orchestra, Balanescu Quartet
Sets and costumes: Miriam Buether
Lighting design: Marc Parent
Premiere: March 10, 2005, Montréal
Created for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal
Duration: 45 minutes
“The inspiration for TooT started with the Suite No.2 for Jazz Orchestra by Shostakovich. Being a Russian composer under Stalin's regime, he was forced for economic reasons to compose music for a huge variety of arts, film and entertainment but still managed within that spectrum to keep his own identity.
I started to question identity, individuality and the relationship of the individual to society. Surely society was created for the benefit of the individual or has it become the other way around? Do we have to let go of individuality to be part of society?
I felt the need to create two musical worlds, an inner and outer world, to reflect this conflict. The Balanescu Quartet, with its American influence, fulfilled that role.
Through my research, play and improvisation with the dancers, collaboration with the set and costume designer we have created TooT. TooT meaning the sound of a horn, a sound which shocks you out of your current state to make you aware of a new situation, a new layer of consciousness.” Didy Veldman
« Noces » Choreography: Stijn Celis
Music: Igor Stravinsky
Set: Stijn Celis
Costumes: Catherine Voeffray
Lighting design: Marc Parent
Premiere: September 26, 2002, Montréal
Created for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal
Durée : 25 minutes
“The celebration-be it sacred or profane, a prelude to an attack, in rejoicing or sadness; whether it leaves memories of the present, perpetuates the past, or conjures the future -the celebration in all its forms represses death. And like tribes of monkeys gather together in the face of danger, the tribe of man, united, even reinforced, displays its great strength through a collective rhythm that strengthens it further. In a single, unchanging rhythm, all beat the earth drum, all is dance, and speech, and song. But repetition contains uniformity, and uniformity monotony.Yet one of them senses the danger. In its rhythm, something incites him. In its very rhythm, the great defiance to the rules of a dying world incites him, inspires him, to start the celebration again through the stimulus of surprise…” Fernand Schirren, Le rythme primordial et souverain (1996)
« Six dances » CONCEPT AND CHOREOGRAPHY: Jirí Kylián
Assistant to the choreographer: Roslyn Anderson
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Sechs Deutsche Tänze, KV 571
Set and costumes design: Jirí Kylián
Costume realisation: Joke Visser
Lighting design: Joop Caboort
Tech /light supervision: Kees Tjebbes
World Première : October 24, 1986, Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam, NTD1.
Duration: 15 minutes
“Two centuries separate us from the time when Mozart wrote his German Dances: an epoch shaped considerably by wars, revolutions, and myriad social upheavals.
With this in mind, I found it impossible to simply create different dance numbers that merely reflect the composer's humour and musical brilliance. Instead, I have set up six seemingly nonsensical acts that are clearly oblivious to their surroundings. These are dwarfed in the face of the ever-present troubles of the world, which most of us for some unspecified reason carry in our souls.
Although the entertaining quality of Mozart's Sechs Tänze enjoys widespread popularity, it shouldn't be regarded solely as burlesque. Instead, its humour ought to serve as a vehicle for pointing up our relative values. Mozart's ability to react to difficult circumstances with a self-preservational outburst of nonsensical poetry is well known.” Jirí Kylián
