IBT Contemporary Dance Series 2011-2012

2011-12

dance

IRVINE

BARCLAY THEATRE

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org www.thebarclay.org

Table of Contents 1

From the President.......................................................................................3

2. Eastman.........................................................................................................4

October 15, 2011 (from Antwerp, Belgium)

3. La La La Human Steps.................................................................................8

January 26, 2012 (from Montreal, Canada)

4. Diavolo.........................................................................................................12

March 22, 2012

(from Los Angeles, California)

5. Pilobolus......................................................................................................16 Cover & page two photos: Pilobolus; photos by John Kane

May 17-18, 2012 (from Washington Depot, Connecticut)

6. About dance at the Barclay........................................................................20 7. Join the Movement.....................................................................................22

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Welcome to the 2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series at Irvine Barclay Theatre. On the following pages, you will read about the four trail-blazing dance companies that we will be presenting for you next season.

In its 20 years of presenting dance, the Barclay has come to be known as a ‘dance destination’ on the West Coast. The staff and I research companies throughout the U.S. and the world – and companies seek us out, as well. When putting a season together, I try to consider our dance presentations in their totality – not just individual performances. Each group that you will see here next season is noteworthy for its visionary artistic leadership and outstanding productions and performers.

Taken together, these companies provide a richly unique perspective. Each company provides context, contrast and comparison for the one after, or the one before. For viewers, the richest rewards come from sharing in all four dance experiences.

photo by Alison Harris

I encourage you, for that reason, to become a subscriber to the whole dance series. Go ahead – immerse yourself in Irvine Barclay Theatre’s contemporary dance series and share in the rewards.

President Irvine Barclay Theatre

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Babel [words] West Coast Premiere / U.S. debut tour choreography by Damien Jalet & Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Eastman

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, artistic director Antwerp, Belgium

photos by Koen Broos

www.east-man.be

October 15, 2011

Saturday at 8pm

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is one of Europe’s most successful and inventive choreographers. His productions are like voluminous story books, full of quirky, wickedly observed characters, recognizable from real-life scenarios.

Sidi Larbi is known for blurring the division between dance and other forms of performance, and for mixing genres in interesting ways. Continuing his exploration of the links between ethnicity and identity, and the myths that shape our belief systems, in this new work Cherkaoui traces a path between the heavily thematic worlds of his previous works FOI and Myth, and the stark, modular aesthetics of zero degrees and Sutra.

Working with Damien Jalet, cochoreographer, Cherkaoui collaborated with renowned visual artist Antony Gormley, creating five giant boxes for Babel’s dancers and musicians to work in and around.

Eastman, founded in January 2010, was established to produce and perform

“An avalanche of surprising images, full of humour, imagination and poetry... a remarkable show”

the works of artistic director/choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (pronounced sher-KAHwee).

Eastman is a literal translation of its founder’s last name. Cherkaoui’s work is

composed of a vast array of projects and collaborations; ranging from contemporary

LE SOIR, BRUSSELS (29 April 2010)

dance, theatre, ballet, opera, musicals and other forms of performance. His non-hierarchical thinking on movement, body language and culture is the basis of his artistic approach. Set in his native harbor city of Antwerp, Eastman forms the hub for all of Cherkaoui’s work, and is a resident company at Taneelhuis in Antwerp – Flanders’ largest municipal theater. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is associate artist at Sadler’s Wells in London and artistic director of dance at the Fonazione Musica per Roma.

“Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is the master of making dazzlingly inventive connections, turning basemetal choreographic ingredients to gold, and generally sending the conceptual sparks flying”

“Babel is not only the most innovative dance piece of the year; its language of movement is as new as Pina Bausch’s was in the seventies. It is also one of the strongest works of the year” TANZNETZ.DE (April 2010)

THE OBSERVER

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

Damien Jalet, co-choreographer, is a French/Belgian artist working internationally in dance, theater, opera and film.

He started his choreographic career with Wim Vandekeybus on the show The Day of Heaven and Hell (1998) and danced with choreographers like Ted Stoffer and Christine De Smedt. In 2000, he began an intense collaboration with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui as his artistic partner within the company Les Ballets C de la B creating Rien de Rien (2000), Foi (2003), Tempus Fugit (2004), and Myth (2007). In 2005, he created a short movie, The Unclear Age, co-directed with Erna Omarsdottir. At the request of Rosas, he choreographed with Cherkaoui the bal moderne for the 175th birthday of Belgium, danced by 40,000 people. He also assisted Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in the creation of the piece In Memoriam for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo and Loin for the Grand Theatre de Geneve, End for the Cullberg Ballet, and Sutra for 16 Shaolin Monks.

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Step-by-step guide to dance:

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

He went from vogueing his way to first place in a dance contest to mixing ballet, jazz and offbeat moves in shows the world over.

Sanjoy Roy on the rise of Belgium’s bendiest choreographer

Sanjoy Roy

guardian.co.uk 17 December 2009

Backstory Cherkaoui was born in 1976 in Antwerp, Belgium, of a Moroccan father and Flemish mother. At 15 he became hooked on dance, inspired by music videos and television (Prince, Janet Jackson, Fame). He was talent-spotted and, still in his teens, became a dancer on TV. At the same time he began to take classes in all kinds of styles – ballet, tap, hip-hop, jazz, flamenco. At 19 he entered a national dance competition set up by Alain Platel, founder of the seminal dance collective Les Ballets C de la B – and won first prize for his solo performance, which mixed vogueing, hip-hop and African dance. Through the competition he was introduced to a new world of contemporary dance. He enrolled in Parts, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s prestigious contemporary dance school in Brussels, while continuing to perform with both a hip-hop and a jazz dance company.

In 1997, Cherkaoui joined Les Ballets C de la B in Platel’s international hit Iets op Bach in 1999.

But his choreographic career took off in 2000 with his precocious first full-length work Rien de Rien (2000), “a piece of such diverse range that it seemed to recalibrate the coordinates of 21st-century dance-theatre”, wrote Luke Jennings. In 2001, he spent a year working with Nienke Reehorst (former performer with Meg Stuart’s Damaged Goods and Wim Vande-

keybus’s Ultima Vez); in 2002, he worked with “Eurocrash” supremo Vandekeybus himself. For Ballets C de la B, he created Foi (2003) and Tempus Fugit (2004), before leaving in 2006 to become associate artist at the Toneelhuis theatre in Antwerp.

Cherkaoui is a remarkably productive choreographer, and outside Ballets C de la B he has worked in three main fields. First, is his own troupe. Together they have produced the shows Myth (2007) and Apocrifu (2007). He has also worked for several long-established companies (Monte-Carlo Ballet, Geneva Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Cullberg Ballet in Sweden, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet in New York); as well as in a series of duets – Zero Degrees (2005) with British-Bengali wunderkind Akram Khan, Dunas (2009) with flamenco dancer María Pagés, and Play (2009) with Paris-based Indian dancer Shantala Shivalingappa.

Having spent the last few years doing globe-trotting tours and far-flung commissions, in January 2010 Cherkaoui will launch his own company, resident at the Toneelhuis in his home town. It will be called Eastman, the literal translation of his own Arabic surname.

Watching Cherkaoui Physically, Cherkaoui is a slender, sapling figure; he can twist himself into pipecleaner contortions, or flow through space with liquid limbs. Choreographically, he is nothing if not eclectic. His installation Zon-mai (2007) – a house of

Irvine Barclay Theatre

screens, its “rooms” made of films of his motley diaspora of dancers performing in their own homes – is most emblematic of his approach.

He enjoys working with performers who have different techniques, physiques, ages, nationalities and languages; but rather than trying to unify them, he mobilises their physical and personal differences.

The result is not some sentimental rainbow community, but multiplicitous, prop-ridden sprawls that harness the performers’ idiosyncrasies into loosely-knit episodes that are stuffed with allusions to history, mythology, everyday life and inner desires. Even in his duets, Cherkaoui chooses partners – Khan, Pagés, Shivalingappa – who are distinctively different from him. The exception is Sutra, his masterly 2008 work with a group of Shaolin monks: here, Cherkaoui sets the monks as a group, with himself as the outsider.

Cherkaoui is eclectic with subject and tone too – switching between sacred and profane, drama and comedy – as well as with media (sound, props, speech, writing, film). There are some recurrent themes: personal and cultural difference, religion and spirituality. He often uses medieval polyphonic music. He’s theatrical, but his choreography is more like a network than a narrative. Some choreographic motifs recur, too.

Watch particularly for duets, where Cherkaoui is interested in the different ways people connect with each other: one will turn into a puppet master, or shadow the other, or they’ll merge into a composite creature.

Fact

Click on the video to play >>>

In other words

Cherkaoui would love to meet Kate Bush and tell her what a decisive role she played in his career. His first wake-up call to dance, at the age of 13, was watching a friend act out Bush’s Wuthering Heights.

He’s also a big fan of Running Up That Hill.

In his own words “I was mad on drawing when I was a kid. I wanted to draw reality, but when I drew clouds, I’d also draw the things I could see in them. The great thing about dancing is that you’re both the pencil and the artist. I still translate the world into something beyond the facts.”

“Part contortionist, part visionary, part poet.”

Alistair Spalding, director of Sadler’s Wells theatre, Telegraph, 2007

“Cherkaoui’s eye for the singularity of body language is so witty and sharp, that we still end up feeling as if we know a startling amount about these people and the noisy, disjointed world we all inhabit.”

Haunting work ... Apocrifu (2007), a show Cherkaoui produced with his own troupe

Judith Mackrell on Rien de Rien, Guardian, 2001

Foi (2003), Cherkaoui’s dance piece for Les Ballets C de la B

Cherkaoui in the Independent, 2008

“I had started to make choreography – I’d mix this, with this, with this and make my own work, and then people said, ‘this is contemporary dance you’re doing’ and I said, ‘contemporary what’?”

Cherkaoui remembers his teenage choreographic experiments, londondance.com, 2008

Dunas (2009), a duet featuring Cherkaoui and flamenco dancer María Pagés

“I’ve always considered myself lucky with my background because I had this double lineage.

I never felt I was in the path of one culture, one vision or one truth. I’m a very big doubter; I like doubt. I think it is one of the most important things one should have in one’s life.”

Interview with Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times 2009 Divine inspiration ... Cherkaoui and a group of Shaolin monks in Sutra (2008)

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Ethereal, Abstract, Pop and Radiating Peace

By ROSLYN SULCAS

“I

’M meditating,” says the calm voice of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui over the plangent sounds of Tibetan music at the other end of the phone line. There is a pause. More music. “Please.” Another pause. “Leave a nice message.”

In person, Mr. Cherkaoui (pronounced sher-KAH-wee), 33, a Belgian choreographer increasingly in demand, lives up to his message, deploying a peaceful amiability to coax dancers into exploring new facets of their technique, or even — in the case of “Orbo Novo,” his new work for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet — asking them to speak.

The work, which had its premiere in July at the Jacob’s Pillow festival in Massachusetts and which opens at the Joyce Theater on Oct. 20, also stems from what might be described as the love-and-peace side of Mr. Cherkaoui’s personality; “Orbo Novo” (“New World”) was inspired by Jill Bolte Taylor’s “My Stroke of Insight,” a memoir about having, and recovering from, a stroke.

“It motivated me,” Mr. Cherkaoui said in a conversation earlier this year, “to spread her message of sense of community, of our choice in bringing ourselves closer to each other by focusing on the beauty of immediate sensory experience.”

Motives aside, the work Mr. Cherkaoui creates is densely layered, occasionally disturbing and highly theatrical — performances that can sometimes seem to take in and spit out every trend in contemporary dance-theater. “I had honestly never seen anything like it before,” said Benoit-Swan Pouffer, the artistic director of Cedar Lake. “I knew I wanted the dancers to work with him.”

Since his first work in 1999, created for Alain Platel’s Ballets C de la B, Mr. Cherkaoui has shown a range of

Julieta Cervantes

The Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. His “Orbo Novo,” which played Jacob’s Pillow before its coming performance at the Joyce Theater, is in its American premiere.

tastes: collaborating with the choreographer Akram Khan, the sculptor Antony Gormley and the early-music ensemble Micrologus; using nondancers and people with disabilities; and creating his recent “Sutra” for the martialarts-trained Chinese Shaolin monks.

All of this has helped Mr. Cherkaoui establish an international reputation for his silky intermingling of hybrid movement forms and emotionally intense theater, which frequently takes ethnic and sexual identity as its subject.

“When choreographers go after the multi-arts-form approach, the dance can often get forgotten,” said David Sefton, the director of U.C.L.A. Live, the Los Angeles program that has presented Mr. Cherkaoui’s work for the last two years. “But he is a very serious choreographer; the movement is always at the heart of everything.”

It says much about the appeal of that movement that although Mr.

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

Cherkaoui emerged from the avantgarde cradle of Belgian contemporary dance (which has produced choreographers like Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus and Jan Fabre), his work is also sought by major ballet companies.

Since 2005 he has made works for the Monte Carlo Ballet, the Geneva Ballet, the Cullberg Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet. The Cedar Lake commission, his first work created in the United States, is set to a new score

by Szymon Brzoska and has a modular red lattice set by Alexander Dodge for the dancers to climb through and upon as it mutates into cages and enclosures.

The movement reveals Mr. Cherkaoui’s distinctive physical style: extreme flexibility that conveys a boneless slipperiness melded with street dance with more formal techniques. It is, he said, speaking on the telephone from Ant-

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

Published: October 7, 2009

werp, where he grew up and still lives, partly a result of coming late to dance and absorbing early movement influences through music videos, television and films. (He cites Kate Bush and “Fame” as strong memories.)

“I wasn’t in a family that went to the opera or to see ballet, so all my influences were pop-related until I was 18,” said Mr. Cherkaoui, whose mother was Flemish and father Moroccan. “My father didn’t want me to dance at all, and it was only after my parents divorced that there was more room for that.”

Mr. Cherkaoui started to take as many dance classes as he could: ballet, hiphop, African dance, flamenco, jazz.

Everything, he said, felt natural — and nothing did.

“It felt organic to me to do a movement from ballet and go into an aikido roll, to combine the knowledge of one style with another. But then maybe that comes from the fact that I am a bit of a hybrid form myself — half-Belgian, halfMoroccan, half-Christian, half-Muslim.

I grew up aware that there were two sides, no single truth.”

After winning a prize at a national dance competition for a solo he had created (which featured, among other things, vogueing mixed with African dance), Mr. Cherkaoui auditioned for and was accepted at Parts, Ms. de Keersmaeker’s forward-thinking dance school in Brussels. There he learned about Trisha Brown, Pina Bausch, William Forsythe and others.

“It was a revelation to me,” he said.

“I saw the way contemporary art and popular art talk to each other so much more than people think. That’s a dialogue that isn’t much explored.”

Mr. Cherkaoui hasn’t shied from that exploration throughout his subsequent career with the Ballets C de la B, which he joined after a year at Parts, and, later, as a member of the Toneel-

•

949.854.4646

•

huis Antwerp theater collective. (He is putting together his own company, Eastman, to be based at the Toneelhuis next year.)

Neither has he avoided the kinds of fiercely intellectual topics that tend to excite critical disapprobation. “Orbo Novo,” which received mixed reviews at Jacob’s Pillow, tries to evoke the physical duality of the right and left brain hemispheres. “I wanted to show that we have that choice to bring ourselves closer to each other by focusing on immediate sensory experience,” Mr. Cherkaoui said.

The desire for art to change the world can seem both naïve and ambitious, but that’s not something that bothers Mr. Cherkaoui. “The whole point of live music and dance is to celebrate the present moment,” he said.

“This is how I do it.”

Julieta Cervantes

From top, the Cedar Lake dancers Golan Yosef, Jon Bond, Acacia Schachte and Jason Kittelberger in “Orbo Novo.”

www.thebarclay.org

“Edouard Lock’s New Work” West Coast Premiere

photos by Massimo Chiarradia

La La La Human Steps Edouard Lock, artistic director Montreal, Canada

www.lalalahumansteps.com

January 26, 2012

Thursday at 8pm

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Édouard Lock

(La La La Human Steps Founder, Artistic Director and Choreographer) began his choreographic career at the age of 20, creating works from 1974 to 1979 for a variety of Canadian dance companies and institutions, including Groupe Nouvelle Aire, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal. In 1980 he founded La La La Human Steps, a company that has garnered strong national and international recognition and that celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2005.

Over the years Mr. Lock has been invited to create works for some of the world’s leading dance companies, including the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, the Nederlands Dans Theater and Het Nationale Ballet of Holland. Mr. Lock co-conceived and was Artistic Director for David Bowie’s world tour, Sound and Vision, in 1990. He also collaborated with Frank Zappa on the Yellow Shark concert – an occasion that marked Mr. Zappa’s final performances – alongside Germany’s Ensemble Modern, Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, the Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna’s KonzertHaus.

At the invitation of the Opéra de Paris, Mr. Lock choreographed the 2003 production of Les Boréades, interpreted by La La La Human Steps at Palais Garnier. Two art films based on Mr. Lock’s work have also been made: La La La Human Sex duo no 1 in 1987, directed by Bernar Hébert and winner of six international awards; and Velásquez’ Little Museum in 1994, again by Mr. Hébert. In September 1997, the Toronto International Film Festival presented the documentary Inspirations by British director Michael Apted, featuring Mr. Lock alongside other major figures of contemporary art and architecture such as painter Roy Lichtenstein and architect Tadao Ando.

The film adaptation of Amelia, directed by Mr. Lock, had its American premiere at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival and at Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and its European premiere at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The film has won awards from numerous international festivals, including the Chicago Film Festival, the Rose d’Or Festival in Switzerland and the Prague International Film Festival. The film was also nominated at the International Emmy Awards.

Click on the video to play >>>

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

La La La La Human Steps was founded in 1980 around a three-week series of performances in the small theatre l’Eskabel in Montréal’s St-Henri district, which led the troupe to The Kitchen in New York City, the epicentre of contemporary dance at the time. Since then, the troupe has become one of the world’s most recognized dance companies, thanks to the unique choreographic language it developed. Choreographic complexity, the alteration of balletic structures and the intertwining of choreographic, musical and cinematic strands are among the elements that create a sense of perceptual distortion and renewal, that encourage audiences to both reinvent and rediscover the body and its dance. The company requires that its dancers constantly redefine, question and renew themselves, to bring out performances that move from extreme physical challenge to the greatest of lyricism. The Montréal troupe has collaborated with institutions both prestigious and eclectic, from the Opéra de Paris to Frank Zappa. Since Human Sex in 1985, which catapulted La La La Human Steps to the forefront of the international dance scene, the troupe has performed: New Demons (1987), Infante, c’est destroy (1991), 2 (1995), Exaucé/Salt (1998), Amelia (2002) and Amjad (2007) on international tours in the major capitals of Europe, Asia and America. Over the last 15 years, the company has received the co-production support from many international dance festivals to produce Édouard Lock’s creations, such as Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, deSingel in Antwerp, the Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam, the ImPulsTanz in Vienna, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, the Montréal High Lights Festival, the LG Arts Centre in Seoul and the Saitama Arts Theater in Japan.

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Review:

Edouard Lock debut in Amsterdam

By Victor Swoboda Special to The Gazette January 7, 2011

tently evoked the Dying Swan, a coy but highly effective little homage from Lock.

The participation of the world-famous artist came after she searched for some high-profile choreographers to prepare pieces for her in a one-off show. Lock was considered. Although the two were unable to collaborate on that show, Lock felt there was potential to work together.

AMSTERDAM – La La La Human Steps began its fourth decade auspiciously in Amsterdam this week with the world premiere of Edouard Lock’s latest major work largely involving new dancers, a distinguished guest artist in the person of Diana Vishneva of Russia’s Maryinsky Ballet, and, most significantly, choreography of great depth, subtlety, range of movement and emotional resonance.

Publicized rather oddly only as “Edouard Lock’s New Work,” the 95-minute piece could well be his finest creation.

On Thursday (Jan. 6), throughout the second performance of the three-day Amsterdam run, there was evidence that Lock pushed beyond the parameters that he established in Amelia (2002) and Amjad (2007), works that emphasized brilliant duets for men fiercely gesticulating and women on point spinning like tops.

Never fear, the new work had plenty of gesticulation and fantastic spinning by both the women on point as well as the men – the 12-member cast outfitted in familiar La La La black was a marvel.

But at times for purposes of dramatic contrast, Lock allowed body lines to become looser, more relaxed, without the relentless tension seen in the earlier works. Instead of extended clinches, couples in duets separated for longer intervals and at a farther distance on the big Het Muziektheater stage (comparable to Salle Wilfrid Pelletier’s).

Lock also unusually had his dancers often sprawling on the floor. Indeed, after the onstage four-member band played

an overture of Gavin Bryars’ music (his pseudo-Baroque score was a highlight throughout the work, with a particularly poignant saxophone), the curtain rose on the floor-bound arched figure of Talia Evtushenko, her arm raised plaintively.

Regularly the floor came into play during intense exchanges between couples.

Each time that the dancers came together after separating or rose up from the floor to find each other, there was dramatic, emotional reconciliation (frequently followed immediately by another breakup – these were people bound by an emotional vicious circle). Lock is the most unsentimental of choreographers, but his work nonetheless regularly shows people trying desperately to make connections with other people, however brief or in vain.

This was certainly evident in this latest piece, which was inspired, according to the publicity, by two classic tales of love, Dido and Aeneas, and Orfeo and

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

Eurydice. Lock took not their plots, but their evocation of passion and poignant awareness that all relations, not matter how intense, are slaves of human mortality. At intervals, two large vertical screens were lowered in parallel showing a pretty young woman on one side in a touching visual conversation with a version of her old self on the other. Aging and its ultimate end were inevitable, and no amount of spinning or vigorous movement, the entire work implied, could delay one’s fate.

The final statement on this came in a closing duet with Vishneva and veteran company member Jason Shipley-Holmes, the coolest and most reliable of partners. With a lyricism unusual for Lock, the two calmly bid an extended farewell, Vishneva demonstrating the relaxed ease, fine line and expressiveness that make her outstanding as Giselle and Odette-Odile. The last image of Vishneva alone on the ground, her body arched over her one extended leg, pa-

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

Vishneva spent an intensive month in Montreal preparing her role. Rehearsals regularly lasted until midnight. Though she was accustomed to memorizing big parts (she’s performing three large-scale classical ballets this year including La Bayadere with the Maryinsky in Ottawa in February), Lock’s work was demanding even for her.

that was dropped because of an injury to her partner. But the performance this week showed unusual polish for a Lock premiere.

Equally up to the challenge were the splendid company members hired last year – Diego Castro, Mi Deng, Sandra Muhlbauer, Marcio Vinicius Paulino Silveira, Grace-Anne Powers, Alejandra Salamanca Lopez, William Lee Smith and Kai Zhang. Statuesque veteran Zofia Tujaka rounded out the formidable cast.

“This feels like ballet for the 21st century,” Vishneva said in a back-stage interview after the show. “After this, classical ballet feels like slow motion.”

Almost everything connected with the rehearsal was a challenge.

“First I learned the steps slowly, but then I was having sleepless nights wondering how I could ever perform them fast the next day. And we rehearsed without mirrors or music. Never had I worked that way! I heard the music for the final duet just two days before the premiere. But Edouard asked me to trust him, and I did. I danced through his eyes.”

Vishneva will dance in selected cities on the company’s European tour and also in Montreal in May (but not in Toronto).

Undoubtedly Lock will fiddle with the work before it gets to Montreal, hopefully adding a slow duet for Vishneva

•

949.854.4646

•

Photographs by: Deen van Meer HET NATIONALE BALLET & HET MUZIEKTHEATER AMSTERDAM

www.thebarclay.org

derstand the story, it didn’t flow, but if you flipped through it too fast you missed the progression. But at just the right speed your brain was only slightly behind the moving images and you were left with the impressions of the story while still visually seeing every detail.

La La La Human Steps: ‘Amelia’

by Cecly Placenti February 4, 2005

Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn

If it is at all possible to set a stage on fire with lightning-fast pointe work and unbelievably quick partnering sequences, Montreal-based La La La Human Steps would be the company to do it. On February 4, Edouard Lock brought his provocative “Amelia,” with its multi-media projections, 3D animation, and 600 lighting changes, to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the result was an unabandoned whooping ovation. Set against shifting lattice-work panels or simply an empty stage, this abstract work for pointe is a powerful and totally unique mix of intertwining solos, intricate duets that seem to defy the laws of physics, breathtaking speed, and complexity of movement. In the hometown of Balanchine and his quickfooted ballerinas, I never imagined women could move with such velocity and power on such a small surface of satin.

Choreographer Edouard Lock believes that dance, like language, has its power not in the meaning of the words or steps, but rather in their syntax or structure. In “Amelia” he uses repetition, modification, and the partial isolation of moments through lighting to create the world in flux as he wants us to see it. This piece, while having to do with memories of a transvestite he once knew, deals more with the actual act of remembering. “When the body is in flux it has a relatively abstract and incomplete shape. Memories tend to be like

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

that as well for me,” said Lock. The choreography, while often repeating certain gestures and using hundreds of intricate upper body movements, was constantly unfolding.

The dancers seemed to move at speeds of quick to quickest for the entire 90 minute ballet. As a result, the audience was forced to imagine the overall shape of the movements or phrases.

Without time to process every little thing that was unfolding before your eyes, you were left with an impression, a memory of what you just saw. It reminded me very much of those flip-books I’d had as a child. If you thumbed through the pages too slowly you didn’t un-

Another component of memory that intrigues Lock is how it simultaneously hides and reveals. The highly detailed choreography and the slight impurity resulting from high speed, as well as the use of fluctuating light sources to reveal things only partially, highlighted that facet of memory. Juxtaposing that with the revelation of body shape and line inherent in pointe work was a highly original and interesting idea. Respectful of classical tradition, Lock’s choreography takes ballet and pointe technique to its outer limits and produces something completely new.

There is quite a lot of pas de deux work in “Amelia” that relied on weight and timing.

Traditional partnering emphasizes strength, while Lock’s duets exist through timing and cooperation. With partnering at such high velocity, the tempo is achieved through a mutual dependency between both dancers executing very small shifts of weight. At any given point in the duets, if the man had let go of the woman, she would have gone spinning to the floor.

The music and singing seemed to coexist with the dancers, but neither inspired nor cued them. The use of music and song in no way detracted from the dance, although the dance was not dependant on the time sequences of the music. The razor-sharp lighting employed throughout the piece could be seen as almost interfering with the dance, but in my opinion it enhanced and highlighted it. The audience was left with the job of putting all the elements together. As in nature, nothing necessarily cooperates with anything else, but overall it works. That is the same with the theatrical elements of “Amelia.”

Watching a dance in which the dancers seem to be on the edge of their control, the choreographer seems to be stretching his own creative limits, and the elements of lighting and sound seem to challenge another perspective, all inviting the possibility of failure, La La La Human Steps invites us to enter a new and exciting reality.

To say these dancers were beautifully proficient is an understatement. They moved with the surreal precision of an animated cyberdoll. In contrast to their precision were pieces of film created by recording information from parts of the dancers bodies and storing them as data. Then the image of the dancer was recorded separately. The two—data and—image were then brought together onto film and used almost like a partner.

Performing onstage with the dancers were three musicians and a vocalist singing the lyrics by Lou Reed set to a score by David Lang.

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

photos by Richard Termine

•

www.thebarclay.org

Fearful Symmetries Trajectoire Barclay debut

Diavolo

Jacques Heim, artistic director Los Angeles, CA

www.diavolo.org

March 22, 2012

photo by Kristi Khans

Thursday at 8pm

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Diavolo

company members are dancers, gymnasts, actors, athletes, and above all, teammates. Under the guidance of Artistic Director Jacques Heim, they collaboratively develop work on oversized surrealistic sets and everyday structures. Heim’s childhood struggles and his journeys as a French-Jewish man have shaped his thematic choices within the urban landscapes. Themes of isolation, fear, destiny, survival, faith, modernization, destination and danger help to illustrate the effect of our surroundings on our daily lives. The structural elements and surrealistic set pieces of Diavolo create a sense of daring and risk-taking through dramatic movement that juxtaposes human fragility and survival. Only through working together with the elements of danger created by, and on, architectural environments does Diavolo accomplish its metaphors for the challenges of relationships, the absurdities of life and the struggle to maintain our humanity in the shadow of an increasingly technological world.

Jacques Heim founded Diavolo in Los Angeles in 1992. Diavolo made its European debut in 1995 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where they were named “Best of the Fest” by the London Independent and Critic’s Choice by The Guardian. The company was honored to perform live at the 10th annual American Choreography Awards in 2004. In 1998, the company opened the performance series at the new Getty Center Museum in Los Angeles and 1999 saw the creation of Diavolo’s first full-evening length work, Catapult, which also coincided with Diavolo’s first full North American tour. During the summer of 2001, Diavolo invited Jelon Viera, artistic director of DanceBrazil and the Capoeria Foundation, to Los Angeles to conduct an intensive Capoeria workshop with the company. In spring 2002, Diavolo created a second smaller company to perform in a cabaret-style show, which ran for eight weeks at the New Shinagawa Prince Hotel in Tokyo, Japan.

Jacques Heim, artistic director, was born in Paris. He

The commercial arm of the company, Diavolo Creative Productions, has also created unique performance events for such corporate clients as Wells Fargo Bank, Honda, Sebastian Inc. and General Motors. Due to the unusual and innovative way that Diavolo works with architectural structures, the creative team at Cirque du Soleil was inspired to hire Jacques Heim to choreograph a show in Las Vegas, entitled “Ka,” which opened in February of 2005 and is still running. In 2007, Diavolo was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic to create a performance to Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Foreign Bodies” and a second commission based on John Adams’ “Fearful Symmetries,” which premiered at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2010. The Los Angeles Times declared its premiere at The Hollywood Bowl “one of those rare events that define the art of this city when the levels of vision and support are equally exceptional.” The 2010-11 season marked Diavolo’s twelfth U.S. tour. In addition, Diavolo has performed internationally in Scotland, Japan, Chile, Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Brazil, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany and Austria.

moved to the United States and earned a BFA in Theatre, Dance and Film from Middlebury College. He was awarded a Certificate for Analysis and Criticism of Dance from the University of Surrey in England. Heim moved to Los Angeles in 1989 and attended California Institute for the Arts, receiving an MFA in Choreography. In 1992, Heim founded Diavolo Dance Theater. In the summer of 2001, Heim was one of three choreographers chosen to create a piece during the Ballet Pacifica Annual Choreographic Workshop. He has been named one of the “Faces to Watch in the Arts” by the Los Angeles Times and one of the “100 Coolest People in LA” by Buzz Magazine.

Heim was the Artistic Director for the 2005 Taurus Stunt Awards and returned in 2007 to stage a movement/stunt piece; “The Car.” In 2002-2004, Heim choreographed the long-running KA, a permanent show for Cirque du Soleil, which premiered in April of 2004 at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. In 2006, Jacques created choreography for “The Stones,” a theatre piece produced by Center Theatre Group at the Douglas Theater. In September 2007 he choreographed

photo: Rose Eichenbaum

“Foreign Bodies,” based on a score by Esa-Pekka Salonen for the

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. He has recently worked in television on BBC America’s “Dancing with the Stars,” and Bravo’s “Step Up and Dance” and has been invited to be a Creative Director for the Opening Ceremony of The 16th Asian Games, in Guangzhou, China.

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Machines Of Movement, With Bruises

By Victoria Looseleaf

S

TONEHENGE. Mayan architecture. Factory workers gone amok. These are but some of the disparate images conjured in Jacques Heim’s latest dance piece, “Fearful Symmetries,” for his hyperphysical Los Angeles troupe, Diavolo. Known for humongous, custom-built sets that are not exactly travel-friendly, like a two-and-a-half ton aluminum wheel and a 17-footlong rocking boat, Diavolo, believe it or not, spends most of its time on the road, often in Europe, and is rarely seen at home. But “Fearful Symmetries,” set to the modular pulse of John Adams’s 1988 Minimalist score of the same title, is an exception. It will have its premiere next month at the Hollywood Bowl.

The second part of a planned trilogy, this collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic promises to go further than Part 1, “Foreign Bodies” from 2007, which The Los Angeles Times’s erstwhile dance critic Lewis Segal called “one of those rare events that define the art of this city.”

He went on to describe that work, with music by Esa-Pekka Salonen, as “a life-cycle set in dangerous times,” encompassing sex, aggression and a fast-changing landscape.

“For the longest time I’ve been fascinated about the beginning of the universe,” the French-born Mr. Heim, 46, said during a break in rehearsals at Diavolo’s studio east of downtown Los Angeles. “In ‘Foreign Bodies’ it was more the beginning of the beginning — actual foreign bodies, bacteria, were entering the system. The meaning of ‘Fearful Symmetries’ is basically the evolution of time through the metaphor of factory workers.”

The workers as viewed through the architecturally inclined lens of

Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times

The Los Angeles troupe Diavolo, clockwise from left, Philip Flickinger, Briana Bowie, Garrett Wolf, Trevor Harrison (foreground), Omar Olivas, Anibal Sandoval and Melinda Ritchie

Mr. Heim’s vivid imagination. Think of Charlie Chaplin’s character struggling to survive in the industrialized world of the 1936 film “Modern Times” — but on steroids. Confronted with even greater obstacles, Diavolo dancers slither, leap and spin around structures designed by the architect Adam Davis.

Mr. Heim, who choreographed Cirque du Soleil’s “Ka” in Las Vegas, has lately been attracted to the cube.

“Foreign Bodies” made use of an 800-pound one that divided into three pyramids. The cube in “Symmetries” involves four aluminum and wood columns as well as two U-shaped pieces that can be deconstructed, reconstructed and reconfigured by the dancers, often atop a three-part, twoand-a-half-ton motorized “field” that rises and tilts toward the audience at a 17-degree angle.

“Swan Lake” it’s not.

But the opus does feature a number of heart-stopping swan dives by dancers from on high into the waiting

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

arms of sure-footed partners.

“My process has always been the structure first,” said Mr. Heim, who was a street performer in his native Paris before attending college in the States; he earned a master’s degree in choreography from the California Institute for the Arts in 1991.

“I think about what the structure is and how I respond to it, ” added Mr.

Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times

The Los Angeles troupe Diavolo, led by Jacques Heim.

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

Published: August 27, 2010

Heim, dressed in black and sporting a graying ponytail. “Then the themes come toward the end of the improvisational process. But working on this project, the music came first.”

That music is what its composer calls “a big boogie-woogie.” It has been used for more than a dozen dance pieces, including settings by Peter Martins for New York City Ballet and Ashley Page for the Royal Ballet. But Diavolo’s ultra-athletic, high-octane account differs by dint of the sheer physical demands.

At a recent rehearsal, the performers — five men, five women — gripped slots in the cube to break the columns apart before pushing, pulling and twirling them in what occasionally resembled the teacup ride at Disneyland. At one point two dancers were caught between a pair of pillars. As they were on the verge of being squeezed, as if in a vise, doom loomed. But like the beautiful assistant who climbs into a magician’s box in order to be sawed in half, the dancers disappeared, only to pop up around another geometric configuration.

Bramwell Tovey, who will conduct at the September performance and who worked with the Royal Ballet for five years, wrote via e-mail that the choreography brilliantly captured “the relentless minimalism of the score, with its multilayered complexities and powerful emotional core.”

Over the years, though, Diavolo, founded in 1992, has had its naysayers. Of a New York appearance in 2001, Anna Kisselgoff wrote in The New York Times, “Diavolo was all too obviously long on novelty and short on depth.” Chris Pasles, in The Los Angeles Times in 1997, said the company’s “inspiration is not consistently high,” adding, “When their imagination fails, the results are structurally inorganic.”

•

949.854.4646

•

And not all Diavolo dancers have relished the rigors of so-called crashand-burn choreography.

Jones Welsh was with the company off and on for five years. “I wanted to give my body a break,” said Mr. Welsh, who now has his own movement theater troupe, Leonix. “I felt that doing the work was overbuilding my muscles, and working with set pieces was like lifting weights all day. As for being a dancer, you lose flexibility, the bulk of your body loses the dancer line, and having that sense of grace as a dancer isn’t as pronounced.”

But Diavolo’s current performers don’t object, even though bruises, strains, friction burns and worse are not unusual. The rehearsal director Briana Bowie recently lost the tip of her middle finger missing her mark by seconds; within a month, however, she was performing again.

Garrett Wolf, 33, who’s been with the troupe for a decade, said he liked the adrenaline rush. “Diavolo and Jacques have always been about high risk, trust and teamwork,” he said. “But since we don’t have crash mats and wires, at the least we’ll have one partner, if not two or three. I was supposed to retire last May, and I’m still here. It’s part of my makeup.”

Mr. Heim calls his performers gladiators. “Because I care about my dancers, I’m pushing them further than they can be pushed — mentally, physically, emotionally. If they can do that, then they become giants.”

Click on the video to play >>>

www.thebarclay.org

| ENTERTAINMENT

September 10, 2010

Diavolo meets John Adams at the Hollywood Bowl Dance Review:

By Lewis Segal

S

ince its formation in 1992, the Diavolo ensemble has used portable architectural units to create movement theater about our relationship to an unstable environment. Artistic director Jacques Heim has sent his fearless performers plunging off a rocking platform, bursting out of trapdoors inside a staircase, scrambling over fast-evolving pyramids and hanging onto wheels of every possible size at every possible height and angle.

To say Diavolo is exciting is redundant -- the question is always whether there’s anything deeper than the high-risk gymnastics and advanced theater technology on view. The answer was mostly yes at Hollywood Bowl on Thursday when this Los Angeles-based company premiered “Fearful Symmetries,” a major collaboration commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as the second installment of a projected Diavolo trilogy that began with “Foreign Bodies” three years ago.

The 10 cast members proved brilliant at making precisely coordinated feats look improvisational, even reckless -- but, at their freest, they remained under the thumb of two master manipulators (not counting Heim). One was Adam Davis, who designed the giant cube that became the focus of the piece. This mysterious structure held all sorts of hidden panels, apertures and crevices, but quickly opened up to evoke a whole cityscape, then divided into rectangular platforms that became everything from towers to surfboards. (Mike McCluskey and others engineered the unit.)

Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

plateaus and canyons to be investigated, and the search continued with no cube in sight.

Stay tuned for Part 3 -- to premiere, one hopes, before Dec. 21, 2012, when (Nostradamus and the Mayans warned us) we’ll definitely need all of Diavolo’s lessons about enduring environmental calamity with grace and high spirits.

Besides “Fearful Symmetries,” this final night of the Bowl’s classical season included danceless orchestral performances of two works originally choreographed by Mikhail Fokine for the Diaghilev Ballets Russes.

As orchestrated by Berlioz, Weber’s “Invitation to the Dance” has served great male stars from Vaslav Nijinsky to Nikolai Tsiskaridze in a ballet titled “Le Spectre de la Rose.” Tovey’s leadership enforced vigorous attacks

at the work’s massive structural junctures, but a rather tame interpretation of its sweeter moments. Nice playing but little surge.

The 1919 suite from Stravinsky’s “Firebird” had atmosphere galore, plenty of sizzle in the Infernal Dance and impressive surety in the transition from the shimmer of the Berceuse through the fervor of the finale. But the dance impetus virtually evaporated in the Dance of the Princesses.

String playing sounded especially admirable -- particularly in the high exposed passages of the Dance of the Firebird.

Besides colleagues previously mentioned, Diavolo on Thursday included Briana Bowie, Philip Flickinger, Ashley Hannan, Melinda Ritchie, Anibal Sandoval and Chisa Yamaguchi.

Adam Davis designed the giant cube that became the focus of the piece. This mysterious structure held all sorts of hidden panels, apertures and crevices that would quickly open up to evoke a whole cityscape.

Even more dominant in “Fearful Symmetries”: the 1988 score of the same name by John Adams -- an intricate, churning and often threatening showpiece that challenged Heim and the cast to match its scale and intensity. Even those of us who saw preview showings of the work weren’t prepared for the way conductor Bramwell Tovey and the Philharmonic asserted Adams’ fierce authority on Thursday. And by failing to embody the darkness in the music, parts of the last third of the Diavolo performance looked arbitrary and insufficient.

Before those lapses, however, acts of collective and individual heroism fused with the music in ways at once startling and uplifting -- Omar Olivas leaping across tilting preci-

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

pices; Trevor Harrison avoiding obstacles with one dynamic flip after another; Garrett Wolf fighting for survival inside an imploding cubicle; Shauna Martinez forcing the whole set to pivot open for her as if breaching the gates of hell.

Watching them, did we think of 9/11, Katrina, the firestorm in San Bruno? Why not? The best moments in “Fearful Symmetries” showed a familiar landscape suddenly becoming dangerous and people forced by an unexpected loss of control to discover new capabilities and relationships. In form, the piece depicted a search -one that initially focused on the cube, with Diavolo exploring inside, outside, above and below it. By the end, even the ground had opened, forming new

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

The Diavolo ensemble expertly made precisely coordinated feats look improvisational, even reckless, in its performance of “Fearful Symmetries” at the Hollywood Bowl.

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Pilobolus

Only West Coast Engagement this season.

Pilobolus Artistic Directors:

Robby Barnett Michael Tracy Jonathan Wolken (1949-2010)

Washington Depot, Connecticut

www.pilobolus.com

May 17-18, 2012

photos by John Kane

Thurs-Fri at 8pm

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Pilobolus

(crystallinus) is a phototropic zygomycete - a sun-loving fungus that grows in barnyards and pastures. It’s a feisty thing - only 1/4 inch tall - that can throw its spores nearly eight feet. Right over a cow. It is also a highly unusual dance company.

Pilobolus, the arts organism, germinated in the fertile soil of a Dartmouth College dance class in 1971. What emerged was a collaborative choreographic process and unique weight-sharing approach to partnering that gave the young company a nontraditional but powerful new set of skills with which to make dances.

Today Pilobolus is a unique American arts organization of international influence. It has not forsaken its original impetus, and remains a deeply committed collaborative effort with its artistic directors and over twenty-five full and part-time dancers contributing to one of the most popular and varied bodies of work in the history of the field. Nearly four decades of creative production testify to the company’s position as an arts collective of remarkable fruitfulness and longevity.

Pilobolus is based in Washington Depot, Connecticut and performs for stage and television audiences all over the world. Pilobolus works appear in the repertories of major dance companies - the Joffrey, Feld, Ohio, Arizona, and Aspen/Santa Fe Ballets in the U.S., the Ballet National de Nancy et de Lorraine and the Ballet du Rhin in France, and Italy’s Verona Ballet - and the company has recently begun a series of major creative collaborations, including new productions with the famed writer and illustrator, Maurice Sendak; the Israeli choreographic team, Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak; the remarkable American puppeteer, Basil Twist; and head writer for SpongeBob SquarePants, Stephen Banks.

Pilobolus has received a number of prestigious honors, including the Berlin Critic’s Prize, the Brandeis Award, the New England Theatre Conference Prize, and a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in cultural programming. In June 2000 Pilobolus received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement in choreography and in 2004 the company was featured on CBS 60 Minutes.

The physical vocabularies of Pilobolus works are not drawn from traditions of codified dance movement, but are invented - emerging from intense periods of improvisation and creative play.

This process has been the source of much interest, in response to which the company inaugurated the Pilobolus Institute, an educational outreach program using the art of choreography as a model for creative thinking in any field. The Institute offers sustained programs for both children and adults around the country, as well as a series of Leadership Workshops for corporations and business schools.

The physical vocabularies of Pilobolus works are not drawn from traditions of codified dance movement but are invented, emerging from intense periods of improvisation and creative play.

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

The third arm of the company’s activity is Pilobolus Creative Services, a choreographic and performance collective providing movement design and production for commercial applications in business and advertising. PCS has made television spots for Mobil, Ford, Toyota, Opel, and Hyundai; created live events for IBM, McKinsey, United Technologies, Dupont, and Merck; and has presented gala performances for Joe Boxer, Marithe Girbaud, MAC Cosmetics and Krizia, among others. In 2007, the company created and presented six acclaimed performances during the 79th Annual Academy Awards, and produced a series of original segments for the Oprah Winfrey Show; in 2008, itwas featured on the Conan O’Brien show; and in 2009 it was nominated for a Sports Emmy for its work for the NFL Network.

The 2010-11 season marked Pilobolus’ 40th year. The company has continued to grow, expanding and refining its unusual collaborative methods to produce a body of over 100 choreographic works, and while it has become a stable and influential force in the world of dance, Pilobolus remains as protean and surprising as ever.

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Tangled Up in You

By Emily Macel Pilobolus Dance Theater delights and compels, mesmerizes and befuddles. When watching them perform, one’s mind is a flurry of questions like “How’d they do that?” and “Where’d that arm come from?” and “Who’s holding who?” But it’s more than just gymnastics or circus stunts.

The inventiveness of these daring dancers has a 39-year history of more than 100 dance works, proving what you can do when you work together as a team—in ways you’d never imagine.

Co-artistic director Robby Barnett talks about Pilobolus as an organism, using scientific terminology that you wouldn’t expect from a dancer. “We look for a kind of membroidian fractal application of our beliefs,” he says. The name Pilobolus itself came from a type of fungus that co-founder Jonathan Wolken studied. Though the terms might seem misplaced outside of a laboratory, when you watch the company dance together it can be like looking through a lab microscope. Like an amoeba, they have no fixed shape, but are in constant flux. Bodies move together, then separate from one large mass to a few smaller groups. Then they reunite, forming a new structure of limbs and torsos, balanced on heads, hands, and feet. Audiences are fascinated and presenters love to book them.

It all started in 1971 with a dance composition class at Dartmouth College taught by Alison Chase. The company founders, Wolken and Moses Pendleton, met in that class; later that year classmates Robby Barnett and Lee Harris joined their team. Pendleton, Wolken, Harris, and Barnett presented their first concert in New York that summer, performing

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

the piece they’d developed in Chase’s class, Pilobolus. In 1973, Chase, who trained with Merce Cunningham and Mia Slavenska, left Dartmouth to join her former students full time; Harris left and was replaced by Michael Tracy, another Dartmouth peer. And the sixth member, Martha Clarke, had been a dancer with Anna Sokolow.

The strength of Pilobolus—in technique, in organization, and in philosophy—is in its core. “The original Pilobolus was a group of four men twisted together like proteins trying to figure out how to move across the floor en masse,” says Barnett. “We clung to each other for moral and physical support. We had a single center as a compound creature.

If your partner moved away you would fall down.” The creation of the company came out of the ethos of the 1960s. “Our generation had freedom to imagine what our lives could be. It was a physical life, a creative life, and we were doing it with people we enjoyed being with.”

Though the company has gone through changes (Pendleton left in 1981 to form his own company, MOMIX; Clarke also left to pursue her own dance/theater work) the core values remain. The current company has seven performing members, three artistic directors, and a whole lot of collaboration.

Although Jenny Mendez, who joined Pilobolus in 2004, started dance at a late age, she was immediately comfortable with the founders of Pilobolus. “They had no ballet experience, no modern experience, the company grew out of their own physical abilities. I related to that because I knew I liked to run and jump and fall.”

Dance captain Andrew Herro was also attracted to the physicality. A former athlete,

he came to dance at Marquette University because he wanted to keep himself physically active. His athletic background has helped him, though. “I’ve got several pieces where I’m picking up two people at a time. If you get your body physically strong you have a lot more options available for you to work with other bodies.”

For a piece like Megawatt (2004), performed to the music of Primus, Radiohead, and Squarepusher, Mendez says, “It’s 16 minutes of pure raw physicality; it’s about how much you can push yourself to roll, jump, flip, create

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

these incredible movements onstage.”

Though Barnett says there is no set technique, the dancers have terms for the ways weight can be shared and carried. For example, “reciprocals” are the way “you pick somebody up and put them on their feet, then they pick you up and put you back on your feet,” explains company member Annika Sheaff. “It’s unexpected and the audience can’t see how it’s happening or if they can see it, they can’t believe it’s happening,” she says. “Those magical moments are typical Pilobolus.”

•

www.thebarclay.org

Annika Sheaff and members of Pilobolus in a field near their Washington, CT, studio, photographed for their 2010 calendar.

In repertory classics like Ocellus, Day Two, Gnomen, Pseudopodia, and Symbiosis, the dancers form amazing entanglements that yield shapes unlike two bodies in a typical dancer’s embrace. Nearly nude in many of these works, their muscles and limbs glisten.

Though its obvious that a great deal of strength is required for a dancer to hold himself on a diagonal straight line hinged only on another dancer’s thigh, or for a woman to crawl up a man’s body like a spider and hang from his neck by her ankles, the dancing is always graceful, agile, and somehow natural.

Other works incorporate these balancing skills into something more theatrical and often funny. In one of the company’s earliest pieces, Walklyndon (1971), a dancer balances on his

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

arms in a horizontal plank, while two dancers push his head and legs like a seesaw. This silent physical-theater piece is rife with slapstick humor. In Lanterna Magica the dancers are mythical creatures who flit around with a lantern on a long rod, tumbling and balancing, and just playing around. There’s no doubt that the dancers are having fun.

In recent years, collaboration has grown with artists and choreographers outside of the company. The first came in 1999 with artists/ authors Maurice Sendak and Arthur Yorinks to create A Selection, which is documented in the film Last Dance (2002). In 2007, the company in­vited Israeli choreographers Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak to create a work. The result was the quirky and riveting Rushes.

“It was a strange experiment for Inbal and me because we didn’t know what was going to happen,” Pollack says. “Pilobolus is a great group of people who have fun and are fun to be with and can do many things. They gave us the opportunity to go in a different direction than they’re used to going,” such as the use of costumes, sets, props, and character development. One dancer wears suspenders and carries a suitcase while hunched over, skittering around the space; three men climb onto one another to create a slot machine of their bodies and faces. It’s all darkly humorous mixed with astonishing lifts and balances, proving that the company is not only a troupe of dancers, but also of gymnasts, actors, mimes, and collaborators.

This summer the company will perform a second collaboration with Pinto and Pollak during their season at the Joyce, July 13–Aug. 8. They’ll also premiere a collaboration with Steven Banks, the head writer of the cartoon Sponge­Bob SquarePants. Last year Pilobolus worked with New York City puppeteer Basil Twist for Darkness and Light.

The shadows-as-dancers in Twist’s piece was not the first time they experimented with shadow work. In 2006 the company got the gig of doing a commercial for Hyundai Santa Fe, creating silhouettes of campfires, bicycles, harps, and opera singers using only their bodies. “You’re trying to hit these specific shapes and perfect images. The process is really about finding what exactly makes that image come to life,” says Herro. The ad led to the invitation to make shadow images for the 2007 Oscars—from a women’s high heel shoe with a devil’s fork for the heel, to a van with passengers riding in it, to a firing gun. This type of gig involves

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

an extended company that includes former members and those trained specifically for the commercial work.

Five years ago the company hired its firstever executive director, Itamar Kubovy. In 2005, mother of Pilobolus Alison Chase was let go—a painful decision all around. When she asked the company to stop performing the works she’d helped to choreograph, it raised complex questions about choreographic rights.

Pilobolus tours seven to eight months a year. In the past year they’ve been to New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, and Israel. The company often performs in the U.S. as well.

This fall and winter they’ll makes stops in over a dozen states, from Vermont to California.

Abroad or on home turf though, audiences can enter a place of euphoria watching the company perform.

“We’ve been through plenty of ups and downs over the years, but at the moment the company is on a wonderful upswing,” Barnett says. “The thing I’m most proud of is Pilobolus the arts organism. It was like getting a fire going and keeping it burning. For all its quirks and faults and errors, the company has survived. We’ve made this creature Pilobolus, which in its turn does many things.”

Emily Macel, a former associate editor for Dance Magazine, is now based in Washington, DC.

Click on the video to play >>>

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Irvine Barclay Theatre

Dance Initiative The Barclay’s Dance Initiative marks an evolution of the theatre’s involvement with dance to date. It includes multiple components designed to increase the significance and profile of dance in Orange County, and to increase the community’s engagement with dance. Through this program, Irvine Barclay Theatre intends to grow its artistic and presentation activities, develop new audiences and collaborate directly with members of the Orange County dance community.

We will establish two new volunteer and support councils. One will help guide the Initiative, while a larger, community-wide council will serve as a resource for choreographers, school directors, dancers, and educators so they might collaborate and share resources, ideas and solutions to common artistic and administrative challenges.

The theatre will continue as a major presenter of superior performances, with an expansion of the number companies and productions at the theatre. It will also launch a “secondtier series,” featuring more exploratory work, which this year will feature Irish step dancer Colin Dunne who has pushed beyond his art form’s traditional boundaries.

The first major student outreach project will use IBT’s dance series as a hands-on laboratory for high school and university students. Directed in conjunction with faculty from UCI’s Claire Trevor School for the Arts Dance Department, this 10-monthlong outreach project will give students exclusive access to company classes and rehearsals, and opportunities to interact with artistic directors and dancers of premiere contemporary dance companies.

IBT’s Dance Initiative is being developed as a catalyst to spur creativity among dance artists and engagement among all those who are curious about dance.

You can show your support for the Dance Initiative with your contribution. A gift in any amount is appreciated.

Click to

>>> Donate Now

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

20 Years of Dance at the Barclay Our Mission The Directors and staff of Irvine Barclay Theatre believe that dance is an art form with a unique essence, inspiring deep emotional responses among viewers and practitioners. Dance’s communicative power resides in the body, so it is a universal form, available to all viewers, regardless of nationality or language.

Through its diverse and eclectic forms, it appeals as mass entertainment and as high art, and all gradations in between.

Irvine Barclay Theatre is committed to raising the artistic profile and significance of dance in our culture through an in-depth slate of programs and services designed to advance the art form and benefit dancers, choreographers and audiences in Southern California.

Background The Barclay is one of the region’s leading presenters of international and American professional dance. Its 20-year history includes showcasing popular, folkloric, world and cutting-edge contemporary concert dance. More recently, the theatre has been the producer of the New World Flamenco Festival. For the National Choreographers Initiative, a leading creative laboratory for the development of new dance, the Barclay has served as fiscal agent and provided administrative and marketing support. The annual NCI Discovery performance takes place at Irvine Barclay Theatre.

In addition, the Barclay is home to some of the area’s prominent local dance companies -- including modern dance troupe Backhausdance, Festival Ballet and Arpana Dance Company, devoted to India’s classical bharata natyam form. UCI also presents its dance department’s premiere programs here.

Annual “Nutcracker” performances (since 1994) have had a loyal following, and attendance for Festival Ballet’s 15 performances in 2009 was 94 percent of capacity. The theatre is the most desired venue for dance school recitals, among them Maple Conservatory of Dance, The Wooden Floor of Santa Ana (formerly Saint Joseph Ballet), Focus Dance Center, and Pacific Dance Center.

Education outreach has included artist master classes for university and high school students, as well as workshops and daytime shows for younger pupils.

The Barclay is expanding its leadership role as a catalyst organization for presentations, commissioning, audience development, institutional support and local dance and audience development.

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

1990-1991 Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Maria Benítiz Spanish Dance Co. 1991-1992 José Greco Flamenco 1992-1993 Bebe Miller Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Dayton Contemporary Ballet Joe Goode Performance Group Maria Benítiz Spanish Dance Co. 1993-1994 Parsons Dance Company Lar Lubovitch Dance Company LINES Ballet Donald Byrd/The Group 1994-1995 Mark Morris Dance Group Parsons Dance Company Susan Marshall Dance Company Pilobolus Dance Theatre Le Ballet National du Senegal 1995-1996 Compagnie Maguy Marin Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Paul Taylor Dance Company Stephen Petronio Dance Company Ballet Folklorico de Chile Dancers & Musicians of Bali 1996-1997 Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co. Parsons Dance Company Joe Good Performance Group Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal 1997-1998 Rosas Streb/Ringside Batsheva Dance Company Mark Morris Dance Group La Tania Flamenco Ensemble 1998-1999 Ballet Preljocaj Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Mark Morris Dance Group Momix 1999-2000 Eliot Feld: Ballet Tech La La La Human Steps Parsons Dance Company Doug Varone and Dancers

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

2000-2001 Streb/Ringside Pilobolus Dance Theatre Sasha Waltz Garth Fagan Dance 2001-2002 Joe Goode Performance Group Mark Morris Dance Grp/Yo-Yo Ma Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Dayton Contemporary Ballet American Indian Dance Theatre New World Flamenco Festival Companía Domingo Ortega Yaelisa & Caminos Flamencos Companía Bélen Maya

2006-2007 Richard Alston Dance Company Joe Goode Performance Group Les Grands Ballets Canadiens Compania Nacional de Danza II Ballet Folklórico de Mexico Hungarian State Folk Ensemble Les Ballets Africains National Choreographers Initiative New World Flamenco Festival Companía Juana Amaya Sin Fronteras / Savion Glover Companía Rafaela Carrasco 2007-2008 Jazz Tap Ensemble Whirling Dervishes of Turkey Tango Fire Cois Ceim Dance Company Shen Wei Dance Arts Mark Morris’ Dido & Aeneas Rubberbandance Group National Choreographers Initiative

2002-2003 Sean Curran Dance Company Ballet Preljocaj Momix Philadanco Trinity Irish Dance Company Music & Dance of Manipur

New World Flamenco Festival Companía Maria José Franco Andrés Peña & Pilar Ogalla Companía Juan Ogalla

New World Flamenco Festival Companía Juana Amaya Yaelisa & Caminos Flamencos Companía Andrés Marin

2008-2009 Joe Goode Performance Group Aspen Santa Fe Ballet National Choreographers Initiative

2003-2004 Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Pandit Birju Maharaj Krasnoyarsk National Dance Company of Siberia

New World Flamenco Festival Somos Flamencos Companía Antonio el Pipa

New World Flamenco Festival Jerez Puro Israel Galvan & Company Antonio Canales 2004-2005 Hawaii Festival Ulukou: Waikiki Revisited Eddie Kamae & Sons of Hawaii Ke Aka: Reflections Hapa Maui National Choreographers Initiative 2005-2006 Savion Glover: Classical Savion Julio Bocca: Boccatango Seoul Performing Arts Company National Choreographers Initiative

2009-2010 Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co. Grupo de Rua Akram Khan Dance Company Alberta Ballet Virsky Ukranian Natl Dance Co. Dulsori National Choreographers Initiative 2010-2011 Ballet Preljocaj Momix Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Aszure Barton & Artists Tango Inferno National Choreographers Initiative

New World Flamenco Festival Los Farrucos Y Una Batita de Cola Companía Antonio el Pipa

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org

Join the Movement Subscribe to all 4 concerts and save $20!

October 15, 2011

Eastman

$28, $39, $100

January 26, 2012

La La La Human Steps

$32, $45, $100

March 22, 2012

Diavolo

$28, $39, $100

May 17-18, 2012

Pilobolus

$32, $45, $100

Pilobolus photo by John Kane

Price 1: all 4 shows for $100

(reg $120)

Price 2: all 4 shows for $148

(reg $168)

How to Subscribe

Price 3: all 4 shows for $380

(reg $400)

Online

Gold Patron seats in price level 3 include: • VIP seating • admission to the Gold Bar • complimentary drinks • invitations to special events

•

>>>Click here to Subscribe Now

•

Go to our website at www.thebarclay.org Choose the Contemporary Dance Series from the list of events.

Click on the Buy Now button and choose your seats.

Single tickets will go on sale August 1.

A $2 per ticket charge is applied to all subscription orders.

A $3 per ticket charge is applied to all single ticket sales.

Stage A

B

B

C

C

D

D

E

E

F

F

G

G

H

H

J

J

K

K

L

L

M

M

N

N

O

Balcony Boxes

Phone

A

P QQ

R

R

S

S

AAA

AAA

BBB CCC

Hours: Mon-Fri 10am to 6pm; Sat & Sun noon to 4pm

In Person

BBB

BaLCoNy

CCC

•

O

P QQ

Call the box office at: (949) 854-4646 x1

•

Balcony Boxes

Visit the box office at:

4242 Campus Drive, Irvine CA 92612

Hours: Mon-Fri 10am to 6pm; Sat & Sun noon to 4pm

Support the Dance Initiative Help us to bring the best in contemporary dance to southern California by adding a donation to your ticket order. A gift in any amount is greatly appreciated.

Irvine Barclay Theatre

•

2011-2012 Contemporary Dance Series

•

949.854.4646

•

www.thebarclay.org