Home | Performances | Communications from the Lab
Company: Ballett Frankfurt
Concept: Ivar Hagendoorn
Choreography: Ivar Hagendoorn in collaboration with the dancers
Music: Paula Matthusen
Costumes: Frédérique
Daubal
Lighting design: Jan Walther
Dancers: Alejandro Alvarez, Esther Balfe, Francesca Caroti, David Kern, Brock
Labrenz, Tamas Moricz, Ester Natzijl, Luis Rodriguez
Premiere: 15 January 2004 Ballett Frankfurt
Solo from the Lab
Dancer: Esther Balfe.
Date: 17 January 2004.
Size: 8.7Mb. Format: QuickTime
Solo from the Lab II
Dancer: Esther Balfe.
Date: 16 January 2004.
Size: 6.8Mb. Format: QuickTime
Excerpt from the Labyrinth
Dancers: Ballett Frankfurt & Guests.
Date: 16 January 2004.
Size: 16.8Mb. Format: QuickTime
Excerpt from the Lab
Dancers: Ballett Frankfurt & Guests.
Date: 16/17 January 2004.
Size: 6.2Mb. Format: QuickTime
It is safe to say now that the piece was created during what was probably the worst period in the history of the company, perhaps even worse than the fire which destroyed part of the stage house of the Frankfurt Opera in November 1987, leaving the company without its rehearsal space, because now the future of the company itself was at stake.
In 2002 the city of Frankfurt had announced that, by the end of the 2003/2004 season it would stop its financial support for the Ballett Frankfurt in the form in which it had existed up until that time. Negotiations dragged on throughout 2003. A few weeks before I was to start rehearsals negotiations between the company and the city of Frankfurt had once again collapsed. As a consequence many dancers left over Christmas and New Year to audition with other companies. It was only during the last week that I had the full cast together, which was still three dancers short of the original number of dancers I would be creating a piece with.
And this was only one of the hurdles. In all it was an extremely valuable learning experience, an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life.
Early 2004 an agreement was reached whereby the company would continue as the Forsythe Company with a dual home in Frankfurt and Dresden.
The piece is semi-choreographed and semi-improvised. Every scene is based on a set of principles for spatial and temporal organisation (more about the theory). Apart from a few musical cues the structure is entirely internally organized using only spatial and movement cues.
The individual movements are based on metaphors (e.g. "searching"), rules (move only in a particular way) and structured improvisations on choreographed phrases.
Most of the duets and trios are based on equivalence classes whereby the dancers can take on each others roles.
As a result every performance is different, yet structurally the same. Most scenes are also dimensionless to the extent that adding or removing one or several dancers doesn’t affect the structure, only the spatial density.
The final scene was inspired by the observation that the human visual system is very poor at discriminating both fast and slow movement. The dancers stand on stage like dead trees. Sometimes a leaf blows in the wind or a branch breaks off. They move very slowly, almost imperceptibly.
The music consisted of an immersive soundscape for 12 speakers, which
were distributed across the entire space. Some people commented that the
music in the solo was at times unpleasant. But does music have to be pleasant?
The goal for some scenes was to have music that would be on the verge
of being painful. Since people’s pain thresholds differ, for some
it may have been painful. Going by the comments the music achieved the
goal we set in advance.
Coinciding with my performance I organized an international symposium on "Dance and the Brain".