Created at the Venice Biennale’s International Festival of Contemporary Dance, Italy, 2005
In this new work by Marie Chouinard, the company’s ten dancers execute variations on the exercise of freedom. Often, the dancers appear on points: on one, two, and even four at a time. In a spectroscopy of the gesture, we also see them using different devices – crutches, rope, prostheses, horizontal bars, and harnesses – which at times liberate their movements, at others fetter it, and at still others create it.
This use of accessories gives rise to unusual bodily shapes and gestural dynamics and opens onto a universe of meticulous and playful explorations in which solos, duos, trios and group work, in their labour, pleasure and invention, echo the human condition.
An aesthete beyond norms, Marie Chouinard presents her ideas on the way the indefinableness of the Other and the flagrancy of Beauty brush up against one another through an interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Subtle and extravagant, sumptuous and wild, the work’s movements plumb the insoluble mystery of the body, of the living being.
Choreography and Artistic Direction: Marie Chouinard
Dancers at creation: Kirsten Andersen, Mark-Eden Towle, Julio Cesar Hong, Andrea Keevil, Chi Long, Carla Maruca, Lucie Mongrain, Carol Prieur, David Rancourt, James Viveiros
Music
Louis Dufort: Variations on the Variations,
Johann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg Variations,
Variations 5, 6, 8
Vocal Extracts of Glenn Gould
Glenn Gould: A State of Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations (1955 & 1981)
Lighting, Set Design and Props
Marie Chouinard
Costumes and Hair Stylist
Vandal
Make-up
Jacques-Lee Pelletier
Production Manager
Nadia Bellefeuille
Lighting Creation Assistants
Erwann Bernard, Marc Tétreault
A Compagnie Marie Chouinard production, co-produced with the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Montreal High Lights Festival, Schlossfestspiele (Ludwigsburg), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Venice Biennale, White Bird (Portland), with the support of ImPulsTanz (Vienna)