New Settings 2012

9 Nov 2012
18 Nov 2012
Alain Buffard and Nadia Lauro, "Baron Samedi", 2012 © Marc Domage
Jonah Bokaer and Daniel Arsham, "Curtain", 2012 © Liza Voll, courtesy Jacob’s Pillow Dance
Gérald Kurdian, "The Magic of Spectacular Theater", 2012 © Gérald Kurdian
Julie Nioche and Virginie Mira, "Voleuse", 2012 © P.Imbert
In 2012, New Settings brings together four works supported in production and presented at the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale in Paris. Selected following a call for projects, these works all feature crossings of one kind or another: they play on the porosity of the boundary between the performing arts and visual arts as their creators experiment with original and unusual forms.

An installation by scenographer and artist Nadia Lauro occupies the stage like a vast, blank page. Baron Samedi – the debauched voodoo spirit of the dead – lends this piece its title and serves as the unsettling master of ceremony, summoning American, French, Ivorian, South African and Rwandan dancers to deploy their talent and their sometimes tragic life experiences on stage. With this exceptional cast giving the piece its cutting edge, renowned choreographer Alain Buffard calls up an unusual vision of the world of composer Kurt Weill.

At this year’s edition of New Settings, multidisciplinary artist Gérald Kurdian builds on years of solo performance works by exploring scenography for the first time. Drawing on the vocabularies of performance, illusion and electronic music, he explores the magic powers of the stage. Blending a “lo-fi celebration of the extraordinary”, a twist on the rituals and tricks of the conjurer, a mock stand-up routine and a genuine musical show, The Magic of Spectacular Theater explores the multiple dimensions of contemporary performance.

Curtain celebrates the disappearance of the stage curtain and unveils a series of “non-Newtonian” surprises. Its creators, dancer and choreographer Jonah Bokaer and sculptor and scenographer Daniel Arsham, are long-term collaborators; for their fifth piece together, Arsham has responded to Bokaer’s desire for a shifting scenography with a moving sculpture made of sand, plaster and a mysterious, unknown substance. Neither solid nor liquid, this sculpture envelops the dance and becomes its essential partner.

Julie Nioche and Virginie Mira’s piece Voleuse centres on the endangered and constrained bodies of four dancers as they run, skirt and duck the blades of an infernal machine that threatens to fell them at any moment. This fourth collaboration between dancer, choreographer and osteopath Nioche and architect-scenographer Mira explores notions of space at the crossroads of the arts: scenic space, vital space, and the metaphorical space of the embodied and social individual.

 

Disciplines
Performing arts
France
In 2012, the Foundation’s performing arts programme returns for a second edition.
Selected following a call for projects, four works are supported in production and presented at the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale in Paris.
These pieces explore encounters between the performing and visual arts.

Information

  • Presented in Ile-de-France

    The following works were presented in Paris, from 11/09/2012 to 11/18/2012:

    • Alain Buffard and Nadia Lauro, Baron Samedi
    • Gérald Kurdjan-Thisisthehellomonster, The Magic of Spectacular Theatre
    • Jonah Bokaer and Daniel Arsham, Curtain
    • Julie Nioche and Virginie Mira, Voleuse

See also