La Valse

Presentation

Completed at the end of World War I, Ravel’s “La Valse” rises from nothing but a vague rhythmic pulse, proceeding through several distinct waltz sequences, each culminating in an increasingly powerful crescendo and ending in apocalypse. Along the way come disturbing accelerations and ritards, dynamic extremes, and eerie glissandi, creating an atmosphere of violence, decadence and decay. Ravel spoke of the piece as an “apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, which is entangled in my mind with the idea of the whirl of destiny”, “a dancing, whirling, nearly hallucinating ecstasy, a whirlwind that increasingly whips on and exhausts the dancers who allow themselves to be overwhelmed and swept away by the waltz.” Beneath the glistening surface, the orchestra is being pulled away by dangerous currents. The end is as spectacular as it is frightening. The machine has jammed, time is disintegrating and we struggle to find the legendary triple beat again. Amid a terrifying din and complete upset, the music falls in on itself. Nothing is left. Time, the orchestra, dance and beyond it the world, man, life, everything has been engulfed… One of the most powerful works to come out of the First World War, “La Valse” can be interpreted as an evocation of grandeur and decadence, and then of the destruction of western civilisation itself. In the final part of their show “Accords”, Thomas Hauert and the dancers of ZOO graft movement onto this “fantastic, fatal whirlwind”. They use their bodies like instruments, adding themselves to the ones performing the music. The harmonies, the melodies, the counterpoints are translated, amplified or physically deflected by the dancers. The rhythms travel from body to body to form captivating polyphonies of movement. Starting with Maurice Ravel’s choreographic poem for orchestra, Thomas Hauert has produced an abstract composition which relates physically to the music while also reflecting its scripted meaning. Based on the exploration of the self-organisation of the group through improvisation, the choreography formulates the question of the freedom and responsibility of the individual in society. The movement arises from the bodies themselves but also from the space “between” the bodies, unleashing a complex choreography with no conductor nor pre-established plan. The spectator continually sees formal structures emerging and disintegrating before they are even completed. A desire for order, always active and always frustrated, seems to be exerted within the chaos. The entire unfolding scenario seems to contain a microcosm of the committing forces that affect creative coping with the human condition. For the spectator, this choreography, where complex structures and forms emerge spontaneously from isolated components interacting with each other, can in abstract terms translate the negotiations, conflicts, tensions and resolutions at work within social systems. But a parallel can also be drawn with self-organized natural systems such as flocks of birds or schools of fish. In the Spanish newspaper El Pais, the critic Begona Barrena described “Accords” has “a brilliant ethological experiment with birds of paradise”. Created by the director and composer Thierry De Mey, “Equi Voci” is a polyptych combining several pieces of orchestral music accompanied by films of dance edited in real time. The original model for this multi-faceted work, “Ma Mère l’Oye”, has recently been supplemented by “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune”, a new piece based on a choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and shot in the spectral setting of a dried-up Aral Sea. As third and last part of this ambitious project, Thierry De Mey dreams of directing a filmic version of the choreography that Thomas Hauert has created on La Valse”. To complement the presentation of the first two parts of “Equi Voci” in Charleroi/Danses on 27th November 2009, and as anticipation of the “La Valse” film projected to be realized in June 2010, 8 dancers of ZOO will perform this piece live with the Brussels Philharmonic - Vlaams Radio Orkest. Melanie Suchy (Tanzjournal, June 2008): “Accords lets figures dance, which are neither fish nor flesh. (…) there is no point of rest, no center or balance of symmetries, either in the individual or in the group body. In order to detect the basis of the disquietude and its conquest of space and time, the spectator eye is also permanently in movement; one is almost driven along. (The movements) testify to a nerve network, wide awake, that sparks inside of the individual and which connects every two to seven dancers on the stage. Synchronicity is always barely missed, and the details are liquidated to the whole. The inscrutable mixture of constraint and zestfulness in the drive, co-drive and power makes Accords a feast for the eyes and formulates the effective question on free will. The floating general will again seems to have no recognizable goal, than to exist and to affirm itself, which is only possible through constant movement. Thus the concluding image, in the falling darkness, is a type of catastrophe or the birth of the individual: the dancers stand.”