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Who says I have to dance in a theater... Anna Halprin

(excerpt)

Choreography
Year of production
2006

Shot in Paris where she recreated three emblematic works, and in California where she lives and works since the middle of the 50’s, Anna Halprin believes that “dance does not have to be beautiful, it is just a part of life”.

Shot in Paris, where, invited for the first time in 2004, at the age of 84, she was reviving three emblematic pieces from her work, and in California where she has been living and working since the mid-1950s, this film allows us to apprehend a quite unique conception of choreographic art. Indeed, for Anna Halprin: “dance does not have to be beautiful, it is simply part of life”.

This principle, which guided her personal and professional career, led her very early on to break with all forms of aesthetics and to take her distance from the representatives of modern dance, then at its zenith, to conduct her own research.

By preferring a sensory and relational approach to movement, by elaborating the concept of “tasks” based on everyday gestures, and by composing from open improvisations and scores, Anna Halprin paved the way for American postmodern dance – a movement that Trisha Brown, who was her disciple, joined.

Anna Halprin was a pioneer and dissenter in more ways than one: thus, with one of the performances presented in Paris, Parades and Changes, in 1965 she confronted the taboo of nudity. And while, after she settled on the West coast of America, she included nature in her experimentations, she would also free herself of theatre and its conventions to re-introduce dance into the flow of life.

Source : Myriam Bloedé

Choreography
Year of production
2006
Duration
49′
Production of video work
Jacqueline Caux, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon
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