Dance

Created on 1979, october, at Stadsschouwburg, Eindhoven (Pays-Bas).
Dance. The title of this monument to choreographic art  instantly puts the research work of Lucinda Childs on the horizon, i.e. a  dance form which is free of any intentionality or theatricality, and  which is centered exclusively on the expression of its pure essence. In  the manner of Jackson Pollock’s abstract paintings, this composition is a  celebration of the perpetual engendering of form through movement.  Created in 1979, Dance constitutes a synthesis between the silence and sparseness of her previous works, such as Radial Courses, and the stage work developed in conjunction with Philip Glass and Robert Wilson in the Einstein on the Beach  opera. She once again turned to Philip Glass, whose repetitive melodic  structures provided the perfect accompaniment to the purity of her  choreographic language, as collaborator on this first, large-scale piece  designed for the theatre. The artist Sol LeWitt added to the equation  with his proposition of a film-based mechanism which duplicated and  enlarged the flux of the onstage movements. In three twenty minute-long  sections, Lucinda Childs gave shape to a glissando of aerial  gestures continually altering in accordance with the loops in Philip  Glass’s music, setting up the possibility of tiny variations. In this  work, simple, basic, steps are used to trace out circles, arcs, and  diagonals on the ground, forming a vast counterpoint, and then echoed by  the projected images. The superimposed presence of the film – remade by  dancers from Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon for the occasion, and based on  the original – gives rise to the interpenetration of silhouettes and  their doubles. This bewildering optical effect transports the audience’s  gaze into the beating heart of the movement, and imbibes the space with  a multidimensional volume. The resulting, plan-like formation is one in  which the different lines dream their way into and out of different  compositions, in a sliding, floating, fluid and altogether timeless  world.
Source: Festival d’Automne à Paris