Flot

Serge Prokofiev’s Waltz Suites op.110 is a somewhat strange piece in the classical orchestral repertory, a compendium of six waltzes excerpted from three independently composed pieces, notably from the ballet Cinderella, from his opera War and Peace, and from music he wrote for the film Lermontov. Each waltz has its own rich melodic inventiveness and dynamic variation; they are harmonically sophisticated and brilliantly orchestrated, but the six waltzes played consecutively tend to sort of blend together in the movement continuum, such that the listener becomes inured to its exuberant abundance. This may explain why the suite is not regularly performed in concerts and why there are so few complete recordings in print. Flot uses the recording as a first, essential musical layer: the dance feeds off it, finding in it a source of movement, energy, dynamic and rhythm, channeling together the spaces and atmospheric expansion it suggests. At the same time, the choreography is free to restructure the music, letting it be shaped by the dance, by the pluridisciplinary performance – manipulating the sound as a dramaturgical component of the piece.

Using a complex network of movements which connect in time and space, the choreographic vocabulary of Thomas Hauert is sometimes seen as a continuation of the tradition of abstract dance. However, his polyphonic “language” actually moves from studio to stage via improvisation. The essence of the work is that it happens without the intervention of a central authority. It is comprised of an integrated dynamic system which includes unpredictable behavior, such that certain dancers may initiate a movement and others react to it, triggering another reaction and movement inside the same structure, or one which moves toward an entirely new area. Drawing from a shared repertory of physical principles developed and integrated throughout the creative process, the dancers invent and perform their own movements onstage, responsible for the creation and development of their group structures. They adapt their individual roles as part of a dynamic constellation whose mechanisms are constantly evolving, seeking order from disorder, shape from that which is amorphous, creating a group from disparate individuals, while at the same time benefiting from the exceptional qualities of perception, attention and concentration developed through their improvisations.

The choreography appears as a microcosm in which individuals are defending their freedom and creativity and demonstrating their will to connect to others. The concepts of free will and responsibility can be felt running through the series of negociations, conflicts, tensions and resolutions we observe in our social systems. During the work we pick up on uncertainty, retrospective justification, the improvisation of the do-it-yourself-er, limited vision, opportunities discovered a second too late, the temptation to choose familiar paths, and an open future — the forces we are all now facing as human beings. Imperfection becomes a marker for true commitment and the quest for virtue, instead of a public sign of failure.