No play hero

No play hero was premiered in 2012 and commissioned by Les Subsistances in Lyon. The piece is inspired by two works composed by David Lang. Its starting point is the movement of the drums sticks and the notion of gravity.

“I decided to mix two different musical works, percussion scores, minimal abstract music : The anvil chorus, whose intense, pounding percussive beat, an essentially pure composition, attracted me immediately, and The so-called laws of nature, which is built around the idea of discovering how shapes are formed, how they change, deconstructing and reconstructing themselves again.

My response to these two pieces was to look for simple, basic movements to develop for the dancers’ bodies. The percussive movements of the musicians inspired me greatly, and I began working with the concept of gravity. The working process for this piece has been different from previous works. Here I am asking for minimal movement while maintaining expressiveness, a process of synthesis in which I wished to keep only that which is essential in the movement, to go with this primal, structured, tribal music.

This is also the first time I am working with live musicians onstage. As their presence and their posture are important onstage, I decided to place the percussion ensemble into a ceremonial position relative to the space and the stage itself.”

Yuval Pick

Interview with Cathy Bouvard – Associate Director of Les Subsistances International laboratory of artistic creation – Lyon

The stage is like the story of a relationship.

Working with dependency, harmony, tension and contrast, Yuval Pick is working with the different principles governing an ensemble. A similar principle affects the structuring of sounds and movements, the emotional relationships between the dancers, as well as the visual composition of the stage.

But in order to attain this transversality, the dancing bodies have experienced lengthy rehearsal processes, substitutions and superpositions found within the musical score. Movement phrases become parts of games, fragmented and cumulative exchanges. But just when we might think the dance has been subverted by compositional mechanics, the dancers’ bodies pull away from the music, becoming their own composition. The movement is no longer the material fashioned by a choreographic structure, it is instead a vehicle for harmonies, contrasts and tensions. Intensive situations arising

from the improvisational process are developing, further evolving as each dancer’s attention is focused on the actions of the others as well as on the shared space. The choreography is stripped down, letting the bodies move inside their own musicality, the rhythm of their breathing, their empathy with the others. Abstract substitution becomes a human gesture, taking each other’s places, but not in the sense of substituting one tone for another, one movement for another, but in terms of maintaining the continuity of the others within the process.

By apparently moving away from the musical dramaturgy of David Lang, this dance nonetheless captures its drama, the deep movement driving its dynamic, in this Anvil Chorus evoking the solid power of the workers’ movements, pounding their anvils. It is a piece which weaves between the smooth and the rough, between violence and gentleness, control and chaos, in a constantly changing social space.

Text by Bojana Bauer based on an interview with Yuval Pick

Choreography : Yuval Pick

Interpretation : Zen Jefferson, Lazare Huet, Madoka Kobayashi, Anna Massoni, Antoine Roux-Briffaud

Music : David LangThe Anvil Chorus & The so-called laws of nature (part 2 & 3)

Interpreted by : Ensemble TaCtuS & Ryan Wilson

Assistant : Nadia Perlov

Lights : Nicolas Boudier

Costumes : Magali Rizzo with Aude Bretagne

Advice to dramaturgy : Bojana Bauer

Sound : Raphaël Guénot

Production : Centre Chorégraphique National de Rillieux-la-Pape / Direction Yuval Pick

Coproduction : Les Subsistances – Lyon

Centre Chorégraphique National de Rillieux-la-Pape / Direction Yuval Pick is sponsored by Culture and Communication Ministry – DRAC Rhône-Alpes, Région Rhône-Alpes, city of Rillieux-la-Pape and Département du Rhône.