Parades & changes, replays

1965: Parades & Changes, the first-ever collective creation to be named as such by Anna Halprin, was the result of experimentation that she had undertaken since the late 1940s on performance and improvisation.

This major piece of work focuses on the banality of everyday gestures such as getting dressed or getting undressed. The performance ends with the dancers wrapped in a gigantic sheet of flesh-coloured paper that gets crumbled and torn in total silence. This staging of nudity led to the show being banned in the United States for twenty years. Created in partnership with the composer, Morton Subotnick, the composition of this work is based on a complex score that provides its structure with total flexibility, and offers artists from several disciplines the opportunity to work hand-in-hand. 2008: As regards Parades & Changes, Replays, Anne Collod initiated collaboration with Anna Halprin and Morton Subotnick, the composer and co-creator of the 1965 work. Two other choreographers, Alain Buffard and Boaz Barkan, who had participated in the American choreographer’s work for many years and who know her work extremely well, joined the trio, along with Boris Charmatz, Vera Mantero and DD Dorvillier. Each of them was eager to experience the work of Anna Halprin and her latest developments.

“The question: “What opportunities for togetherness does dance invent?” is one of those that have been guiding my creative and research work for several years. It was this question that led me to meet Anna Halprin, an extraordinary woman, a pioneering choreographer whose work provides the answers for a humanity burning with this wondering. It was also the catalyst for the project that we are talking about here, and furthered my desire to work specifically on this piece from 1965, which shattered the codes that existed in dance and its performance at that time: parades & changes. What effects can be produced when the multiple scenarios of this piece of work are put back into play, in another period of time and in other places, by actors of today who are directly concerned by the issues that touch the contemporary world? How can we create the conditions so that the exchange between Anna Halprin and a new generation of dancers and choreographers will be fruitful? A myriad of challenges at the heart of the parades & changes, replays project.”

Sources : Anne Collod, Biennale de la danse 2008 press book