Sacre

Excerpt of the performance created on the 22nd and the 23rd of June 2011 at the Festival Montpellier Danse 2011 (Studio Bagouet / Agora).

Pagan rites and celebrations
CASSETTE (creation 2010-11) was related to The Nutcracker; I was interested in Christmas due to its pagan origin, celebration of winter solstice and festival of lights. I now wish to purse the process of re-examining the repertory, taking an interest in The Rite of Spring, created for the Serge of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes as an extension of The Afternoon of a Faun. The Rite is a series of ceremonies, the story of a primitive community that sacrifices one of their own: a young virgin. Three authors participated in the creation of this work: Igor Stravinsky for the music, Vaslav Nijinksi for choreography and Nicolas Roerich for costumes and paintings of the stage set.
Origins
The Rite of Spring presents multiple themes, all of which fascinate me : ritual, ceremony, state of ecstasy, inebriation, grogginess. My entrance point in exploring The Rite of Spring will not be Stravinsky’s music or Nijinski’s dance, but Roerich’s work on the costumes, inspired by traditional folk costumes, some of which belonged to the collection of a Russian princess. Nicolas Roerich founded the Roerich Pact, which defended the protection of artistic and scientific institutions and historical monuments: he could have invented the word «heritage». I explore The Rite of Spring through the angle of costume, because the work we have done, in collaboration with Rachel Garcia, on my earlier performances, has always placed the costume at the same level as dance and setting : costume that hides and reveals, dresses and undresses.
The Sacre project
The Sacre performance will be based on the interpretation of different sequences, solo or duet, that will allow us to review various levels, different emotional games, different approaches to achieve a game of physical actions, proper to Meyerhold, the Russian director an playwright. In 1910, shortly before the creation of The Rite of Spring, Meyerhold developed a revolutionary method for actor training, called biomechanics, which rejected the psychological method used by Stanislavsky, of whom he had been a student. Our work strongly relies on this technique, finding the body of the actor or dancer, whilst concentrating on breathing techniques based on hyperventilation, causing a state of inebriation and natural intoxication due to the excessive flow of oxygen in the brain.
David Wampach, January 2011