Choreographer Isabelle Van Grimde and composers Sean Ferguson and Marlon Schumacher are bringing the dialogue between dance and music to new heights in the choreography-concert Les Gestes. Onstage is a string quartet consisting unexpectedly of two musicians and two dancers.

The latter are equipped with digital musical instruments developed at the IDMIL lab*. Extending the dancers bodies these prototypes facilitate a vibrant encounter where technology meets tradition in a fusion of esh and sound. Springing from the most elemental impulses of the body, the movement gathers the music and spatializes it, transforms it.

This project is the sequel to an initial collaboration, Duo pour unvioloncelle et un danseur (2008), where live music was transformed and spatialized by the dancers through a cutting edge digital musical instrument known as the T-Stick. Technological innovation is once again placed in service of art, providing the audience with a new world of perception, new approaches to creation and new keys for understanding the body and music. Never have interactions between dancers and musicians been so re ned, so visceral or so magical. A highly original sensory experience that blurs boundaries in an exaltation of the combined power of music and dance.

Co-produced by Van Grimde Corps Secrets and CIRMMT – Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, IDMIL (*Input Devices and Music Interaction Laboratory of the Schulich School of Music), Agora de la danse, Concertgebouw in Bruges, Schouwburg in Arnhem and the Forum de Blanc-Mesnil. A live@CIRMMT co-presentation.

 

 

Choreographer and artistic director : Isabelle Van Grimde
Musical director : Sean Ferguson
Created with and performed by : Sophie Breton, Soula Trougakos
Cello : Elinor Frey
Violin : Marjolaine Lambert
Composers : Sean Ferguson, Marlon Schumacher
Lighting : Bruno Rafie
Costumes : Pascale Bassani
Director of research : Marcelo Wanderley
Doctoral student researchers : Joseph Malloch, Ian Hattwick, Marlon Schumacher
Electronics : Eliot Britton, Marlon Schumacher
Research assistant : Anthony Piciacchia

 

Press review Les gestes