„Point of eclip­se“ – Aus­schnit­te aus dem Bal­lett von Jo­han In­ger

Aus­schnit­te aus „Point of eclip­se“ (2007)
Cho­reo­gra­phie von Jo­han In­ger
Mu­sik von Jean-Lou­is Huh­ta

Es tan­zen So­fia Bo­nil­la Pé­rez, Sas­kia Lehm, Lu­cia Ma­ria Ru­bio Bel­da, Ana­bel Sán­chez Ro­dríguez, Cora-Stel­la Wal­ter.

Ein­stu­die­rung: Isaac Spen­cer

Pre­mie­re 2007, Cull­berg Bal­let, Stock­holm, Schwe­den

In 2007, cho­reo­gra­pher Jo­han In­ger crea­ted "Point of eclip­se” at the Cull­berg Bal­let in Stock­holm tog­e­ther with the com­pany's dan­cers, in which I was part of the ori­gi­nal cast. The pie­ce was in­ten­ded to be a de­par­tu­re from Jo­han's pre­vious cho­reo­gra­phic me­thod, an “at­tempt to break out” and was quo­ted in an in­ter­view by Hart­mut Re­gitz in tanz­netz.de as say­ing “I am very con­cer­ned with dy­na­mics and en­er­gy, re­se­arch and at­mo­s­phe­re. And, wi­t­hout tel­ling a sto­ry, with lan­guage, my lan­guage.”

The bal­let is ne­ar­ly 20 ye­ars old, and back then the 60-mi­nu­te pie­ce fluc­tua­ted bet­ween lar­ge group sce­nes with syn­chro­ni­zed mo­ve­ment se­quen­ces, chao­tic sce­nes with in­con­gru­ent parts, and so­li­ta­ry so­los. Jo­han wan­ted to give the au­di­ence the op­por­tu­ni­ty to per­cei­ve the corps de bal­let as a ma­chi­ne and then zoom in on a dan­cer to see and feel the sen­si­ti­vi­ty and hu­ma­ni­ty in small mo­ve­ments and ges­tu­res. Jo­han was thus com­men­ting on an in­crea­singly tech­no­lo­gi­cal­ly con­trol­led world that was just be­gin­ning to be felt at that time. This was sup­por­ted by the set de­sign from Jens Setz­man, which con­sisted of a shiny black floor that mi­mi­cked the sleek ae­s­the­tics of de­vices such as iPho­nes and ta­blets, co­ve­r­ed with black snow re­semb­ling as­hes and al­lu­ding to im­pen­ding na­tu­ral dis­as­ter, and a light pa­nel at the back of the sta­ge that si­mu­la­ted a lu­nar eclip­se, fur­ther heigh­ten­ing the ten­si­on bet­ween ar­ti­fi­cia­li­ty and na­tu­re.

The mu­sic was com­po­sed for the bal­let by com­po­ser Jean-Lou­is Huh­ta and also mi­xes harsh elec­tro­nic sounds with so­ot­hing me­lo­dies.

The cho­reo­gra­phy mo­ves bet­ween po­les of strict, ac­cu­ra­te line and pre­cisi­on, and fra­gi­li­ty and fail­u­re, all of which pos­sess be­au­ty in their own way and I am eager to see how our stu­dents em­bo­dy this cho­reo­gra­phy that, at that time, at­temp­ted to pre­dict ae­s­the­tics and man­ne­risms be­lon­ging to the fu­ture, a fu­ture that they now in­ha­bit.

TEXT: ISAAC SPEN­CER