ensemble L'Abrupt : repertory

Trois études de séparation : Lointain - Luisance - Lacis 2007-2009

Conception and choreography : Alban Richard
Assistant : Daphné Mauger
Lightings : Valérie Sigward
Sound : Félix Perdreau
Costumes : Corine Petitpierre

Lointain
Dancers: Mélanie Cholet, Max Fossati
Music : Richard Wagner
Prologue of Acte 1 and extracts from acte 2, scene 2 from Tristan und Isolde, recordings of 1953 under the direction of Wilhem Furtwängler, with Kirsten Flagstad and Ludwig Suthaus (EMI Classics)

Luisance
Dancers : Céline Angibaud, Laurie Giordano
Music : Johann Sebastian Bach, « O Haupt voler Blut » BWV 244
Transcriptions and arrangements by Léopold Stokowski
Recorded in 1936; Léopold Stokowski conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra (Maestro Célèbre History)

Lacis
Dancers : Max Fossati, David Lerat
Film director : Xavier Bäert
Music : W.A. Mozart, Contrapuntal Study, K. 620 b for two violins, viol and cello
Played by François Goic (violin), Sylvie Dupont (violin), Luc Balestro (alto), Vincent Daguet (cello), conducted by Jean-Claude Dodin.

Far from the world
«Three studies of parting : Lointain – Luisance – Lacis is a triptych; three studies of a dry beauty, heady, with minimalist lyricism. Three « nocturnes » which deal with erotism, separation and “ghostly”. An outmoded play which takes us a little farther of the world, towards things buried in the self, like an echo of forgotten situations in a disappeared space...
- Three duets : man/woman, woman/woman, man/man.
- Three choreographic pieces, each linked to a musical work : Richard Wagner, Johann Sebastian Bach and W.A. Mozart
- Three forms of eroticism : eroticism of hearts / mystical eroticism / eroticism of bodies.
- Three perspectives playing on “clichés” : the difficult interlocking of the man/woman duet, searching for the one who is lost; the blurred links between mysticism, eroticism and hysteria for the woman/woman duet; and the purely physical relationship for the man/man duet.
In these three proposals, eroticism is considered a poetic contemplation.
The work was constructed around the idea and principle of editing isolated images in order to create a living flux; the labyrinthine positions in Lointain, the iconography of the Salpêtrière hospital asylum and saints in ecstasy in Luisance, and the cinematic montage of Lacis. The choice made in each of these pieces is to show the passing from the continuous to the discontinuous, or from the discontinuous to the continuous, and to work on a dissolution of constructed forms.” Alban Richard

The triptych was premiered on 21 and 22 Novembre 2009, at the Centre Chorégraphique National du Havre et de Haute-Normandie, in the festival Automne en Normandie.
This work benefits from the « Charte de diffusion » signed by ONDA/National Office for Artistic Diffusion, ARCADI/Regional Action for Artistic Creation and Diffusion in Ile-de-France, OARA/Regional Action for the Arts in Aquitaine, ODIA-Normandie and Réseau en Scène – Languedoc-Roussillon.
Lointain et Luisance
Production : ensemble L’Abrupt
Coproduction : Le Forum du Blanc-Mesnil, with support from Conseil Général de Seine-Saint-Denis
Lacis
Production : ensemble L’Abrupt
Coproduction : Le Forum du Blanc-Mesnil, with support from Conseil général de Seine-Saint-Denis – Arts 276/ Festival Automne en Normandie – Centre Chorégraphique National du Havre Haute-Normandie.
With support from le Triangle, Rennes/ Scène conventionnée pour la danse for the lending of the studio.
Thanks to Jean-Claude Dodin, director of the national music school of Blois.

The ensemble l’Abrupt is supported by the Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles Ile de France / Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication under the title of aid to companies, and it benefits from the support of culturesfrance for its tours abroad.

arcadi

logolemonde
The new French stage.
They are pushing the limits, rejecting labels: portraits of a generation on its toes.
Elan and posture, flesh and concept…(...) Unafraid of the spectacular, his pieces deftly traffic emotion and idea. Rosita Boisseau, Thursday 9th september

Alban Richard’s bigges bet is to be inspired by figures that belong to the collective memory and to have made the reasoning of this montage of isolated images. The famous medieval lovers reborn through theatrical illusion and the labyrinthine positions of Lointain, as well as the references to the iconographic images of the hystériques of the Salpêtrière Hospital and to the religious ecstatic figures of baroque works are the soul of the ritual of Luisance. As for the spectors of Lacis, they spring from the filmic material inspired by the theories of Barthes and Nadar.
From the vain search of the alter ego to the purely physical relationship, everything is an affair of poetic contemplation and the infinite, to nourish a great diversity of resolutions and to let go into abandon.
Kritik, April 2010

At first glance, the subject of the new piece by Alban Richard, a male-female duo entitled “Lointain”, has everything to seduce us. Set to extracts from “Tristan unt Isolde” by Wagner, the choreographer attempts a close two-step in which the bodies brush each other but never touch. Built on forty positions imagined in an apartment then reproduced in an empty space, this piece explores musical emotion like an object of study. Alban Richard talks about a “moment of illustrated listening” and cites a line from Wagner: “true dance is in a dramatic action: simple, intense, powerful gesture… without pretension but with a lot of ambition.” Taking into account the previous pieces by Alban Richard, this endeavor holds to this by the letter.
Rosita Boisseau, Télérama Sortir, February 20th, 2008