ensemble L'Abrupt : repertory

as far as 2007

Conception / Choreography : Alban Richard
Lights creation : Valérie Sigward
Music creation : Laurent Perrier
Costumes : Corine Petitpierre
Choreographic assistant : Daphné Mauger
Performers : Cyril Accorsi, Mélanie Cholet, Max Fossati, Laurie Giordano, Laëtitia Passard.
Duration : 60'

as far as will use, sabotage, pirate a single danced sequence
In “as far as”, a sequence elaborated based on film extracts dealing with a body in panic is distilled in space. Subjected to the programmed return of this timed sequence, the five dancers engage in a struggle to last. Their contours cancel each other out as the intensity increases. Strange facial expressions, battlefields and constellations of actions emerge on stage, while the theme relentlessly tries to endure the transformations... as far as... possible.

With as far as, the choreographer Alban Richard pursues his quest of the perpetual motion, throwing his dancers’ bodies like comets in space. They appear and disappear endlessly, aspirated by an implacable spiral. Though repetitive, this choreography keeps us in suspense. Télérama, 12th to 18th January 2008
lemonde
At the MC93, as soon as the five dancers burst onto the stage, as far as imposes a choreographic unit that will be insensibly repeated for one hour long. Shot from a black hole like cannonballs, the dancers go back into it, irresistibly aspirated. And so on. Within an organic logics, these successive entrances and exists blow a bad wind that turn the dancers into foeti of straw, mercilessly rolled around. Rosita Boisseau, Le Monde, 17th May 2007

libe
Alban Richard’s show – or ballet you could say – is more, even frankly, straightforward. As Far As, the company’s new creation for three female and two male dancers, is a choreographic saga with abundant entrances and exits stage left. Everything is uncomfortable: first of all the naked bodies which are subsequently clothed as if in a backwards strip-tease before collapsing in spasms. The attempts to get up are rather awkward too. Repetitive, the choreography doesn’t leave any way out, even more so since the lights are unrelenting. Laurent Perrier’s music is also a devastating torrent, a mudslide. None of the five dancers can hold out against it. In the end, the individual dancers are nothing but petrified bodies slipped into robes of ash. It’s rather beautiful.
Marie-Christine Vernay, Libération, 8th may 2007

The latest creation by Alban Richard’s dance troop establishes the choreographer in a perpetually tenuous exploration of the minute possibilities of the body.
The raw bodies of As Far As, by Alban Richard.
There’s no doubt that Alban Richard disconcerts us, with his wholehearted devotion to a line of exploration he relentlessly sticks to: he keeps pushing the combinations of bodies or movements ever further, infinitely investigating what he finds to be the most intimate or subtle element in a gesture. As Far As presents bodies in a state of controlled brutality; abrupt, like the name of his company. The work opens with a rush of five dancers, set trembling by their uncompromising nudity as they cross the stage from one side to the next. This movement of bodies, followed by their retreat, is repeated and altered throughout the entire work. Motifs and variations create a widening rift, playing on the light or the covering up of bodies. Caught in the stranglehold of an extremely precise choreography, the dancers seem on the threshold of a purgatory whose abyss they’re unable to fathom. N. Yokel

Production : ensemble L’Abrupt
Coproduction : Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, Arcadi (Action Régionale pour la Création Artistique et la Diffusion en Île-de-France), Centre national de la danse (Pantin) – création en résidence.
The ensemble l'Abrupt is supported by the Centre chorégraphique national de Franche-Comté à Belfort in France, the DRAC Île-de-France – ministère de la Culture et de la Communication pour l’aide aux compagnies et de l’Association Beaumarchais.