This year’s Innovation Series Dance ends this weekend with French choreographer Xavier le Roy’s 2007 solo, Le Sacre du Printemps.
The inspiration for the piece came from Le Roy’s watching the Berlin Philharmonic rehearse Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps in 2003. It raised several questions for him.
Do conductors, through their hand and arm gestures and body movements, lead an orchestra or is it the music leading the conductor? Are there differences in the way music is perceived by a conductor, the musicians and the audience?
Photo Courtesy of Xavier le Roy
Le Roy was also interested in the silence — the moment before a sound, before a conductor’s movement.
He began to analyze a conductor’s movements as if they were choreography and, in 2007, he premiered his own work, using Stravinsky’s title and a recording of the Berliner Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, with the sound design for the program by Peter Boehm.
■ National Experimental Theater (國家實驗劇場), 21-1 Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21-1號)
■ Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm, tomorrow and Sunday at 2:30pm; Tickets are NT$800, available at NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com and convenience store ticket kiosks.
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