Encyclopœdia – DOCUMENT 1
DOCUMENT 1, first and foremost, is a meticulously crafted work
about the body, which uses the entire choreographic and artistic corpus as
material for reflection and direct integration. Like all works initiating
a series, DOCUMENT 1 lays the foundations for the larger project
Encyclopœdia and sets forth its aims – particularly with
regard to the body as the engine of movement, and the notion of the theatrical
encyclopedia.
Forging a link between the stage and the outside world, the work is composed of hundreds of gestures, attitudes, objects and perspectives on the world and its everyday activities. These gestural combinations and collections of movements underscore the infinite generational possibilities of various parts of the human body: variations for arms, hands and feet unfold one after the other in a geometrically divided space, along with astonishing choreographic sequences for head and hips by Meg Stuart and Benoît Lachambre respectively.
Stressing the relationship between the encyclopedia and theatre, Lynda Gaudreau
positions the moving bodies against a large band of white paper, occasionally
inserting plates from the celebrated encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert.
In this encounter between the human being and proliferating spatial configurations,
the artist works on the body – twisted, folded, stretched, bent, standing,
recumbent – and on everything surrounding it: music, sound environments
and video, including a clip from Jonathan Burrows’ Hands. With
ironic winks here and there, DOCUMENT 1 also reveals, through
video projections, the natural and almost banal aspects of familiar body movements:
races, a ball game in a park, knitting motions.
Deliberately fragmentary and discontinuous, DOCUMENT 1 casts a slightly detached look at movement and the world that surrounds and modulates it. At the same time, it forges unexpected links between choreography and everyday life.
Andrée Martin
Credits
To P. Mills
Premiere: September 27, 1999, Festival international de nouvelle danse (Montreal, Canada)
Choreography and artistic direction
Lynda Gaudreau
Dancers
Sarah Doucet
Mark Eden-Towle
Sophie Janssens
Sophie Lavigne
Guest choreographer and dancer
Benoît Lachambre
Scenography and sound direction
Lynda Gaudreau
Sound engineering
Dino Giancola
Lighting
Lucie Bazzo
Original score
Rober Racine
Piano (1999)
Costumes
Lynda Gaudreau
Carmen Alie
Denis Lavoie
Integrated videography
Jonathan Burrows
Hands (1995)
A dance film by Jonathan Burrows, Adam Roberts and Matteo Fargion
Music: Matteo Fargion
Video used with kind permission from the Arts Council of England.
Integrated choreographies
Meg Stuart and Damaged Goods
Excerpt from No Longer Readymade (1993)
Dancer: Benoît Lachambre
Music: Hahn Rowe
Benoît Lachambre
Solo à la hanche (1999)
(original composition)
Integrated choreographic props
Daniel Larrieu
Feutre (1999)
(the ball and the feathers)
Integrated interviews
Barbara De Coninck
Les oiseaux et le mouvement
Jérôme Bel
Propos sur la création
Rehearsal directors
AnneBruce Falconer
France Roy
Original videography
Marlene Millar
Philip Szporer
Lynda Gaudreau
Actors: Dwayne Bromfield, Loan Duong, David A. Peters, Mark Eden-Towle, Roger
Beaulne, Alexina Cowan and AnneBruce Falconer
Director of photography: Michael Wees
Sound Director: Duraid Munajim
Editing: Michel Giroux
Sound editing: Martin Hurtubise
This project was made possible thanks to the financial participation of PRIM.
Lynda Gaudreau was artist in residence at the La La La Human Steps studios during the 1998-1999 season.
Project partners: Théâtre de la Ville (Longueuil, Quebec), Centre chorégraphique national de Tours (France)
Length: 70 minutes (without intermission)
Press Excerpts
A magical evening of dance: DOCUMENT 1, by Canadian Lynda Gaudreau, conjures up a poetical alphabet of the body [...].
DOCUMENT 1 fascinates from beginning to end.
Eva Bucher, Neue Luzerner Zeitung (Switzerland), November 11, 2001
Odenthal [Head, Department of Performing Arts, Haus der Kulturen der Welt,
Berlin] commented that, in the 16th century,
an attempt was made to re-systematize knowledge. In the "gaps of knowledge"
– where the world had not yet been explored – artists and utopians
created their imaginary worlds.
Which is what Lynda Gaudreau does in her choreographies.
Ulrike Geist, Oranienburger Generalanzieger (Germany), August 15, 2000
With her Compagnie De Brune, the Canadian artist, well-known for her rigorous
creations, seeks to get to the root of things. [...] Yet in its formal radicalism
DOCUMENT 1 is one of the highlights of this year's Internationales
Tanzfest Berlin.
Kerstin Rottman, Die Welt (Germany), August 15, 2000
[...] a theatrically passionate, fleet-footed and danced exchange about
the contemporary repertoire.
Andrea Amort, Wiener Kurier (Austria), August 9, 2000
It was, like the rest of the evening, purely intellectual. And purely a
delight.
Jenny Jackson, The Ottawa Citizen (Canada), February 25, 2000
The first surprise in DOCUMENT 1 stems from this very act:
the sheer boldness of creating an original artistic form to explore the polemical
question of aesthetic relationships.
With DOCUMENT 1, the Brazilian public will have the chance to see the starting point of this fascinating trajectory, to discover the difference that makes a difference in the world of contemporary dance.
Helena Katz, O Estado de São Paulo (Brazil), January 18, 2000
This extremely concentrated method of working is reflected in theatrical
spareness. Nonetheless the work sparkles with Gaudreau's fascination for the
archival, the descent into ever new modes of ordering.
The result is an organically developed piece that avoids becoming a mathematical or purely technical exercise, but which rather owes its gentle yet striking visual force to a careful and delicate melding of complex, intermeshed choreographic-theatrical strata.
Sabine Huschka, Tanzdrama (Germany), 2000
A poetic minimalism arises, so to speak rhythm-ising the various fragments
and binding them together compositionally. This turns the conventional concept
of authorship on its head.
[...] Like Jérôme Bel, but by different routes, a playful space comes into being that confronts the subject as the central category of modern art with an imaginary collective.
Diderot's cultural-political intention in publishing his Encyclopédie in the 18th century, namely the democratisation of knowledge, is also what has inspired Lynda Gaudreau to attempt a redefinition of choreographic work.
Johannes Odenthal, Ballet International–Tanz Aktuell (Germany), November 1999
Lynda Gaudreau has the marvelous habit of transforming her choreographic
research, which at first might appear rather clinical and formal, into something
incredibly pure and extremely moving.
DOCUMENT 1 focuses on the arms, hands, feet and hips, and the result is absolutely fascinating. Like plates in a living encyclopedia...
Stéphanie Brody, La Presse (Canada), September 28, 1999
As ever, Gaudreau juxtaposes forms and perspectives, finding new ways to
help us appreciate the body – any body.
Linde Howe-Beck, The Gazette (Canada), September 28, 1999
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