Encyclopœdia – DOCUMENT 3
The third chapter of a series whose end is unpredictable, Encyclopœdia – DOCUMENT 3 has the lightness of an ongoing creative process and the richness of a rigorous research project brought to a successful conclusion. From the sequence of scenes featuring the dancer-individuals to the folding and unfolding of its paper scenography, the paper-colored and textured DOCUMENT 3 is bathed in a sound environment which divides body and space into infinite parts, into tiny breaks and fractures, into strange and indefinable reverberations and echoes.
If DOCUMENT 1 and DOCUMENT 2 played with formal parameters and, to some extent, turned the body and its fleshy exterior into abstractions, this third volume of Gaudreau's encyclopedia contains something of the simplicity of human existence, of its singular reality. A playful back-and-forth movement, at once lively and calm, combines with slices of life and bodily expressions to create a unique and unexpected humour.
By adding this humorous layer, Lynda Gaudreau surprises and charms her audience. Closer to real-life humanity than its two predecessors, this new chapter of her Encyclopoedia – with its fractures and eruptions and gentle madness – presents and catalogues a series of human reactions and attitudes, both corporal and auditory. Apart from the video footage with Vera Mantero and then Akram Khan, the work leads us into a zone we did not expect to enter: the realm of the text. An indirect relationship is thereby established between paper, an inscribable surface from an encyclopedia, and the word, the very unit of inscription.
With its work on spatial, acoustic and corporal elements, with the unfolding and spreading of the paper, DOCUMENT 3 is clearly not limited to the body. The choreography incorporates monologues, gestures, silences, thoughts, stillnesses, surprises. Gaudreau is thus deliberately transcending the choreographic dynamic, moving freely within a creation without boundaries, where a triple pleasure lurks: spontaneity, drifting, and the freedom to do so.
Andrée Martin
Credits
To Paul
Premiere: May 1, 2002, luzerntanz – choreographic center at the luzernertheater (Lucerne, Switzerland)
Artistic direction and choreography
Lynda Gaudreau
Choreographic material developed with the dancers
Anna Bozzini
Cristian Duarte
Sophie Lavigne
Monique Romeiko
Integrated choreographic fragments by
Vera Mantero
(segment with the balls)
Integrated video from a work choreographed and performed by
Akram Khan
Monologues by
Lynda Gaudreau
Cristian Duarte
Sound design and scenography team
Alexandre St-Onge
Christof Migone
Annie Lebel (Atelier in situ)
Lynda Gaudreau
Sound design developed by
Alexandre St-Onge
Christof Migone
Scenography developed by
Annie Lebel (Atelier in situ)
Lynda Gaudreau
Lighting contribution
Isabelle Lapointe
Costumes
Carmen Alie
Video concept
Lynda Gaudreau
(Lynda Gaudreau and Vera Mantero at the park, Vera Mantero, Akram Khan)
Video crew
Direction and editing: Marlene Millar
Photo direction and camera: Michael Weiss
Sound: Alain Tremblay
Rehearsal directors
France Roy
France Bruyère
A co-production of the KunstenFESTIVALdesArts (Brussels, Belgium), the Théâtre de la Ville (Paris, France), the Arts Centre Vooruit (Gent, Belgium), the luzerntanz – choreographic center at the luzernertheater (Lucerne, Switzerland), the Festival international de nouvelle danse (Montreal, Canada), and the Compagnie De Brune, in collaboration with the Atelier du Rhin (Colmar, France).
The dancers Sarah Doucet, Mark Eden-Towle, Tanya White and Guy Trifiro initially took part in the elaboration of the choreographic material of DOCUMENT 3. Lynda Gaudreau wishes to thank them.
Lynda Gaudreau would like to thank Farooq Chaudry, Fu Kuen Tang for his contribution at the beginning of the creation, AnneBruce Falconer and Nicolas Marion.
Length: 60 minutes (without intermission)
Press Excerpts
Particularly through its gesture/sound duality and its hypothetical translation into language, DOCUMENT 3 appears as a breathtaking and dizzying quest, as a field of possibilities within a framework of constraints, as the immanence of the spoken within the unspoken, as the confession of a doubt, universal and sensual.
Marie Baudet, La Libre Belgique (Belgium), May 19, 2002
The Compagnie De Brune presents this constant beginning and repeated interruption with such refinement and precision, that the audience is constantly holding its breath.
Christina Thurner, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland), May 3, 2002
What at first glance appears abstract and relatively unspectacular astounds again and again by means of the minutely-conceived artistic form that opens dynamic fields of tension between acoustic, spatial and choreographic elements.
Eva Bucher, Neue Luzerner Zeitung (Switzerland), May 3, 2002
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