The Belgian-Moroccan choreographer arrives at the Liceu at the helm of the company he directs, the prestigious Ballet du Grand Théàtre de Genève.
Barcelona, February 23, 2024. The Belgian-Moroccan choreographer, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui returns to the Gran Teatre del Liceu after the duo performed alongside María Pagés, Dunas, in 2011 with the show Faun/Noetic, two choreographies that the Grand Ballet de Genève will perform on February 27, 28, 29, and March 1.
Faun, 16 minutes long, is a commissioned piece by the prestigious Sadler's Wells in London to celebrate the centenary of the Ballets Russes, co-produced by the Théâtre National de Chaillot (Paris), Monaco Dance Forum, National Theatre of Catalonia, Mercat de les Flors, Opéra de Dijon, and the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, and premiered on June 16, 2009, with the National English Ballet.
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui proposes a personal reading of the mythical choreography L'après-midi d'un faune by Vàtslav Nijinsky, premiered with great scandal on May 29, 1912, at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Vàtslav Nijinsky was inspired by the pastoral scenes of the Iliad and ancient Greece to imagine this piece revolving around the love between a faun and a nymph.
The impressionist score Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, by Claude Debussy, is in turn inspired by a poem by the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. One of the novelties introduced by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is the modification of the original score and the introduction of fragments signed by Nitin Sawhney. The treatment of movement also responds to a contemporary sensibility, intensifying the fantastic and animal aspects, and a body language that gives a three-dimensional dimension to the work.
To create this piece that explores the relationship between these two mythological beings, the Belgian-Moroccan choreographer was inspired by the Australian dancer James O'Hara, while Daisy Phillips premiered the piece interpreting the nymph, an ethereal being rooted in the forest. In this playful scene, the two beings innocently play, while the sexual tension between them becomes evident.
The choreographer has enhanced the eroticism of this work by showing the contrast between a childlike gaze and ancient and old souls seeking each other in a wild environment, crossed by chiaroscuro. This ancient-modern dialogue is also found in the costumes, signed by Hussein Chalayan, which combine organic materials with synthetic ones in an effort to bring these fantastical creatures to the present.
When Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui took over the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève after directing the Ballet de l'Opéra de Flandes in 2022, he immediately wanted to premiere this Faun with the company, which was done in August 2022 at La Bâtie-Festival de Genève. Subsequently, this piece went on tour, making Faun one of the most emblematic works of the Swiss company.
Noetic, 55 minutes long, is a group work premiered on March 8, 2014, and created in collaboration with the Göteborgsoperans Danskompani of Göteborg. In this choreography, which will be seen for the first time in Barcelona, emerges the most reflective and philosophical Sidi Larbi, as he delves into the idea of noetic, according to which the straight line is actually a curve, so that everything is connected in the perfect form of the circle.
Noetic, a word of Greek origin, "noetikos," means "intuitive mind," so it refers to the non-rational search for knowledge that connects us with an immutable universe. It was the astronaut Edgar Mitchell, founder of The Institute of Noetic Sciences, which aims to investigate the role of consciousness in human evolution, who recovered this concept. The score composed by Szymon Brzóska, highly emotional and colorful, has influences from traditional Japanese music.
As for the choreographic work, it is very different from Faun because here Sidi Larbi proposed a group work in which all twenty-one dancers of the company bring out collective consciousness and the need of men to structure their existence. As for movements, we find mobile sculptures unfolding in space and time, facing random flows, such as the flight of a flock of birds or a chain reaction of gestures.
One of the highlights of this piece is the participation, for the fourth time already, with British visual artist Antony Gormley, who explores the action of sculptural figures and the emotions they evoke in the performers. Thanks to the handling of various elements that act as catalysts, such as three long rods made of carbon fiber, the dancers explore space and create endless paths and curves that are inevitably shaped by the force of gravity.
In the previous conceptual work by Gormley, the dancers themselves were invited to create models of some of these geometric figures so they could understand from within the Noetic proposal as a questioning of the relationship between body and space.
Elegant and dynamic, this piece is also part of the repertoire of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, which premiered it alongside Faun in Geneva, in August 2022, as part of La Bâtie-Festival de Genève.
The Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève was established as a company in 1962, but the theater previously had a ballet company. Following the reopening of the center after a fire, it was equipped with a stable company with a very clear line: to explore new artistic avenues within contemporary dance, both in terms of updating great classics from the repertoire and creating new works with the best choreographers on the international scene. Today, the company has twenty-one permanent dancers.
After seven years at Ballet Vlaanderen, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has taken on the role of director since July 2022. A enfant terrible of the dance world, the prestigious dancer and choreographer signs some of the most outstanding works of the present and often establishes enriching interdisciplinary collaborations with visual artists, designers, and musicians.
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