DANCE

The cultural frenzy of the 1960s gave rise to a new form of dance, akin to performance art, embodied by American choreographer Lucinda Childs. A manifesto of American minimalism, her Dance (1979) ballet is exceptional and radical in more ways than one. This triple choreographic, musica, and visual composition stemmed from her collaboration with two other towering 20^th-century figures.

Following Einstein on the Beach, Lucinda Childs reunited with composer Philip Glass, who crafted a fluid score built on a simple looping, shifting rhythmic pattern across which dancers create sliding, geometric moves. Their pared-down motion unfolds in a line that is imperceptibly transformed while the music pursues its mesmerizing flow.

As for painter and sculptor Sol LeWitt, this was the only film of his career. On an invisible screen stretched across the front of the stage, he projected a video of the dancers filmed during a rehearsal. The audience sees double: floating beneath the fly bars or magnified out of proportion next to their flesh-and-blood counterparts, the filmed shadows create dizzying variations and ghostly overlays.

Performed by 17 dancers from the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, the entire production is crafted as an incredible shimmering black-and-white interplay between space, music, movement and time. Our gaze is invited to wander actively through the work, drawn into a spellbinding meditation evoking a universal emotion that has not aged a bit.