The choreographer Régine Chopinot, with her company Ballet Atlantique
- Régine Chopinot, has brought the rhythms of nature, of generation
and falling away, and of deep, geomorphological time into contemporary
theatre-based dance. In her engagement with the elements and the spirit
of the natural world, Chopinot has created works with a demanding simplicity,
slow meditations in real time using natural materials, on the structures
and processes of nature.
For two works, she has collaborated with the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy :
Végétal, created 1995
La Danse du Temps, created in 1999
‘I respond to dance more than other forms of theatre. Dance is more
sculptural. It deals with the stuff of the body, more abstract, the essence of
movement. My work is a way of releasing an energy which is there. Régine
releases movement. Appearing as if an external force is making the movement -
somehow over-riding the mind of the dance, it takes control. That for me is the
essence of movement.’ Andy Goldsworthy
Végétal
Choreography : Régine Chopinot
Set design : Andy Goldsworthy
Sound design : Knud Viktor
Lighting : Maryse Gautier
for 15 and 13 dancers
The dance is composed of five parts, in each of which the dance incorporates
the creation of evolving sculptures using materials of the natural world, in
movements which are between the choreographed and the spontaneous. The stage
is circumscribed by the slow pace of Chopinot herself walking, marking real
time.
from the book accompanying Végétal:
Earth / terre : dust throws of red earth
‘Breathing rhythm is a gradual awakening, rocking, to and fro,
inhaling and exhaling, the body forging itself and melting.’ Régine
Chopinot
Seed / graine : the building and falling of
balanced rocks
‘Stone has shown me many things about the structure of growth.
I have found an energy in stone that can be best described as a seed
that becomes taut as it ripens - often needing only the slightest of
touches to make it explode and scatter its parts. The precariousness
of a balanced column is like the fine edge between success and failure
- the tension of growth.’ Andy Goldsworthy
Root / racine : dancers responding to a background
of dried ferns glued to a canvas, forming a snake-like pattern.
‘I have used the sounds of worms in wood, which I discovered one
day - there were about a dozen worms communicating with each other in
a percussion-like way. If one worm changed the type of signal, all the
others followed. The whole piece is arranged, composed, but the natural
sounds are kept as they are.’ Knud Viktor
Branch / branche : the dancers build a circular
nest from branches
‘Methodical, harmonious, the wood finds its place and places me
in its rings. As my grandmother would say, working is doing and
undoing. Végétal is work with wood. Wood is an energy element
which extends past me, passes through me, builds me. The memory
in my cells of the gestures that shaped my dancers body.’ Régine
Chopinot
Leaf / feuille : a leaf throw within a circle
of branches
‘I choreographed ‘Leaf’ as a sculpture, with the dancers’ energy
as the material. In a stormy state, the body accepts the wind, its open
gaze directed inwards. Bodies swirl in circles, turning until they fall.
The tree is bare, loses its foliage, turns back within itself. Full cycle.’ Régine
Chopinot
La Danse du Temps
Choreography : Régine Chopinot
Film-Set Design : Andy Goldsworthy
Sound design music composer: Tôn-Thât Tiêt
Lighting : Régis Montambaux
for 16 dancers between the ages of 20 and 75
The work is a meditation on time and its symbolic associations with
water, and on age and generations - alteration, loss and renewal.
The work is in three parts:
the human time on earth
the time of the universe
the time that is lost, forgotten or absent
The image of the river and the perceptions of time are constantly present
in all of Chopinot’s work.
The river inspired Tôn-Thât Tiêt to return to the
music and sounds of his native Vietnam, back to the River of Perfumes
and the boatmen’s songs of his childhood. His score refers to three ‘times’ – linear
time, cyclical time, and non-time.
The river inspired Andy Goldworthy to create the silt river stage set.
Goldsworthy’s film of his work ‘Earth River’, is projected
onto the stage. In the film, a wall of clay dries to reveal the serpentine
path of a water course. This image draws on the essence of time through
the slow process of its cracking. On the stage floor was an undulating
strip of red silt.
Chopinot invited the dancers Françoise and Dominique Dupuy and
Sophie Lessard to join the company, uniting three generations of contemporary
dancers. In her choreography, Chopinot uses walking, running, jumping,
falling, trances and immobility to create a primal dance – a work
on rhythms and the cross-over of one mood to another.
‘I am deeply interested in how a dancer’s body can portray
the kind of expansion that exists between actual time and the experience
provided by the performance, providing the audience with a different
perception of time up to the point where they no longer know whether
they have just seen a performance that lasted three hours or only a
second. This ‘unawareness of time’ fascinates me.’
Ballet Atlantique-Régine Chopinot creates a full and varied repertoire
of contemporary dance.
Contact
e : regine.chopinot at wanadoo.fr
a :
14 rue du Collège
17025 LA ROCHELLE Cédex 01
France
t : 05.46.41.17.75
Notes on text
The quoted text on Végétal has been taken from the booklet
published and copyright by Ballet Atlantique-Régine Chopinot,
[1996, ISBN 2904893016] reprinted with permission.
Photo Credit
The photographs are copyright of Tristan JEANNE-VALES Agence Enguerand,
and have been provided with permission by Ballet Atlantique-Régine
Chopinot