VIOLET

According to Meg Stuart, VIOLET is both a colour and the very place where the idea of colour tends to fade away, the last colour before the unknown. It is the moment when sight loses itself in ultra-violet, when it puts itself in danger, attempting to perceive ultra-worlds. It is the place and the moment where the mind must take over and try to sketch out these worlds, through the bodily experience of dancers sent to reconnoitre. With VIOLET, Meg Stuart works at the border of the visible spectrum in what she considers her first "abstract" work. She has freed herself from societal and social, love and family questions: questions that belong to the infra-violet - the one that appears after the flood of Blessed, one of her earlier shows - and contain all the colours of the rainbow. She has tried to see beyond the visible and has undertaken an inner journey through and within dance. A journey in which the bodies are in charge of mapping the inchartable by way of curves and oscillations, emitting sounds that come from elsewhere. The choreographer has buried herself in alchemy textbooks, has explored immemorial signs, has followed the footsteps of the Bible, without ever totally losing sight of our world, combining physical and occult sciences, and incorporating trance figures into dance techniques. With Brendan Dougherty, the musician, and Janina Audick, the set designer, she seeks genuine transmutation, summoning the dancers to "change skins," as though she wanted to make them pass live through different states of matter, each of them revealing as many forays into the invisible. Bearers of a history of their own, the five dancers form a single wave, flowing from the back of the stage and breaking before the spectators. The rhythm of the collective movement reveals a continuous flow of personal energies, a gushing foam which also echoes the forces of nature, in a musical murmur that submerges and sweeps along like an ocean. JLP

concept and choregraphy Meg Stuart
dramaturgy Myriam Van Imschoot
scenography Janina Audick
light design Jan Maertens
costumes Nina Kroschinske

created with and performed by Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Varinia Canto Vila, Adam Linder, Kotomi Nishiwaki, Roger Sala Reyner
and the musician Brendan Dougherty

production Damaged Goods (Bruxelles)
coproduction Festival d'Avignon, PACT Zollverein (Essen), Festival d'Automne à Paris, Les Spectacles vivants - Centre Pompidou (Paris), La Bâtie-Festival de Genève, Kaaitheater (Bruxelles)
en collaboration avec Uferstudios (Berlin) et Radialsystem V (Berlin)
avec le soutien d'Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Berlin), de la Commission de la Communauté flamande et des Autorités flamandes