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Anna Halprin Born in 1920, Anna Halprin has profoundly influenced and renewed dance, music and the visual arts in the past 40 years. In the early ’50s, while a choreographer and a soloist with Doris Humphrey, she left New York and settled on the west coast of the United States, thus starting one of the 20th century’s most radical and fertile artistic adventures, whose effects continue to inform many fields of art. Her summer workshops were the meeting-place for artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Simone Forti and Robert Morris, who in particular practised the famous “tasks”, a novel concept that introduced everyday gestures into the realm of dance and decisively influenced American post-modern dance. Nourished by the approaches of Moshé Feldenkrais and of Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, by Bauhaus theories, and by the humanist and pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey, Anna Halprin has unstintingly explored, developed and encouraged the creative process, especially in its collective form. She tirelessly challenges ways of thinking and acting, and aesthetic and political norms and boundaries, using scores, collective creation, improvisation and experimentation in natural surroundings, her involvement in 1960s protest movements, and long-term work with Aids and cancer patients. Halprin, who founded the San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop in 1955, initiated fruitful collaborations with artists from all disciplines: many dancers and choreographers, of course, but also with Lawrence Halprin (her husband, an architect and landscapist), with musicians and composers (La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Luciano Berio…), and poets (James Broughton, among others), as well as painters and sculptors. She has created many pieces including Birds of America (1960), Four-Legged Stool (1962), Apartment 6 (1965), Myths (1967-68), and Ceremony of Us (1969). From 1971 onwards, her fight against cancer prompted her to radically alter her relationship with art – she dedicated her own art to life, and used her creative processes to serve the seriously ill. This yielded Circle the Earth (1986-1991), The Planetary Dance (1987), Carry Me Home (1990) and Intensive Care (2000), among others. Now aged 88, she is still dancing, creating and teaching. Her latest piece, Seniors Rocking, features 50 people aged over 80. parades & changes, replays / recreated in 2008 A recreation initiated by Anne Collod in collaboration with Anna Halprin. 1965: Parades & Changes, the first group piece described as such by Anna Halprin, stemmed from the choreographer’s experiments with performance and improvisation since the late ’40s. This major work centres on the mundane nature of everyday gestures, such as dressing and undressing. The dancers end up enveloping themselves in a huge sheet of skin-coloured paper, which crumples and tears in silence. Its nudity caused the show to be banned in the United States for 20 years. The mode of composition, co-devised with composer Morton Subotnick, is based on a complex score that renders its structure totally flexible, and enables cooperation between artists from several disciplines. 2008: For parades & changes, replays, Anne Collod initiated a collaboration with Anna Halprin and Morton Subotnick, the piece’s composer and co-creator in 1965. Also participating are two choreographers – Alain Buffard and Boaz Barkan – who have been involved in Halprin’s work for many years and know her oeuvre particularly well, together with Boris Charmatz, Vera Mantero and DD Dorvillier. They are all curious to address Anna Halprin’s work and its topicality. The question “What possibilities for being together does dance invent?” is one of those that have guided my creative and research work for several years. It is this question that led me to meet Anna Halprin, an extraordinary woman and ground-breaking choreographer whose work supplies incandescently human answers. That question has also driven this project, and, more specifically, made me want to work on this 1965 piece – parades & changes – which in its day blew away the codes that governed dance and its representation. What effects can be produced by bringing this piece’s multiple scenarios back into play, in a different time and places, by actors of today who are directly engaged with the questions shaping the contemporary scene? How can the conditions for a fruitful exchange between Anna Halprin and a new generation of dancers and choreographers be created? All of these issues lie at the heart of parades & changes, replays. Anne Collod A graduate in biology and in the development of natural spaces, she chose to train in contemporary dance with Michel Hallet Eghayan in Lyon and then started performing with Pierre Deloche, Philippe Decouflé, Stéphanie Aubin and La Camionetta. With Dominique Brun, Simon Hecquet and Christophe Wavelet, she co-founded the Quatuor Albrecht Knust (1993-2001), dedicated to recreating choreographic works from the early 20th century (by Doris Humphrey, Kurt Joos, Yvonne Rainer and Steve Rainer, among others). In 2002, she created the non-profit organisation Eéfro’s Project, through which she met Anna Halprin. She also works with Boris Charmatz, Laurent Pichaud and Cécile Proust. In 2005, she founded the non-profit organisation …& alters. Extra info: |
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