 | REPERTOIRE Multiplicity, Forms of Silence and Emptiness |
Choreography:
Nacho Duato
Music: Johan
Sebastian Bach (collage)
Sets:
Jaffar Al Chalabi (based on an
original idea of Nacho Duato)
Costumes:
Nacho Duato (in collaboration
with Ismael Aznar)
Light
Design: Brad Fields
In co-production
with Weimar 1999, Cultural European
Capital
World Premiere in Weimar at the Viehauktionshalle on the 23rd of April, 1999. Pre-premiere in Spain at Teatro Calderón, Valladolid, on the 9th of April, 1999.
The first one, Vielfältigkeit, is a choreographic reflexion which arises mainly from the wonderful music of the brilliant composer. This first part is characterized by a choreographic variety and diversity which matches the linked different musical excerpts by Bach. Continuos changes in costumes and settings highlight visually this musical collage.
The second part, Formen von Stille und Leere, maintains a more introspective tone, more mystic and spiritual, reflecting upon the subject of the death, so present in the work of Bach. Musically speaking it is based mainly on the Arte of Fugue.
Folding: towards a visual conception
Stage design, J.S. Bach Vielfaeltigkeit, Formen von stille und Leere
Vielfaeltigkeit, i.e. multiple-folds, diversity, multiplicity, labyrinth, refers to the processual idea of folding. The Baroque refers not to an essence but rather to an operative function to a trait. It endlessly produces folds. The Baroque trait twists turns its folds, pushing them to infinity fold over fold, one upon the other. The Baroque unfurls all the way to infinity.
An architectural conceptions
invisions the thematic of Baroque
music of J. S. Bach, through
the process of folding. In architecture,
the fold provides a model for
theories of metamorphosis and
covering (Bekleidung, Gottfried
von Semper). Folds are maneuverable
borders which separate an interior
from the exterior, yet also create
an interior within the exterior
and an exterior within the interior.
Considered abstractly, it is
only the type of bend -concave
or convex- that determines inside
and outside, meaning the gender
of the space. In this unfixed
state, the fold provides a model
of transformation.
A scaffold set at the back
of a stage acting as building
retaining a curtain wall, that
transforms itself from opened
to closed entity. This architectural
gender of the Baroque, represents
the separation of the façade (exterior) and the closed room (interior), the outer facade of reception and the inner rooms of action. Baroque architecture is always confronting to principles, a bearing principle and a covering principle. The geometrically ordered scaffold enhances several floors all connected through ramps creating a fluid movement. These ramps represent vertical folding, spatial continuum, all set in diagonal relations (dynamic) within a rigid structure (static).
In contrast to the building,
the façade consist of an elastically membrane that transforms itself through contractions and extensions. These contractions provide literal models of folds, simulating zones of intervals and densification.
Jaffar Chalabi
