Through “Lumière du vide”, Ingeborg Liptay pursues and intensifies her exploration into the musical world of the American band TOOL.

The variations in rhythm and the sound of this music are the tools of her choreography. TOOL blends the power of heavy metal, the emotional charge of progressive rock and the ability of psychedelic rock to create an absolute, enchanting atmosphere. TOOL is a band apart. Its art is to invoke irregular, unusual, yet totally organic rhythms.

Humans, today, frequently feel they are in a hostile world, pushed into confinement that prevents them from relating to anything at all with confidence. Whereas space welcomes everything. Through dance, we can comprehend that external space, the infinite, and internal space, ourselves, are not separated. Infinity in the palm of your hand.

For Ingeborg Liptay, TOOL's music is an opportunity to transform violence into pure energy. By becoming one with TOOL's penetrating music, dance becomes contrasted and intense. It draws its strength from the complexity of sounds and the profusion of rhythms, to emit a wave, a slackness, a peaceful opening.

“Lumière du vide” and “Les Ailes de la gravité”(The Wings of gravity) (created in 2008 - trio) are two pieces of work that were created by Ingeborg Liptay as a whole, a diptych around the musical world of the rock band TOOL.

(source : website of the Ingeborg Liptay Company)

Further information

Company Website

Updating: June 2012

From Essen to Paris

1960. Ingeborg Liptay joined Karin Waehner, a disciple of Mary Wigman, at the Schola Cantorum in Paris. She was 26 years old. She had studied classical dance and the Laban method in Würzburg in Bavaria. At the Folkwang School in Essen, Kurt Jooss transmitted his “belief of the possible fluidity of the body” to her.

New York experience.

1963. In New York. She studied with Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey. With Claude Thompson, she discovered “playing with gravity, the engine of dynamic dance”. It was “the experience of the positive body gravity”.

In Bird Land, she discovered the great jazzmen. The intense musical experience during her stay in New York was decisive for her relationship to music, to sound and the comprehension that it developed. She felt that “music can actually dance you”.

1967, back to Paris. Ingeborg taught modern-jazz at the Schola, in Colombes and elsewhere.

From Africa to the French garrigue

1970. In Casamance, she saw children dancing sacred initiatory dances with great sincerity. When she left Africa for France, she had understood that “there are dances which, linked to music, enable you to survive when life in itself is too difficult”.

In 1972, to get close to the natural environment of the mountains of St-Guilhem-le-Désert, she moved to Montpellier. She set up a studio with Morton Potash, an American pianist, and created with him from 1971 to 1983.

From 1985 to 1989, she produced works that were accompanied by contemporary jazz music from Doudou Gouirand, Eberhard Weber and Jan Garbarek.

Terre du ciel (Earth from the Heavens)

1993. Her solo “Terre du ciel”, with music by Arvo Pärt, was acclaimed by the press as a masterpiece. “In Japan, Mrs Ingeborg Liptay would be qualified as a Living Treasure”.

Philippe Verrièle, Les Saisons de la danse, Sept. 1994.

“...a great lady in the silence of her glory”

Dominique Frétard, Le Monde, 20 July 1996.

Her current company took shape in 1999 with the creation of the trio “Insula Deserta”, with music by Erkki Sven-Tüür. Next came productions accompanied by jazz music, from Miles Davis to Annette Peacock, rock music by Jeff Buckley and classical by Dimitri Chostakovitch.

BIRD, pour les oiseaux (for birds)

In May 2010, at the age of 75, Ingeborg returned to the stage with her solo “BIRD, pour les oiseaux” (music by Chostakovitch), which was performed on the Esplanade of La Défense, Paris. She danced in the 2012 creation “NuageAnge” (AngelCloud), which included music by Eberhard Weber, Jimi Hendrix and Arvo Pärt.

Further information

Company Website

Dernière mise à jour : juin 2012

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).