Midori
2013
Choreographer(s) : Leighton, Joanne (Belgium)
Present in collection(s): WLDN / Joanne Leighton
Video producer : CCNFCB
Midori
2013
Choreographer(s) : Leighton, Joanne (Belgium)
Present in collection(s): WLDN / Joanne Leighton
Video producer : CCNFCB
Midori
For the creation of Exquisite Corpse, Joanne Leighton invited leading french dancer Jérôme Andrieu to join the company of the Centre Chorégraphique National of Franche-Comté in Belfort.
Following this rich artistic encounter, Joanne and Jérôme continued their collaboration, working together for the creation of Midori. The piece explores the place of the performer in a choreographic work, taking as its departure point notions of identity and role-playing. They attempt to recreate a number of iconic dance works using a spoken, real-time description as the only resource. The object is not the recreation of an existing piece per se, but to explore the use of language as a medium of transmission, instruction and documentation in choreography. The process is not dissimilar to the processes that have been used to attempt to recreate « lost » choreographies from little more than notes and sketches.
Leighton, Joanne
Based in Paris Ile-de-France, Joanne Leighton is a Belgian-Australian choreographer and pedagogue. Her professional career is linked to an original, dynamic and constantly evolving vision of dance and her discourse is permeated by an emphasis on dialogue and exchange, both with the public and with her artistic collaborators. Central to her work lies the notion of site, territory and identity, which are for Joanne Leighton interdependent spaces.
Joanne Leighton is the representative choreographer of the administrative council of the SACD (French Society of Composers and Dramatic Authors) and the Beaumarchais 2018 – 2020. She is also a member of the administrative council of La Maison du Geste et de l'Image in Paris.
After dancing in the Australian Dance Theater (1986-1991), Joanne Leighton moved to Europe, living and performing in London for 2 years. Her company Velvet was formed in Brussels from 1993 - 2010, where she established her choreographic work, active for over 18 years. She was choreographer in residence at the Raffinery - Charleroi/Danses (2003-2005) and Les Halles de Schaerbeek (2005-2007). In 1994 and in 2010 she received the SACD Prize (Society of Composers and Dramatic Authors) for her choreographic work. Joanne Leighton has been commissioned to create work for international companies such as the Dance Theater of Ireland (2001); in Belgium for Charleroi Danses (2005); in France for the Ballet de Lorraine (2014) and in Switzerland for the company Marchepied (2015).
Director of the National Choreographic Center of Franche-Comté in Belfort in France (2010 – 2015), Joanne Leighton formed WLDN in 2015. WLDN is a project, philosophy and platform for her choreographic research and creation. Her works have been performed nationally and internationally in theaters, urban and industrial spaces, art galleries, town squares, on rooftops and presented on screens and smartphones. Joanne Leighton's choreographic work has been co-produced and presented on international stages for over 20 years, with over 30 productions touring to France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Netherlands, Wales, the United Kingdom, Australia and Cuba.
Joanne Leighton’s choreographic work includes Corps Exquis (2019) a piece for 3 dancers around an exquisite corpse for 58 choreographers; I am sitting in a room, a movement study of the sitting position performed by four poetic clowns on the eponymous text by American composer Alvin Lucier; Exquisite Corpse (2012) an exquisite corpse for 7 dancers ; Made in…Series, a large scale ‘architecture in movement’ for 99 participants performed in situ and (re)created in France, Denmark, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, Cuba; The Modulables, a series of site-specific pieces between installation and performance with an ambulatory public, which have been evolving over a period of 10 years. In 2014, Joanne Leighton and the director Christoph Frick co-sign Melting Pot for 9 young performers from immigrant backgrounds, a cultural exchange between the Theater Freiburg, the CCN of Belfort and Junges Theater Basel. Chair Dances, an evolutive virtual digital gallery comprising over 30 short choreographic films by diverse choreographers involving chairs, was initiated by Joanne Leighton in 2010.
In 2015 Joanne Leighton initiated a trilogy of works which will span 5 years with her signature piece 9000 Steps, performed by six dancers on a bed of salt to the music Drumming, Steve Reich. This work was followed in 2018 with Songlines, for eight dancers, created to the fascinating musical composition In C by Terry Riley. This trilogy will conclude with her production People United in 2021.
In September 2011, Joanne Leighton launched her large scale work, The Vigil, whereby each morning and evening at sunrise and sunset over 365 days, a participant holds watch over the city for one hour, a work for 730 inhabitants and performed over 365 consecutive days. Around these same principals this choreography has been mounted for the towns Belfort (September 2011 – September 2012) ; Laval (15th September 2012 – 15th September 2013) ; Rennes (30th September 2012 – 29th September 2013) Haguenau (1st January – 31st December 2015), Freiburg, Germany (20th June 2015 – 19th June 2016) and Evreux, France for the Le Tangram, Scène Nationale (22nd September 2017 – 22nd September 2018) ; Dordrecht, for the Schouwburg Kunstmin in Holland (1st Mai 2019 – 30th April 2020) , and eigth project, The Graz Vigil Austria (1st January 2020 - 31st December 2020) for La Strada, is currently in performance. The Münich Vigil - Türmer München, is due to start shortly (12th December 12th 2020 - 12th December 2021) ; along with The Hull Vigil (20th March 2021 - 19th March 2022) for the Freedom Festival of Hull in the United Kingdom.
In parallel to this work, Joanne Leighton initiated a series of walking pieces as with Walk#1 Belfort – Freiburg, where she walked a path between two Vigil sites by following waterways over 127 kms in four days. Since 2014 these ‘walking dances’ are part of her choreographic practice. In September 2017, Joanne Leighton mounted Walk, a performance over 25 km linking the four theaters of Paris Réseau Danse, with an open call for participants to join her. Her work Salt Circle concluded this unique event at Atelier de Paris/CDCN. Her walking projects such as Walking as Remembering (2019) weave into her choreographic practice and stage work.
An internationally recognized pedagogue, Joanne Leighton regularly gives lectures and workshops. She has taught for companies such as Jean-Claude Gallotta, Catherine Diverrès, Angelin Preljocaj, Trisha Brown Company, Batsheva Company, Charleroi / Danses, AMNT in Tokyo, Need Company, Rosas, Wim Vandekeybus, and dance centers like the Seoul International Choreographic Center (South Korea); The Menagerie de Verre, Paris; Centre National Danse in Paris; Atelier de Paris / CDCN; PARTS; Dansens House in Copenhagen; and the Croatian Institute for Movement and Dance / Zagreb Dance Center. She has also taught in art schools such as the fine arts school in Toulouse.
Interested in finding new ways of being, doing, thinking, working, making and presenting, Joanne Leighton seeks to embrace a radically different approach to access, ownership, and authorship in contemporary dance performance.
Midori
Choreography : Joanne Leighton
Interpretation : Jérôme Andrieu (danse et voix)
Artistic consultancy / Dramaturgy : Geoffrey Carey
Original music : Peter Crosbie
Live music : Pieter Van Dessel (guitare)
Lights : Sylvie Mélis
Costumes : Hélène Oliva-Patinec
Technical direction : Thierry Meyer
Other collaborations : Geoffrey Carey (voix), Noël Claude, Christophe Maltot (voix), Gérard Mayen et Benjamin Tovo (lecture des danses)
Production / Coproduction of the choreographic work : Centre Chorégraphique National de Franche-Comté à Belfort / Coproduction Le Granit, Scène nationale de Belfort
C'est un solo (À propos de Midori de Joanne Leighton)
On the stage: the singular physical presence of Jerome Andrieu, leading figure in the contemporary dance scene in France for a number of years. In Midori, for the first time, he performs not only a solo, but presents an elaborate verbal discourse.
The piece, is a meeting point. With a number of partners.
Jerome was one of the performers in Joanne Leighton’s recent Exquisite Corpse. We are already familiar with her choreographic approach, the use of a range of techniques - borrowing, copying, the use of series, alteration, recycling- to rework existing models of the role of the author. If in doing so she illuminates the fundamental critiques of modernity, she does so with intelligence and a malicious humour, keeping at arm’s length anything that risks becoming too serious or pretentious.
Another partner is, obviously, the viewer - to whom we’ll return later.
Because there’s another presence that finds its way into Midori. It’s less perceptible, but no less splendidly active. During much of the piece, we listen to «voices-off» describing the gestures and movements of dancers as they dance. To generate these texts, a range of filmed dance sequences were shown to observers, who were then recorded as they described what they were seeing. These recordings were subsequently replayed to Jerome. Thus, a voice-based transposition initiated a chain reaction of transmission, appropriation and commentary, which animates the piece.
The description is thorough, factual. After all, a movement is a movement. But we never get to see these movements in their original form. So a shift takes place. And it is in this shift that Jerome Andrieu creates a dialogue, through his own words and movement, as a performer with a capital P.
But, let us return to the spectator. Midori invites the audience to undertake an unusual perceptual experience. To listen to the unfolding of one dance by one dancer while regarding that of another dancer. Is it the same? Between listening and watching there’s an inter-sensorial double play, which connects the spectator to a network of what is heard and what is expected. So meticulous is the description of this absent dance, that it opens up the possibility of an inexhaustible imaginary space, a space which is activated and inhabited by the performer who is present, Jerome Andrieu.
The range of variability, considerable and profoundly alive and constantly renewed, moves from a literal translation of the text to a more liberal interpretation, rich in intentions, dynamic changes, rhythmic modulations and spatial explorations. That is when Andrieu doesn’t himself describe the dance that he’s performing.
Activating the various states of «being present», interchanging the «I’» and the «he», moving from being the subject of an action to being the object. We glimpse the ontological distance between being a body, and having a body. A pleasant feeling of vertigo is established, inviting us to look anew at what fixes a written work of dance, and what opens it up to variable readings.
In this regard, the discourse returns to a discussion on the dualism between the supposed rigid authority of the choreographer on one hand, and the amount of freedom given to the dancer on the other. But in doing so, we perhaps overlook what Midori actually touches on: a fluctuation between levels of meaning and performance, a questioning of all that a repertoire of dance has already interpreted of the world. And all the while, not forgetting that this interpretation - for which the choreographer has faith in the rendering of his/her work by the performer(s) - has no meaning without a spectater. Midori, has all the shimmering brilliance of these games of shifting and switching cross-references. In Japanese, «midori» is the word for «green». But did we think that the chromatic range would give us a reliable and universal scale by which to measure our perceptions? Even in speaking of colours, this piece by Joanne Leighton shows how ingenious civilisations can be in representing with a thousand differences the singularities of their world.
Between the event and the symbol that refers to it - a word or a movement - their is enough space to give rise to a plethora of possible interpretations. Midori contributes a joyous choreography to this game of relationships.
Gérard Mayen, dance critic
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