Tracing Time

The touring Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival is about to land in London, March 12- April 8, returning to the location of its first edition in 2022. Between then and now, the event has built a strong reputation for presenting avant-garde contemporary choreography alongside influential postmodern works, giving audiences the chance to trace the arc of dance history and witness how the art form is evolving.

Rachid Ouramdane with Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve in “Outsider.” Photograph by Gregory Batardon

The festival opens with three works that span almost 40 years. “Sakinan göze çöp batar (an over-protected eye always gets sand in it)” (2012) at the Lilian Baylis Studio is by French multihyphenate, and Dance Reflections favourite, Christian Rizzo. A popular piece in Rizzo’s repertory, it explores themes of exile, solitariness and exploration in a meditative solo performed by Turkish dancer Kerem Gelebek. Next door, on Sadler’s Wells main stage, the mood will be more energetic in a double bill of Trisha Brown’s “Working Title” (1985) and “In the Fall” (2024), created by French choreographer Noé Soulier for the Trisha Brown Dance Company (only their second external commission). The Brown/Soulier pairing is a contemplation, the younger choreographer considering the elder. Soulier comments on Brown’s “decentred” movement language, but also diverges from it.

For Serge Laurent, director of dance and culture programs at Van Cleef & Arpels and the festival’s curator since its inception, demonstrating these kinds of “transmissions” between artists is part of his mission. “The Trisha Brown Company has to think about how to look forward as well as how to preserve its heritage,” he says, speaking to me online. “They proposed commissioning Noé and he made “In the Fall.” For me, this work is a very good example of the intelligent passing of information from one body to another. Later in the festival, Noé will present “Close Up,” where he shows his own voice. Artists may receive ideas from the past, but this doesn’t block their creativity.

“What is important for me as a curator is that the festival is not only a selection of artists, it’s about my duty as a curator,” he continues. “When I was working in the visual arts [at Fondation Cartier and Centre Pompidou], we worked hard to create an exhibition. We based our research and choices on the contemporary landscape, but also on a strong awareness of art history. I take the same approach for Dance Reflections. To select an artist, I must be aware of dance history. It’s very important for me to say that contemporary dance, or contemporary art, is not something just happening—it’s the result of something.”

The Royal Ballet in George Balanchine's “Serenade.” Photograph courtesy of ROH

Other seminal innovators in dance like Brown are represented on the programme in performances of Merce Cunningham’s “Beach Birds” (1991) and “Biped” (1999), both danced by Lyon Opera Ballet at Sadler’s Wells; and Balanchine, whose “Prodigal Son” (1929), “Serenade” (1935) and “Symphony in C” (1947) will be staged by the Royal Ballet in (a treat for Balanchine fans) eight shows. Seeing the dances of twentieth-century choreographers amid such a dense concentration of twenty-first-century work allows for a certain revision of the former perhaps, I suggest to Laurent. He answers that the crucial factor for him is revealing the progression and multiplicity of ideas in dance.

“I think it's about references,” he says. “The work of Merce Cunningham, such as “Beach Birds,” is beautiful, but it may appear a bit ‘dry’ today. But I want us to think about the form of the work as a piece of art, and the ideas behind it. The best way to have a dialogue with an audience is to focus on this. In the festival we are presenting many different dance forms and vocabularies. If I compare Balanchine’s neoclassical ballet with the work of La(Horde), for example, they have nothing to do with one another, but they are two very strong dance forms. I'm glad they can be seen together.”

La(Horde), the experimental dance collective that directs Ballet National de Marseille, will put on “Age of Content” (2023) at Sadler’s Wells East, a piece for 18 dancers exploring ideas around the abundance of content that we consume today and the “simultaneous realities”of social media and the digital age. Self-described as “post-internet” dance, La(Horde)’s choreography is highly inventive and frequently multidisciplinary, traits that run through the festival programme.

“Giselle” (2020) conceived by Swiss director François Gremaud is part of a triptych focusing on tragic heroines (the others are Phèdre and Carmen). Showing at the Linbury Theatre, it was created on Dutch dancer Samantha van Wissen and incorporates spoken word and live music to give new perspectives on the protagonist. Over at Tate Modern, “Hagay Dreaming,” by Taiwanese-American new-media artist Shu Lea Cheang and Taiwanese performance artist Dondon Hounwn, is a study of ancient Taiwanese rituals and beliefs in a staging crafted using digital technology. Like Merce Cunningham’s “Biped,” Noé Soulier’s “Close Up” (2024) on at the Linbury, creates a relationship between projected imagery (of dancers) and live movement.

Shu Lea Cheang + Dondon Hounwyn's “Hagay Dreaming.” Photograph by Hsuan Lang Lin 林軒朗

“For me, the coming together of many disciplines is part of my reflection on dance,” says Laurent. “It’s a way to give an audience a different axis of approach to a work. There are always several ways to approach the art of movement. Dance can be nothing else but a dancer—no music, no costume, no lights. At the same time, it’s probably the one art form that can be best put together with all the other disciplines. I like to bring both approaches to the stage.”

Varied approaches are indeed borne out in this programme. Young Malagasy dancer-choreographer Soa Ratsifandrihana will perform “g r oo v e” (2021) at the Lilian Baylis Studio—a pared-back solo fusing several styles that she admires, including popping and the traditional Madagascan dance Afindrafindrao. In another minimal work, on at the same venue, French dancer-choreographer Georges Labbat will perform “Self/Unnamed” (2022), a duet investigating the dynamics between two bodies, Labbat’s own and his “alter-ego,” a plastic-resin figure. Across town at Sadler’s Wells East, British dancer-choreographer Jules Cunningham will show “Crow/Pigeons” (2025), two works based on themes of marginalisation and invisibility, and the work of the American composers Julius Eastman and Pauline Oliveros.

In other choreographies, the staging and theatrical elements will be more elaborate. Also featuring the music of Julius Eastman, “Outsider” (2024), by French-Algerian dancer-choreographer Rachid Ouramdane, will see the main stage at Sadler’s strung with high wires and slack lines, to be navigated by 20 dancers from Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève and four extreme sports athletes. The premise of the piece is an exploration of the limits of the human body, and the individual’s relationship to the “crowd,” and community. Celebrating a long-gone but cherished community, South African dancemaker Robyn Orlin’s “We Wear our Wheels with Pride…” (2021) is a homage to the exuberant Zulu rickshaw drivers she encountered as a child in the 1970s, in the apartheid era of her home country. A vibrant production, it’ll be performed by South African contemporary dance company Moving into Dance Mophatong at Queen Elizabeth Hall.

A dedication is also embedded in Pam Tanowitz’s work for the festival, “Neither Drums nor Trumpets” (2025), which will be danced by her company in the Paul Hamlyn Hall of the Royal Opera House. Citing the postmodernist David Gordon as a “mentor” in the programme note, Tanowitz promises to explore “performing rituals” and “ideas of narrative and abstraction” in a space with an eclectic history ranging from flower market to storage area for theatre sets.

Pam Tanowitz's “Neither Drums Nor Trumpets.” Photograph by Mark Garvin

Speaking about the breadth of works he has chosen, Laurent returns to his intention for the festival. “I know not everybody can attend everything, but looking at the diversity of the programme, I want people to wonder what dance is today,” he says. “I want people to be curious about coming to a festival where you bring together very young choreographers with Balanchine. As as a spectator, you're not passive. I want people to ask questions.”

Throughout the event, festival-goers will get the opportunity to prove they aren’t just passive spectators by joining one of the many free dance workshops open to amateurs and professionals, and led by the companies on the programme. Dance education is a key element of Van Cleef & Arpels’ broader Dance Reflections activity, and an underlying theme in “Join” (2024), by Greek choreographer and former dancer with the Forsythe Company Ioannis Mandafounis. On at Sadler’s Wells East, the piece will be performed by the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company, of which Mandafounis is artistic director, and students from the Rambert School. Like the festival, “Join” is a work designed to travel, engaging dance students in its various destinations.

The spectrum of the festival is certainly wide and colourful, channelling ideas about what dance is on many wavelengths. Laurent sees this as central to his aims. “A work of art makes sense as a language if you can communicate it,” he says. “I feel that my job as a curator is to mediate. I'm the mediator between different dance languages. I place great importance on this. I can engage a lot of people in dialogue and find a common language. More and more I think the arts are about this communication.”

The next stops (currently in discussion) for the event are New York and Seoul. “We only started the festival four years ago. It's still quite new,” says Laurent. “Perhaps within a few years it will change a little . . . . For the moment, it's a statement for me: this is our vision of dance today and we want to share it with you.”

Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival, March 12 - April 8, London, UK. For more information visit www.dancereflections-vancleefarpels.com/en

Rachael Moloney

Rachael Moloney is a freelance writer and editor covering dance and the arts. She has studied ballet as well as modern and contemporary techniques, and has worked on and contributed to publications including Departures, the Financial Times, Fjord Review, Sunday Times, Time Out, Vogue and Wallpaper*.

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