If our reality starts to look more and more like chaos, if all our efforts to reimpose order simply draw us deeper into its absence, then we must learn to recognize chaos, to ponder it and create with it, because it won’t be long before it’s the only model we have for the future.
How does chaos translate into dance? Can a choreography be truly chaotic, meaning that it doesn’t repeat so much as a single phrase or motif, that it embraces the unknown and unfamiliar?
It is questions like these -questions which Laurent Chétouane has posed in the past- that form the epicentre of this, his latest work, which was co-produced by the OCC. KHAOS is an artistic experiment which sets itself in opposition to current trends in ‘chaos-phobia’ by embracing chaos and the instability it brings and making it creative -meaning enjoyable for dancers and audience alike.
A specially-designed speaker system intervenes in the work’s aural perception to create unstable, ‘musically chaotic’ zones for audience and performers (four dancers and three musicians). Musically, the work takes as its starting point compositions by J.S. Bach, John Cage and Wolfgang Rihm, which is to say composers who introduced the random and the unfamiliar into the game of composition. Through the artistic process, Laurent Chétouane recasts chaos as a creative force, granting us an utterly unique experience which will make us rebrand the disturbance of order as an opportunity for new worlds to come into being before our eyes.
After having studied Engineering and Theatre Studies at the Sorbonne and theatre directing in Frankfurt on the Main, French-born Laurent Chétouane has been creating pieces performed on major German stages (Hamburg, Munich, Weimar, Cologne, Stuttgart) and at theatres throughout Europe (Oslo, Zurich, Athens, Vienna) since 2001. In parallel, he has created 15 dance pieces as a choreographer since 2007. In 2012 and 2014, his dance pieces were invited to the German Dance Platform. For 2016 he is planning a large dance project on the subject of chaos in cooperation with Jean-Luc Nancy. Chétouane is a guest lecturer and guest professor at several art schools (Berlin, Bochum, Frankfurt, Giessen, Hamburg, Leipzig, Oslo). He was awarded the Wild Card of the RUHR.2010 project and in 2008 the scholarship of the Federal State of NRW for outstanding young artists.
In more ways than one Laurent Chétouane is a late arrival. As a Frenchman who initially studied Chemical Engineering followed by Theatre, and then made a career in Germany as a theatre director, no boundary is sacred to him. He creates new connections between theatre and dance or narration and abstraction. Via Heiner Müller he worked on learning the German language by himself, and as a non-native speaker he developed a special feeling for rhythm and tonal structures. Initially he carried this analytical approach over to the physicality of actors by means of abstract images of movement on the boundaries of choreographic research.Choreography: Laurent Chétouane and dancers
Musical Concept: Laurent Chétouane with the musicians
Dancers: Bilal Elhad, Mikael Marklund, Kotomi Nishiwaki, Tilman O’Donnell
Musicians: Mathias Halvorsen (piano), Tilman Kanitz (cello), Artiom Shishkov (violin)
Light Design: Jan Maertens
Sound Design: Johann Günther
Costume Designer: Lydia Sonderegger
Dramaturgy: Marten Weise
Assistant to the Director: Sarah Blumenfeld
Costume Design Assistant: Anna Philippa Müller
Production: Christine Kammer, Hendrik UngerMusic:
J.S. Bach, Allemande και Chaconne from Partita No. 2
Wolfgang Rihm, Klavierstück No.1, op.8a © Universal Edition AG Wien
John Cage, Études Boreales, No. 3 and 4 for Solo CelloThanks for their dramaturgical support and councel to Jean-Luc Nancy and Jean-François Peyret
A production by KHAOS GbR in coproduction with Onassis Cultural Centre - Athens, HAU Hebbel am Ufer - Berlin, Tanzquartier - Vienna, Kaaitheater - Bruselles, Kampnagel - Hamburg.
Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and Basisförderung Berlin/The governing mayor Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural AffairsWith support of Dock11/Eden***** (Berlin)
Premiere: November 11, 2016 at HAU Hebbel am Ufer - Berlin