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Angelin Preljocaj unravels before our eyes a story of encounters with this triptych in which he combines embraces, reunions and missed meetings. Between duets and duels, his choreographic grammar is as sharp as ever. A dive into the heart of the repertoire!

ANNONCIATION

"What can we learn from the concept of the Annunciation? What is this founding event of a religion supposed to open up in us?

While the catapult of antinomic symbols that is the Annunciation has been examined time and time again by painters over the last two millennia, astonishingly, despite it being so connected to the issue of the body, it has been virtually ignored by the choreographic art form. And yet, what’s at play here is, of course, fascinating.

In traditional iconography, Mary is often depicted in an enclosed garden that symbolises her virginity. A similarity emerges between her inner space and her environment.

The angel’s intrusion into this intimate world brings with it news of the metabolic upheaval of her body. This is why, although in the text the Virgin is described as serenely submitting to the event, many artists have depicted her expressing doubt, concern and even outrage. This strange simultaneity between submission and rebellion, this explosion of space and time, shows us that the biological process began the very moment the message was delivered. We are, in fact, in the act of conception.

This genesis through successive shifts obviously brings us back to the very mechanism of artistic creation, with the message passing from the virtual to the real. Couldn’t what we call conceptual art today be, rather than a finished art form, the announcement of a new art, the Annunciation of an art form yet to be born?"

Angelin Preljocaj
June 1995

UN TRAIT D'UNION

"Encounters always seem serendipitous, colluding with chance, these moments seem to open within us sublime and enigmatic futures. Yet each of us is looking for the other, like in Plato’s “symposium” in which he tells us about these perfect beings who were split in two by the gods, each half now searching for their “missing piece”, the one who will truly complete them.

But aren’t we really trying to find in someone else a stitch, a personality trait that will suddenly annihilate our essential solitude? As if to prove to ourselves that we really exist, as if only "that which is in relation to" existed.

Un trait d’union aims to touch on this, this tireless search between two kleptomaniacs who pick the pockets of each other’s subconscious to find what will connect them, what will reduce their solitude to nothing, what will make them exist in the other’s eyes."

Angelin Preljocaj

LARMES BLANCHES

“... A few months later, an unrecognisable, liberated, inspired Preljocaj lets an unhindered, poetic breath pass through his choreography… He composes a refined and tender piece about love. He gives himself, body and soul…
… It all begins with a static prelude. Two dancers on the lookout for the particularities of a few elementary movements. Then a quartet takes flight, on all the vectors of the stage area, in a variety of very rich scales and registers. The mechanical movements, without transition, return. But it is soon rounded, in a soft, undulating bond, with reminiscences of baroque, outdated figures who, in turn, stiffen and break. Deliberate alternation of styles, superimposed in a permanent optical illusion.
…Preljocaj is himself a musician, as we suspected. Fascinated by counterpoint, he composes his dance like an orchestral polyphony…

... Larmes blanches is a delicate piece that deals with the obscure relationships of two couples grappling with the conventions of life. The dancers develop outlines of classical vocabulary, redirecting it, giving it vivid angles and surprising accelerations.”

Laurence Louppe