Valley Performing Arts Center is partnering with Ford Signature Series to present L'Espace du Temps performed by DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion, choreographed by the company under the direction of DIAVOLO Artistic Director Jacques Heim. Now in its third year, the Ford Signature Series pairs LA County artists with world-renowned performers in one-of-a-kind presentations.
DIAVOLO performed
L'Espace du Temps in the summer of 2014 at the Movimentos
Festival in Wolfsburg, Germany. The performance at Valley
Performing Arts Center will be the first time that the trilogy will be performed in the United States and with live orchestral accompaniment. Works by Philip Glass, John Adams, and Esa-Pekka Salonen will be performed by the New West
Symphony and conducted by Los Angeles conductor Christopher Rountree. Rountree is director of Wild Up, Los Angeles' modern music collective.
L'Espace du Temps began as three individual pieces commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the
Hollywood Bowl -
Foreign Bodies (2007) set to the music of Salonen;
Fearful Symmetries(2010) set to the music of Adams, and
Fluid Infinities (2013) set to the music of Glass'
Symphony No. 3.
This American premiere of the full-length version is made possible by a re-orchestration of Salonen's score, scaled to fit into VPAC's orchestra pit and utilize instrumentalists who play in the other two pieces. Rountree, who is also a composer, will oversee the reduction with Salonen's approval. Rountree and Wild Up have performed at Green Umbrella, the LAPhil's contemporary music series founded by Salonen.
Thor Steingraber, Executive Director of Valley Performing Arts Center, said, "This trilogy has percolated for almost a decade. It's Heim's first full-length evening with orchestra in the 23-year history of DIAVOLO, and bringing Rountree into the mix to conduct and re-shape the Salonen score is the perfect culmination to the trilogy's evolution. Now DIAVOLO can tour the trilogy widely, and rightfully fulfill their role as LA's dance ambassadors to the world." DIAVOLO celebrates its 25th season starting in 2016-2017.
Jacques Heim, Artistic Director of DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion ™ said of
L Espace du Temps, "Giant...monumental...fantastic...outrageous..! Performing
L'Espace du Temps is the biggest piece to date for DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion™. All three pieces are extremely intense not only musically but also structurally. Creating the trilogy has been an incredible challenge to the company, not only artistically but physically, pushing me to creating pieces for DIAVOLO with a completely differently process, a process that truly defines Architecture in Motion™."
"We are pleased to partner with the Valley
Performing Arts Center on this exciting presentation," said Laura Zucker, Executive Director, LA County Arts Commission. "While the Ford Theatres undergoes renovations, we continue to present world-renowned LA County artists through this partnership. This evening of dance and music is a perfect fit for the Ford Signature Series."
Natalia Staneva, Executive Director of New West
Symphony and another collaborator in this project said, "This year we have reached a remarkable milestone as we celebrate 20 years of bringing vibrant, world-class music to Los Angeles metropolitan area. We are thrilled to be a part of Thor's vision for this project and join
Diavolo for this US premiere of L'Espace du Temps at the Valley
Performing Arts Center - our first time performing at the state-of-the-art facility".
Set pieces are designed by Tina Trefethen and architect Adam Davis. "The individual pieces were originally performed on the Bowl stage shared by the LA Phil," said Steingraber. "In the new proscenium stage version, the orchestra plays from the pit. Sets and lighting are fully realized, and the theatrical and visual impact of the full trilogy is complete."
There will be two performances of the complete
L'Espace du Temps Saturday,
September 19 at 8:00p and Sunday,
September 20 at 3:00p. Tickets range from $60 - $99 and can be purchased by visiting
ValleyPerformingArtsCenter.org or calling (818) 677-3000. Valley
Performing Arts Center is located on the campus of
California State University, Northridge (CSUN),
18111 Nordhoff Street Northridge, CA 91330-8448, at the corner of Nordhoff and Lindley.
Steingraber adds, "
L'Espace du Temps opens Valley Performing Arts Center's 5th full season, and launches my first year of programming. It was important to start my tenure with something that was a premiere, and something with strong Los Angeles roots. Combining the forces of Rountree and Heim, two of LA's most innovative artists, fulfills that vision. This is my second collaboration with Jacques to mark an important occasion - I commissioned the new piece he choreographed for the opening of Grand Park in 2012."
DIAVOLO performs a distinct style of architecture in motion that uses abstract and recognized structures to explore the relationship between our environment and the fragility of the human body. DIAVOLO's dance is a fusion of different movement vocabularies such as everyday movement, ballet, contemporary, gymnastics, martial arts, and hip-hop. There is no narrative, but strong themes pervade the work such as human struggle, fear, danger, survival, chaos, order, deconstruction, reconstruction, destiny, destination, faith, and love.
L'Espace du Temps is a meditation on the space of time from creation to evolution and finally to an unknown destination. It begins with three questions: "Where do we come from?" "Where are we going?" and "How did everything begin?" From these questions, the trilogy evokes familiar and foreign worlds by exploring the relationship between the shifting architecture of the human experience and the ever-changing processes that lie within and without.
Foreign Bodies begins the trilogy with a cube designed by Tina Trefethen. The cube represents geometric form; Rene Decartes believed that the universe was born from geometric components.
Foreign Bodies is an exploration of the intellectual and spiritual study of creation, a visceral canvas of myriad individuals, like bacteria expanding in an unknown system of time and space, discovering a collective transformative identity amongst each other amidst structural mayhem.
Lewis Segal in the Los Angeles Times said, "DIAVOLO has never had a set-sculpture as mutable in shape and potent in metaphoric possibilities as the metallic cube packed with hidden pieces that was designed and engineered for its latest project by Tina Trefethen. And DIAVOLO has never had a score as sizzling and often overwhelming as
Foreign Bodies, composed at the beginning of this century by Esa-Pekka Salonen...with everybody out for blood the result is one of those rare events that defines the art of this city when the levels of vision and support are equally exceptional.
You could view the DIAVOLO component of "Foreign Bodies" as sheer spectacle: dancers turning that cube into a pyramid, three pyramids, a wall, three walls, a bridge and a labyrinth while leaping from peak to peak, rolling down the sides, slithering in and out of every aperture and balancing, unafraid, as various pieces collapsed underneath them.
You could also see the one-act piece as a life-cycle set in dangerous times, with sections abstracting a sense of communal birth, the discovery of prowess, of sex, aggression, a sense of the landscape changing too fast and our environment literally pushing us around."
Fearful Symmetries to music of John Adams, like its predecessor, begins with a cube, this one designed by architect Adam Davis. The cube in this second installment has now multiplied in its number of components, allowing many shifting symmetrical landscapes to illuminate the relationship between the universal language of mathematics and the human force that manipulates it. The performers represent abstract factory workers within a mechanical world in which they deconstruct, reconstruct and reorganize their environment, ultimately to discover that the answers they are seeking lie within themselves.
Victoria Looseleaf wrote in the New York Times, "The cube in
Symmetries involves four aluminum and wood columns as well as two U-shaped pieces that can be deconstructed, reconstructed and reconfigured by the dancers, often atop a three-part, two-and-a-half-ton motorized 'field' that rises and tilts toward the audience at a 17-degree angle. But the opus does feature a number of heart-stopping swan dives by dancers from on high into the waiting arms of sure-footed partners."
Lewis Segal wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "to say DIAVOLO is exciting is redundant ... the giant cube that became the focus of the piece [is a] mysterious structure [which] held all sorts of hidden panels, apertures and crevices, but quickly opened up to evoke a whole cityscape, then divided into rectangular platforms that became everything from towers to surfboards ... in form, the piece depicted a search -- one that initially focused on the cube, with DIAVOLO exploring inside, outside, above and below it. By the end, even the ground had opened, forming new plateaus and canyons to be investigated, and the search continued with no cube in sight."
Fluid Infinities to Philip Glass'
Symphony No. 3, the final installment in the trilogy, represents the future -- "an alternate reality," said Heim, "where life continues in a new and different form, so foreign yet so familiar. Foreign because it is difficult to see beyond our limited perceptions, familiar because the greatest mysteries in life can only be explored by looking inside ourselves."
The structure created for
Fluid Infinities by Adam Davis, is a quarter sphere, a single piece of curving fiberglass with an organic pattern of openings across the face. This partial dome sits on a mirrored floor. The performers explore metaphors of infinite space, continuous movement, and our voyage into the unknown future. The dome's organic patterns evoke the craters of the moon, a honeycomb of bees, a shifting brain, or an undiscovered starship. As the trilogy concludes,
Fluid Infinities investigates the persistence of life through struggle and the promise of life to change beyond the space of time.
Heim said, "As the dome moves and shifts, the audience will experience dramatic changes of perspective. Together with reflections from the floor, the movements will evoke dualities such as internal and external, light and dark, inside and outside, life and death."
Culture Spot said, "For
Fluid Infinities, Heim's team of designers and craftsmen built two structures: A long sectioned tube wrapped in clear acrylic, and a curved, pivoting canopy riddled with holes, which is positioned upon a large circular mirror. Upon first glance, the canopy looks like the asteroid-pocked surface of a barren planet in space. According to Heim, it could be this, but it could also represent inner space - the brain. The reflective surface not only implies the process of quiet thinking, but also mirrors the dancers' actions, creating some striking imagery."
DIAVOLO | ARCHITECTURE IN MOTION
DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion™ uses dance to explore the relationship between the human body and its architectural environment. Artistic Director Jacques Heim steers DIAVOLO's diverse team of dancers, designers, choreographers and engineers to create visceral and awe-inspiring works that reveal how we are affected emotionally, physically and socially by the spaces we inhabit. Meticulously designed bespoke architectural structures serve as the central inspiration for each work, activated by the stylistically varied and intensely physical choreography which has become the hallmark of this truly original company throughout its rich 25 year history. Through The DIAVOLO
Institute the company also provides educational and outreach opportunities to people of all ages and abilities while touring internationally and at home in Los Angeles, sharing the pioneering art form and the power of dance as a means of social impact. For more information, visit
www.diavolo.org
JACQUES HEIM
Jacques Heim has been a transformative choreographer for over 20 years. He founded DIAVOLO in 1992 and has directed the Company's work ever since. Heim was born and raised in Paris, France. His earliest experiences with performance came from street performing. He attended Middlebury
College (B.F.A. in Theater, Dance, and Film), the University of Surrey in England (Certificate for Analysis and Criticism of Dance), and the
California Institute for the Arts (M.F.A., Choreography). In addition to his work with DIAVOLO, Heim has worked extensively for other companies in dance, theater, TV, and special events worldwide. Most recently Jacques worked with Guy Caron and Michael Curry as consulting choreographer on
Ice Age Live!, a "mammoth" arena show which had its world premiere at London's Wembley Stadium in November 2012. For Cirque du Soleil, Jacques choreographed
KÀ at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas. He was a Creative Director for the Opening
Ceremony of The 16th Asian Games, in Guangzhou, China. In 2005, Jacques was the Artistic Director for the Taurus Stunt Awards and returned in 2007 to stage a movement/stunt piece, "The Car". With Center Theater Group, Jacques created choreography for the stage play,
The Stones. On television, his work has appeared on BBC America's
Dancing with the Stars and Bravo's
Step Up and Dance. Jacques taught movement and dance for many years at Ballet Pacifica, Cal State LA and UCLA. In addition to three USA Fellowship nominations and four Alpert Award nominations, Jacques has received the Martha Hill Choreography Award of the American Dance Festival, the Special Prize of the Jury at the 6th Saitama International Dance Festival, a Brody Arts Fund fellowship, and a James Irvine
Foundation Fellowship
NEW WEST SYMPHONY
Founded in 1995, the New West
Symphony is a professional orchestra that draws its players from the rich talent pool of professional Los Angeles-area musicians. Led by music director Marcelo Lehninger, the
Symphony is the resident company of the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, and Barnum Hall in Santa Monica. It presents six Masterpiece Series concerts annually, performing major works from the symphonic repertoire with internationally-acclaimed artists as guest soloists. It also provides quality outreach and educational opportunities for the communities it serves through its annual
Symphonic Adventures concert programs for youth, its traveling Music Van, and its New West
Symphony Harmony
Project of Ventura County, an after-school, tuition-free music education program for underserved students.
CHRISTOPHER ROUNTREE
Rountree, 31, is the founder, conductor and creative director of the pathbreaking L.A. chamber orchestra wild Up. The group has been called "Searing. Penetrating. And Thrilling" by NPR's
Performance Today and named "Best Classical Music of 2012" by the
Los Angeles Times.
VALLEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
VPAC is the realization of a long-held dream by leaders in the San
Fernando Valley - a performance venue that serves the Valley's 1.9 million people. CSUN stepped up to make this dream a reality. The LEED-certified, 1700-seat venue opened in 2011. Thor Steingraber assumed leadership in March, 2014.
FORD SIGNATURE SERIES
DIAVOLO's
L'Espace du Temps is part of the
Ford Signature Series, a program of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. The Ford Signature Series is made possible through the generous support of Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl. Original program created with support from former Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. Now in its third year, the Signature Series pairs LA County artists with world-renowned performers in a one-of-a-kind presentation. Proceeds benefit the Ford Theatre Foundation, which supports programs at the Ford Theatres in Hollywood and throughout Los Angeles County.
L'ESPACE DU TEMPS - PART ONEFOREIGN BODIES
Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Music Director. With additional support from the
Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Cal State Long Beach, CA; and the Newman Center for the Performing Arts, Denver, CO; and The City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs.
Original Music: Esa-Pekka Salonen
Reduction: Christopher Rountree
Set Conception: Jacques Heim
Set Design and Engineering: Tina Trefethen
Set Fabrication: Mike McCluskey LTD
Lighting Design: Evan Merryman Ritter
Run time: 20 minutes
L'ESPACE DU TEMPS - PART TWOFEARFUL SYMMETRIES
Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Music Director. Co-commissioned by the University of Notre Dame's DeBartolo
Performing Arts Center and the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois
Music: Fearful Symmetries by John Adams
By arrangement with Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company, publisher and copyright owner.
Concept and Directed by: Jacques Heim
Original Collaborators: Briana Bowie, Philip Flickinger, Ashley Nilson, Trevor Harrison, Shauna Martinez, Omar Olivas, Melinda Ritchie, Anibal Sandoval, Garrett Wolf, Chisa Yamaguchi.
Musical Director & Dramaturg: Bruno Louchouarn
Set Design: Adam Davis
Deck and Towers-
Set Engineering / Construction / Lights: Mike McCluskey and Tina Trefethen
Stage Operations: Renee Larsen Engmyr
Lighting Design: John E.D. Bass
Costume Design: Laura Brody
Acting Coach: Salome Jens
Scenic Artist: Ramiro Fauve
Run time: 30 minutes
L'ESPACE DU TEMPS- PART THREEFLUID INFINITIESFluid Infinities was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association; co-commissioned by Movimentos 2014, University of Notre Dame's DeBartolo
Performing Arts Center and Syracuse University.
Music:
Symphony No. 3 by Philip Glass
© 1995 Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc. Used by Permission.
Concept and Directed by: Jacques Heim
Choreographed by: The Company
Musical Director & Dramaturg: Bruno Louchouarn
Associate Choreographer: Monica Campbell
Production Design: Adam Davis
Project Manager: Renée Larsen Engmyr
Dome-
Original Design Concept: Tina Trefethen
Structural Design / Construction: TFX trans fx, Mike McCluskey, Tina Trefethen
Lighting / Electrics Design & Fabrication: Mike McCluskey, Tina Trefethen
Paint and Finish: McCluskey LTD
Tube-
Design / Construction: Tina Trefethen, Mike McCluskey
Deck and Support Equipment-
Structural Design / Construction Tina Trefethen, Mike McCluskey
Lighting Design: John E.D. Bass
Associate Lighting Designer: Nicholas Davidson
Costume
Concept and Design: Brandon Grimm
Costume Construction and Fabrication: Kelly Maglia
Soft
Sculpture Fabrication: Hilary Sepp
Production Assistant:
Elizabeth Van Vleck
Assistant Choreographer: Briana Bowie
Diavolo would like to extend special thanks to Jordan Piemer, Thor Steingraber, Jay Quantrill, Victoria Looseleaf, Melinda Ritchie and Chad Michael Hall.
Support for
Fluid Infinities was provided in part by the Cheng Family Foundation, the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Fluid Infinities premiered in 2013 at the
Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, CA
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