Echo
At last - after years of trying - New Moves International has succeeded in bringing Catherine Diverrs company to the UK. Why are we so excited? Because Diverrs is one of the most innovative forces on the European dance scene, hailed as a major in. uence on countless others... but, amazingly, never seen in this country until now. Luckily Echo offers audiences a comprehensive opportunity to catch up. Put together as a celebration of Diverres work so far, Echo is a fresh journey through various fragments from previous pieces. On-stage, former members of the company join forces with new dancers in mapping out the different paths Diverrs choreography has explored across the years.
The result is not some sentimental wander down memory lane, but a dynamic re-engagement with the ideas, techniques, perceptions, that mark Diverrs out as a true visionary who has created her own, distinctive choreographic language.
Like a red-hot meteor, striking the contemporary dance scene of the mid 1980s, Catherine Diverrs made her mark immediately by turning her back on the dominant concepts of American post-modern dance and the classic vocabulary of her training. For, like other choreographers of her generation, she created her own language and invented her own universe. Instance - the first production created with Bernardo Montet after meeting Kazuo Ohno, one of the masters of but - is symbolic of this approach, refusing to follow fashionable trends and developing a special poetry of its own. Indeed her work possesses something akin to the "turbulent in. nity" that is a recurring theme in the poetry of Henri Michaux. Melancholy, feelings of tragedy, of approaching the void, abstraction: the choreography moves forward on precipitous paths. Her dance is characterised by a profound knowledge of our innermost being, its workings subtly revealed in rapid, vibrating gestures. Director of the National Choreography Centre of Rennes and Brittany, Diverrs has created about twenty productions. Irne Filiberti
"It would be like taking up things where they were and attempt to suspend and evade time. Melting down (in an articulated form) the precipitate of previous pieces, bringing out the special touch from each of them and creating a new form that would express community on a stage, the chorus and the dancers solidarity." Catherine Diverrs
Coproducers: Festival International de Danse de Cannes; centre de chorgraphique national de Rennes et Bretagne. Supported by AFAA (Association Franaise dAction Artistique-Ministre des Affaires Etrangres)