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| Myriam Gourfink - LOL |
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Micro-respirations, micro-movements, these are the key elements in her choreographic research, as a means of infinite variations.
> http://www.myriam-gourfink.com |
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| Corbeau |
choreography : Myriam Gourfink
Dancer : Gwenaëlle Vauthier from Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris.
Live music : Kasper T. Toeplitz
Coprodution Association LOL, Centre National de la Danse – Pantin (création en résidence). Avec l’aimable autorisation du Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris. LOL est soutenue par la DRAC Ile-de-France – Ministère de la culture et de la communication.
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For this solo, I will be inviting: first, an accomplished classical dancer, and second, an electronic music composer Kasper T.Toeplitz. http://www.sleazeart.com
The idea is to base the choreography on the dancer's ability to elevate her legs, in order to focus on an area which is rarely accessible with contemporary dancers. I want to work on a dance playing on the extremely slow unfurling of the dancer's four limbs through space, thus imparting form to that space by embarking along subtle, unexpected directions, created by the projection of the dancer's body inside spherical volumes, and by accepting the 360 degrees of the circle as an arena of limitless sensorial possibilities.
Most of the time, the dancer will be supporting herself using a single leg, and the surrounding environment into which the rest of her body has to extend, is made of air. For me, the poetic force will reside in each atom of air she touches inside the spheres. I see her members as feelers for her feelings that she strives to fashion from the surrounding area.
The spheres architecture, such as I imagine it for this project, and the idea of extending the body to its furthest limits into the environing air, are closely linked to the music spaces created by KTT, and even partially derive from them. I am fascinated by these musical hurricanes and by the spaces they render for dancing: peripheral spaces whose fuzzy edges are defined by the range covered by the sound. The story about Chinese emperors who scaled their palaces according to the range covered by a sound produced in a central point, has become my story. Starting from the immateriality of a space created by sound vibrations, from its elasticity spanning from miniscule to infinite, I create 'bubbles' of spheres into which the body extends itself.
I see the musical space of Corbeau as a swelling of sound waves, a full and immense space "packed to the hilt" for thirty minutes during which the dancer can sculpt her lines.
And so it was that calling on the composer Kasper T. Toeplitz, seemed an entirely natural choice.
Myriam Gourfink.
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| Molecular black |
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Solo created the october, 13, 2006 in DTW-Dance Theater Workshop in New York
Choregraphy and dance : Myriam Gourfink, Music : Kasper T. Toeplitz
Duration : 40 minutes
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The Impulse for Molecular Black originates from a previous work. The Louvre commissioned a piece to accompany the expressionist 1920 film "Von Morgens Bis Mittefnacht", by Karl Heinz Martin. Kasper T Toeplitz Wanting to avoid making a musical score, which would solely stick to the films dramatic structure, he imagined a 20 minute prologue, Beneath the black screen - the black chaos of head leader for silent films -, across the stage, a slow dance, a unique crossing, in close darkness; the dance is interpreted and choreographed by Myriam Gourfink. Molecular Black takes this moment and stretches its idea into an autonomous piece.
Production LOL
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| This is my house |
Created in 2005 in Quimper (France) within the framework of Mettre en Scène
Piece for 5 dancers
Choregraphy : Myriam Gourfink, Composition: Kasper T. Toeplitz
Duration : 1:40
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For a few years my work has been centered on the writing for choreographic scores - writing which implies the creation of special signs being used to compose the dance before the rehearsing period with the dancers - and on the integration, in this writing,
of devices (computerized) of disturbance and Re-generation of the composition pre- written in real time.
The aim of this research is to invite the interpreter to co-create an open score.
For « This is my house » the five dancers control by their breath and slow movements - via a motion capture system developed by the IRCAM - the processes of modification of the choreographic score, which is displayed on LCD screens placed in height.
The technology - the data-processing device which is in the heart of the relations of spaces and time - allows progressively during the flux of the piece, to structure situations, new contexts that the dancers interpret.
We will not make of it, during the performance, a didactic demonstration - the aiming being an artistic creation.
Co-production : LOL, Théâtre National de Bretagne/TNB, Rennes, Théâtre de Cornouaille, Quimper, Les Spectacles vivants -Centre Pompidou.
With the participation of « Pôle Spectacle » of l'Ircam-Centre Pompidou supported by the DMDTS (Direction de la musique, de la danse, du théâtre et des spectacles vivants). With the support of ADAMI, DICREAM, aide à la maquette, and Centre National de la Danse, Pantin. The company is supported by DRAC Ile de France, ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.
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| Contraindre |
Created in 2004 in Centre Pompidou
Piece for 2 dancers
Choregraphy : Myriam Gourfink, Live electronics et spatialisation - music Kasper T. Toeplitz
Duration : 1 hour
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In this piece, the audience is integrated into the device of the choreographic score - spectators are not invited to move freely, but are assigned particular spaces that echo the division of the space of the choreographic score in tune with the dancers' kinesic experiment: confining them to a posture as well, making them experience it rather than be shown it.
Dancers Cindy Van Acker and Carole Garriga are set apart from one another. The space of their dance is reduced to a sphere. In this constraining space, we would like there to be an element of urgency with them, we expect them to lay something bare, reveal something. We would like this to be unleashed inside and then put back together simultaneously. Kasper T. Toeplitz's music sculpts the space, turning it into partitions, walls of a new state of being.
They - dance.
Coproduction Association LOL, Centre National de la Danse, Les Spectacles Vivants-Centre Pompidou Paris, La Halle aux Grains, scène nationale de Blois, KunstenFESTIVALdesArts, Bruxelles, Drac Ile-de-France/Ministère de la Culture et de la communication/DMDTS.
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| L'Innommée |
Created in 2003 in Ménagerie de verre-Paris
Choregraphy et interpretation : Myriam Gourfink
Music : Kasper T.Toeplitz
Duration : 45 minutes
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For a few years, I have been interested in Labanotation, which is for me support of
reflexion and creations.
Paradoxically, the way in which I consider the choreographic composition today is more andmore in contradiction with the bases of the metalanguage suggested by Laban: the division of space in 16, and the gravity axis like referent.
Would my creativity be liked to call into question the bases of a system rooted - it seems to me - in a traditional vision of danced movement : the cross, the top, the bottom?
Also lately I directed my research towards the creation of a flexible language, which enables me to cut out space according to personal choices, and each time differently.
A writing whose signs modulate and change ad infinitum.
This elasticity should enable me to generate - with the use of modification process -, choreographic scores in real time.
The result would be to consider in the choreographic device the interpretation of the dancer. In order to allow the interpretation to disturb the generation of the choreographic score.
« L'Innommée » is for me the occasion to try the first step of this new research. The poetic image, which supports it, is that of a bottleneck.
Also the score constrained the space of the dancer: this one is invited neither to lie down, neither to rise, nor to move forward.
She must move back (she has no front space) without never passing neither on the horizontal level (bottom), nor on the vertical level (top).
Each medium (the dance, the music, the lights) acts in a specific space (there are three corridors), by being completly unaware of the existence of the others.
There is no predetermined connection, They are connected only by the space and the time of the representation.
Myriam Gourfink
Production LOL
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| Marine |
Solo created in 2001 with Cindy Van Acker in ADC-Genève
Choregraphy : Myriam Gourfink, Music : Kasper T. Toeplitz
Duration : 30 minutes
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Marine, a project of resonances between interpreter and choreographer created for La Bâtie 2001, is based on a simple but bold principle. The woman dancer selects her choreographer and commissions her to create a solo full of sensory exchanges, organizing breathing, physical and emotional tensions, and supports. In this creation embodying a plastic, elastic purification of movement millimeter by millimeter, embedded in an incredible slowness, the body metamorphosing forms is that of Cindy Van Acker. She chooses to immerse herself in a universe of micro-movement so characteristic of the French choreographer Myriam Gourfink. Of breathtaking beauty, the impulse circulates and vibrates under the impregnation of a subsonic music, passing from one member of the body to another, literally opening up space.
Myriam Gourfink prefers to concentrate on breathing and the internal movements of the trunk, all the energy as well as the corporeal and spatial tension seemingly catalysed at the extremities of the body, as yoga sometimes is. In her own choreographical creations, Cindy Van Acker works on the ceaselessly shifting limit between mobility and immobility. And she probes the very identity of a choreographic production confronting the permanency of the truism : « it's a dance, so it's got to move ».
Production : La Bâtie, Festival de Genève, LOL
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| Les temps tiraillés |
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Creation in June 2008
Piece for 9 dancers
Choregraphy Myriam Gourfink, Music by George Friedrich Haas. |
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At the moment, I am focusing on devising works with multiple time windows.
For example, I image a room with a dual temporality. We have, seen through one time window, a performance of about one hour, traditional in form, combined with a different time window, to be developed with the dancers, containing a work of proposals tending towards other times and places.
An invited video artist will film each performance, which is then streamed to another place in real time or later. The videos can then be consolidated and form the material of an exhibition to be held at a later time.
Each performance is a unique experience for both audiences and dancers. The dance score is open, and displays in real-time via an interface which I operate on stage. The idea is to establish a dialog between the choreographer and the dancers (ideally 11) which changes each evening. The music, albeit operating independently, is structured in accordance with the dance score.
Myriam Gourfink
Coproduction : les Spectacles vivants-Centre Pompidou - Paris, Festival Agora.
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| L.O.L |
Chorégraphy : Myriam Gourfink
Music : Kasper T.Toeplitz
Vidéo : Dominik Barbier |
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2005 Kill the king
2002 : Rare
2001 : L'Ecarlate, commande l'IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique Musique), pour le festival Agora en 2001
2000 : Too Generate
1999 : Überengelheit
1999/2000 : Glossolalie-Taire-Dermonology
1998 : Waw
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Myriam Gourfink
Danseuse - Chorégraphe
Myriam Gourfink's unique work introduces yoga techniques and computer-choreography to contemporary dance, exploring micro-movements and challenging conventional notions of dance. In less than ten years she has become one of the leading choreographers on the European contemporary dance scene.
The performance she creates requires extreme physical control resulting in a strange but boundless beauty. Every movement, every look, every breath is meticulously pre-determined to the millimetre , while the dancer's body moves along a continuous, measured and fascinating path.
The dance unfurls like a wave, a long vibration echoing the music that accompanies it.
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> http://www.myriam-gourfink.com/Press/Press.htm
Laura Porter Blackburn / Published in Contact quarterly - Winter/Spring 2003
Choreographic Questionings
A presentation of a research by Myriam Gourfink.
With interview by Laura Porter Blackburn.
Weight, Slowness and Breathing. These three factors raise the question of pre- movements. Our most hidden and deepest motor resources. By focusing on these movements, further ones and changes of direction, then called micro-movements, appear. The researching process I apply, including a computer software program I have been working with called LOL, offers an extensive range of gestures. As a result; the space, the body, the skin, the cells and the living are being thoroughly explored. Each one of them, down to the very last millimetre. The work around the different postures is being distorted, deteriorated and put out of line by the micro-movements. The passing between two postures is being filled by these actions. The continuous interaction of data (weight/breathing/slowness) creates a kind of general sweeping inside the body as well as in the space around it.This constant flow begets an important, unnameable state of mind shown on the face and the body. Here, we are in a poetic state before language (or after?). I am interested in the quality of the concentration, the awareness to every psychological and corporeal movement, the performer's personal inner upheaval and the moment itself.
(from the essay, « TOO GENERATE », M. Gourfink, june 2000)Etc.
Révélant des implications à l'infini, ouvrant des horizons qui s'échappent un peu plus loin chaque fois qu'on s'en approche, mais se présentant pourtant dans une relation de grande fixité et proximité, l'entreprise de Myriam Gourfink semble se situer dans un ailleurs-- vraisemblablement un état avancé, espère-t-on-- destiné à ne rencontrer
qu'en un temps futur éventuel, des formes de sensibilité encore en gestation. Elle suggère un différé critique. Un à-coté lointain. Une précieuse rareté. Une grande prudence.
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Interview with Myriam Gourfink
1. How did you get interested in working this way?
Yoga was the starting point of my work. I began to be aware of my breath, and I decided to move only sustained by it.
2. Is your idea of slowness also an influence of yoga?
I wanted to invest the body with breath and concentration and as a result the movement seems slow. Maybe because you have another perception of time : you are aware of very tiny movements of the body, aware of everything around you, aware of the atmosphere inside and outside, aware of your inside story. Your perceptions become more and more subtle. . . Am I slow ? I don't know, there is so
much going on ! But for sure, I am lost in the elasticity of time. So, this way of being that appears as slowness comes absolutely from yoga and, I would say, from the notion of "Sthira Sukha," which means a certain line of tension or tonicity of the body coming from the release. In that state, release and tonicity overlap continuously and are parts of the same thing. I have the feeling that the slowness, the breathing, and the concentration are kneading me, and make me give the deepest and the rarest of myself. . .
3. Have you had experience in dance improvisation? Or contact improvisation?
"Yes. I began improvisation and contact dance with Greg Lara, and then worked with Odile Duboc (who uses both), and I followed classes with Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson and Simone Forti. Of course all those experiences are very precious."
4. You say in one of your writings that your process is the opposite of improvisation. How do you see that? Especially if there are infinite small changes that the body can make through any given trajectory...How do you make sure that you don't improvise...or do you?
I think I do not improvise because I use a written language, or metalanguage, to compose, so the first thing I do is to sit at the table and turn on my computer. The computer helps me to create and define an environment: structures, systems, movements, focus, etc. What I define are open scores. Everything is not predetermined, the dancer has to make his own choices, but within a range of possibilities. And it's different from improvisation, even if there are similarities." Sometimes improvisation which allows the performer to dance as he wishes,
doesn't please me. To me, putting the body at the heart of the choreographic process is a mere illusion; what is relevant in the so-called body process is the way we "think" our body and how it is situated in space. Often in improvisations without structure, we are confronted with our usual way to move (and rarely with our inventions). This reveals the way we function and it can be a very great learning tool. But I don't think free improvisation is sufficient to be a work of art."
5. How does "chance" figure into your choreographies?
To define a choreographic score, I first define several elements that I want to work with. For example : a posture, a concentration of the mind inside the body, a particular breath, a particular trajectory of the eyes, a particular orientation of the body, a particular spot for the dancer in the space, etc. Then I ask the computer to give me all the possible ways of combining them. I call These combinations "moments." And then I make choices. So I am making choices in a very open field with a lot of awareness. Or the computer can help me define an order of phrases of movements. For example, first: the direction of the right arm is in front of the dancer; second: the weight is supported on one knee and one elbow; third: the direction of the eyes is upward; fourth: the breathing has an anal contraction during the exhalation, etc. Or the computer can help me define a series of operations the dancer has to do: change the level of one of your arm three degrees higher, etc. These processes help me to decide if I want to be very precise or leave a range of possibilities open. For the final structures, sometimes I create operations on the space that will define a new structure for each performance of a piece (TOO GENERATE), or the dancer can choose his own combining of moments for each performance (TAIRE), or an operation done just before the performance will determine both the chronology
and choice of moments to be danced (MARINE). So, I use chance on different levels: to create and make choices in an open field, to communicate with the dancer in an elastic way, and to avoid fixing a choreography too formally."
6. Could we consider LOL as creating a new syntax for dance writing?
LOL is just an experiment, still the choreographer has to create a new syntax, LOL helps. Certainly, the most interesting part of LOL is the discussions between the people who have created it.
7. I have seen you perform your own work and I have seen your choreography on other and the power of the experience was very different for me. Why do you choreograph on others, and what do you hope to see, achieve, create?
I want to create a written language that can be read by the dancers. I believe in the freedom of the writing process both for the choreographer and for the dancer. Exactly the same freedom you have when you are reading a book: you always find something of yourself between the lines. Exactly the freedom of an author writing - and freedom of course requires the structuring of personal thoughts, requires one to make choices. So, I invite dancers to give their interpretation of the text. Of course, I give them keys – training essentially with yoga - but I don't want to show them the right movement to do. I want them to find themselves in this dance, so it's taking time. In my recent works, a solo called "Marine" for Cindy Van Acker and a group work, "Rare," I've found all the performers extremely strong. I think it's just a question of meeting the right persons, which took me time, certainly because this quality of movement is not so evident. It's different to write a score for myself than to write a score for someone else, and of course I like both. But what I prefer right now is to
write for a group of people, this is more exciting.
8. What is your desire with music? What is your ideal music and why do you use it?
I usually work on the music with composer Kasper Toeplitz. I like his waves of electronic sounds and vibrations. I have the feeling that this music creates virtual walls and ground, and that every cell of my body is filled with pure electricity just hearing it. It sustains and supports the continuous line of energy of my dance. Music is always a volume of space, like an immaterial space, like another place. I can be in relation to the "other place." Either emerging from inside this place, or completely in the interior of this place (like amniotic fluid), which gives me something to push against.
6. Are you educating your audience?
Absolutely not. I'm also the audience... I'm just proposing something, and maybe some people can feel it.
-Excerpt from "LOL : an experimental environment ofchoreographic composition" an essay by Myriam Gourfink
"Music has developed a metalanguage which creates a distance between musical thinking (composition) and sound producing. We can consider music without considering the sound as its result. This seems to be a great source of invention because it means that music is relevant as soon as there is musical thinking, even before any sound is produced. When I tried to find a similar function suitable to dance thinking, I became interested in Labanotation. While studying, it became quite obvious to me that since I used computing tools, it could be possible to use this (very structured) language in my choreographic composition and in my a priori writing of a choreography. Dance is not a movement but a score, an abstract place, an immaterial link between the choreographer and the interpreter. With this idea of dance writing, I wrote a first solo called Glossolalie (1999) for dancer Jerome Bel. The research stage for the movement was extremely short : three days. As far as Glossolalie is concerned, we did not intend to create miraculous movements but only to give shape to Jerome's very personal language. Nothing was rejected, we did not want to make any aesthetic choices, we just wanted to favour the structure. I was simply trying to define the parameters I considered to be the origins of dancing:
Form (f)
Breathing (b)
Orientation of the body within space (o)
Direction of thoughts inside the body (i)
Direction of thoughts outside the body (e)
Regard/orientation of the eyes (r)
I thought it was unfortunate to favour form and orientation in the choreographic composition and I was curious to know what the most hidden and least visible parameters present - in breathing, thoughts, regards - could generate. So I decided to structure the dance by calculating a few combinations (defining moments) chosen randomly from the possible combinations of 6 parameters (f,b,o,i,e,r). To go further in this direction, I also randomly chose the order of the possible combinations. However this did not keep me from making a final choice. I deciphered (knowing that this would be danced) a great deal of random draws and I did not hesitate to rewrite some of the passages. From there I started to conceive of a dance-writing software " LOL " with the help of Frederic Voisin (computer scientist and ethnomusicologist at IRCAM in Paris), Laurence Marthouret (choreographer and Labanotator) and Kasper T. Toeplitz (composer). We intended to invent a tool to write movement, to be used to compose an a priori choreography, rather than to notate an already existing dance. LOL utilizes concepts from Labanotation. Labanotation is organized into "classes": parts of the body, supports, spatial direction, levels, joint flexion, rotation, relation of body parts to each other, contacts, and so on, which can be used to define and analyze movement. With LOL, it's not only possible for the choreographer to create his own parameters, to define the elements he wants to work with, but he
can also invent new classes with which to evaluate them. With an early version of LOL, in September 1999, I wrote a solo, "Taire," for Laurence. I used LOL to choose 26 body shapes, obtained by a random combination of classes, without trying it on the body first. Laurence translated them into Labanotation, which we marked on the floor as 26 scattered points. Then, using the floor as a score, she moved from one point to another, inventing the pathways and the movement. The predetermined shapes are simply a stimulus for the performer to give shape to her own language, as the device gives her the opportunity to try out an infinite number of trajectories. LOL is not a software ormatted according to the anatomical limitations of the human body. The choreographer has to imagine the body constraints and he has to invent the body he wants to see dance. Thus, the choreographer may, for example, work with the "thoughts" parameter , and treat "thoughts" as a part of the body. He'll choose from the classes a "direction", a "level" and a "contact" and evaluate
"thoughts" with the software like he would a "right foot" or a "left hand. I think that the first thing the choreographer thinks about is space. This space, invented by the choreographer, considers the body, the connection between bodies or between objects or words. In the conception of this choreographic space, LOL is like a partner suggesting calculations and inviting the choreographer
to explore, develop and give shape to his own language. The idea is to allow the choreographer to consider dance in a different way.
When I began using this new software, I noticed that simply reading the results led me to very precise perceptions. The further I go with it, the more refined my initial desire becomes and the more I see a language taking shape. I do not argue for a rigid dance writing. For me, thinking is at the heart of the choreographic process, but thinking does not mean conceiving of inflexible directions which enclose the
bodies. The score and the setup offer a kind of elasticity to the sensitivity of the performers. I want LOL to allow for dance writing that is as open as music or poetry. I have a sense of dance that is about touch, not visual or image-based, but through the interior touching of the body. It's energetic. It gives me an awareness of movement which is pure poetry. "
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8 janvier 2008
Conférence EESI
26 rue Jean Alexandre, 86 000 Poitiers
www.eesi.eu
15 & 16 janvier 2008
Atelier et conférence
Ecole supérieure d'art de grenoble
www.esag.fr
du 28 janvier au 2 février 2008
STAGE pour les enseignants (dans le cadre de royaumont)
Eragny
27 janvier 2008
ATELIER “les mouvements du corps”
centre des arts d'Enghien-les-bains
01 30 10 85 59 / www.cda95.fr
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Website : http://www.myriam-gourfink.com
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