Newsletter—Oct 09

Dear all,

After a successful premiere at the festival Steirischer Herbst last month, we have the pleasure to bring “Tribute to Kurt Jooss’ Green Table”, the piece Manuel Pelmus and I choreographed together, to Maison de la Danse in Malmö, in the frame of Maison Ouverte #8 on October 17. In this piece, we revisit a milestone in dance history: the groundbreaking anti-war ballet The Green Table by Kurt Jooss. Our homage enters into a critical dialogue with the piece, engaging with its choreographic vocabulary and political urgency. The tradition of the Danse Macabre, central to the original work, remains a key element in this contemporary reimagining. The performance reflects on today’s fractured global order, in which peace negotiations often serve more to simulate control than to find real solutions.

As reflecting on dance matters to us at Maison de la Danse, as much as dancing and watching dance, we have paired the performance with a lecture by Josefine Wikström. In “Truth, protest and Soma: Dance and War 1920 to today”, she will address the following questions: how have dancers and choreographers responded to war, from the beginnings of modern dance in the early 1920s until today? How can the different ideas of war that have been present in the 20th and 21st centuries be reflected in modern and contemporary dance works? What is dance's role or task in times of war today?

The evening will then continue with a conversation between us and the audience, as we love to do at Maison de la Danse.

The day after, on October 18, I will also perform my 2015 piece Ribbon dance, in the frame of the opening of Axel Ebbes Konsthall in Trelleborg.

Hoping to see you at one of these occasions!

/Frédéric Gies  

Frédéric Gies performing the premiere of Tribute to Kurt Jooss’s “Green Table” at Steirischer Herbst