SILENT BALLET
EMANUEL GAT DANCE (2009)
An orchestration of movements, this dance piece is using silence as well as its own live sounds, as a dense, thick, musical environment, open to endless opportunities for melodic, harmonic and dynamic interpretation.
A self-contained dance, SILENT BALLET is a work for 8 dancers, experimenting with different sets of choreographic tools and the transformation they undergo during the process of creation. Starting as parts of growing physical mechanism, those initial sets of tools hold the DNA of a slow unfolding logic with countless references. In many ways, SILENT BALLET is dealing with dance making itself. It exposes the parts of this fine tuned process and allows a glimpse into the alchemy of physical abstraction. questions about dance and beyond are tackled within a bare landscape, in a dance piece stripped to its basic elements.
Photos of SILENT BALLET by Stephanie Berger and Agnès Mellon
Rising choreographer Emanuel Gat trained as a conductor before turning to dance. Oddly, his background shows most clearly in Silent Ballet, a work performed virtually without music. Although there are just eight dancers on stage, the way Gat coordinates them has an almost orchestral feel. […] Even though Gat’s choreography can be spare to the point of minimal, the overall impression is fascinatingly rich.