SACRE by David Wampach

After CASSETTE, freely inspired by the Nutcracker Suite, choreographer David Wampach offers a new and crossed reading of the Rite of Spring, retaining just a few notes (or blasts) of Stravinsky’s music and a handful of movements from Nijinsky’s dance. Wampach takes inspiration from the work’s scenario, in collaboration with costume designer Rachel Garcia, who draws on the ballet’s original costumes by Nicholas Roerich as the starting-point for a free variation on the theme of ‘nakedness in clothing’.

Wampach’s work is rooted in the ‘ritual, ceremony, ecstatic states, intoxication, inebriation’ of the original Rite of Spring, involving extensive breathing work on the part of the dancers, who use hyperventilation as a natural means to achieve a state of intoxication.

Performed by David Wampach and dancer Tamar Shelef, SACRE is also inspired by the so-called ‘bio-mechanical’ methods of Russian dramatist Vsevolod Meyerhold, designed to transcend the body’s natural powers. The piece plays on the figures’ gravity in space, in an atmosphere of contained, internalized emotion with occasional touches of humour.

The work represents a considerable physical challenge for its performers. It was premiered at Montpellier Danse 2011, with the support of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, before the choreographer’s move to Kyoto, to take up a residency at the Villa Kujoyama/Institut Français.