Dance

9, 10, 11 october 2009

Fri 10.45pm, sat 10pm, sun 5.45pm

French Premiere!

One shared object PROFIT AND LOSS is the successful conclusion of a partnership between choreographers Martine Pisani and Martin Nachbar. They wanted to develop a joint project leading to a show that would highlight choreographic languages as well as an exchange of ideas. On stage, six dancers walk, dance, follow certain rules or paths, converge, and sometimes diverge. This play intertwines two voices and six performers to form a “shared (and dreamt) object”, a light and strange object.

See synopsis (pdf/76kb)

In residence: 11-18 May 2009

How did you get the idea for this show?

Martine Pisani : The original idea for this collaboration was born out of the desire to share a territory, where I wouldn’t be the only one making decisions, to try a situation that was novel for me, to step out of usual patterns regarding the production of a show, to work with performers I hadn’t chosen myself, and out of Martin’s and my own love of games. This project is part of Running times, a cycle of works on the topic of time started in 2007, in which I created several different formats according to the occasion (each time with a different format and location). I asked myself how I would like to work on a dance show with Martin. The concept of loss, which is so intimately linked to time and change, became the obvious choice at that point of Running Times. I chose loss because it is associated with time, and because I needed to lose control over things... We talked and agreed on the topic of loss and transformation, on the presence on stage of a "kaïros" - a time disruptor, on asking three dancers each to participate, and on a tactical approach based on games.

Martin Nachbar : Actually, we did not start with a topic, but with the idea of a collaboration. In 2005, I received a grant from my home town. I decided to spend a few months with Martine. At that time, she was finishing Contre Bande and starting Hors sujet ou le bel ici. I assisted her any way I could, as an assistant, teaching movement to the amateurs, and as a subtitle operator/performer. That’s when Martine and I discovered we had the same playful and sometimes absurd approach to dance, and we thought it might be interesting to work together.

What are the challenges of working as a duo?

Martine Pisani : The challenge was to find strategies leading to one single thing while being two of us... We have agreed from the start that each of us was responsible for what he/she would produce. At first, we tried several things such as the surrealist game of cadavre exquis with this idea of loss and transformation to find material. We ended up with movements needing completing. This produced Nachbar pieces and Pisani pieces, spontaneous and sometimes unlikely, as the aim was to react very quickly. But then, what to do with all these various pieces? How can they produce a coherent, understandable entity, which respects each person’s intuition, and not some choreographic soup? From there, we decided to both develop our own ‘story’, with its own material. The performers introduce both stories at the start of the show and a “common story” slowly emerges as a result of merging certain situations. As the show unfolds, performers and materials become more and more intertwined. But we didn’t mix our methods of working on the movement - both of us expressed it to feed the show.

Martin Nachbar : In my previous collaborations (with Thomas Plischke, Alice Chauchat, and Jochen Roller), the challenge was to give up on your own signature as soon as possible to arrive at a fully mixed result. As a consequence, the aim of a duo is to try to respect the differences between the two work methods and to go as far as possible in the writing in order to achieve this joint signature project, which allows us to alternate in the show sections that are “more Martine", "more Martin" or "Martin/e“.

Parcours

Martine Pisani founded her company in 1982 and has since produced several plays, including: sans (2000), Slow down (2002), Bande à part (2004, showcased at Les Subsistances), Hors sujet ou le bel ici (2007), Road Along Untitled Moments (2007) and Blink (2008). Her three latest productions were part of Running Times, a series of works focusing on the topic of time, which she deals with under various guises and formats. As part of this series, she is preparing As far as the eye can hear, an outdoors performance on the image of time, which will be produced in 2010.

Martin Nachbar is a dancer and choreographer from Berlin. He has worked as an assistant, playwright and performer with Thomas Plischke, Vera Mantero, Les Ballets C. de la B., Meg Stuart, Carlos Pez, etc. He has choreographed the piece for three dancers Looking for Johnny, the solo Iller for the Schillertage Festival in Mannheim and Repeater, a duo with his father, a retired shopkeeper. In 2008, he created the solo piece Urheben / Aufheben (UA) based on the reconstruction of dance cycle Affectos Humanos by Dore Hoyer (1911-1967), one of the main figures of German "Ausdruckstanz“.

Cast and Crew

Created by Martin Nachbar & Martine Pisani.

Performed by Hermann Heisig, Eduard Mont de Palol, Elise Olhandéguy, Denis Robert, Lola Rubio, and Litó Walkey.

Kairos or Time Disruptor: Theo Kooijman. Lighting by Bruno Pocheron. Sound by Gaëtan Bulourde. Costumes by Michèle Paldacci. Admin: Susanne Beyer & Lien Juttet.

Produced by Martin Nachbar and Compagnie Martine Pisani.

Produced by Martin Nachbar and Compagnie Martine Pisani.

Residency & Co-production: Les Subsistances / Lyon / France.

Coproduced by ARCADI, Action régionale pour la création artistique et la diffusion en Ile-de-France, Centre chorégraphique national de Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon (with the support of Jardin d’Europe / Programme de l’Union Européenne), Espace des Arts Scène nationale de Chalonsur-Saône, fabrik/Potsdam, Sophiensaele/Berlin.

In partnership with La Ménagerie de Verre (studiolabs) Paris – Tanzfabrik Berlin.

With the support of: Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin - Theatre and Dance Bureau in Berlin - Goethe Institut Lyon. Compagnie Martine Pisani is subsidised as part of the aid provided by the Ministry of Culture-DRAC Ile-de-France

Price

€5

Duration

50 min