Focus programme around unique dance personality Lucinda Childs
Choreographer Lucinda Childs is the queen of minimal dance. She will be 85 years old in 2025, and Introdans is celebrating this with the focus programme ICON, a tribute to the ‘grand old lady’ of American dance. This evening the audience will experience a (time) journey that starts with Interior Drama from 1977, new for the Dutch audience, past the pieces Kilar, Petricor and Concerto that Introdans has danced before, and ends with a world premiere of her latest work. Childs’ movement idiom is absolutely unique: taking an abstract, almost mathematical approach she uses relatively simple ballet and athletic movements to create amazingly complex masterpieces. The bond between Childs and Introdans can also be called unique, there is no company in the world that dances so much of her work. Introdans has a rich oeuvre of existing and new work by Lucinda Childs. With ICON it underlines this special bond. ICON is accompanied live in a number of theaters by the National Youth Orchestra.
‘Call it danced mathematics, musical transformation or moving shapes – it’s all exciting and lucid. As if Childs was aiming to tame human passions with a set square’ – de Volkskrant
‘It’s so special that we, as a Dutch company, have been able to build this intensive relationship with this American ‘icon of dance’. For me, these masterworks by Childs are truly the showpieces of Introdans. Her work is meditative, highly aesthetic and stand apart from that of any other choreographer. The dance pieces simply draw you in and enthral you, and audience members often tell me it makes them feel very calm and relaxed – which is a wonderful thing in these chaotic times’ says artistic director Roel Voorintholt.
ICON will premiere 14 March 2025in Stadsschouwburg Nijmegen.
tour: 14 March – 9 May 2025
all locations:
Interior Drama
Interior Drama is one of Childs’ early works. This choreography was premiered at the famous Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York in 1977 and since then has been performed at all kinds of indoor and outdoor locations in the city, mostly on large, flat roofs. This work is performed in total silence and you might call it a study in minimal, repetitive movement, but in fact this little jewel transcends this simple goal. Geometry, spatial relationships, timing, tempo and variable repetition are key in this ‘mathematical’ choreography, but the result is hypnotic and spellbinding.
Kilar
Kilar, dating from 2013, is the first work that Childs made specially for Introdans. This choreography involves an ingenious interaction with the Piano Concerto by (film) composer Wojciech Kilar. In Kilar – as in most of her creations – Childs impresses with scintillating, abstract and complex dance patterns. However, in the middle section the choreograph also challenged herself in a new way by having the dancers perform in crinolines and with cubes of steel wire. This not only generates many fine images but also gives the work something of a romantic touch.
Petricor
Petricor (‘the scent released when rain falls on dry ground’) is the third work that the ‘queen of minimal dance’ created for Introdans, dating from 2018. For this work, Childs drew inspiration from the composition of the same name by Ludovico Einaudi, known among other things for his music for the successful French film Intouchables. This resulted in a complex but also crystal-clear choreography of repetitive, classical dance steps – with many turns, arabesques and small, low jumps – that are arranged in space with a feather-light touch. The ingenious mathematical patterns that Childs creates through this process are also rendered visible, in a sketched version, in the stage design of the French artist Dominique Drillot. This results in abstract artworks that further reveal the genius of the choreography.
Concerto
An electrifying work that moves across the stage like one long whirlwind. That’s how Lucinda Childs’ Concerto was described at its Dutch premiere in 2007. In this work, which might well be the most ‘ballet-like’ of the choreographies by the American ‘queen of minimal dance’, seven dancers race across the stage in continually changing formations, accompanied by the driving music of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki. With tiny variations and shifts, Childs is able to create a kaleidoscopic jewel: it looks so simple, but in fact it’s incredibly refined and masterful.