Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)
Le Sacre du printemps is a perfect amalgam of everything Daniel Léveillé has wanted to express in his work up until now : the quest for a primary expressivity that goes beyond narration. The meeting of four bodies that never touch, moving within a Spartan scenic space, the constant and insistent repetition of their gestures, and the hammering piano on the sound track are all elements used to evoke the chaos of human sacrifice. Daniel Léveillé’s Le Sacre du printemps is a work that doesn’t attempt to render the content of the original libretto. Rather, it is a portrayal of Stravinsky's music where the dancer’s perpetual movement becomes a metaphor of the movement of a machine that produces as much energy as it consumes and that will ultimately lead to the sacrifice of the human.
CHOREOGRAPHER Daniel Léveillé
DANCER AT CREATION Louise Lecavalier, Solange Paquette, Gilles Simard, Danièle Tardif
LIGHT Jean Jauvin
REHEARSAL DIRECTOR Marie-Andrée Gougeon
PHOTOGRAPHER Denis Farley, Philippe Bergeron
PRODUCTION Daniel Léveillé danse
COPRODUCTION Coproduction CanDance Network Creation Fund and his partners, Agora de la Danse, BrianWebb Dance Company, Canada Dance Festival, National Arts Centre, Vancouver East Cultural Centre, with the sponsor acknowledgement of Canada Council Dance Section, and Danspace Project (New York)
SPONSOR Imperial Tobacco Ltée Canada
« Experience has showned that for Léveillé, a limited choreographic range is sufficient to devasted the space. »
- Télérama, Paris
« The choice of a work for two solo pianos gives a more obsessive quality to the pulsing music, with its insistent percussion. The dance is built around the music’s earthy and sensual power. A dance exquisitely interpreted by four male performers (as opposed to three women and a man, in 1982) who interpret four distinct choreographic scores, returning at times to symmetry and balance. Léveillé thus plays with asymmetry to build tension and desire.»
- La Presse, Montréal
« Sensitive musicality guarantees a dynamic friction with an austere sense of form. »
-Die Welt, Allemagne
« [Daniel Léveillé] has concocted a doomsday pièce for four dancers, characterizing likely to prevail during our final hours … That something has do to with the remarkable way he has turned the music of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring into a metaphor for the impressing force of destruction. His dancers look possessed by the music, robbed of personality, will, a sens of destiny.»
- The Toronto Star, Toronto