The Collection
Alessandro Sciarroni
In 2022, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting the Festival d’Automne à Paris to present Alessandro Sciarroni's The Collection by Lyon Opera Ballet.
From Schuhplattler – the traditional Tyrolean dance in which performers strike the soles of their shoes and their thighs with their hands – Sciarroni creates a series of combinations that test the dancers’ physical endurance. As in the film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, the piece ends when there is only one dancer left on stage – or no more audience!
Coming from the visual and performing arts world, Sciarroni is fascinated by the limits of physical performance and the exhaustion of forms, as he had already shown in 2016 with his TURNING_Motion Sickness, a real mystical experience created for the Lyon Opera Ballet. Here, the Italian choreographer works again with the company to re-create one of his iconic works, the third part of a triptych begun with Untitled and Aurora. Taking motifs inspired by the Tyrolean Schuhplattler, Sciarroni rewrites traditional ideas and transposes them into the collective imagination of clubbing, in order to better connect them to our times.
On stage, a relentless mechanism reveals, through small variations on a pre-established motif, a metaphor for the world and the time in which we live. A post-modern performance, both physical and intellectual, totally hypnotic, that takes form and intention to the point of exhaustion.
Photo: © Marc Domage
About the artists
Alessandro Sciarroni
In 2022, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni for his creation DREAM.
Lyon Opera Ballet
Following on from his predecessors Françoise Adret, Yorgos Loukos and Julie Guibert, who introduced the company to a wide range of styles, Cédric Andrieux and the Lyon Opera Ballet will continue to discover new areas for contemporary creation while continuing to meet the technical demands of the great choreographers.
Combining its rich heritage – a repertoire of more than 100 works – with a renewed focus on the singular qualities of its performers, the Ballet continues to explore new horizons of contemporary art while maintaining a firm reliance on great choreographic creations. Such is the case for the choreographers William Forsythe, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Marcos Morau, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Alessandro Sciarroni, Mats Ek, Christos Papadopoulos, and Pina Bausch. Kindling wonderment while striving to make sense of the world; blending local action and international prominence, reinterpreting the repertoire with a pioneering pursuit of new aesthetics, the Ballet holds fast to its tradition as a classically trained troupe turning its gaze to contemporary dance. It is still finding new ways of celebrating dance, turning the spotlight on the way dancers interpret the choreography.
Devoting special attention to the formulation of meaning, alongside language, voices, and transdisciplinary collaborations – particularly in the fields of music and visual arts – the Ballet endeavors to broaden the spectrum of now, providing an eloquent counterpoint to the construction of the choreographic arts.
Photo: © Patrick Tourneboeuf
