Past event

27 May 2022

Cantiere Navale Società di Navigazione/ Lido di Lugano

19:00

28 May 2022

Cantiere Navale Società di Navigazione/ Lido di Lugano

19:00
English Italiano

In the unusual and evocative surroundings of the Shipyard of the Società di Navigazione del lago di Lugano, Cindy Van Acker presents four of the ten solos that make up her project Shadowpieces (2019-2021).

Van Acker returns to a format that marked her debut on the international scene, dialoguing intimately with each of the performers.

Depth, listening, empathy: these are the themes of a choreography that has been tailored around the way each dancer moves, their particular sensitivity or current concerns. The intense relationship with music is the common motif connecting these unique works, each of which lasts about ten minutes, depending on the length of the excerpts chosen by the interpreters from a musical selection proposed by the choreographer. Every solo has been individually conceived for the dancer interpreting it, expressing their own personal energy, color, expressiveness. The compositional elements have been chosen by the soloists, while Cindy Van Acker has achieved the perfect synthesis between choreography and music.

concept
Cindy Van Acker

choreography Cindy
Van Acker
in close collaboration with the dancers

sound
Denis Rollet

production
Cie Greffe

in co-production with
La Bâtie - Festival de Genève,
ADC Genève
CND Centre national de la danse Paris
La Place de la Danse - CDCN Toulouse/Occitanie

with the support of
Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation

The Compagnie Greffe benefits from a joint support agreement between the City of Geneva, the Canton of Geneva and Pro Helvetia- Fondazione Svizzera per la Cultura for the period 2009-2023.

Born in Belgium in 1971, Van Acker studied classical dance and worked with the Ballet Royal de Flandre before joining the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève in 1991. In 1994 she began choreographing her own performances and in 2002, a year in which she won international acclaim for her solo Corps 00:00, she founded the Compagnie Greffe. Pneuma (2005) was her first collective work, for eight men and women dancers. The same year, Romeo Castellucci invited her to the Venice Biennale, which is when their artistic partnership began. Her career has been marked by encounters with Myriam Gourfink, Mika Vainio, Victor Roy. For the season 2006/07 she presented the women’s trio Kernel at Geneva’s Théâtre du Grütli, which was the first time she worked with Mika Vainio. In  addition to her activity with the Compagnie Greffe, she creates works for the Ballet Junior and the Ballet du Grand Théâtre, both located in Geneva, for P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels for the Ballet de Lorraine. Diffraction (2011) won acclaim at the Creazione Attuale di Danza competition in 2013 on the occasion of the Swiss dance prizes. She created Anechoic, a work for 53 dancers (2014) which was performed in Vidy for the Fête de la Danse 2017, the solo Ion (2015), Zaoum (2016) and Speechless Voices (2019).

Shadowpieces I – Mélancolie de l'espace
choreography  Cindy Van Acker in close collaboration with the dancer
interpreter Daniela Zaghini
music Ryoji Ikeda, album Opus, Prototypes I, II, III et IV, chosen by Daniela Zaghini

Daniela Zaghini has noticed the melancholy in Ryoji Ikeda’s Prototypes. The musical tonality in this work evoked for her Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, which is suggested in the prologue and in references to the paintings Ophelia by John Everett Millais and Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Melancholy as well as to a paragraph from Làszlò Krasznahorkai’s The Melancholy of Resistance. Every time Daniela Zaghini moves her way through Prototypes, she expresses another shade of melancholy.

Born in Italy in 1990, Daniela began dancing at the age of eight. After a short period at the school of La Scala and Teatro Carcano in Milan, she completed her training at the Rudra Béjart school where she had the possibility of being followed by the master Maurice Béjart (2006- 2008). During these two years of training she participated in several performances and tours of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne. In 2008 she enters the company of the Ballet du Rhin in France (under the direction of Bertrand d'At). She dances for two years a classic and contemporary repertoire, including choreographies by Jiri Kilian, Alexander Ekman, Johan Inger and Lucinda Childs. In 2010, she returned to Switzerland and incorporated the company of the Grand Théâtre in Geneva (under the direction of Philippe Cohen).
During the five years with the company, she toured different countries of the world with a varied repertoire. She danced in particular the performances of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Mats Ek, Emanuel Gat, Joëlle Bouvier and Andonis Foniadakis. In 2015, she decided to start a free lance career. She dances Tool for Inkörper dance company under the direction of Aurélien Dougé, as part of the fête de la Musique and Antigel festival in Geneva. Today she works notably with two companies: Cie Greffe Cindy Van Acker and Emanuel Gat Dance.

Shadowpieces V – Les Ephémères
choreography Cindy Van Acker in close collaboration with the dancer
interpreter Stéphanie Bayle
music Fred Frith - No Birds, chosen by Stéphanie Bayle

"The solo is experienced as a movement through landscapes which may be either familiar, surprising or extravagant. Anita Pittoni’s poetic writing, in her book Confession téméraire [French translation of the stories Passeggiata armata, with an additional two stories La città di Bobi and Caro Saba] accompanies this unfolding of intimate images, open to the kind of surprise the state of wandering is conducive to. The spirit of French New Wave cinema was very much present during the creation of this solo and offered opportunities to experiment with ideas like: the mental state of being present and how it can vary in intensity, the distortion of time, humor and the second degree. The emphatically versatile No Birds by Fred Firth has led us to look for the same freedom in the excerpt.”
– Stéphanie Bayle

After her three-year course at the Junior Ballet of Geneva, Stephanie Bayle was first recruited by the company Alias with which she worked until 2012 on several creations, as an understudy and on many international tours. In Geneva, she was the performer of the 7273 company for the creation of Nile and recently, she joined the cast of Quantum, a piece choreographed by Gilles Jobin. Stephanie is also currently working with choreographer from Basel Tabea Martin and performs in her latest production, Field. In 2014, Stephanie meets the Swiss visual artist Sylvie Fleury and takes part in the exhibition-performance Camino Del Sol at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Pantin. Since August 2012, Stephanie works with choreographer Cindy Van Acker in her company, Greffe, which she joined as an understudy for the performance Diffraction. Cindy Van Acker creates for her the solo Helder in 2013 for the Off Festival in Avignon. In the same year, Stephanie assists the choreographer for LINIAAL, a creation for the young company Virevolte by Manon Hotte, then for Anechoic, created in Ostend Belgium, for the 50 dancers of the school PARTS. Recently, Stephanie has been assisting Cindy Van Acker for the choreography of the opera Moses and Aron, directed by Romeo Castellucci, created at the Opéra Bastille in Paris in October 2015. Also with Cie Greffe, Stephanie is coordinating the organization of daily classes and occasional workshops with guest artists, as part of the project for the training of professional dancer that the company has implemented in its studios.

Shadowpieces VI – Fête en blanc
choreography Cindy Van Acker in close collaboration with the dancer
interpreter Sonia Garcia
music Eliane Radigue - Opus 17/ Etude, chosen by Sonia Garcia

“Before beginning this dance, I try to see the space in front of me like a memory, as if everything that had happened here had left traces. And my body also contains the memory of everything I have ever done and seen. So, before beginning this dance, I try to take into account everything that’s already in the space and inside my body and, when I feel that it is becoming more an idea than a sensation, that’s when I have to launch myself. I go up to the turntable and take the record out of its cover. I put on the music. 99 fragments follow one another, gestures that testify to a more or less distinct memory, signs that mark the unknown history of a place or of a body. There’s no feeling of worry here, of looking for something, of any solemnity or joy in reviving these traces. It just happens and that’s it. Figures more or less distant or close appear, overlap with each other, vanish, or linger on. There’s no hierarchy, the abstract forms follow expressionist gestures, situations intertwine…everything becomes open”
– Sonia Garcia

Sonia Garcia is a dancer and choreographer. She studied dance at the Conservatoire of Montpellier and the Conservatoire of Lyon and at the CNDC of Angers (under the direction of Emmanuelle Huynh) where she created the solo Sens in collaboration with the artist Salome Genes. As a performer, she has worked with Olga Dukhovnaya (KOROWOD), Katerina Andreou (SABLE), Julie Nioche (Sensationnelle, Les Sisyphes), Emmanuelle Huynh (TOZAI! ...), Emmanuel Eggermont (Πόλις - Polis), Rémy Heir (Relier les traces) and Cindy Van Acker (Speechless Voices). After obtaining a degree in Performing Arts at Paris 8 University, she moved to Bordeaux and created the association La Tierce with Séverine Lefèvre and Charles Pietri. Between 2013 and 2018, they created the performances and pieces Extraction, En Creux, Inaugural, ÉCRITURES and D’après nature. In 2015, they launched the PRAXIS, nights dedicated to choreographic research, inviting several artists to "make an attempt" for a few days and then perform their research.

Shadowpieces IX – Verso
choreography Cindy Van Acker in close collaboration with the dancer
interpreter Anna Massoni
music Arnold Schoenberg - Drei Klavierstücke, Opus 11, chosen by Anna Massoni

“A floor, a page on which the steps are placed, one by one, notes and signs on the score. A walk on the edges of the shown and the hidden. The fingers on the piano, like the whole body, give and take. There are these three pieces that must be cut up to be heard, crumble then cross, and this painting by Schönberg, Going Self-Portrait.” 
– Anna Massoni

Born in Paris in 1985, Anna Massoni is a dancer and choreographer. She trained in contemporary dance at the CNSMD Lyon. In 2007, she participated in the Danceweb / Impulstanz programme. She worked as a performer for Johanne Saunier and Jim Clayburgh, Yuval Pick, Noé Soulier, Vincent Weber, Simone Truong. In addition, she is doing her own creative work : she created L'An 2 (2009) collectively with Ana Hervier and Marie-Lise Naud, then Chants (2011), (To) Come and See (2015) in collaboration with Simone Truong, Adina Secretan, Elpida Orfanidou and Eilit Maarom, Ornement (2016) in collaboration with Vania Vaneau. Her first solo, Notte, was created in 2019. At the same time, she obtains a degree in philosophy at the University of Toulouse (2007-2010), and participates at the creation of LIEUES in Lyon, an artistic space for research and teaching. She also co-founded the journal Rodéo with a group of artists, and develops a graphic work in collaboration with Sandra Pasini for Trente- trois morceaux publishing.