"The tools I use in "La Danse du temps" are clear. There's walking, running, jumping, falling, trance, immobility, to serve a generous dance, a primal dance. What interests me deeply as a choreographer today is knowing how to move from frantic dance to immobility, without dying. To find out how a dancer's body can achieve this kind of dilation between real time and the experience of the performance. It's about drawing the audience into another perception of time, to the point of vertigo, of no longer knowing whether what they've just seen lasted three hours or one second. It's this 'loss of time' that fascinates me." Régine Chopinot quoted in the program for the premiere at La Coursive de La Rochelle (November 1999)
Choreography: Régine Chopinot
Performers: John Bateman, Géraldine Blanchard, Daniel Scott Bodiford, Régine Chopinot, Clara Cornil, Philippe Ducou, Virginie Garcia, Alexandre Isely, Franck Journo, Anne Moulin, Claire Servant, Marie Tempere, Duke Wilburn
With associate artists Françoise Dupuy, Dominique Dupuy, Sophie Lessard
Original music: Tôn-Thât Tiêt
Set design: Andy Goldsworthy
Lighting: Régis Montambaux
Costumes: Yao Souka
Music recorded in co-production with Radio France and France Musique.
Introduction: Vietnamese song performed by Thamh-Tâm.
Part One: "Mémoire de la rivière" for string quartet, performed by the Quatuor Rosamonde (Jean Sulem, Agnès Sulem, Thomas Tercieux, Xavier Gagnepain). Second part: "Cycles du Temps" for 6 percussion instruments, performed by the Percussions de Strasbourg (Jean-Paul Bernard, Claude Ferrier, Bernard Lesage, Keiko Nakamura, François Papirer, Olaf Tzschoppe).
Third part: "Temps oublié" for vocal ensemble and percussion, performed by the Choeur de Radio France, Christophe Maudot, synthesizer, conducted by Guy Reibel.
Set design: Thomas Riedelsheimer, assisted by Dieter Stürmer.
"La rivière de terre", Andy Goldsworthy's monumental wall filmed for the set, was built at the Musée départemental in Digne with support from the DRAC and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.
