Noetic

“‘Noetic’ has become an unusually rich, consummate choreography”

GT/Expressen

About Noetic

Multi award-winning, constantly topical Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has created Noetic, along with a distinguished team comprising sculptor Antony Gormley, fashion designer duo Les Hommes, and composer Szymon Brzóska.

The creation explores man’s instinctive need to structure every detail of our existence, and our longing to break free of the rules and discover what lies beyond them. With at times mechanical, at times flowing, classical movements, the dancers construct, change and deconstruct reality.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s roots are in the cultures of both Morocco and Central Europe. His artistic identity has been influenced by many years of involvement in the Belgian dance company Les Ballets C de la B, whose work belongs among the most exciting things to have happened within dance in recent decades.

Cherkaoui is known for bringing together art forms, cultures and traditions. His dance company, Eastman, is attributed the title of European cultural ambassadors in 2013. The harmonic and emotional music in Noetic is composed for The Göteborg Opera Orchestra.

Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has developed the potential opened up by sculpture in the seventies through a critical engagement with both his own body and those of others in a way that confronts fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos.

Antony Gormley and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui have collaborated on three previous projects; Sutra, Babel and Zero Degrees. His set design for Noetic will give the dancers both bodily extensions and the constructive elements to create a potential architecture for individual and collective action.

Team

Choreography – Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Original music – Szymon Brzóska
Set design – Antony Gormley
Costume design – Les Hommes
Dramaturgy – Adolphe Binder
Lighting design – David Stokholm

Assistant choreographers – James O’Hara, Elias Lazaridis, Helder Seabra

Live musicians

Either:

- traditional japanese percussion (taiko) and harp (koto) performed by Tsubasa Hori, or
- traditional japanese percussion (taiko), violin (kokyu) and flute (fué), performed by Shogo Yoshii
Singer – Miriam Andersén

Information

Length – 55 min
Dancers – 19
The Göteborg Opera Orchestra (recorded for tour performances)

World premiere 8 March 2014, Göteborg Opera

Created in collaboration with the dancers from GöteborgsOperans Danskompani.

Music

1. Intro (solo percussion)
2. Chaconne & Fugato
3. Fugato Repercussion
4. Carpe Diem
5. Plato, Book II
6. In Perpetuum
7. Horacio, Carmen
8. Construxi
9. Plato, Book IX