LOVETRAIN2020 (76’) - world premiere on October 3th, 5th & 6th 2020 at Montpellier Danse 40 bis, Opéra Comédie, Montpellier (FR)
Awarded best dance performance of the season 20-21 by the French Professional Syndicate of Theater, Music and Dance Criticism.
After working with scores by Pierre Boulez, Rebecca Saunders and Gat himself for Story Water, his last production for Festival d’Avignon 2018, Emanuel Gat pursues his long time exploration of the meeting points between the choreographic and the musical, the visual and the auditory, and the potentials they hold for observation, study and story telling.
LOVETRAIN2020 unfolds within this charged space of references, counterpoints and endless possibilities, where movement and sound interact to once again, and from a different angle, reveal the obvious yet almost transparent layers in which people come together, drift apart, push and pull, question, resolute and move forward.
A contemporary “Musical”, LOVETRAIN2020 will call upon the wonderful music of the 80s British duo Tears for Fears (Mad world, Shout, Everybody Wants to Rule The World, Change, Sowing The Seeds Of Love and many other incredible hits from that glorious decade). A choreographic ode to the sound and vibe of the 80s, as embodied in the music of Tears For Fears, with its utopic drive and epic groove.
Upcoming tour dates
Recent press
Creation Journal, Montpellier Danse 40 Bis
Music: Tears for Fears
The two founding members were both born in 1961. They met in Bath, England when they were 13 years old. They also shared a similar experience of tormented single-parent family life that marked their childhood and adolescence. This social precision is important, as it is the source of the group’s name and most of Tears For Fears’ texts.
The personal trajectory of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith creates a penchant for the field of psychology and therapy very early on, especially that proposed by Arthur Janov. The latter became known by the technique of Primal Scream or Rebirth, consisting of treating behavioral disorders by going back to the source of his discomfort and putting tears on his fears (“tears as replacement for fears”). Shout, Tears For Fears’ best-known success, is a call to this release cry. Their first album is entitled “The Hurting”, with songs like “Suffer The Children” or “Mad World”. This record, which largely reflects the teens’ malaise under the Thatcher era, has a huge impact in the UK and sounds like an extension of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Everything is said in the pocket that represents a prostrate child.
Tears For Fears stands out from many groups of that time, thanks to their uncompromising texts. From a musical point of view, the group made its first steps in two successive formations called Neon and Graduate, very influenced by post-punk. But soon enough, their friend David Lord showed them the sound possibilities with a synthesizer and introduces them to Ian Stanley and Manny Elias (drummer) who were, respectively, the third and fourth members of Tears For Fears. The true creative pair is nonetheless made up of Orzabal and Stanley, both keyboardists and composers. Another characteristic in the division of roles within the group is to entrust the singing party either to Orzabal or to Smith. The identification of a single singer in the training was not a chosen option. The trend will be confirmed later with the integration of soul singer Oleta Adams at the time of the album The Seeds of Love (1989).
The Hurting, their first album, was released in 1983. The sound and style reflected their influences in Neon and Graduate, plus synthesizer pads. “Mad World” was their first single success; right before “Change” and “Pale Shelter”. A stylistic turnaround took place with their next record.
The album Big Chair (1985) is Tears For Fears’ musical emancipation: more sophisticated compositions, sounds combining acoustic instruments and state-of-the-art synthesizer technology, jazz-themed ambiances (“I Believe”), improvisation (“The Working Hour”), minimalism (“I Believe”), or concrete music (the end of “Mothers Talk”) and a conception in the sequence of the last tracks worthy of the 1970’s progressive rock’n’roll.
This search for musicality does not fade in the following albums, namely The Seeds of Love, Elemental and Raoul and the Kings of Spain. This is precisely what keeps Tears For Fears unclassified in the one category of its debut, the new wave. Their compositions relate them to groups where the qualities of musical invention as well as a certain instrumental technique are obligatory. (Source)
Costumes: Thomas Bradley
Thomas Bradley was born in Australia in 1990. After studying at the NZ School of Dance, he joined Sydney Dance Company in 2012. He received a professional development fellowship from Tanja Liedtke Foundation and was nominated for Outstanding Male Dancer at the Australian Dance Awards in 2015. He started collaborating with Emanuel Gat in 2017.
Bradley’s visual arts practice is the foundation of his conceptual designs. The designs draw on the notion of newfound bodies, faces and objects, all the result of a process initiated through sketches made with black ink and watercolors. Each sketch starts off with a serie of symbols, resisting the urge to imbue them with meaning or purpose, merely foreshadowing the final image.
Drawing on his affection for oversized garments and dresses, Thomas’ costume design for LOVETRAIN2020 is an ode to elegance, volume and form. Each dancer will sport two formal silhouettes, as if they were meant to be somewhere important but got distracted from the main event. One series reflects the variety of female dress-wear at the Met Ball, all uniquely crafted with different fabrics, textiles and techniques. The other series is a functional devolution from the dress-wear, incorporating similar aspects, while adding rich patterns and details to further define each dancer individually.
Since Story Water, Thomas Bradley was invited by the Scottish Dance Theater and the Staatsballett of Berlin to create the design costumes of their new pieces. He is still exploring his aesthetic between design composition and dance in Belgium, Japan and Australia, his origin country.
CREDITS
LOVETRAIN2020 - A work by Emanuel Gat
Music: Tears for Fears.
Choreography and lights: Emanuel Gat
Costume design: Thomas Bradley
Costume construction: Thomas Bradley, Wim Muyllaert
Created with and performed by the dancers of the company.
Production: Emanuel Gat Dance. Marjorie Carré, Antonia Auday.
Coproduction: Festival Montpellier Danse 2020, Chaillot - Théâtre national de la Danse, Arsenal Cité musicale - Metz, Theater Freiburg, with the support of Romaeuropa Festival. Emanuel Gat Dance acknowledges the support of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, and DRAC Provence Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Région Sud - Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Conseil Départemental des Bouches-du- Rhône. LOVETRAIN2020 receives the support of Institut Français for its international tours in 2022. Created at Agora - cité internationale de la danse in Montpellier.
"I put the dancers in a position that is active,” Gat says. “In which they can own the responsibility for their decisions, and as a consequence they become free.”