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TRÄUME (2023)

November 29, 2024

A choreographic work by Emanuel Gat
A personal response to Wesendonck Lieder and ‘Art and Revolution’ by R. Wagner

photos

For the first-ever time, dance will feature at the Easter Festival, in the dramatic setting of the Felsenreitschule, with »Träume« (Dreams) an original creation by choreographer Emanuel Gat.

For his first edition as director of the Salzburg Easter Festival, Nikolaus Bachler innovates and opens the program to contemporary dance. Presented in the mythical concert hall of the Felsenreitschule. Träume (Dreams) by choreographer Emanuel Gat, will explore different facets of Wagnerian work.

The Israeli/French choreographer Emanuel Gat will present a work for the 14 dancers of his company that is inspired by Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder. Gat will combine the five famous poems with excerpts from Wagner’s essay Art and Revolution. Träume [Dreams] is a choreographic work that engages with different facets of Wagner’s oeuvre. In the first act, excerpts from his revolutionary essay are juxtaposed with the poems by Mathilde Wesendonck in order to create a kind of textual score in a dialogue between the sexes. The second act unfolds to the music of the five Wesendonck Lieder (recorded version, Julia Varady, soprano - Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, direction).

For this creation, Emanuel Gat has imagined a scenography specially adapted to the dramatic stage of the Felsenreitschule, where it will be premiered, on April 6th and 7th 2023. Träume is thus conceived to be declined in specific versions, adapted to the atmosphere and uniqueness of each space where it will be performed.

The costumes are a new creation by Thomas Bradley, who previously designed those for Story Water (2018) and LOVETRAIN2020.

In a letter of June 1849 to Franz Liszt, one of his few influential allies at the time, Wagner wrote “I must make people afraid of me. Well, I have no money, but what I do have is an enormous desire to commit acts of artistic terrorism”.

Wagner had been an enthusiast for the revolutions of 1848 and had been an active participant in the Dresden Revolution of 1849, as a consequence of which he was forced to live for many years in exile from Germany. “Art and Revolution” (Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft) is one of a group of polemical articles he published in his exile, which helped characterise Wagner as an impractical and/or eccentric radical idealist at the time.

During that same period of change and turmoil, unfolded the circumstances under which Richard Wagner composed his Wesendonck Lieder (WWV 91, Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme). In May of 1849 the fall of the provisional government that led the Dresden rebellion put an end to Wagner’s revolutionary activities. He was forced to flee, first to Weimar, then, with the help of Liszt, to Zurich, Switzerland, where he sought the support of friends. The songs are settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of Richard Wagner’s patrons. Wagner had become acquainted with Otto Wesendonck in Zürich, where he had fled on his escape from Saxony after the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849.

Otto Wesendonck allowed Wagner and his wife Minna to move into a cottage on the grounds for a nominal fee.The close proximity to Mathilde induced him to read to her each evening his work in progress. This intense inter-action with the poet-composer inspired Mathilde to compose five passionate poems of her own, which Wagner set for voice and piano. Mathilde later wrote in her memoirs that he took each of her poems upon their completion and gave to them a “supreme transfiguration and consecration” with his music. No name was given for the author of the texts at the first publication, it was not publicly revealed until after Mathilde’s death in 1902.

Wagner wrote “Art and Revolution” over two weeks in Paris and sent it to a French political journal, the National; they refused it, but it was published in Leipzig in 1849.

“Modern changes in society have resulted in the catastrophe that art has sold her soul and body to a far worse mistress - Commerce […] There are even many of our most popular artists who do not in the least conceal the fact, that they have no other ambition than to satisfy this shallow audience. They are wise in their generation; for when the prince leaves a heavy dinner, the banker a fatiguing financial operation, the working man a weary day of toil, and go to the theatre: they ask for rest, distraction, and amusement, and are in no mood for renewed effort and fresh expenditure of force. This argument is so convincing, that we can only reply by saying: it would be more decorous to employ for this purpose any other thing in the wide world, but not the body and soul of Art.”

Provocative, somewhat extreme in tone and utopian by nature, this text might give an insight into the artist’s state of mind at the period just before embarking on the process of creating some of his most accomplished work. It stands in stark contrast with the female voice of the Wesendonck Lieder poems, with their melancholic yearning an distinct sense of intimacy.

Alongside the textual and musical content which is at the heart of the choreography created for Träume, Felsenreitschule where the work will see its world premiere, serves as a major inspiration for an almost site-specific work, influencing the motions and distribution of choreographic flux. The unique atmosphere and dense historical context of the venue, will find its way into the piece, drawing ever expanding choreographic lines and structures.

Träume, wie wenn Frühlingssonne
Aus dem Schnee die Blüten kü.t,
Daß zu nie geahnter Wonne
Sie der neue Tag begrü.t,

Daß sie wachsen, daß sie blühen,
Träumend spenden ihren Duft,
Sanft an deiner Brust verglühen,
Und dann sinken in die Gruft.

Dreams, as when the Spring sun
Kisses blossoms from the snow,
So the new day might welcome them
In unimagined bliss,

So that they grow and flower,
Bestow their scent as in a dream,
Fade softly away on your breast
And sink into their grave.

Träume is a choreographic piece engaging with the different facets of Wagner’s work. Excerpts of his essay, will be juxtapositioned with Mathilde Wesendonck’s poems, to create a textual live masculine/feminine dialogue score for the first act of the piece, followed by a second act unfolding to the sounds of the five songs.

CREDITS

Music: R. Wagner, “Wesendonck Lieder” (WWV 91, Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme)
Julia Varady, soprano - Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, direction

Concept, choreography and lights: Emanuel Gat
Dancers: Eglantine Bart, Thomas Bradley, Robert Bridger, Gilad Jerusalmy, Péter Juhász, Michael Loehr, Emma Mouton, Eddie Oroyan, Rindra Rasoaveloson, Ichiro Sugae, Milena Twiehaus, Sara Wilhelmsson, Karolina Szymura, Jin Yong-Won.

Texts: Poems by Mathilde von Wesendonck “Art and revolution” by Richard Wagner, excerpts
Costumes: Thomas Bradley
Sound design: Frédéric Duru
Lights supervision and technical director: Guillaume Février

Company Management: Marjorie Carré
Production Management, Touring: Antonia Auday
Production: Emanuel Gat Dance
Coproduction: Salzburg Easter Festival, other coproducers in process.

In TRÄUME
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ACT II&III (2022)

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Act II&III or The Unexpected Return Of Heaven And Earth is a choreographic and theatrical exploration, evolving in parallel to the 1965 historical recording of the second and third acts from Puccini’s Tosca, sung by Maria Callas, Carlo Bergonzi, Tito Gobbi and directed by Georges Prêtre.

Sharing one performative time-frame and space, the live choreography engages in a multi-layered conversation with the recording of Puccini’s work. Rather than follow or depict the well-known libretto and the opera’s characters, the choreography evolves independently, engaging in a detailed mapping of its rich musical content and with the myriad universal themes it addresses such as love, betrayal, jealousy, hope, death, war, political intrigues and persecution.

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It is warm water, it is bread. It is a garden. It is the story of dancing bodies, of music being played, of color and line, and of the light that hides and shows it all.

It is an intermediary put to work in the service of communities, through reflecting the issues and concerns of the places where they land. It stands witness to meaning beyond the known, and is therefore a transcendent commerce, a currency, an economy of experiences. It is a place of fluid metaphors waiting for new contexts to emerge, so as to reveal new meanings.

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“SUNNY by Emanuel Gat is a blast of pleasures. Gat is one of the rare artists of the moment who puts forwarda notion or research. His writing is a continuous flux of of new sensations. Together with Awir Leon on stage, SUNNY offers some of the most beautiful sequences of the season. The richness of composition, the intelligenceof changing moods and colors, renders SUNNY a choreographic miracle.”

Philippe Noisette - Les Échos

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In Corner Etudes

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"Brilliant Corners" is the title of an album by Jazz musician Thelonious Monk released in 1957. Monk’s music appears in no way in the score of this piece, but many aspects of his music are very much present. I have always found in it endless inspiration for dance making, and although the piece contains no direct reference to this music, it shares with it a certain understanding regarding the process of transforming concrete artistic matter (sounds and musical composition / dancers, movement and choreography), into environments where both artists and audiences are offered a somewhat clearer glance at life.

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In Brilliant Corners

Photos by Agathe Poupeney

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In Winter Variations

Photo by Stephanie Berger

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Photo by Thomas Amerphool

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gettyimages-80372713-612x612.jpg

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January 11, 2017

World Premiere on June 6th, 2006 at Festival de Marseille (FR)

Choreography, lights and costumes: Emanuel Gat
Music: K626 by W.A. Mozart
Length: 58 minutes
Production: Emanuel Gat Dance
Coproduction: Festival de Marseille (FR), American Dance Festival (US), TANZtheater International (DE), GRAN Teater for Dans (DK).

In K626

Photo by Cathy Peylan

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