Awarded Best Contemporary Production for 2022
by Danza&Danza Awards

Contrary to what I thought for many years, I see choreography now (the practice, processes and resulting objects, works, events and whatever other manifestations it may have), more like something with the logic and characteristics of a Big Bang type of event. An ever expanding kind of thing. A three (four?) dimensional fractal traveling simultaneously in all directions (dimensions?).
It’s a major shift from the linear, forward moving perception of it I had before, as something that moves from point A to B to C and so on, gathering information along the way, adjusting, adding, revising, evolving on a clear path towards whatever point in the future (overall process and separate pieces alike).

Looking back (up and down, sideways and straight ahead), I’m starting to realize that this linear perception I’ve had, is merely a fragment. A sort of tunnel vision in the midst of a radically wider field of happenings and possibilities. Within this kinetic three dimensional space/event/situation, time as well as ideas and acquired perceptions, become fluid and flexible. Everything can move at anytime in whatever manner and in any direction. Yet surprisingly, nothing is random. A coherence of another nature emerges. One which seems to be more in-tuned with ‘how things are’.

“Emanuel Gat is a supreme musical connoisseur, devouring every genre from pop to classic, rock to salsa. In his latest work, he tackled opera for the first time, transforming Puccini’s arias from Tosca into dance. More specifically, he chose act two and three of the opera, in Act II&III or the Unexpected Return of Heaven and Earth (created in 2021, presented in Italy at the Bolzano Danza Festival 2022). Steering clear of a didactic approach, the choreography absorbs the narrative construct of the story, and translates it into a tornado of movements echoed by the music. They inject the story with ‘other’ undertones, with an astoundingly theatrical range of movements and concrete gestures. In a distillation of physical and emotional energy, just the bodies of the eleven incredible performers ‘tell us’ everything about the characters, their motivating sentiments, and their actions. They reveal layers of meaning and new moods in which the various destinies of Puccini’s opera play out.”

— D&D Awards

“The nude bodies opening the piece, the exposed beauty, the absolute absence of provocation although the nature of the setting, all install an immediate relation with the lyric universe. Thus, the spectator is sent back to that which awakens at its most intimate realm when listening to this music. A staggering ballet of emotions.”

— Arianne Bavelier, Le Figaro

“It’s as pure as it gets, as in naked, that’s the dancers follow each other in a série of sublime solos on a barley lighted stage. The only light coming in from stage side, from what seems to be large celestial windows shedding their light upon these two ancestral arts forms, opera and dance. The eleven dancers follow each other, bringing forth their bodies, their venerability, their power, their singularity, whiteout any parasite distractions. They erupt from the opera’s gut, gushing forth the essence of dance, in its outmost rawness, carnal and beautiful. Mystical!”

— Romain Rougé, La Grande Parade

“Impressive and masterful creation by Emanuel Gat, Act II&III or The Unexpected Return Of Heaven And Earth.”

— Rosita Boisseau, Le Monde

“Their solos are stunning, sort of skin pigmentation, painting pigmentation, hovering within a luminous black cube, and their movements posses the unfathomable traces of the Soulagien geste. A splendeur bordering on the sublime.”

— Jérémy Bernède, Midi Libre

“Stronger than a straight forward transposition of the lovers drama would have been, Act II & III or The unexpected Return of Heaven and Earth invites to the stage without fireworks, but with a rare density, the devouring passions of some, and the possessive desire of others.”

— Olivier Fregaville-Gratian, L'œil d'Olivier

#BigBang

Contrary to what I thought for many years, I see choreography now (the practice, processes and resulting objects, works, events and whatever other manifestations it may have), more like something with the logic and characteristics of a Big Bang type of event. An ever expanding kind of thing. A three (four?) dimensional fractal traveling simultaneously in all directions (dimensions?).
It’s a major shift from the linear, forward moving perception of it I had before, as something that moves from point A to B to C and so on, gathering information along the way, adjusting, adding, revising, evolving on a clear path towards whatever point in the future (overall process and separate pieces alike).

Looking back (up and down, sideways and straight ahead), I’m starting to realize that this linear perception I’ve had, is merely a fragment. A sort of tunnel vision in the midst of a radically wider field of happenings and possibilities.
Within this kinetic three dimensional space/event/situation, time as well as ideas and acquired perceptions, become fluid and flexible. Everything can move at anytime in whatever manner and in any direction. Yet surprisingly, nothing is random. A coherence of another nature emerges. One which seems to be more in-tuned with ‘how things are’.

Early January, we found ourselves in the studio for ten long days, after yet another cancellation of scheduled performances at l’Arsenal Cité musicale-Metz. By the end of these ten days, after a somewhat improbable creation process and only three months after premiering #LOVETRAIN2020, a new work was fully present and with it, a myriad of new realizations.

I am privileged to have had the best companions possible for this sort of voyage in time and space. Some doors open only when certain conditions are present, and only with the right people: Michael Loehr, Emma Mouton, Thomas Alfred Bradley, Sara Wilhelmsson, Ichiro Sugae, Juhász Péter, Gilad Jerusalmy, Eglantine Bart, Rob Bridger, Rindra Rasoaveloson, Eddie Bruno Oroyan.

Nothing is strange anymore in the current reality, so I guess the fact that for the first time ever in 26 years of work, I’ve created a new piece without having any idea when or where it will premier, or who will be the producing partners, doesn’t seem so strange anymore.

First we do, then we see - seems like a good moto for our times.

Act II&III 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.

The music of Puccini, and the genre of the Italian opera of the late 19th century, receives an unorthodox theatrical treatment through choreographic means, allowing for new narratives to emerge and once more, navigating the wide spaces that lie at the meeting point of the visual and the audible, the musical and the choreographic.

The intensely charged and dramatic music of Puccini is in direct continuation of Gat’s last creation, LOVETRAIN2020 to the 80’s pop music of Tears For Fears. By taking a musical work out of its time and habitual context and by confronting it with cutting edge choreographic processes (as in Gat’s SACRE in 2004), the work creates new synergies, new ways to see the well-known and familiar, and allows for a fresh and riveting reading of old masterpieces from a contemporary angle and under a new light.

Credits

Music: Giacomo Puccini, Tosca, Act II & III (1965, directed by Georges Prêtre)
Singers: Maria Callas (Tosca), Carlo Bergonzi (Carvadossi), Tito Gobbi (Sciarpa)

Choreography, Set, Lighting: Emanuel Gat
Technical Director: Guillaume Février
Sound : Frédéric Duru

Created with and performed by: Eglantine Bart, Thomas Bradley, Robert Bridger, Gilad Jerusalmy, Péter Juhász, Michael Loehr, Emma Mouton, Eddie Oroyan, Rindra Rasoaveloson, Ichiro Sugae, Sara Wilhelmsson

Company Management: Marjorie Carré
Production Management, Touring: Antonia Auday

A production by Emanuel Gat Dance, co-produced by Montpellier Danse Festival 2022, Arsenal - Cité Musicale de Metz, Bolzano Danza 2022. Emanuel Gat Dance is supported by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication - DRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Region South - Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and by Conseil Départemental des Bouches-du-Rhône. Creation residencies at L'Arsenal - Cité Musicale, Metz, January and October 2021 and at Agora-Cité Internationale de la Danse, Montpellier, September 2021.

Artistic intentions

Dialogue with Emanuel Gat

I.    An unorthodox and contemporary theatrical exploration

Emanuel Gat creates Act II&III to the music of Tosca, by Puccini, choosing to break away from the libretto and characters of the famous opera and to offer an independent theatrical treatment.

Why did you choose an opera, and why Tosca in particular?

Opera is a musical genre I never worked with. I’m curious to see how it behaves in the context of choreography and of my creation process.

In 2002, I participated as a dancer in a piece by a choreographer called Javier de Frutos, who used the second act of Tosca. Working on that music as a dancer kept it in my head in a specific manner which drives me back to it, years later, this time as a choreographer. 

Why do you choose to take distance from the opera’s original story?

The music of Tosca is anything but abstract, and the work is loaded with layers of meaning well known to audiences. There is the history of the libretto in relations to its time but also the history of the play, the history of the composer, the singers… It is a challenge to find a new way to address these layers of meaning, other than following or illustrating them. How to create a dialogue with these elements, without ignoring them, but leaving enough space to allow the choreography to unfold.

This approach is quite new and stimulating. Even in the case of proposals adopting contemporary aesthetic or offering variations within the opera genre, they rarely break free from the original story. This process is similar to what I did with the piece SACRE in 2004. The choreography had moved away from the themes of the Rite of Spring, to develop independently. But in the end, it came back to it in some way.

I do not plan to change strategy in the sense that whatever narratives will eventually emanate from the work. They are always a consequence and an independent by-product which emerges from the choreographic situation, rather than being starting points for it. 

Intimacy is a very important register in your work. How will it develop in this piece?

That depends mostly on the dancers to be honest. It takes different directions each time, depending a lot on their mood, the group dynamic, etc.

II. The audible and the visible 

Emanuel’s Gat creative process brings into dialogue the different elements that compose it, and in particular the choreography and the music. This approach opens wide, unknown spaces, and allows sensory discoveries.

How does the dialogue between music and choreography work in your creative process?

It’s a process of uncovering the meeting points, the tensions, the parallèles, the opposites etc, and how they can complement, push, pull, light, cover, each other. Along the years, I have realized that a piece of performative dance doesn’t fully exist for me if the interaction between music and choreography doesn’t preserve the autonomous separate nature of the two. To this we can add the lighting, which is a totally separate element as well, with its own logic, identity and characters. 

Any new thing which is the combination of more than one element, is the result of an interaction between distinct separate entities. There is no creation outside of this basic logic. Like any other interaction in the natural world. Water, H2O, is made out of the combination between these two separate elements. Like a chemistry experimentation, you keep mixing the different elements and you wait to see what comes out of it. This guides us along the way and keeps nurturing the wonder of observing and experiencing these phenomena.

You often mention the vast space opened at the meeting point of the audible and the visible…

I think it has to do with the way our brains link together the visual and the auditive (before even talking about music and dance). There’s something in the action of processing what we hear and what we see at a given moment which I find fascinating. I think this space holds revelatory qualities about things much beyond a specific dance piece.