Le Sacre du Printemps: a haptic rite

A (mostly) non-visual, haptic choreography on "Le Sacre du Printemps" (first act), performed directly on the body of the visitor.

Strongly related to, but not always rooted in Stravinsky’s music, the piece uses and expands the vocabulary developed in the previous performances for the touch sense, including cross-sensory sound/touch correlations.

The visitors are blindfolded, not to establish a power relationship but in order to produce a concentration on other sense modalities. The guest is not moving actively, concentrating instead on his or her subjective bodily sensations and architecture. The haptic score offers both a compositional structure and immediate bodily experience (rather than kinaesthetic empathy.)

Choreography: Kenji Ouellet

Performers: Susanne Eder, Franziska Kronfoth, Kenji Ouellet, Anna-Luella Zahner

Production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer

Supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

Press/visitors comments   (Download reviews)

…for all intents and purposes an incredible performance, 18 intense minutes during which the participants lived through great, sometimes even contradictory, emotions.

(…)

Being deprived of sight allowed the spectator to better concentrate on the sounds, and since the music was so to speak « acted out » on the body, it opened up new frontiers in the ways to attend a performance.

(…) Everything became more intense, direct, immediate and new nuances and unique emotions could be experienced if one managed to let go all the way by setting aside the structures of social conditioning.

(…)

Ouellet produced an excellent piece of work, dense with meanings and references. The multimedia artist, also trained as a classical musician, inserted multiple quotes from historical works made on the Stravinsky, also carrying out a musical research which could be clearly understood, just like his experimentation using the body as a sensorial instrument could be intuited.

-F. Cassine, La Stampa, 31.07.2015

The theater has managed to recreate a catharsis without using a single word.

-S. Frigerio, www.rumorscena.com

It is an unknown sensation, very strange, which brings you very far if you have a bit of imagination (I saw myself surrounded with gentle imps and evil witches, ending up burnt at the stake with the body twisted in flames, then thrown in a tomb, with earth covering my face (!). A funny journey outside of time and space, where you feel different, light,  abandoned to those hands, that body which dances on you and makes you dance too while you are lying down in the dark, bathed in the music. An original, fascinating corporeal experience.

-N. Bourbon, www.regarts.com

We experienced a moment, during almost 20 minutes, which can be described as very special. An especially tactile experience  which, in all its forms, stimulated moods, thoughts, sensations, anxieties and finally a new sense of freedom. Time passed quickly in this beautiful journey which smells of theater and life.

-L. Uggè, www.artalks.net

This sensorial experience full of surprises lasts about 20 minutes, for sure very physical for the performers. One gets out with the feeling of being oneself a part of the score,  to have been immersed in the work.

A moment rich with sensations, sometimes sensual, to experience by oneself since the performance seems to generate such different emotions and sensations in each visitor.

-L. Coudol, www.froggydelight.com

More than a spectacle, a catharsis.

-A. G. Selva, www.teatro.it

Wonderful and powerful ! I couldn’t have imagined before that I can experience so much in 16 Minutes.

Body impressions of the performance come back constantly, very diffuse and hence inspire to reflect about it. It is incredible how the body simply records everything.

I felt comfortable, alert, excited, and happily anxious at the same time.

Beautiful, intense, deep idea.

This Sacre interpretation is the most intensive, the most direct, exciting and immediate that I can imagine. The world is split in two : there are the lucky ones who were there, and the rest.

 
Dear « A haptic rite » team, thank you very, very much. I died.

Between curiosity, fear and relaxation – sensitive, acoustic experience at last without visual stimuli. Relieving and challenging at the same time.