Born in Stockholm, Petter Jacobsson started his studies in dance at  the age of three and was further educated at the Royal Swedish Ballet  School, he later graduated from the Vaganova Academy in St.Petersburg in  1982.

As a principal dancer with the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet in London  between 1984 to 1993, he toured the globe dancing all of the renowned  classical roles as well as appearing as guest artist with numerous  international companies. In 1993, he moved to New York to begin a  freelance career, studying with Merce Cunningham and working with Twyla  Tharp Dance Company, Irene Hultman Dance and later Deborah Hay.

Petter and Thomas Caley started working as a creative team in the mid  nineties, choreographing works for Martha@Mother, the Joyce Soho in New  York and the choreography for the opera Staden at the Royal Opera in  Stockholm, a commission for the 1998 Cultural capital of Europe.

In 1999, when Petter was appointed the artistic directorship of the  Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm, they made the move to Europe to  continue their artistic collaboration. An exceptional embodiment of  their work for the RSB was the creating of two immense happenings,In nooks and crannies 2000 and 2001.  The project included the Royal Ballet, Opera and Orchestra, as well as  independent artists who took-over non-traditional, yet possible,  performance spaces occupying the entire Royal Opera House of  Stockholm. Petter received "Choreographer of the year 2002” from the Society of Swedish Choreographers in recognition of the modernisation of the Royal Swedish Ballet. 

After years of collaboration, Petter and Thomas established an independent dance company in 2005 - works include Nightlife, Unknown partner, Flux, No mans land- no lands  man,The nearest nearness – in 2002 they won a “Goldmask” for best choreography for the musical Chess with Björn Ulveus and Benny Andersson (ABBA).

As of 2011, Petter is leading and choreographing together with Thomas  Caley for the CCN Ballet de Lorraine in Nancy. Their curating for the  CCN invites as well a wide variety of artistic talent from around the  world. Each invited creator joins in the active questioning of a  specific theme. La saison de La 12/13, Tête à tête à têtes 13/14, Live 14/15, Folk + Danse = (R)évolution 15/16 and Des plaisirs inconnus 16/17.  To insure a lively and non fixed use of the art form they continue  their searching through installations for the Musée d’Art Moderne in  Paris and Musée Pompidou Metz and an original initiative LAB-BLA-BAL, where a series of open house art experiments, workshops, and discussions are given at our choreographic center.

Source : Ballet de Lorraine

More information: http://ballet-de-lorraine.eu/en/

Art critic and curator, Christophe Wavelet co-directed the activities of  the Quatuor Knust project (1993-2001), sat on the editorial boards of  the journals Vacarme and Mouvement, watched over the activities of the international research pole at the National Center of Dance, then directed the LiFE- International Place of Emerging Forms (2005-2010), institution dedicated to the production and diffusion of contemporary scenes of art. His articles and essays are published in numerous magazines and occasionally in exhibition catalogs. Prioritizing discursive projects from different cultural areas, in 2012 and 2013 he  was the laureate of the Akademie Schloss Solitude, and worked on an essay and the French translation of Writings of the Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica. He also designed and curated the "Scenes de Geste" program at the CND in November 2015.
 

Francis Picabia,  (born January 22, 1879, Paris,  France—died November 30, 1953, Paris), French painter, illustrator,  designer, writer, and editor, who was successively involved with the art  movements Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism.

Picabia  was the son of a Cuban diplomat father and a French mother. After  studying at the École des Arts Décoratifs (1895–97), he painted for  nearly six years in an Impressionist mode akin to that of Alfred Sisley. In 1909 he adopted a Cubist style, and, along with Marcel Duchamp, he helped found in 1911 the Section d’Or, a group of Cubist artists. Picabia went on to combine the Cubist style with its more lyrical variation known as Orphism in such paintings as I See Again in Memory My Dear Udnie (1913–14) and Edtaonisl  (1913). In these early paintings he portrayed assemblages of closely  fitted, metallic-looking abstract shapes. As Picabia moved away from  Cubism to Orphism, his colours and shapes became softer.

In 1915 Picabia traveled to New York City, where he, Duchamp, and Man Ray began to develop what became known as an American version of Dada, a nihilistic art movement that flourished in Europe and New York from 1915 to about 1922. In New York Picabia exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery, 291, and contributed to the proto-Dadaist review 291.  About 1916 he gave up the Cubist style completely and began to produce  the images of satiric, machinelike contrivances that are his chief  contribution to Dadaism. The drawing Universal Prostitution (1916–19) and the painting Amorous Procession (1917) are typical of his Dadaist phase; their association of mechanistic forms with sexual allusions were successfully shocking satires of bourgeois values.

In 1916 Picabia returned to Europe. He settled in Barcelona, where he published the first issues of his own satiric journal 391 (named in reference to the New York review). He subsequently joined Dadaist movements in Paris and Zürich.  In 1921 he renounced Dada on the grounds that it was no longer vital  and had lost its capacity to shock. In 1925 he left Paris to settle in  the south of France,  where he experimented with painting in various styles. He returned to  live in Paris in 1945, and he spent the final years of his life painting  in a mostly abstract mode. Picabia was notable for his inventiveness,  adaptability, absurdist humour, and disconcerting changes of style.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Erik Satie, original name in full Eric Alfred Leslie Satie,  (born May 17, 1866, Honfleur,  Calvados, France—died July 1, 1925, Paris), French composer whose  spare, unconventional, often witty style exerted a major influence on  20th-century music, particularly in France.

Satie  studied at the Paris Conservatory, dropped out, and later worked as a  café pianist. About 1890 he became associated with the Rosicrucian movement and wrote several works under its influence, notably the Messe des pauvres (composed 1895; Mass of the Poor). In 1893, when he was 27, Satie had a stormy affair with the painter Suzanne Valadon. From 1898 he lived alone in Arcueil, a Paris suburb, cultivating an eccentric mode of life and permitting no one to enter his apartment. Beginning in 1905, he studied at the Schola Cantorum under Vincent d’Indy and Albert Roussel for three years. About 1917 the group of young composers known as Les Six adopted him as their patron saint. Later the School of Arcueil, a group including Darius Milhaud, Henri Sauguet, and Roger Désormiere, was formed in his honour.

Satie’s music represents the first definite break with 19th-century French Romanticism; it also stands in opposition to the works of composer Claude Debussy. Closely allied to the Dada and Surrealist movements in art, it refuses to become involved with grandiose sentiment or transcendent significance, disregards traditional forms and tonal structures, and characteristically takes the form of parody, with flippant titles, such as Trois morceaux en forme de poire (1903; Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear) and Embryons Desséchés (1913; Desiccated Embryos),  and directions to the player such as “with much illness” or “light as  an egg,” meant to mock works such as Debussy’s preludes.

Satie’s flippancy and eccentricity, an intimate part of his musical aesthetic, epitomized the avant-garde  ideal of a fusion of art and life into an often startling but unified  personality. He sought to strip pretentiousness and sentimentality from  music and thereby reveal an austere essence. This desire is reflected in piano pieces such as Trois Gnossiennes (1890), notated without bar lines or key signatures. Other early piano pieces, such as Trois Sarabandes (1887) and Trois Gymnopédies (1888), use then-novel chords that reveal him as a pioneer in harmony. His ballet Parade (1917; choreographed by Léonide Massine, scenario by Jean Cocteau, stage design and costumes by Pablo Picasso)  was scored for typewriters, sirens, airplane propellers, ticker tape,  and a lottery wheel and anticipated the use of jazz materials by Igor Stravinsky and others. The word Surrealism was used for the first time in Guillaume Apollinaire’s program notes for Parade. Satie’s masterpiece, Socrate for four sopranos and chamber orchestra (1918), is based on the dialogues of Plato. His last, completely serious piano works are the five Nocturnes (1919). Satie’s ballet Relâche (1924) contains a Surrealistic film sequence by René Clair; the film score Entr’acte, or Cinéma, serves as an example of his ideal background, or “furniture,” music.

Satie was dismissed as a charlatan  by musicians who misunderstood his irreverence and wit. They also  deplored the nonmusical influences in his life—during his last 10 years  his best friends were painters, many of whom he had met while a café  pianist. Satie was nonetheless deeply admired by composers of the rank  of Darius Milhaud, Maurice Ravel,  and, in particular, Claude Debussy—of whom he was an intimate friend  for close to 30 years. His influence on French composers of the early  20th century and on the later school of Neoclassicism was profound.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica