“A playground for a group of ten dancers, a place where the forces that lead to movement take their free course, confront each other and grow in power until they create a coherent world.” This is how the Israeli Emanuel Gat introduces his new production, 'Brilliant Corners', whose title is borrowed from Thelonious Monk and whose indicative value is: Emanuel Gat is jazz like Toni Morrison is jazz, like Piet Mondrian is jazz. Both a musician and a choreographer, sensitive to both notes and silence, here he has composed the music for his show for the first time. With his dancers, he has created a moment where the powers of the measure of freedom coexist and where “rules and mechanisms are established only to immediately confront their exceptions”. With cast shadows and brilliant glares, restraint and force, he launches an invitation to share the intensity of the moment.  

A warning to all those who love action: the piece 'Brilliant Corners' does not seek to demonstrate or establish something any more than it is about something in particular: it is something in itself. From the start of the play, a pact is made with the spectator: do not try to understand what is happening with words; let yourself be carried away in order to hear more, see more, feel more. 

Emanuel Gat became a dancer almost by accident at the age of 23. Not long after his military service, he took part in a workshop lead by the Israeli choreographer Nir Ben Gal. It was a revelation. “Everything happened very quickly. I quit music because I had found a place that suited me through another form of expression. I wanted to dance, so I joined a troupe and started choreographing after a year, and I've continued on that path ever since.” “Quit music”? Not really: when he rehearses, Gat swears that he can hear movement more than see it. He daringly explores all musical territories, navigating between styles and eras like a natural, from Bach to Schubert ('Winterreise', which won him a Bessie Award in 2006), from Mozart to the 'Sacre du Printemps' (Rite of Spring), merging it with salsa, from the English baroque of John Dowland ('Hark!', commissioned by the Opéra National de Paris in 2009), to the electro of SquarePusher and even Xenakis ('Windungen', 2008). A 'Silent Ballet' was therefore the logical culmination to all of this, whereby dance establishes its own score out of the silence. Gat was also 'jazz' in a memorable solo on John Coltrane's My Favorite Things. Far from illustrating music, he restores a radical liberty to it that is by turns tempestuous, introverted, explosive and inert, playing with space and tempo as and when it chooses. It is a way of saying “I come and I go, I kill myself and come back to life: these are a few of my favourite things”. This graceful authority, this intuition for rupture and syncopation, are now put in the hands of ten dancers and pushed to their most scintillating limits, their 'brilliant corners'. Though the title is taken from a Thelonious Monk album, the music is composed entirely by Gat using hundreds of samples taken from different musical worlds, which frame, respond to and confront each other. From Monk Gat has retained not the product but the essence, seizing upon the title, 'Brilliant Corners', where he has found an echo of his own project: “A fine example of what words become when we use them as concrete material. We cannot understand this title literally, yet it generates a perfectly clear meaning.” Around these corners, we find the noteworthy elements of Emanuel Gat's work: the distant imprint of Oriental sensuality, choreographic confidence, sovereign authority and a taste for action that he sums up in one sentence: “On the first day of rehearsals, I only had a very rough idea of a point of departure, but as soon as the starting signal is given, you know that something is going to happen.”

Credits

Choregraphy, music and lights : Emanuel Gat 
Dancers : Hervé Chaussard, Amala Dianor, Andrea Hackl, Fiona Jopp, Michael Löhr, Pansun Kim, Philippe Mesia, Geneviève Osborne, François Przybylski, Rindra Rasoaveloson 
Technical director : Samson Milcent

Brilliant Corners est une commande de Dance Umbrella (Londres), Biennale di Venezia (Venise) et Dansens Hus (Stockholm) au sein du réseau ENPARTS-European Network of Performing Arts qui bénéficie du soutien de la Commission Européenne.

Coproduction Festival Montpellier Danse 2011, Sadler's Wells (Londres), deSingel (Anvers) Avec le soutien de la Fondation BNP Paribas

Video direction : Luc Riolon
Production : 24 images

Emanuel Gat was born in Israel in 1969. He started dancing at the age of 23 during a workshop led by Israeli choreographer Nir Ben Gal. Few months later he joined the Liat Dror Nir Ben Gal Company with whom he toured internationally. He started working as an independent choreographer in 1994.

Ten years later, Emanuel founded his company Emanuel Gat Dance at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv, with whom he has created several pieces of which « Winter Voyage » (2004) and « The Rite of Spring » (2004) won a Bessy Award; « K626 » in 2006 and « 3for2007 » in 2007, before choosing to settle in France, at the Maison Intercommunale de la Danse in Istres. « Silent Ballet » (2008) was the first piece created in France, followed by « Winter variations » in 2009 and « Brilliant Corners » in 2011.

In 2013, Emanuel Gat was associated artist to the Montpellier Danse Festival for which the company developed the project « Up Close Up » proposing two new works : « The Goldlandbergs » and « Corner Etudes », a photographic installation « It’s people, how abstract can it get ? » and a choreographic event « Danses de Cour ».
In 2014 Emanuel Gat creates "Plage Romantique", a one hour work for 9 dancers, in the Agora courtyard during the 34th Festival Montpellier Danse.

Emanuel is associated choreographer to Montpellier Danse Festival for the seasons 16-18, and has presented « Sunny », a choreography for 10 dancers, as his first piece within this association at the festival during summer 2016. The work is a collaboration with musician Awir Leon, former dancer with the company, who is playing live for this piece. Emanuel is currently preparing his second project as part of his residency at Montpellier Danse, which will include two productions; a unique collaboration with the Ballet de l'Opera de Lyon, « Tenworks » (for Jean-Paul), a program of ten short new pieces mixing dancers from both companies, and « Duos », a série of duets presented at different public locations around the city of Montpellier during the festival.

Emanuel is regularly invited to set his work and create new choreographies for dance companies around the world including: The Paris Opera Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, Tanztheater Bremen, Le Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Ballet de Marseille, The Royal Swedish Ballet, Polish National Ballet, Ballet de Lorraine, Cedar Lake, Ballet British Colombia and Ballet de l'Opera de Lyon among others.

Source : Emanuel Gat 's website

More information

emanuelgat.com

After studies of mathematics preparatory class and medecine studies, Luc Riolon begins to make films within the framework of his Faculty of Medicine, then met the famous choreographers of the 80s (Maguy Marin, Mark Tompkins, Josef Nadj, Daniel Larrieu Daniel, Odile Duboc, Josette Baiz, Angelin Prljocaj, etc.) with whom he shoots numerous films (re-creation for the camera, the illegal securements). In the 80s with the American choreographer Mark Tompkins he introduces the video on the stage, broadcasting live on big screens the images which he shoots with his camera by being on the stage with the dancers, mixing live images and pre-recorded images. With Daniel Larrieu he participates in the creation of the famous show WATERPROOF, the contemporary choreography which takes place in a swimming pool, by filming live) the dancers dancing in the water and mixing the live images with pre-recorded underwater images. This choreography has been shown in many countries (USA, Canada, Spain, England…)
Then he collaborates during 10 years with the famous french TV producer Eve Ruggieri for her programs" Musics in the heart ". He shoots with her of numerous documentaries about classical music, opera singers and dance. From 1999 he directs documentaries of scientific popularization, by following researchers attached to the resolution of a particular ecologic enigma. These two artistic and scientific domains which can seem separated are nevertheless, for Luc Riolon, connected by the same approach : the deep desire to understand the world, by the art or by the scientific research, and to restore it to the largest number. Among his recent scientific documentaries, we can quote for example " The Enigma of the Black Caiman ", Living and dying in the swamp " or " The Nile delta: The end of the miracle ". “Chernobyl, a natural history ? “ These documentaries of scientific popularization recently have been awarded in international festivals.

Source: Vimeo