“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. After his military service, he entered the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv, with the aim of developing his musical practice. His first encounter with dance was 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 created two works and toured internationally. He started working as an independent choreographer in 1994.

During the following ten years, Gat has developed a unique and personal approach to choreography and dance making, through numerous projects, collaborations and creation processes, setting the foundations for his artistic vision and laying the groundwork for his future body of work.

He founded his company, Emanuel Gat Dance, at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv in 2004, and has since created a diverse repertoire of works. His first pieces for the company were created that same year: “Winter Voyage” to the music of Franz Schubert and “The Rite of Spring”, his original take on Stravinski’s masterpiece, which received a Bessy Award for best choreography for their presentation at Lincoln Center Festival in New York in 2006. He then created “K626” (2006) and “3for2007” (2007), before choosing to settle in France.

“Silent Ballet” (2008) was the first piece created in France, followed by “Winter Variations” in 2009 and “Brilliant Corners” in 2011 for which Gat also composed the music score. By that time, Emanuel Gat Dance has gained international recognition for its unique voice and has toured regularly to the four corners of the world to great critical acclaim.

In 2013, Emanuel Gat was named associated artist to the Montpellier Danse Festival, where he created “The Goldlandbergs” and “Corner Etudes”, and presented a photographic installation that was his debut work as a photographer. In 2014, he created “Plage Romantique and “SUNNY” in 2016, a collaboration with musician Awir Leon.

In 2017, Gat developed a unique collaboration with the Ballet de l'Opera de Lyon for the creation of “TENWORKS”, a program of ten short pieces mixing dancers from both companies; and “DUOS”, a series of site specific duets presented in several Museums and at different public locations. In 2018, Gat was named associated artist to the National Theater of Chaillot in Paris, and during that same year he collaborated with the prestigious Ensemble Modern from Frankfurt and created "Story Water" at the Cour d'Honneur at the Palais des Papes, one of the most iconic stages in the world during the Festival d’Avignon, gathering 12 dancers and 13 musicians, with music by Pierre Boulez, Rebecca Saunders and Gat himself.

Gat’s work was presented in most of the leading venues and festivals for dance all around the world for the past 25 years, danced by a strong and diverse group of long term collaborators. Parallel to his choreographic work, Gat designs the lighting to all of his works, making it an integral component of his creative process.

In recent years, Gat developed a photographic practice and has presented elaborate photographic installations alongside his stage work, through a series of photographs, dedicated to and inspired by specific pieces from his repertoire.

In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Gat created “LOVETRAIN2020”, a work for 14 dancers to the music of Tears For Fears. The work has seen its premier between two lockdowns early October, and received overwhelming response from audiences and critics alike. Gat is currently associated artist to l’Arsenal - Cité Musicale, Metz and is in the process of creating a new work to Puccini’s opera “Tosca”.

Gat is regularly invited by companies and dance institutions for which he creates or transmits pieces: in France, he has collaborated with Paris Opera Ballet, Ballet du Rhin, Ballet National de Marseille, Ballet de Lorraine and Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon. He is also guest choreographer of prestigious international companies: Sydney Dance Company, Tanztheater Bremen, Candoco Dance Company, Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Los Angeles Dance Project, Czech National Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Polish National Ballet, Cedar Lake (NY), Vancouver Ballet British Columbia, Scottish Dance Theater and Staatsballett Berlin.

During his entire career, Gat has developed a rich methodological set of tools and an original pedagogical approach to dance making. He is regularly invited to teach and collaborate with the world's leading dance schools and institutions, and in parallel, offers through Emanuel Gat Dance regular options for young dancers and makers to immerse themselves in his practice, through internships, workshops and master classes.

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