Diana Vishneva brings new Carlson and Maillot works to London

Diana Vishneva's dance programme On the Edge will get its UK début when it comes to the London Coliseum in April 2015. The evening consists of two works commissioned specifically for Vishneva: Jean-Christophe Maillot's intriguing pas de trois Switch, and Carolyn Carlson's profound solo work Woman in a Room.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Vish­neva said,

Car­o­lyn Carlson doesn't work with clas­sical dan­cers in principle.

But when she was convinced that they could collaborate successfully together and agreed to create Woman in a Room, Vishneva remembers the first day of rehearsals:

When I came to her rehearsal room, I saw that on the huge table, which became my part­ner in this piece, she had spread pages with poetry by Arseny Tarkovsky… I ended up recit­ing his poetry in my show, which is totally incred­ible for me.

I spoke to Carlson a few months ago about the project:

It was won­der­ful work­ing with Diana. This was some­thing! It was dif­fi­cult in the begin­ning because she's a diva, every­body takes care of her, and she's used to people giv­ing her steps.

As I've always been inspired by the film­maker Andrei Tarkovsky who used poems by his father, Arseny, for his works, I gave one of Arseny Tarkovsky's poems to Diana and said, “Diana we're going to work with this, with the films of Andrei Tarkovsky as inspir­a­tion.” Her eyes just opened, she loved it.

I said, “You have to under­stand this poem, and I want you to cre­ate with me.” No one had ever asked her that. It was a little dif­fi­cult in the begin­ning because she wanted me to do everything. When I said that we were going to impro­vise for a little bit, she looked at me and said, “I don't impro­vise.” I said, “Of course you do, just read the poem and show me what it is.”

It was a long pro­cess for her to believe that she didn't need just steps, but she could also give her own feel­ings about the work. Very interesting.

Ardani Artists now gives London the chance to see the results of this collaboration on the 14th, 16th and 18th April 2015. On the Edge is produced in association with the Diana Vishneva Foundation, a cultural and charitable organization she set up in 2010, that works in Russia, the USA and Japan to increase access to ballet for all social classes, to promote it, establish new dance projects and assist young performers and retired performers.

THE PROGRAMME

SWITCH
Choreography Jean-Christophe Maillot
Music Danny Elfman
Scenery Alain Lagarde
Costumes Jean-Christophe Maillot, Jean-Michel Laine
Ms Vishneva's costume Karl Lagerfeld

Performed by Diana Vishneva, Bernice Coppieters, Gaetan Morlotti

Music selections
From Serenada Schizophrana: End Tag, Blue Strings, A Brass thing, Improv for alto sax
From Rummy (Not Edited): Drone wild stereo, Theme 1.4 stereo

INTERVAL

WOMAN IN A ROOM
Choreography & scenography Carolyn Carlson
Music Giovanni Sollima, Rene Aubry
Music editor Nicolas de Zorzi
Costumes Chrystel Zingiro
Photos and video Maxime Ruiz

Performed by Diana Vishneva

Music selections
Giovanni Sollima – Aquilarco, “Aria”; Works, “Terra Aria”; Aquilarco, “Spinning top prelude”; We were trees, “The Architect”; Spasimo, “Il Tracciato di Marta”; We were trees, “Iguil”

René Aubry – Plaisirs d'amour, “Lungomare”

Tuesday 14th, Thursday 16th & Saturday 18th April, 7.30pm
London Coliseum, St. Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4ES
Tickets: £39 – £79
Box Office: 020 7845 9300 /www.eno.org

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.