Crowd, which was originally created in 2017, is without a doubt a key work of the celebrated French-Austrian choreographer Gisèle Vienne. It is now being presented for the first time by a company other than her own as Crowd #2 rewritten with OBV.

A group of dancers, each with their own character and history, like a gallery of portraits of a generation, meet on a stage that has been transformed into a dusty wasteland littered with the remains of a party in full swing.

Crowd tells a story of underground techno in 1990s Berlin, to the soundtrack that embraces the history of electronic music, with pride of place given to Detroit techno and the collective Underground Resistance. Crowd reminds us of stories of counterculture, these creative, intellectual and political spaces, immense and crucial, where people try to invent other ways of being, as a tribute to today’s vital counterculture.

Emotional and social movements are worked on as choreography, just like the formal choreographic work, a meticulous composition that unfolds in space the different temporalities, through different physical states, that make up the present time. Crowd is a sensory experience unfolding the density of the experience of the present time, where past, present, the construction of memory and anticipated future come together. The performers’ movements; slow motion, jerks, stops, and loops create powerful images and constantly recompose the arrangement of bodies, timeframes, and fictions questioning the influence of emotions on perception.

The performances of Crowd #2 rewritten with OBV are the culmination of a months-long process in which the complex inner worlds of the characters are developed by Gisèle Vienne, her collaborators Sophie Demeyer, Theo Livesey, Vincent Dupuy and Katia Petrowick, Martha Rodezno and the dancers of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.

Matthew Johnson featured in

Crowd #2 rewritten with OBV

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