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Always created with relevance to the audience in mind, André Gingras’ work provides intelligent commentary on issues pervading our worldwide conscience – cultural identity, gene manipulation, the plight of refugees – presented in a thematically layered environment of arresting visual imagery, sardonic humor, and impeccable choreography.

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André Gingras Biography

André Gingras was born in Canada and studied in Toronto, Montreal and New York City. His studies in Canada encompassed theater, English literature, and contemporary dance. He received a Canada Council Arts Award to pursue his dance education in New York City. In NYC he worked with Christopher Gillis, Doug Varone, Mariko Tanabe, and the Doris Humphrey Repertory Co. In the course of performing with the Humphrey Company, he worked with Lucas Hoving and danced José Limon's roles across North America. Since moving to Europe in 1996, André Gingras has worked extensively with Robert Wilson. He has toured internationally with Mr. Wilson's repertory (TSE- ‘96, Seventy Angels on the Façade – ‘98, The Days Before – ‘99, Relative Light – ‘00, Prometheus – ‘01), and has taught in Europe and North America. In Holland, he has worked with Arthur Rosenfeld (Kop eraf- ‘96), Onafhankelijk Toneel (Hamlet- ‘97) and Min Tanaka (The Magic Flute-‘98).

André Gingras began choreographing in Holland in 1999. After an extensive career in dance and theater, his desire to explore a highly physical and visual personal language began to manifest itself. His movement research finds its inspiration in the martial arts, in breakdance, in the physical symptoms related to specific medical conditions and in post-modern dance and theater. His desire is to interface dance with the visual and digital arts and to create new hybrid performance experiences. Gingras’ choreography CYP17 premiered at the Cadance Festival 2000 (The Hague, The Netherlands) and became one of the sensations of the season. An extensive tour through the Netherlands was followed by many invitations from festivals and theaters in Europe and in India, including renowned events such as Romaeuropa, Rencontres Chorégraphiques de Seine-Saint-Denis (Bagnolet, France) and the Biennale of Venice (Italy). For CYP17, Gingras was awarded the Encouragement Prize 2001 by the Amsterdam Art Fund.

In June 2002, André Gingras collaborated as a choreographer with theater director Peter Stein in Stein's production of Penthesilea, which was premiered in Epidauros, Greece, and toured throughout Europe. In the same year, Gingras’ second Korzo production, The Sweet Flesh Room, was premiered at the Cadance Festival in The Hague and toured throughout Holland and in England. This work was a further step in the collaboration between André Gingras and Fabio Iaquone, the video designer of CYP17. In January 2003, André Gingras premiered his full length work The Lindenmeyer System, in which he examines the theme of migration. The piece has been selected as one of the highlights of season 2003-2004 by the jury of the Dutch Dance Festival and was presented in Tanztheater International, Hannover, and at the Biennale de Charleroi/Danses as well as France and Germany.

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Repertory

trans.form

Coming soon…

Hypertopia (56 minutes)

Hypertopia is a full evening work for four performers deeply layered with video.

It is conceived as a piece in three parts, each looking at a different aspect of the central themes, purity and utopia. There will also be a separate installation component that could be placed in the lobby of the theatre as a preface to the piece, or that could stand on its own as an installation with no performers.

The concept of purity throughout human history has two distinct aspects, the private, inward-turning act of the individual seeking to fulfill his or her own definition of the word, and the public and outward-turning act in which an individual or group seeks to spread their view to others, to convince or force others to conform to a standard, an icon of purity which is held up as an example to be emulated by all.

This obsession with purity, or the search for some sort of perfected life, which we see in so many forms in the world today, manifests itself on many levels and scales. It exists from the very intimate, private level such as the search for physical perfection and control over the body, to the global­ in all of the positive ideologies and negative fanaticisms, political, religious, and nationalistic that today perhaps more than ever affect all of our lives, wherever we live.

In this context, the echoes of utopia and dystopia heard in the title are also significant. The prevalence of combative ideologies will be highly present in this work. Images of POW’s in Iraq will be juxtaposed against foreigners being threatened with beheadings on CNN and utopic soviet workers will be compared with capitalist market “freedoms”.

The word “hyperopia” refers to far-sightedness and tunnel vision. This physical metaphor as well as myopia and other visual distortions will be addressed throughout our research. These physiological parameters will be applied to the stage work affecting how the piece is organized spatially, how the performers are viewed (fully, partially or not at all) and the proximity to the public, engaging the audience in their seating space or from the farthest point in the theater.

choose). The responses to the questionnaire will contribute to the content of both performance and installation. Furthermore the questionnaire will inform and inspire the rehearsal process, guiding us towards contemporary concerns about the ideological systems that we currently inhabit. Who are extraordinary individuals in our time? What are exemplary ways of life? Why has fundamentalism reemerged within our societies and what is it replacing?

Where possible, Hypertopia will serve as a lecture and dialogue event. For each performance, local civic and/or cultural leaders will be contacted and one will be invited to discuss with the audience and a moderator what they are doing to better the life of that particular city.

In form, these topics will be looked at from a visual artist’s perspective, in terms of portrait, still life and landscape, the structure would be broken into three segments as mentioned above, each one reflecting visually and in content one of these three forms. The information garnered from the internet will also be organized and presented within these three frames of reference and presented with the differing perspectives from distant and monumental to very close and personal. The video will also reference these three forms and be very present throughout the performance. The video will “co-exist” with the performers, at times taking over the function of portrait or landscape as necessary. In this way the piece will be a constant dialogue between “live” and pre-recorded events, both having equal value in the total performance experience. It is of particular interest to us to find a deeper connection with video as a dramaturgical element, not aesthetic backdrop, but a partner with the performers that expresses an abstract visual dramaturgy parallel to the overall.

The movement material will be drawn from non-traditional vocabulary. As with other works such as CYP17, movement investigations will be influenced by neurological studies (in this case with a specific interest towards those dealing with vision and sight), animal-human hybridizations and computer programs for the arts like Photoshop and Final Cut. Ideas of vision, myopia, hyperopia and visual distortions with relation to migraine symptoms will also be used to develop the physical elements of Hypertopia.

Specifically, a source of inspiration for movement material will be the anatomies of birds and insects that, throughout history, have been held to represent some ideal of purity, such as the dove and the pelican (both associated with Christian mythology), the butterfly (seen in some Native American mythology as being the soul of the dead), the scorpion (in Greek mythology placed in the heavens as a sign of purification).

A movement language specific to this piece will be developed through tasks made in collaboration with the dancers, drawing ideas from a number of sources that relate in some way, either directly or abstractly, to the themes of purity and utopia. This physical language will have the dynamic range similar to what the subject matter possesses. The static rigidity of fundamentalism will be present and cohabitate with the extreme kinetics of fanaticism.

Lindenmeyer SYSTEM (70 min., site specific)

An environmentally specific production for seven performers, The Lindenmeyer System involves audiences in a farcical, black comedy inspired by human migration and cultural identity. The Lindenmeyer System may be staged for up to 200 audience members on formal stages or in alternative spaces. Upon arrival, a sticker is slapped on the audiences chest: EU citizen or non-EU citizen. Next, they are informed to strap on a wrist band and then each audience member’s wrist band is subsequently fastened to the stool upon which they must sit for the duration of the performance. One performer uses a megaphone to bellow instructions, in a performance that evokes both merriment and terror –

The mood is mostly rather playful, due to the quick tempo
and quasi nonchalance of the slightly chaotic action.
The Lindenmeyer System is a funny happening with a light, politically tinted undertone.”
Isabella Lanz, NRC Handelsblad

Simultaneously, performers manipulate and coerce one another in acts of solidarity and division. In spite of this atmosphere of oppression, the environment swings from playful, nonchalant interactions to chaotic, savage dances surrounding the audience. The audience travels through a world of bizarre actions and overwhelming images of oppression, solidarity, and mutual alliances created by computer animator Bas van Huizen. While named for Aristid Lindenmeyer, a Swedish botanist who developed a model for charting plant growth, the work is deeply informed by Europe’s cultural/ethnic migration and the ensuing refugee and asylum policies. Gingras asks, “What do we do with all these wars, the streams of people who are set into motion because of them? That dilemma runs through our entire history and has effect on how we live now.”

Sweet Flesh Room (55 min., trio)

In The Sweet Flesh Room Gingras examines the conditions we need in order to feel a sense of security. These coincide closely with being able to trust ones own perceptions and our inability to integrate excessive violence into our concept of man. In a world where we are constantly confronted with uncertainties, the safe haven of truth disappears. Next to the reality of our own perception, is the reality of CNN, the reality of reality TV, the reality of the new media, and everything in between.

Moreover, in order to maintain our sense of security, the phenomena of disease, violence and cruelty are completely shut out. The existence of serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Gilles de Rais and mental disorders such as the Korsakov-syndrome and autism, indicate a fundamental degradation of our sense of security. That it is possible to treat such heavy themes with lucidity and even humor, Gingras has already proven with CYP 17. Through his intelligent use of the various media, Gingras is able to layer his pieces and find the perfect balance between the absurd and the macabre.

Choreography: André Gingras; video: Fabio Iaquone; dance: Jens Biedermann, Thomas Falk, Marco Jodes; dramaturgy: Sue Jane Stoker; composer: Joseph Hyde; costume design: Asalia Khadjé; set design: André Gingras; light design: Roland van Ulden.

The Sweet Flesh Room is produced by Korzo producties, The Hague, the Netherlands in co-production with Change Performing Arts, Milan, Italy and the Tanzhaus NRW, Düsseldorf, Germany, and is financially supported by the Dutch Fund for the Performing Arts and CoDaCo Dance Web 14Funds.

CYP 17 (40 min., solo)

Forty minutes in length, CYP17 is a solo dance and video performance that creates a “freak show of the future,” probing questions about what our lives will be like in the wake of gene manipulation, super athletes and alien pregnancies. Performed by a solo dancer in a space without exits, a surrounding cocoon of white walls are covered in dynamic projections. Audiences are held until curtain time – entering in one large group with the soloist waiting in the performance space.

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