Press and audience on HEAR EYES MOVE. Dances with Ligeti in Avignon 2023

We are delighted to share the new press articles as well as audience comments about the Hear Eyes Move. Dances with Ligeti performed at the Festival in Avignon Les Hivernales.

The piece received a recognition by La Provence and Ouvert aux Publics magazines. It was also selected by the Office National de Diffusion Artistique as one of the best performances recommended to be seen at the Festival.

We share with you also a selection of the press and audience quotes accompanied by the video presenting the audience opinions after the performance.

‘”Hear eyes Move. Dances with Ligeti”, fortissimo!

(…)Brian Ca, Cree Barnett-Williams, Malcolm Sutherland, Elisabeth Christine Holth and Piera Jovic, who all put in an enormous, physical, harmonious performance…Solos alternate with ensemble movements on a stage bathed in white for an atypical but powerful dance-concert! We love it!’

– Patrick Denis, La Provence –

Hear Eyes Move is presented at the end of the evening at the Théâtre des Hivernales by Elisabeth Schilling. She is one of only two female choreographers in this programme, in an art form that is in serious decline in this respect. She and her five dancers have set themselves the ambitious challenge of tackling the powerful and complex music of Hungarian composer György Ligeti. His 18 piano etudes, of legendary virtuosity, each develop a precise stylistic element: polyrhythm, fifth chords, blocked keys, seemingly infinite falling and rising movements, canon, interlacing…

In a technically perfect performance, the dancers merge with the piano, revealing the structures of the works, or the discrepancies between them. They also take liberties, as in the troubling minutes when they do not dance, remaining on the floor while the music takes off in cavalcades.

Elisabeth Schilling’s choreography is accurate and aesthetically remarkable, working on the architecture of dance at its most abstract, in keeping with the spirit of Ligeti’s studies. But the bodies, always, when they collapse, when they tremble, emerge from abstraction and represent. Images, feelings and emotions that contemporary music has long kept at arm’s length, but which are powerfully reborn underfoot.

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– Agnès Freschel, Journal de la Zébuline –

‘Hear Eyes Move is a sublime piece performed by 5 dazzling dancers. Luxembourg choreographer Elisabeth Schilling uses the Études pour piano by Hungarian composer György Ligeti to explore the relationship between dance and music. The choreographic score is just like the 18 Études in the work: erudite, intoxicating and majestic. The absolutely rigorous performers deliver a dance ensemble that is not devoid of feeling, where the solo rubs shoulders with the duo, trio and choral ensembles. It’s a brilliantly performed piece with the right balance, and an evocative title once you’ve seen the programme.‘

– Laurent Bourbousson, Ouvert aux Publics –

‚A very promising young choreographer’

‚Most dangerous contemporary dance I have seen‘

‚The most beautiful hands in contemporary dance‘

– Audience –