With choreographies by Mauro Bigonzetti, Alejandro Cerrudo, Eric Gauthier, Eric Gauthier & Catarina Mora, Jiří Kylián, Paul Lightfoot & Sol León, Hans van Manen

PREMIERE: June 22, 2011

A sort of magic: The programmes with a number in their title have brought luck to Gauthier Dance. Ever since they started out with SIX PACK in 2008, the dance company of Theaterhaus Stuttgart has never stopped moving upwards. With five works by international star choreographers and two by Artistic Director Eric Gauthier, Lucky Seven continues the successful series. The stylistic diversity of this new mixed programme impresses just us much as the credits. Mauro Bigonzetti, one of the most important contemporary choreographers, contributes a world première; Hans van Manen his signature piece The Old Man and Me – a duo which made dance history when it was first performed by Nederlands Dans Theater III. Jiří Kylián's Six Dances based on Mozart's KV 571 has attained similar classic status, a pastoral for four rococo couples, with more than a hint of pre-revolutionary depths. Lightfoot/León's Shutters Shut refers to an avantgarde classic, playing with the rhythms of speech and accompanied by the voice of Gertrude Stein reciting one of her poems. In Lickety-Split shooting star Alejandro Cerrudo, Resident Choreographer of Hubbard Street Dance Company Chicago, acts out the encounter of three couples – very sensual, very sophisticated and with a slightly eccentric flair. Finally Eric Gauthier. In his world première Punk Love, the award winner of the German Dance Prize »Future« 2011 also explores a very special relationship – the secret connection between abandonment and pain. His second contribution was developed in collaboration with the acclaimed choreographer Catarina Mora who is known for her unique fusion of traditional flamenco with modern elements. The solo for Gauthier himself deals with a truly vital issue – a new life.


Lickety-split
Choreography: Alejandro Cerrudo
Assistant to the Choreographer: Cheryl Mann
Music: Devendra Banhart
Costume Design: Alejandro Cerrudo and Rebecca Shouse
Lighting Design: Ryan O’Gara
World Première: Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Chicago-IL, 27.09.2006
6 dancers / 16 min

In spite of its dynamic title, Lickety-Split comes with a distinctly relaxed, humorous touch. Set to the hypnotic music of Californian indie songwriter Devendra Banhart, shooting star Alejandro Cerrudo, Resident Choreographer of Hubbard Street Dance Company Chicago, acts out the encounter of three couples – very sensual, very sophisticated and with a slightly eccentric flair.


The Old Man and Me
Choreography: Hans van Manen
Assistant to the Choreographer: Mea Venema
Music: J. J. Cale, Igor Strawinsky, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Lighting Design: Joop Cabort
Costume Design: Keso Dekker
World Première: Nederlands Dans Theater III, Den Haag, NL, 29.02.1996
2 dancers / 16 min

Two people, a couple, shaped and shaken by a lot of shared experiences – disappointment, love, seduction, joy, happiness – yearning for a reunion but ending in shipwreck, like many times before. The Old Man and Me, named after the song of the legendary blues singer J. J. Cale, is a profound duo poised between silent melancholy and boyish humour: At times playful, inventive and full of clownery, at other times dramatic and relentlessly tragic, Hans van Manen confronts us with images of a relationship and situations taken from real life.
Created for Sabine Kupferberg und Gérard Lemaitre, two central figures of NDT III, the “old dancers‘” group of the Nederlands Dans Theater, The Old Man and Me premièred on 29th of February 1996 in The Hague. Following the première at The Bavarian State Ballet Munich in 2005, danced by Judith Turos und Ivan Liška, Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart is only the third company worldwide that performs Hans van Manen‘s masterpiece. For the first time the love-torn couple will be embodied by younger dancers. Hans van Manen: “Eric is a phantastic dancer! His age is not important. I would even have given him the piece if he was just 25!”


Punk Love
Choreography: Eric Gauthier
Music: Stephan M. Boehme
Costume Design: Gudrun Schretzmeier
Lighting Design: Mario Daszenies
World Première: Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, 22.06.2011
2 dancers / 5 min

Why do people get tattooed? What happens if I abandon myself to a touch that will inevitably leave permanent traces on my body? Ötzi the Iceman already wore a tattoo 5,000 years ago. In the 19th century King George V of Britain had one, too, and today the body of David Beckham is covered with them. Seamen and jailbirds wear them as a matter of course – and so do Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. Whether as talisman, as symbol of protest, as fashion accessory, proof of love or sign of belonging, whether as extensive tableau or engraved souvenir: A tattoo is always permanent. It lasts longer than many promises. It gets under your skin, underlines and conceals it, alienates or seduces. And it reminds us that we can never tell for sure what has marked a person. (Text: Rebecca Egeling)


Shutters Shut
Choreography: Paul Lightfoot & Sol León
Music: "If I told him: A complete portrait of Picasso". A poem written and read by Gertrude Stein
Costume Design: Paul Lightfoot & Sol León
Lighting Design: Tom Bevoort
World Première: Nederlands Dans Theater II, Den Haag, NL, 2003
2 dancers / 5 min

A choreography playing with the rhythms of speech, accompanied by the voice of Gertrude Stein reciting one of her poems. The poet's weird, dadaistic character finds its perfect match in the stuttering, repeatedly resumed movements of a pair of dancers: breathless, bizarre and totally absorbing.

Gertrude Stein: IF I TOLD HIM: A Completed Portrait of Picasso
If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him. Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he like it. If Napoleon if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him would he like it would he like it if I told him.
Now. Not now. And now. Now. Exactitude as kings. Feeling full for it. Exactitude as kings. So to beseech you as full as for it. Exactly or as kings.
Shutters shut and open so do queens. Shutters shut and shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and so shutters and so shutters shut and so shutters shut and shutters and so. And so shutters shut and so and also. And also and so and so and also. Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exact as a resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly in resemblance exactly a resemblance, exactly and resemblance. For this is so. Because....

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), American author and art collector, is, like Virginia Woolf, one of the women pioneers of literary modernism. With her experimental novels, essays, text portraits, poems, librettos and dramas, she defied the conventions of literature and played a leading part in 20th century avantgarde. Her verbal cubistic por- traits of artists like Marcel Duchamp, Isadora Duncan, Ernest Hemingway, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and others, follow in form and style the cubism of those artists who made famous appearances in her salon in Paris.


Pietra Viva
Choreography: Mauro Bigonzetti
Music: Antongiulio Galeandro
Costume Design: Mauro Bigonzetti
Lighting Design: Carlo Cerri
World Première: Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, 22.06.2011
2 dancers / 12 min

DEDICATO A‚TUTTI I SUD‘ DEL MONDO
Dedicated to each and every South in the world
(Mauro Bigonzetti)

Mauro Bigonzetti investigates the human body. In his choreographies, he designs images of strong corporeality in the scenery of the stage. Limits of physical possibilities dissolve and blur into streaming sculptures. Sometimes wild and grotesque, at other times vulnerable and fragile, Mauro Bigonzetti‘s creations always centre on the hu- man body in its pureness and beauty. For his intriguing Duo Pietra Viva, in English„Living Stone“, Mauro Bigonzetti found inspiration in the ethnic music of his compatriot Antongiulio Galeandro. (Text: Rebecca Egeling)


Carlito
Choreography: Eric Gauthier & Catarina Mora
Music: Mariano Martín
Lighting Design: Mario Daszenies
Costume Design: Gudrun Schretzmeier
Costume fabrication:: Horst Weichhold
World Première: Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, 22.06.2011
dance Eric Gauthier / 12 min

Flamenco is a frame of mind that, over the last one hundred years, grew into an artform and was declared World Heritage Treasure in 2010. Rooted in the elementary power of song and grounded by the guitar, the dance interprets the great themes of life like love, death, birth, god as well as social conditions. Despite its dramatic tension and origins in poverty, oppression, banishment and discrimination, the “vivo yo“ – the “I live“ – prevails in the art form of flamenco. On watching Flamenco, we are reminded of the unyielding power of all live forces.. (Text: Rebecca Egeling)


Six dances
Choreography: Jiří Kylián
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sechs Deutsche Tänze KV 571
Set & Costume Design: Jiří Kylián
Lighting Design: Joop Cabort
Technical Adaptation: Loes Schakenbos
World Première: Nederlands Dans Theater I, Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam-NL, 24.10.1986
8 dancers / 13 min

„Two centuries separate us from the time, Mozart wrote his German Dances. A historical period shaped considerably by wars, revolutions, and all sorts of social upheavals. With this in mind I found it impossible to simply create different dance numbers reflecting merely the humor and musical brilliance of the composer. Instead, I have set six seemingly nonsensical acts, which obviously ignore their surroundings. They are dwarfed in face of the ever present troubled world, which most of us for some unspecified reason carry in our souls. Although the entertaining quality of Mozart’s Sechs Deutsche Tänze enjoys great general popularity, it shouldn‘t only be regarded as a burlesque. Its humour ought to serve as a vehicle to point towards our relative values. Mozart‘s ability to react upon difficult circumstances with a self-preserving outburst of nonsen- sical poetry is well known.“
„Mozart, (...) is the greatest example of someone, whose life span was painfully limited, but who nevertheless understood life in all its richness, fantasy, clownery and madness. It is his spirit, and his acceptance of the fact, that our life is not more than a masquerade or a dress rehearsal for something deeper and much more meaningful, which has inspired me to make this work.“ Jiří Kylián


a production by Theaterhaus Stuttgart in co-production with Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and in co-operation with Schauburg Munich
A warm thank you to the sponsors of Gauthier Dance // Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart: Adolf Würth GmbH & Co. KG, EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, Fashion- und Lifestylehaus Breuninger Stuttgart and the supporters Germanwings GmbH, Dr. Stefan von Holtzbrinck, John-Cranko-Society, First Friends und Friends of Gauthier Dance
Lucky Seven is sponsored by the Baden-Wuerttemberg Foundation.

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