Le Cercle
Le Cercle
For the conference “Dancing Across Trenches. 100 Years of Le Sacre du Printemps,” Dominique Müller and Detlef Weitz have developed a three-part video installation that captures significant moments from the still-evocative event of the 1913 ballet performance of “Le Sacre du Printemps.” Three large, hanging fabric panels form a fragment of the striking Circle of Sacrifice figure from Nijinsky’s choreography, floating in space. These textile projection surfaces, illustrated with figurines (design: Andree Volkmann), are reminiscent of the costumes designed by Nicholas Roerich. Ornaments stamped with ambiguous war motifs form the background matrix onto which the three-channel video work, composed of choreographies from the past hundred years, is projected.
The film montage was edited from more than twenty productions in short sequences to create a flowing collage of movement. It thus artistically analyzes the focal points and distinctive features of the hundred-year history of production. Stravinsky’s music organizes this cinematic choreography, creating astonishing juxtapositions and connections between the various productions. This choreographic synopsis of the last hundred years demonstrates the full range of the central figure of the circle of victims: sometimes individually, sometimes as a group, sometimes as a man or woman, they are victims and are sacrificed. Isolated and striking movements begin and are unexpectedly replaced by the next. The bodies dance in a circle as if a giant machine were emotionlessly absorbing them in an industrial rhythm, even devouring them: A dance over the trenches of the coming, brutal war?