ECCE/Claire Croizé & Etienne Guilloteau - Pole Reports from Space
During a double residency in STUK (4 to 14 and 24 to 28 June), the creation starts of Pole Reports from Space, based on the music from the Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES), commissioned by the Art Stations Foundation and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM).
Claire and Etienne have accepted their invitation to create a piece for two Polish dancers, Krystyna Lama Szydłowska and Justyna Kalbarczyk, with music made within the iconic PRES. This music studio, which existed from 1957 to 2004, developed bold and visionary electronic music when Poland was still within the communist sphere of influence. They focus on the period between the 60s and the early 80s and use work by, among others, Eugeniusz Rudnik, Elzbieta Sikora and Krystof Knittel: subversive artists and pioneers of electronic music. The title is inspired by a work by Rudnik that incorporates sound recordings of spacemen into a quirky soundscape. Claire and Etienne start from key concepts such as science fiction, futurism, progress thinking and activism, and make a choreography that plays with the presence and absence of the body in the music of PRES.
The creation takes place in June-July and September 2019. The performance will premiere at the Stary Browar Art Center, the birthplace of the Art Stations foundation, on 28 September.
ECCE is the artistic partnership of Claire Croizé and Etienne Guilloteau.
Claire and Etienne werk within the union of ECCE as individual choreographers, but are also involved in each other's creations. The essence of their work is closely connected and Claire and Etienne are complementary on many levels. Claire regularly danced in Etienne's work, and Etienne helps Claire on artistic and technical level. Etienne has a stronger eye for the dramaturgy, while Claire focuses more on the movement itself. Both choreographers have a strong bond with the musical aspect, and collaborated with multiple music ensembles, both Belgian and from abroad (B’Rock, Oxalys, MP4, Zwerm, The Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, Alain Franco).
Their collaboration resulted in pieces such as The Farewell, Mouvement pour quatuor, Synopis of a Battle and The Gyres. Their first creation as ECCE, Mer- (2017), was signed by both Claire and Etienne. Mer- was a creation for five dancers, built on the requiem by Johannes Ockeghem and other renaissance songs on death and decay, performed live by Marnix De Cat's Pluto Ensemble. With ECCE's second creation Flowers (we are), Claire took care of the choreography, while Etienne assisted her as dramaturg. The creation was their first collaboration with a contemporary composer, Matteo Fargion, who created a dramaturgy consisting of Bach's preludes, transcriptions for his corals for four hands, and new compositions, with texts by Rilke put to music. His daughter Francesca joined him for the live music, three dancers shared the stage with them. The performance premiered in Bruges in January 2019. That same year, Claire and Etienne share the choreography for a new creation for two dancers, titled Pole Reports from Space, commissioned by the Polish Art Stations foundation and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Between 2000 and 2019, Claire and Etienne will have made 23 creations, including eight with live music.
