Film: Goldberg Variations / Lucinda Childs. La Grande Fugue de Beethoven

The improvisations of the American choreographer Steve Paxton to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations are unforgettable for anyone who ever witnessed them. Paxton began the project in 1984 and stopped in 1992. As a finale to that eight-year process, he wanted his work to be recorded, and for this he called on the Belgian video artist Walter Verdin. Kaaitheater agreed to act as producer. For ten days, Verdin followed the movements of the improvising Paxton’s process in the Felix Meritis building in Amsterdam. From the thirteen hours of material, he edited and composed a striking fifty-four minute-long jubilant dance film.

Lucinda Childs, a leading figure in American choreography, winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the Biennale Danza 2017, created her vision of the Grande Fugue de Beethoven at the Opéra de Lyon in 2015, in a rigorous and minimal spirit. The film illustrates the phases of her sophisticated work on the choreographic phrasing conceived for six couples, and built as an elegant plastic, musical and visual composition.