© WLDN 2020

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WALK #2 : PARIS

FR / EN

17 September 2017
Micadanses - L'Etoile du Nord - Studio Le Regard du Cygne - Atelier de Paris / CDCN

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WALK is a 25 km performance for a participative audience, punctuated by 4 Modulable dances, in order to connect the 4 venues making up the partnership of Paris Réseau Danse. The buildings along the walk are monuments of patrimoine for this pursuit, and for Joanne Leighton, walking is a way of creating the world, as much as of locating oneself in it.

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PROTOCOL

- The performance of the walk is conducted in silence
- Total distance: 25 km in one day
- Joanne Leighton will personally undertake this march
- Anyone can participate or join this walk for all or part of this route
- The path links four organisations dedicated to the dance by the act of walking
- The public carries packets of salt
- Bring your picnic, refreshments available en route

« What interests me with WALK is to create an ephemeral and fragile form, which has a relatively short existence, fluctuating, passing, like life itself. The photos and videos are the only testimonials of this performance and installation. Simple gestures like walking and leaving marks in connection with place, territory, time, distance, scale, contribute to work of human scale. What traces do our footsteps leave upon us, on others and on the land we tread ? » JL

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WALK
aims to bring groups of people together to participate collectively in the occupation and reappropriation of landscapes through marches over an extended period of time. The insistence on this action differentiates the participants from tourists or spectators. The 25 km WALK performance draws not only from Land Art but also from Joanne Leighton's choreographic work.

Simple gestures, salt, archetypal geometric shapes such as lines, spirals and circles, notions of duration and repetition, are all motifs of Joanne Leighton's choreographic work. In the same way, the salt is at the heart of pieces such as 9000 Pas, Salt Circle and Songlines. These works are formed by the environment and are part of its landscape. The materials are assembled and transformed by the same modifying factors as the Land Art: time and place, space available and light all combine with each representation.

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SALT CIRCLE
is a ritual, both a performance and an installation, in which the choreographer Joanne Leighton proposes to a participative public to occupy the landscape by creating and walking on a circular salt path. The walk will create a physical language as well as a real presence; these actions inscribe the circle in space, like a drawing, by delivering the salt back to the ground. The circle of salt is like a piece of "choreographic land art", crossed by the steps and presence of the participants. In making this circle, we create and leave a story related to the place. The installation, along with the resulting images (photos, videos...), are simultaneously act and memory, witness of this performance. Joanne Leighton is interested in creating new paths, installing a plastic and theatrical language starting from the walk, the circle, the landscape.

Salt has been a foundation of civilization for thousands of years, and has also been an element of several works as in 9000 Pas, The Songline, Salt Walk ... The salt used for SALT CIRCLE comes from the last performance of 9000 Pas. The salt is the only lasting trace and physical testimony of this piece, like a cartography of the site, the footprints of the dancers and the performance itself.

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Chorégraphie et direction, Joanne Leighton | Artistes chorégraphiques : Lauren Bolze, Arthur Perole, Pauline Simon, Alexandre Da Silva | Music : Peter Crosbie | Technique : François Blet | Production de WLDN |