Young Chang Choreographer Angelin Preljocaj heard the...

Young Chang

Choreographer Angelin Preljocaj heard the brilliantly eccentric

music that is Karlheinz Stochhausen’s “Helikopter Quartet” for four

violins and four helicopter engines and thought, “No.”

He couldn’t imagine a dance set to what he was hearing.

“That’s precisely why I decided to work on it,” said the French

choreographer and founder of the Ballet Preljocaj. “To push my limits

and push the limits on the dancers also.”

The results of Preljocaj’s limit-testing is a multimedia work for

six dancers that will be performed today at the Irvine Barclay

Theatre as part of the Eclectic Orange Festival. The work combines

video imagery, techno-organic sounds and the abstract ideas of

“turbulence, aviation, flotation and feeling.”

“The music is based on the melting pot of the sound of the violins

and the technology of the helicopters,” he said.

Sharing the program is Preljocaj’s staging of Igor Stravinsky’s

“The Rite of Spring.” The version is an emotionally heavy work that

communicates about sexuality and social and tribal rituals, as the

performers dance their way through a fable about a virgin sacrificed

to satisfy the god of spring.

“But in this case, it’s more about the human urge to renew

itself,” said Douglas Rankin, president of the Barclay.

Preljocaj added that he explored sexuality in the piece because

it’s “a really big part of the human being.”

“Something very intimate, and this tension between the intimate

and the general human being is very interessant,” said Preljocaj.

“That’s why I think each of the versions that’s been done is both

very personal and also based on something common to all humanity.”

Preljocaj didn’t want to stage “The Rite of Spring” at first

because he felt there were too many versions already. But then he

went for a different point of view -- for a look at things from the

“chosen one’s” perspective.

“I think it’s a feminist version,” he said.

Acclaimed for his ever contemporary and artistically varied way of

doing things, Preljocaj is also the mind behind works including “The

Countryside After the Battle” at the 1997 Avignon Theatre Festival,

“Casanova” for the Paris Opera and “La Stravaganza” for the New York

City Ballet.

“I tried to go in new fields always,” Preljocaj said.

Rankin said that’s exactly why he likes to present works by the

company, which performed at the Barclay four years ago.

“The style of choreography and style of dancing is so very

different from most American work that we try to include that now and

then in our series,” he said.