An interactive choreographic installation.
Available as a local version · Recreated with dancers from the host city, or with the original cast after a short rehearsal period
Photo: Cezary Zacharewicz
Who is spectator? Who is performer?
Festina Lente - make haste slowly is blurring the boundaries. The audience gives impulses to the dancers and set them into motion. It appears at first like a game, but as the piece unfolds and time and space materialize, one’s own way of dealing with expectations is revealed. With joyful ease Festina Lente generates its dynamic out of the moment.
“Dance can be subversive in a very subtle way: in the piece “Festina Lente – make haste slowly”, from Malgven Gerbes and David Brandstätter, the exchange of glances between the audience and the dancers creates a temporary community, that must always be renegotiated.”
LA DÉPÊCHE, NORMANDY
“Festina Lente is a magical choreography that leaves it to the audience to listen, to listen to the others and to be carried away by the rhythm of the dance. It feels like a new story is starting over every time.”
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How are our sense of freedom and our sense of time connected? What part do our wishes, hopes and will play in it? What happens when we notice that we are not acting alone – and how, and why, do we join a collective process?
FESTINA LENTE – make haste slowly – unfolds through the engagement of its audience. The rules are simple: together, the audience tries to count to 100. Anyone may call out a single number; if two people call the same number at once, the count starts again at one. There is no referee and no game master. Every number sets something in motion in the choreography, and every new attempt gives birth to a new piece. The chances of reaching 100 in a large group are small – but with each attempt, the possibility is there.
What interests us is the moment of connection this creates. Each spectator contributes, but no one can control the piece alone; the dependency comes less from the dancers than from the other spectators. The counters themselves become part of what is watched, and individual hopes and ambitions turn into a collective action – in the spirit of Joseph Beuys' "every human being is an artist".
We do not want to tell stories or represent styles, but to create situations that are exemplary: models to be experienced rather than decoded. Free from the need to identify and interpret – which is always culturally shaped – dance opens a space for a dynamic, intuitive perception. In a time of global exchange, FESTINA LENTE looks for ways to "understand" even what our own cultural background does not allow us to interpret.
Over many performances, FESTINA LENTE revealed itself as a piece in which several power dynamics are negotiated in real time, on different layers, between the audience and the dancers.
The counting task awakens an ambition in the audience. This leads to many attempts and countless small failures, to a particular tension in the room – and to a growing desire to collaborate. Every voice is different: some people speak more than others, some louder, some more calmly. The intentions and emotions of those who announce a number become audible in their voices. Their interactions form a first layer, which in turn shapes the timing of the choreography.
The audience may choose to chase the dancers through the space to advance in the counting game – but then the choreography loses its detail. If they give the dancers more time, they are rewarded with images that develop and evolve, and that create wonder. Wonder may bring them into the moment, and that in turn may corrupt the counting game: when several people are on the same wavelength at the same moment, they are more likely to call the next number at the same time. A paradox of control.
As the performance goes on, the interactions between dance and counting become more complex and more blurred. A new challenge appears: reading how the counting shapes the choreography and understanding what is going on – up to the point where it is simply too much input.
At the very end, the audience can take over the space while the dancers take over the counting – at least in the latest version, created in Mexico. The power positions are completely reversed, and the audience can experience for themselves what it means to move on numbers. Always being ready for the call is a very high demand on the dancers; at the end of the show, the audience gets the chance to understand it from within.
The movement material is designed to create intimacy, immediacy and mystery. Because they cannot decide when to move, the dancers begin to speak to each other in a secret code language – a way to stay connected as a group and to encourage each other to go on. The audience cannot translate this code, but recognises it as language: the choreography becomes spoken language in a very concrete sense.
Light and sound follow the counting too, and the light changes follow the way the sounds are played. The interactivity runs through every layer of the piece.
This complexity has been very inspiring – for the dancers, for the audiences and for me. From this piece I developed my own theories of interaction, perception and decision-making, some of which I now put to use in the decision field.
FESTINA LENTE builds its fixed steps from the dancers' personal material and operates on clear rules and scores that dancers and audience negotiate live. This makes the piece transferable: it can be re-created with dance companies and ensembles in an international context. Its dynamics are universal and easily understood around the world.
Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City · Guadalajara · Cancún · Mérida (MX) · 2017
FESTINA LENTE re-created with Olga Gutiérrez, Diana Bayardo, Gervasio Cetto, Guillermo Magallón and Rebeca Portillo, and shown in four Mexican cities.
Watch video ▶ About the project →PROJECT, CHOREOGRAPHY Malgven Gerbes, David Brandstätter | DANCE, COLLABORATION Caroline Allaire, Vidal Bini, David Brandstätter, Katarzyna Chmielewska, Malgven Gerbes, Sebastian Kurth, I-Fen Lin, Stève Paulet (5 dancer per performance) | MUSIC Ruth Wiesenfeld | LIGHT DESIGN Bruno Pocheron, Ruth Waldeyer, Medhi Toutain-Lopez | DRAMATURGIC ADVICE David Williams | PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Katja Kettner | PRESS Ruth Hunsdörfer | TOURING Alix Pellet, Clémence Rey | PRODUCTION shifts – art in movement | COPRODUCTION Le Phare – Centre chorégraphique national du Havre Haute-Normandie / direction Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh; fabrik Potsdam: Artists-in-residence; Le TRIANGLE, Cité de la Danse, Rennes; Scène Nationale Evreux Louviers | STUDIOS Le Dancing de la Compagnie Beau Geste; Uferstudios - Tanzfabrik Berlin | WITH THE SUPPORT OF La Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles de Normandie, La Région Normandie, Le Conseil Général de Seine-Maritime dans le cadre du projet 1artiste - 1collège, Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin | SOME PERFORMANCES HAVE RECEIVED THE SUPPORT OF ODIA Normandie / Artistic Development Office of Normandy; ONDA - Office nationale de diffusion artistique; NPN Nationales Performance Netz; Goethe Institut.
2019 Festina Lente – Dufy, MuMa – Musée d'art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre (FR) – with Le Phare – CCN du Havre Normandie
2017 Mexican version: Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City | Festival EINCE, Guadalajara | Festival Yucatán Escénica, Mérida | Festival Danxica, Cancún (MX)
2016 In Between Festival, Wrocław (PL) | Festival Pharenheit, Le Phare – CCN du Havre Normandie (FR)
2015 Festival La Danse de tous les Sens, Falaise (FR) | Festival 48h Chrono, La Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille (FR)
2014 Festival Pharenheit: Le Phare – CCN du Havre Normandie and Théâtre des Chalands with the Scène nationale Évreux-Louviers (FR) | Festival Made in Potsdam, fabrik Potsdam (DE) | TANZ Heilbronn (DE) | Tanznacht Berlin (DE) | Kunstfest Weimar (DE) | Le Rive Gauche, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray (FR)
2013 Uferstudios – Tanzfabrik Berlin (DE) – premiere | Previews: Le Phare – CCN du Havre Normandie (FR), Ausufern, Uferstudios Berlin (DE)
In the framework of the festival Ausufern, Malgven Gerbes and David Brandstätter are launching a new experience. The audience likes having the opportunity to influence what is happening on stage, especially that ''Festina Lente’’ is not a simplistic interactive theatre piece. The audience is conducting the chronology of the performance; guiding 5 moving dancers and, sometimes, making them stay in specific postures. If the instructions are not followed, the game starts again. The flow of the bodies is starting over while following a different pattern. The choreography is composed of different modules – the dancers have to combine with great intelligence the predetermined with what is required by the new situation. Not only do they have to answer to the impulses of the audience, but also adapt themselves to the constellation of the group. ''Festina Lente’’ means: ''make haste slowly’’. What first appears as a simple game becomes a reflection on expectations and perception of time. The piece does not necessarily rely on a slow dance, but who’s involving oneself without haste in that game will earn a lot more.
The choreographic duet formed by Malgven Gerbes and David Brandstätter, both graduated from ArtEZ in Arnhem, interrupts the course of our thoughts by parts called ''intermezzos’’, ie: by the choreographic obstinacy of the dancers, by the surge of the counting audience, by questioning obedience as an addiction, by calling into question the collective will to achieve ''one hundred’’… If we read the instructions of the game again, there is no indication of such an objective. As the choreography doesn't repeat itself each time the counting is starting over, it is very clear that we would never have seen the choreography entirely if we would have reached ''one hundred’’.
writer: Arnd Wesemann
As long as the numbers are counted, 5 dancers are moving about in the space. The audience, by counting, is giving impulses to the choreographic steps of the performers. They become initiators of precisely composed movements. Accompanied by sporadic sound interjections created by Ruth Wiesenfeld, a multifaceted choreography appears. It sometimes is so inviting and dreamy that the audience tends to forget the counting process. With its one hundred numbers, shifts is once again challenging the playful experience of different intensities, on a physical, mental and emotional level.
