Échelle Humaine

Lafayette Anticipations, the new Parisian art foundation, presents Échelle Humaine (Human Scale)—its first large-scale dance festival in its new building in the heart of the Marais.

OMA/Rem Koolhaas’s design for Lafayette Anticipations allows more than 50 different configurations of the building’s spaces and volumes, thanks to an ingenious system of four mobile platforms. Four choreographers—Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Andros Zins-Browne, Eleanor Bauer, and Radouan Mriziga—have been given free rein to operate the building’s rack-and-pinion platforms and create new configurations for site-specific live works. With Échelle Humaine, Lafayette Anticipations’ “architectural machine” is fully at the service of dance.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker inaugurates Échelle Humaine with Violin Phase, her seminal solo created in 1981 to the music of Steve Reich. Then Andros Zins-Browne, accompanied by Jaime Llopis and Sandy Williams, will perform Already Unmade, inviting the audience to witness the deconstruction of the dancers’ personal choreographic histories and memories. Eleanor Bauer will follow with the world premiere of her solo A lot of moving parts, which focuses on the frictions, collisions, and impossible translations between dance and language. Finally, Radouan Mriziga concludes Échelle Humaine’s first edition with 7, an epic performance for seven dancers and musicians that confronts the moving bodies of both performers and audience members with the symbolic power of architecture.

Programme of events
Saturday, September 15, at 3pm, 5pm, and 7pm
Violin Phase by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

September 17, 18, and 19, from 11am to 8pm (ongoing performance)
Already Unmade by Andros Zins-Browne

Thursday, September 20 and Friday, September 21, at 8pm
A lot of moving parts by Eleanor Bauer

Saturday, September 22 at 8pm and Sunday, September 23 at 3pm and 6pm
7 by Radouan Mriziga

Échelle Humaine is curated by Charles Aubin as part of Lafayette Anticipations’ curatorial platform.

It is presented in collaboration with the Festival d’Automne à Paris.