In Tragic / Love, Stephen Petronio evokes the eternal problem of the feeling of love. Created by the New York choreographer Stephen Petronio for 25 dancers from the CCN - Ballet de Lorraine installed in Nancy, Tragic / Love highlights the paths of love – exhilarating, painful, sinuous, unpredictable, illogical, disorderly and delicious – that have shaped the destiny of such legendary partners as Venus and Mars, Romeo and Juliet, Maria and Tony, as well as so many other anonymous stories.

Bodies against bodies, groups against groups, this creation throws the dancers onto the hazardous paths of love affairs and unites them in solemn rites that make up “the great and difficult parade of love”.

The music commissioned from the New York composer Ryan Lott (a.k.a. Son Lux), is an original electronic score paying tribute to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet

The text is taken from the recently published Letters to Juliet. Written by two American sisters, Lise and Ceil Friedman, this work is a collection of real letters sent to the Juliet Foundation, which receives letters from desperate lovers all over the world.

The setting is made up of a triptych onto which moving and changing images are projected, creating a mysterious and ephemeral world in which dance takes up position.

The video creation is entrusted to the Australian visual artist Mike Daly, and the costumes to the English artist H Petal.

Source: CCN - Ballet de Lorraine 2009 – 2010 programme

For over 30 years, Stephen Petronio has honed a unique language of movement that speaks to the intuitive and complex possibilities of the body informed by its shifting cultural context. He has collaborated with a wide range of artists in many disciplines over his career and holds the integration of multiple forms as fundamental to his creative drive and vision. He continues to create a haven for dancers with a keen interest in the history of contemporary movement and an appetite for the unknown. Petronio was born in Newark, New Jersey, and received a B.A. from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he began his early training in improvisation and dance technique. He was greatly influenced by working with Steve Paxton and was the first male dancer of the Trisha Brown Dance Company (1979 to 1986). He has gone on to build a unique career, receiving numerous accolades, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, an American Choreographer Award, a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, and most recently a 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award.

Petronio has created over 35 works for his company and has been commissioned by some of the world’s most prestigious modern and ballet companies.

Source : Stephen Petronio

More information : http://petron.io/ 

Since acquiring the CCN title in 1999, the Centre Chorégraphique National - Ballet de Lorraine has dedicated itself to supporting contemporary choreographic creation. As of July 2011 the organization is under the general and artistic direction of Petter Jacobsson.
The CCN – Ballet de Lorraine and its company of 26 dancers is one of the most important companies working in Europe, performing contemporary creations while retaining and programming a rich and extensive repertory, spanning our modern history, made up of works by some of our generations most highly regarded choreographers.
The CCN functions as an art center and venue for multiple possibilities in the fields of research, experimentation and artistic creation. It is a platform open to many different disciplines, a space where the many visions of dance of today may meet. 

More information : http://ballet-de-lorraine.eu