Pianist Orlando Bass performs John Cage's famous sheet music, CN D  commissioned choreographers Lenio Kaklea and Jean-Christophe Paré to  compose a dance for these scores.

Lenio Kaklea dances on sonatas I, III, V, XI, XII and XIII from Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano by the American composer John Cage together with pianist Orlando Bass.

Source: program of the CND

Lenio Kaklea was born in Athens and now lives in Paris; she is a dancer, choreographer, director and writer. She was trained in the Athens conservatory and she joined the Angers CNDC in 2005, before embarking on a MA in experimental arts and politics directed by Bruno Latour in Sciences Po Paris. Since 2009, she has been working on projects that include dance, performance, text and film; an important part of her work is devoted to the project Encyclopédie pratique: de 2016 à 2019, in which she explores European territories and gathers close to 600 narratives testifying to the habits, rituals and trades that compose and characterize these territories. She was awarded the Dance prize by the Hermès Italia Foundation and the Milan Triennial in 2019, and she created her autobiographical solo Ballad. In 2021, she choreographed Age of Crime, a piece for nine dancers, for the bicentennial of the Greek Independence war for the Athens and Epidaurus Festivals. That same year, she choreographed to the emblematic prepared piano piece by John Cage, Sonatas and Interludes, accompanied on stage by pianist Orlando Bass.

Working during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, John Cage honed his skills in the midst of the growing American avant  garde. Neither a painter or a sculptor, Cage is best known for revolutionizing modern music through his incorporation of unconventional instrumentation and the idea of environmental music dictated by chance. His approach to composition was deeply influenced by Asian philosophies, focusing on the harmony that exists in nature, as well as elements of chance. Cage is famous not only for his radical works, like 4'33"  (1952), in which the ambient noise of the recital hall created the  music, but also for his innovative collaborations with artists like Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg. These partnerships helped break down the divisions between the various  realms of art production, such as music, performance, painting, and dance, allowing for new interdisciplinary work to be produced. Cage's influence ushered in groundbreaking stylistic developments key to contemporary art and paved the way for the postmodern artistic inquiries, which began in the late 1960s and further challenged the established definition of fine art.

Source: theartstory.org

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).