Ictus . Georges-Elie Octors & François Deppe

In 1912, Vaslav Nijinski created the choreography for the ballet to Debussy's 'Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'. A hundred years later, Thierry De Mey has made a film to the same music, this time with the choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and with Ictus performing Benno Sachs' chamber music version of Debussy's legendary ballet score live. A fascinating initiative. The film-maker and composer Thierry De Mey has been exploring the link between movement in dance and music since the 1980s. Also on the programme is a new version of Maurice Ravel's 'La Valse', one by Frédéric Verrières for ensemble and electronics. Like you, we are curious to hear his contemporary take on the Viennese waltz. The closing piece is Arnold Schönberg's 'Pierrot Lunaire', which is based on the symbolist poems of the Belgian Albert Giraud. A lunatic Pierrot is the central character. Otto Erich Hartleben's extremely fine German translation inspired Schönberg to produce a hallucinatory masterpiece. The magisterial aura of the work derives from not only the introduction of the pioneering 'Sprechgesang' (speech singing), but also the sensuous blending of text and music. 'Pierrot Lunaire', too, was created a hundred years ago.