For Requiem pour L. director/choreographer Alain Platel and composer Fabrizio Cassol turned their attention to Mozart. The idea came from Cassol, known from the avant-garde jazz band Aka Moon. With this contemporary interpretation of Mozart’s Requiem, he continues to write a personal artistic history in which he brings together various musical cultures around a particular theme. For this he draws on both oral and written traditions. Fourteen African and European musicians reconstruct Mozart’s Requiem by fusing it with jazz, opera and popular African music. Alain Platel searches for a physical and visual translation of associations and images that conjure up a requiem, from a funeral mass, to mass graves, to farewell rituals.
“What Requiem pour L. chiefly does – at both an artistic and an emotional level – is to dissolve opposition. Song is not opposed to dance, Western is not opposed to non-Western, and sorrow is not opposed to joy.” Etcetera