Arts & Lectures
2001-2002 Performing Arts Season News Release
For Immediate Release

February 28, 2002
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

UCSB Arts & Lectures and The Lobero present the fiercely original Compagnie Maguy Marin, dance theater from France, at the Lobero Theatre

Summary Facts:

Compagnie Maguy Marin, one of modern dance’s most trailblazing companies, will perform its latest full-length work Points de fuite on Tuesday, April 9 at 8 pm in the Lobero Theatre. Led by the legendary French choreographer Maguy Marin, this world-class company consistently presents the most challenging and daring dance theater at dance meccas like the Joyce Theater in New York and the Festival International de Danse in Cannes, France. Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times calls Compagnie Maguy Marin, “fresh, creative, original,” insisting “it has the arrow of insight that plunges straight to the heart.”

Points de fuite had its debut in December 2001 and is receiving its U.S. premiere performances during Compagnie Maguy Marin’s spring 2002 tour. The full-length work caused something of a sensation in the French press. Libération, one of the “big three” national newspapers, claimed, “This is classic Maguy Marin...Today she is thrusting onto the stage a choreography that marks a milestone, not only for an evening but maybe in the history of dance as well.” The piece began as an exploration of the fugue, and Marin used Bach to conceive the work, although it is performed to a thoroughly modern, abstract, guitar-driven score written by Marin’s longtime musical collaborator Denis Marriote and played live by the dancers during the piece. Struggling against the formal point and counterpoint of the fugue, Marin’s ten dancers move in waves, articulating repetitions and variations that build in momentum and meaning. Throughout they recite quotes (translated into English) from Charles Péguy, the French poet and polemicist who died in World War I. In her notes to the piece, Marin states, “What inevitably follows is experimentation with the forces that underlie the relations that are woven between each of us...In other words, it is a matter of exploring how and to what degree each one of us bears a responsibility to the other, within a collective dynamic.”

Maguy Marin was born in Toulouse, France in 1951. Making her debut as a professional dancer with the Ballet of Strasbourg, Marin moved away from traditional ballet, becoming highly influenced by impresario Maurice Béjart. She eventually joined his Ballet of the Twentieth Century, a company noted for its flamboyant theatricality and innovative reworking of traditional music and dance materials, often in an unusual and controversial fashion. In 1978 Marin and Daniel Ambash founded the Ballet Théâtre de l’Arche, the forerunner to Compagnie Maguy Marin. Based in the Paris suburb of Créteil until 1998, the troupe relocated to Rillieux-la-Pape near Lyon, to help break the local residents’ sense of isolation through encounters and exchanges with creative expression. The Company aims to encourage a new exchange among different artists and diverse audiences.

Marin frequently finds inspiration for her choreography in other arts. Personally told by Samuel Beckett to “be disrespectful,” she used the playwright and novelist’s work to create May B (1981), her first international success that has since been performed nearly 500 times around the world. Other Marin work includes the radically revamped, full-on spectacles of Cinderella and Coppelia and near chamber works like Pour Ainsi Dire (So to Speak), a three-character piece danced and performed in a single set constructed to look like an apartment.

Compagnie Maguy Marin is the third ArtAbounds event of the 2001-2002 performing arts season. An innovative partnership between UCSB Arts & Lectures and The Lobero, ArtAbounds permits both presenters to bring to Santa Barbara international artists of the highest stature that neither could bring on its own. This project is funded in part by the Audience Development and Marketing Grant Program using funds provided by the City of Santa Barbara in partnership with the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission. The remaining ArtAbounds event for this season will be the Paul Taylor Dance Company performing Arden Court, The Word and Piazzolla Caldera on April 19 & 20 in UCSB Campbell Hall.

The performance by Compagnie Maguy Marin is sponsored by the Santa Barbara News-Press. It is funded in part by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Phillip Morris Companies Inc., Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and The British Council.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.

©2002 UCSB Arts & Lectures, University of California, Santa Barbara