9.2

9.2 - Au-delà du silence

Cas Public,
Hélène Blackburn, choreographer in collaboration with Cai Glover

Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony when he was almost completely deaf. Cai Glover is hard of hearing and chooses to dance without his hearing aid. What do our senses – or their absence – tell us about our world and, more importantly, how do they guide us beyond our differences?

Perception, embodiment, challenge, empathy. With four hands, Hélène Blackburn and Cai Glover delve back into this breathtaking epic to embrace the grandeur of one of the greatest masterpieces of the classical repertoire: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In this version, the choreography transcends the senses, allowing the pure magic of dance to fill the spaces that our limitations, great or small, carve between us and our realities. The continuous rigor guides the beauty of the virtuosic movement, a signature of the company, inviting us into a bold exploration of human emotions, intensified by Cai’s quest to embody the poetry of a body in motion: the dancing spirit of a deaf choreographer

Blackburn brilliantly conveys the work to Glover, who remains a talented performer but also becomes the co-artistic director and responsible for future reprises, bringing his own perspective to the choreographer's revolutionary ideas. Beethoven's revisited music molds to the contemporary, physical, and demanding vocabulary evolving in a setting where light plays tricks on us. An audacious journey of sensations, 9.2 reaches all generations, includes every body, every individual, and transforms them into language.

CrEdits 

9.2 takes its inspiration and roots from 9, a Cas Public co-production with the Kopergietery de Gent in Belgium, created in 2016.

Artistic Direction: Hélène Blackburn and Cai Glover
Playwright: Johan De Smet
Music: Martin Tétreault
Lighting design: Emilie B-Beaulieu et Hélène Blackburn
Set Design: Hélène Blackburn
Costumes: Michael Slack et Hélène Blackburn
Films: Kenneth Michiels
With the participation of children from the Ghent neighborhood: Rabot Seymanur Kizilca, Evgeni Miroslavov, Chaz Keith Salfamones, Ramzi Serrai et Burhan Zambur
Performers at inception: Nicholas Bellefleur, Cai Glover, Robert Guy, Daphnée Laurendeau, Danny Morissette and soprano Jolien de Gendt