Discover McGregor's Ballet Limen
A meditation on time and the thresholds of darkness and light.
Wayne McGregor's Limen had its premiere on 4 November 2009, at The Royal Opera House. The 26-minute piece was choreographed for 15 dancers - eight male and seven female. The female dancers are all en pointe, lending the work a more classical air than McGregor's previous Royal Ballet commissions. At its centre is an ethereal pas de deux, danced in bright spotlight against a black backdrop, set to the futuristically raw sounds of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Her work, Notes On Light, takes inspiration from an eclipse of the sun, echoing the transition from light to dark, to light again. 'Saariaho’s cello concerto ,’ says McGregor, ' is very Debussy-esque, hauntingly beautiful, but near the end of the fourth movement everything goes cold. You can feel the light vanishing. I thought the two together would be a fantastic context for a work.’
Limen is a Latin word meaning limit or threshold. McGregor has said that the piece is a meditation on ‘thresholds of life and death, darkness and light, reality and fantasy’. This territory is a favoured theme of Japanese conceptual artist Tatsuo Miyajima, whose sets are the backdrop for the work. Miyajima is known for his light and number installations, which draw attention to the passage of time: sequences of coloured digital numbers counting up or down. Part of his set is a giant wall of blue LED lights, flashing on and off at different intervals. Each dancer is assigned a light, and co-ordinates his or her dancing to the sequence of flashes. The result is a cacophony of jarring, unpredictable movements, linked by the complex harmonies of Saariaho's music.
The meanings of limen
Origin: Latin limen, meaning doorway or threshold
1. a threshold, a point of entering or beginning.
2. the threshold of consciousness (in the fields of psychology and physiology).
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Limen In brief
Ballet in one act
Composer: Kaija Saariaho
Choreography: Wayne McGregor
Set designs: Tatsuo Miyajima
Costume designs: Moritz Junge
Lighting design: Lucy Carter
World premiere: 4 November 2009, The Royal Opera House
Limen:
Watch the Backstage Film
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Limen: watch the trailer
Wayne McGregor discusses his 2009 work Limen.
Infra: Watch the Trailer
Wayne McGregor rehearses his 2008 work Infra.
Chroma: Watch the Trailer
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