«LUMEN» / Jasmine Morand
Sensory experience
Dance Performance Award 2020
In this creation for 13 performers aged between 20 and 50, Jasmine Morand plays with the audience’s retinal perception. The moving bodies can only be seen as reflections in a mirror suspended at an angle for the majority of the performance. The stage also changes its slope as the performance goes on, finally revealing the dancers without the reflective filter. Meanwhile the light grows slowly in intensity until it is almost dazzling. This scenery arrangement, using a mirror to create the impression of a picture surface on which the dancing bodies are the material and reliefs, had already been seen in Jasmine Morand’s “MIRE” (2016). “LUMEN” premièred at the La Bâtie festival in early September 2020. It was also performed on 20 September 2020 at the Le Reflet theatre in Vevey.
Jasmine Morand
Choreographer Jasmine Morand was born in Zurich in 1977 and is currently based in Vevey. Her choreographic research is inspired by the visual arts but also makes use of new technologies. The result is a composite oeuvre born out of those constantly moving fields. After starting her career as a classical dance performer, Jasmine Morand trained at various European schools including the Princess Grace Academy in Monaco and Codarts in Rotterdam. She is also active in institutions, and is vice-chair of the professional association Danse Suisse. A winner of the 2013 Prix Danse 2013 from the Fondation Vaudoise pour la Culture and the Label+ Romand – arts de la scène 2019, Jasmine Morand is also a permanent resident at Dansomètre in Vevey. In 2008 she set up the company Prototype Status, which has received funding from the City of Vevey since 2010 and the Canton of Vaud since 2016.
The culmination of a kaleidoscopic work that Jasmine Morand started to develop with “MIRE” in 2016, “LUMEN” employs an ingenious stage device that includes mirrors, lighting and changes in the angle of the stage. The piece is constantly evolving, and persistently confuses the viewer’s perceptions. Contemplative and hypnotic, “LUMEN” is a sensory experience sustained by a large and heterogeneous group of performers creating a single moving organism and capable of organising themselves into flexible, organic and fluid formations that are continually changing. In “LUMEN”, scenography and movement thus combine to create a work of art that is immersive, innovative and total.
Marco Cantalupo, jury member
