On 25 September 2004, ditto, the latest performance by Leine & Roebana was premièred in the Toneelschuur in Haarlem. In ditto, choreographers Andrea Leine and Harijono Roebana are collaborating with Canadian composer Krista Vincent, who also plays an important part in the performance as a performer. The dancers in ditto are Tim Persent, Lia Poole, Heather Ware, Ederson Rodrigues Xavier and Sarah Linstra. The costumes are by AZIZ, who has collaborated with Leine & Roebana on four previous occasions. Specially for this production, the German multimedia collective, Palindrome, has developed movement-sensitive software. Ditto was performed in the Dutch theatres from 24 September until 26 November 2004.
Over the past 15 years, Andrea Leine and Harijono Roebana have been working on an impressive oeuvre of original dance productions, in which an important role is played by live music and new compositions. They have been developing their own capricious movement language, which is a blend of power, subtlety and emotion, thanks also to the perfect performance of their group of dancers, with Tim Persent and Ty Boomershine as its backbone.
Andrea Leine and Harijono Roebana often work with composers who create music especially for their choreography. The compositions and the dance come together during the rehearsal process. It is fascinating for the choreographers to create dance to music which does not yet exist, and for the composer to make music for dance which does not yet exist. In recent years, Leine & Roebana collaborated with such contemporary composers as Yannis Kyriakides, Martijn Padding, Maarten Altena, and Han Otten and Wiebe de Boer from Soundpalette. Their way of working has proved very productive; it was with good reason that the press gave glowing reviews of last season's successful performances, TURINGS TIJGERS and Sporen: "pure aesthetics" (Haagsche Courant), "unique mix of subtle and powerful dance gestures" (Leidsch Dagblad), "Dance, performers, scenery and costumes possess a pure beauty" (Rotterdams Dagblad).
Deen van Meer.
'ditto' is bursting with hidden meanings
From: Trouw, dinsdag 28 september 2004 By Sander HiskemullerTwo laptops on a table, a tangle of cables from sound and video equipment, a few monitors scattered about. A familiar sight nowadays in modern dance and quite often a weak electronic excuse to give a bit of cachet to rather dubious dance. However, in 'ditto', the latest production by choreographers' duo Leine & Roebana, dance and electronics are integrated in an extremely exciting way. In 'ditto', the electronics and dance really do seem to be 'ditto', i.e. the same.
Of course, there are the unavoidable sound blips which apparently belong to a multimedia soundscape. And there is also the spoken text which disintegrates into an incomprehensible background sound. But apart from this, 'ditto' has nothing other than original sound effects and an inventive selection of music and, more importantly, an ease with which the dancers give depth and colour to the abstract movement material.
For 'ditto', the young Canadian composer/performer Krista Vincent made a sound composition that travels through caterwauling, Charles Aznavour, a car crash and a Hammond organ, to a text about striptease. The fragmentary build-up of this soundscape leads to a good, raw construction of the dance scenes, which lends an agreeable pace to the performance.
Composer Krista Vincent functions as an active 'dance instigator' in the performance. Her interpretation of one of Aznavour's chansons ends in a terrible sound from the speakers as she crashes to the ground, bar stool and all. With the aid of motion sensing software, Vincent transposes, on the spot, the facial expressions of a dancer on realtime video into sound. What could quickly have led to a multimedia parade, in 'ditto' actually became a space for self-reflection and irony. The dancer lost herself in wild grimaces, and the soundmix thus generated ran riot.
'ditto' is bursting with hidden meanings of music and sound. Dual meanings which Leine & Roebana also know how to use well in the dance. A dancer's movements turn to despair as the spoken text to which she is dancing evaporates into detached sounds. During a duet, the music gets hopelessly 'stuck', which suddenly, and succinctly, reveals the distance which exists between the two dancers. Leine & Roebana's formal dance, which can sometimes be rather inaccessible, is here very recognisably realistic.
The five dancers stroll casually in and out of the action. Meanwhile, they take a break on the side of the stage, flirt with each other and have a drink of water before returning to the dance floor. In razor-sharp solos, compelling duets and group dances which keep changing subtly, the enjoyment of dance bursts out into the auditorium. In 'ditto', the dancers can be personalities again. Regular Leine & Roebana dancer Tim Persent, in particular, knows how to keep all eyes fixed on his peroxide-blonde appearance. 'Blondes have more fun', mumbles Krista Vincent into her microphone, at the end. But we as an audience
Copyright: Hiskemuller, Sander