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Expansive Dances
Guillaume Côté: Lulu
September 15, 2020
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This week, the second Expansive Dances film, Choreographic Assoicate Guillaume Côté's Lulu is released. Here, Guillaume shares his insight on his new work. Created for his wife, Principal Dancer Heather Ogden, Lulu features Max Richter’s November and a new musical score by Kevin Lau.
The final film, In Between by Alysa Pires, will be released on September 22.
Tell us about your creation for Expansive Dances.
Lulu follows a woman coming to terms with saying goodbye and having the courage to move on and start over. It’s a solo about the courage and strength of moving on.
I created Lulu especially for Expansive Dances. Ben Shirinian and I have worked together on such films as Lost in Motion and Lost in Motion II and we were excited to make a film that told a quick story. I love Ben’s aesthetic, attention to movement and very unique style, so it was a pleasure to collaborate with him once again.
To create this work on my wife Heather Ogden, Principal Dancer, was both intense and personal. Heather is a powerful mover, a sharp technician and a great actress, so I feel lucky that we had this time to make this together.
How have the challenges of the pandemic impacted your choreographic process?
The pandemic has allowed me to go deeper into my search for new movement patterns and approaches to choreography. It’s given me time to try new types of classes, too. From Gaga to yoga, there has been some wonderful content online and with some very inspirational dancers and teachers.
The luxury of time has made me realize the value of curiosity and has made me fall in love with making my body move differently.
I’ve also had a chance to question my usual process to make work and I’ve been able to study some of the most successful ones. I feel like choreographically it will impact my work positively and I’m excited to try new approaches to collaborating with dancers once when we’re all able to be in the studio together again.