Part yoga, part Cirque du Soleil, Europe's Tripsichore Yoga Theatre is
a place where gravity is less powerful than the energy of the characters
who inhabit it.
Tripsichore began in 1979 as a company devoted
to creating full length dance narratives. They explored a variety of
stylistic forms including
punk ballet, conventional modern dance and strict neo-classical technique.
They used masks, performed with rock bands and did pop videos.
While yoga was always a part of their training,
it wasn't until 1992 that they realized the expressive potential and
choreographic viability
of yoga
postures. Once Tripsichore began to devise works using yoga asanas,
their extraordinary artistic logic became evident.
Surprisingly, it would
seem that there has been no orthodox tradition for using yoga technique
to create dances in the 5000 year history of the discipline. The
postures intrinsically possess a sumptuous beauty and fluidity. They
are the
ideal vehicle to express the themes of harmony, balance, spirituality,
ecstasy,
bliss and mysticism because they are exactly
about these subjects in and of themselves. Tripsichore is now
many years into this experiment and each day brings new discoveries.
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