Anna Halprin/Anne Collod & guests:
parades & changes, replays

About the Artists

Anne Collod

In dialogue with Anna Halprin, concept and artistic director Anne Collod brings parades & changes, replays to the MCA Stage. Since beginning their research in 2003, Collod and Halprin have collaborated in both performance and workshops, including the March 2006 inauguration of the Anna Halprin exhibition Anna Halprin à l’origine de la performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, France. A graduate in biology and in the development of natural spaces, she chose to train in contemporary dance and then started performing with Pierre Deloche, Philippe Decouflé, Stéphanie Aubin and La Camionetta. She co-founded the Quatuor Albrecht Knust (1993–2001), dedicated to recreating choreographic works from the early 20th century (by Doris Humphrey, Vaslav Nijinsky, Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton, among others).

A pioneer of postmodern dance and performance, Anna Halprin has profoundly influenced and renewed dance, music and the visual arts for more than 60 years. Ever-willing to adapt her work to the present moment, her approach has led to a broad redefinition of dance. In 1945, while a choreographer and a soloist with Doris Humphrey, she left New York and settled on the west coast of the United States, thus starting one of the 20th century's most radical and fertile artistic adventures, whose effects continue to inform many fields of art.

Her summer workshops were the meeting-place for artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Simone Forti and Robert Morris, who in particular practiced the famous "tasks," a novel concept that introduced everyday gestures into the realm of dance and decisively influenced American post-modern dance. Anna Halprin has unstintingly explored and encouraged the creative process, especially in its collective form. She challenges ways of thinking as well as aesthetic and political norms, using scores, collective creation, improvisation and experimentation in natural surroundings.

She has been involved in antiwar protest movements, and has undertaken long-term artistic work with AIDS and cancer patients. Halprin is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a lifetime achievement in choreography from the American Dance Festival, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She has created 150 full-length dance theater works, which are extensively documented in photographs, books and on film. At the age of 88, she is still dancing, teaching and producing new work with fervor. Read more about Anna Halprin.