Rapture Series

THE RAPTURE SERIES

The Rapture Series celebrates Frank Gehry’s architecture in movement with site-specific dance installations by choreographer Noémie Lafrance performed on nine Gehry-designed buildings worldwide.

Staged on the exterior surface of Gehry buildings, the Rapture performances feature dancers traveling across the roofs and walls using custom rigging systems and video mapping projections to reveal the dynamics of the architecture’s curves in motion.  Sponsored by Tiffany & Co and produced by Sens Production, the series will travel to nine Gehry designs around the world over the next 5 years.

THE PROJECT

This ground-breaking series, by visionary site-specific artist Noémie Lafrance, features unique dance installations for each building in response to its architecture.  First performed on the Fisher Center building in 2008, the nine Rapture performances form a series of public works bringing elements of choreography, architecture, contemporary arts and film together in a new artistic hybrid.

Theses large-scale dance installations will be performed for 2-4 weeks in each city to a variety of art enthusiasts and new audiences, reaching approximately 200,000 worldwide over 5 years and up to 20,000 per installation.  This first ever site-specific work of this scale launches a new funding model to support the not-for-profit art project estimated at $5,000,0000.  The 5-year Series’ funding scheme relies largely on its box office revenues, sponsorships, private/public funding and creative merchandise including short film collection, books, photographs, and other artistic derivatives that will help publicize the project, targeting over 10 million impressions for the entire series.

INSPIRATION

The undulating shapes elevated between earth and sky, created by Gehry are of pure movement essence; evoking the lightness of clouds or the weight of eroded hills and valleys, they inspire Rapture.  Like an ascent into the sky or a descent on earth, rapture is an act of seizing, carrying off, or transporting one from one state to another.  Suspended in between two states, two places or two moments, Rapture transcends the architecture’s inherent movement into physical motion.

    -Noémie Lafrance

CHOREOGRAPHY

Based on concepts of repetition, evolution and accumulation, the choreography will create an orchestration of rhythms and patterns in response to topography to reveal the dynamics of the architecture’s curves and structure.  Through gravity defying physicality, dancers will travel across the outside surface of the building roofs and walls expressing its ecstasy, lightness and freedom.  The abstract choreographic language traces the architecture’s shapes and lines, redefining the perception-altering structure in movement, making the man-made landscape dance.

MUSIC

Original music composed for Rapture will blend a live orchestrated classical music score with a recorded electronic music score.  Found sound composition inspired by the metallic structures will be created by award-winning electronic music composer Janek Schaefer (AudiOH!Recordings) with classical arrangements by Michael Jennings (Massive Attack) performed by a live string ensemble.

RIGGING

Gravity Design, (Cirque du Soleil, Bandaloop) industry leaders in custom installations for dance and circus will design custom rigging for Rapture. They specialize in setups that are retrofit to existing structures using kinetic rigging with force management involving live loads (people). Each rigging systems will be designed for specific sections of the building and will be manually operated by riggers during the performances. Dancers are retianed by ropes that allows them to perform on the outside walls of the buildings with a different response to gravity depending on the topography.

PROJECTIONS

Using the latest 3D video mapping technology, we will create unique visuals that will interact with the dancers and the architecture. Video mapping involves an extensive architectural mapping of an original structure to overlay a 3D moving image on the surface of the structure. This will allow us to superimpose bodies and architecture in motion. Combining 3D animated and filmed footage will offer a spectacular range of possibilities for interaction with the choreography, resulting in a sensory experience making the building come alive in multiple dimensions.

NOÉMIE LAFRANCE

Noémie Lafrance is an acclaimed site-specific Choreographer, Director and Producer based in New York City, known for her innovative use of public spaces and architecture to stage large-scale performances and films.  Her work both reclaiming the public space and creating interactive theatrical experiences was said to have “Changed the fabric of New York City” – La Presse.  Lafrance’s work invites audiences to participate in a creative experience of their own, immersing themselves in the architecture of their city, and offering them new vantage points from which to view the world.

Lafrance’s epic public work Agora, seen by 15,000 people in NYC, reopened the McCarren Park pool site to the public after 20 years of abandonment. Her signature work Descent staged in a stairwell, and recipient of 2 Bessie Awards was named “best performance of the year” in Time-Out NY and NY Times, and was performed over 80 times.  She won the MVPA award for the choreography of the popular Feist Music Video 1234, which went viral with over 15 million hits on YouTube, was featured on iPod ads, and won numerous awards internationally including a Grammy Award nomination.  Lafrance is Lambent fellow and her work was presented internationally in prestigious venues and festivals including the Whitney Biennial, Festival TransAmérique, and Festival de Cannes 2011.  She has also choreographed for Opera, Visual Art works, Film, TV, Advertising and the Music Industry, collaborating with prominent artists such as Feist, David Byrne, Doug Aitken, Patrick Daughters and many others.

SENS PRODUCTION

Sens Production is an award-winning production company highly specialized in producing films and performances that integrate choreography in urban architecture of public spaces.  Since 2001 Sens has produced over a dozen large-scale dance installations and films in challenging public sites in NYC and around the world. Our high production values and innovative approach to press and marketing has attracted record breaking audiences in the thousands, sold out shows and extended runs up to 6 weeks.  Our work has been featured worldwide in The New York Times/Magazine, TIME magazine, Reader’s Digest Selection, Vogue, Wall street journal, London Times, LA Times, La Presse, The New Yorker, The Architects Newspaper, NPR, A&E, and CBC and has received support form NEA, NYSCA, DCA, Rockefeller foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Leon Levy Foundation, Tiffany & Co., Con Edison, Altria group, Canada Council for the Arts, EMPAC, BravoFact!, and many individual supporters.

FRANK GEHRY

Frank Gehry is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.  His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions.  His works are often cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as “the most important architect of our age”.

The belief that “architecture is art” has been a part of Frank Gehry’s being for as long as he can remember.  In fact, when asked if he had any mentors or idols in the history of architecture, his reply was to pick up a Brancusi photograph on his desk, saying,
“Actually, I tend to think more in terms of artists like this.  He has had more influence on my work than most architects.  In fact, someone suggested that my skyscraper that won a New York competition looked like a Brancusi sculpture.  I could name Alvar Aalto from the architecture world as someone for whom I have great respect, and of course, Philip Johnson.”

Rapture Film

Rapture Demo

Rapture Documentary

Wall Street Journal Online Press

BBC World: Interview 11/11