The Lavender Follies | HERNANDEZ

" My choreographic work is a love letter to performance. Performance has the ability to shape perspective in unique and ephemeral way.  

Because dance cannot exist outside of the exact moment that it is performed, there is an urgency that I have always loved. My role is to create situations within which dancers and performers are able to feel this urgency.  It is this urgency to live and hunger to communicate that can turn an ordinary event into something that soars.

The Lavender Follies is a piece that uses theatrical history as a playground.  My first memories of dance and performance came from VHS tapes of musicals that I would watch with my parents when I was very young.  The systems and traditions that were started by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, and Bob Fosse have had a great influence on how theatre and dance is presented.  With this piece I pull on these traditions as guidance and marry the aesthetics of the past to the complexity of contemporary dance. "

Joseph Hernandez

"The Lavender Follies" | HERNANDEZ
Choreography: Joseph Hernandez
Scenography and costumes: Yannick Cosso & Jordan Pallages
Musical composition: Johannes Till
Lighting: Samuel Thery
Duration: 43 min

Creation for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo
Premiere held on July 26th 2018, Salle Garnier Opera de Monte-Carlo
Production Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo