NITS D’ESCÈNIQUES | La Morgue – Centre Cívic Guinardó

Wednesday 1 July | From 8 p.m

The Morgue | Don Lifar / A duel in gray

Dance – theater |40′

Don Lifar / A duel in gray is an exercise in style, politics and historical absurdity.

On March 30, 1958, at the age of 53, choreographer Serge Lifar faced 73-year-old businessman George de Cuevas in a duel in Blaru, France. The lawsuit was the result of an “artistic disagreement” over Lifar’s ballet Suite en blanc. Dueling had been illegal in France since the 17th century, so the time and place had not been publicly announced. However, the duel took place in front of 30 journalists and ended in the seventh minute after Cuevas injured Lifar’s forearm. After the duel both men were said to cry and hug each other. Cuevas declared: “I pierced my son. I killed the god of dance.”

Through the repetition and re-staging of the duel, a historical striptease is made of the figure of the choreographer and his mythological qualities to question how the institutional discourse is constructed. Careful investigation of the great deeds and events of mankind reveals a hidden sense of the ridiculous. Based on the suspicion that some of the chosen serious, important and major historical events are at once absurd and even funny, the work is a recreation and re-appropriation of the grand narrative structures to suggest that truth emerges through multiplicity and comedy.

Free show.

You can book your place here