Claude Pascal

Claude Pascal is a simple meditation about time, speed 
and aging, and the impossibility of understanding it. 
In much of my work there are references to the past. 
It simply acknowledges my awareness of our roots and 
where we come from. In many of my works I use fragments 
of older music which are decomposed and recomposed by 
contemporary means. In this case it is the “Crisantemi” 
quartet by Puccini.

In "Claude Pascale" the cast of dancers is clearly divided 
into two groups. One group represents a strange family 
dressed in historic costumes from around 1890. This is also 
the time in which Puccini wrote his famous "Crisantemi" quartet.
The dancers perform miniature theatrical scenes using my 
own texts and a text from Bram Stoker's "Frankenstein". 
They are like an old surreal photograph, which only comes 
to life in our fantasy. They have nothing to do with the other 
group of dancers dancing much more abstract choreography, 
wearing contemporary costumes and dancing to music of today.
These two worlds meet in the center of a labyrinth made 
of mirrored walls. It is an imaginary "time tunnel" in which 
past and future swirl around each other. Claude Pascal is a 
tragicomic encounter between the past and the present – 
making us realize that every moment we experience instantly 
becomes the past... even the one right now..!

ON TIME

I remember the future very well.
He pushed his finger through my ear
And scratched my brain.
Clouds passing in his eyes.
Many happy returns.
His body was falling up and up …
Falling apart.
Lying in thousand pieces on fresh green grass.
A back, a face, a foot, a finger, skin,
Elbow, tongue, knee, hair …
Found and reassembled –
Maybe some parts missing.
He knew the way – the way didn’t know him.
He went off in all directions …..

Jirí Kylián
2002

TEXT FOR THE FAMILY
Marie-Claude – Pierre-Marie – Marie-Claire – Jean-Pascale

ACT I

Pierre-Marie: “Sorry, I am slightly retarded”

Jean-Pascale: “How did I get here, anyway?”

Marie-Claire: “My biological existence is a mystery”

Marie-Claude: “Music is my constant passion”

Jean-Pascale: “No more constipation - poetry!”

Pierre-Marie: “Suddenly, strangely swift stomach”

ean-Pascale: “Rumble”

Marie-Claude: “Rock music»

Marie-Claire: “Diarrhea - condition of excessively loose
and frequent bowel movements”

Jean-Pascale: “Maybe it was all written in the stars”

Marie-Claire: “I love darkness, solitude, spaghetti, and my
collection of fans. My singing was always …”

Marie-Claire: “… a great hit …”

Jean-Pascale: “Incarnation”

Marie-Claire: “The men were always very excited”

Pierre-Marie: “I was misplaced for a while, I was placed in a
place where living beings have no place. I did
feel somewhat out of place; now back in my
old place. Happy!”

Marie-Claude: “That was an exciting, electrifying, galvanizing,
rousing, gripping, hair-raising, riveting, spine-
tingling, and, and, and thrilling experience”

ACT II

Marie-Claire: “I can see the time in the mirror”

Jean-Pascale: “I am losing my hair!”

Pierre-Marie: “I start feeling slightly dilapidated”

Jean-Pascale: “The future has just become the past”

Marie-Claude: “Where is my present”

Marie-Claire: “Wrinkles! I have earned every one of them ! “

Marie-Claude: (rhythmically) “I will be a dancer, dancer,
dancer. I will be a dancer in the past”

Jean-Pascale: “My pants are full of grief”

Marie-Claire: “I am just having a terrible déjà-vu”

Jean-Pascale: “My pants are full of grief”

Marie-Claude: “Sometimes, time passes like a shot”

 

Jean-Pascale: (very fast) “My pants are full of grief”

Pierre-Marie: “Sometimes, I feel like time is going backwards”

Jean-Pascale: “Grief of full are pants my”

Marie-Claire: “Sometimes, it just drags on, and on ……”

Jean-Pascale: (very slowly) “M y   p a n t s   a r e   f u l l   o f “

Marie-Claire: “Not that slow! ”

Marie-Claude: “Endless like a big bretzel”

Jean-Pascale: “The shorter I look, the further I see. I see!?”

Marie-Claire: “Sometimes, I wonder”

Jean-Pascale: “I knew a man; what was his name?”

Pierre-Marie: “Can you tell me, why the turtle lives more
long than generations of men? Why the elephant
goeson and on, till he has seen dynasties; and
why the parrot never dies, only of bite of cat,
or dog, or other complaint? Can you tell me,
why men in all ages believe, that there are men,
who cannot die? We all know, because science
has proved, that there have been frogs shut up
in rocks in tiny little holes and survive for
thousands of years. Can you tell me, how an
Indian fakir can make himself to die, and have
been buried, and his grave sealed, and corn
sowed on it, and the corn reaped and be cut
and sowed and reaped and cut again, and that
there lie the Indian fakir, not dead, but rise
up and walk away, as if nothing ever happened”
1

Jean-Pascale: “Aaah …oui .... Claude Pascal”

Marie-Claire: “Sometimes, I wonder“

ACT III

Jean-Pascale: “Tomorrow, this very moment will be yesterday.
The day after tomorrow will only be tomorrow,
and today’s yesterday will become the day
before yesterday… But in any case, the day
after yesterday and the day before tomorrow
seems always to be TODAY …”

Marie-Claude: “What should I remember? “

Pierre-Marie: “Yellow – pang – blue – pang – pink – pang –
whooooooo”

Marie-Claire: “Sometimes, I wonder”

Pierre-Marie: “Less is more, and more is less”

Jean-Pascale: “More or less… I am becoming younger by the
day. In the year 2045, I will be minus five”

Pierre-Marie: “Next year I will become seventeen years of age”

Marie-Claude: “Some years take years, some go by like a shot”

Marie-Claire: “I will die at the age of zero. In any case, zero
is the only number I respect”

Marie-Claude: “My shoe size is zero, my age is zero, my
ambition is zero, and I have zero time to spend”

Jean-Pascale: “Zero hour”

Marie-Claire: “Like end of day, or beginning of night; at the
dead of night”

Pierre-Marie: “Someone left his fingerprints on my night side “

Marie-Claude: “Black and white and black and white and black
and white…. Like the stripes of a zebra”

Marie-Claire: “Zebra, zebra, ze braze, braze, braze, braze,
bra, bra, bra …..”

Jean-Pascale.: “Voodoo. Do we do Voodoo, maybe Voodoo
would do …?”

Jean-Pascale: “I remember, when I saw the light of the day
for the last time. It was the brightest darkness
I ever saw”

Marie-Claire: “Black is black…”

Pierre-Marie: “White can be pinky, rosy, yellowish, greenish, bluish or off white …”

Marie-Claude: “The colour of my dress. The colour of my friends”

Marie-Claude: “The colour of love. The colour of time.
The colour of life”

Jean-Pascale: “When you switch the light off, you see nothing
When you switch the light off, you see only the
inside of yourself. What would happen when we
switch the light off….? Maybe, the day will just
simply become night”


1 Blue coloured text is from “Dracula” by Bram Stoker


                 Jiří Kylián - The Hague, 2002