Benjamin Millepied and Barbara Kruger transform the Studio des Acacias
One is French, the other is American. One is a dancer and choreographer, the other is a conceptual artist. Both are internationally renowned creative minds, each as innovative as the other in their preferred discipline. So it is not surprising to see Benjamin Millepied and Barbara Kruger meet at an exhibition event at the Studio des Acacias as part of the FIAC 2017 Private Course. With “Reflections Redux”, Paul-Emmanuel Reiffers, founder of the Studio des Acacias and President of the Mazarine agency, invites the former director of dance at the Paris Opera to create an immersive work and to completely rethink the Studio’s scenography. On the evening of the inauguration, the guests (Isabelle Adjani, Ellen von Unwerth, Haider Ackermann and Marie-Agnès Gillot, among others) immersed themselves in the experience created by the meeting between holographic projections and a large-scale scenography. The concept: give to review passages of “Reflections”, the ballet imagined by Benjamin Millepied in 2014. At the time, it was Barbara Kruger who signed the sets for the ballet. A total visual environment (on the wall and on the floor, two large red and white canvases take up her obsession with words) that she recreates here for this immersive experience. While on the ground floor the visitor mixes, almost involuntarily, with the dancer-holograms, he discovers on the first floor a series of films by Benjamin Millepied made with his company, L.A. Dance Project. Later, the evening continued with a very private dinner at Loulou, between initiates…
