Click - Pause - Silence

One of my first choreographic efforts (1970) was entitled 
“Kommen und Gehen’ (Come and Go) -
At that time, the significance of this title was not totally clear 
to me – and it still isn’t – and most probably it never will….
The mystery of people entering our life, becoming a part of it, 
and ‘disappearing’, is perhaps an element of our life that moves 
us most -
But our own emergence into our ‘conscious life’ and our journey 
is even more puzzling.

We hear the click of a camera, which captures a moment of our 
life. The result is a photograph, which is silent and motionless, 
while we are alive. But when we die, this photograph will come 
to life, break its silence, and speak to the ones, who come 
after us. 

“Click - Pause - Silence” was conceived as a farewell perfor-
mance for a very fine dancer - Elke Schepers -, who has 
decided to finish her dancing career. The work itself is a 
meditation on the value of our physical, artistic and spiritual 
energy and legacy, which streams through our body while 
we are alive. But it also asks the question: ”What will be 
remembered”?

The fact, that we are born at all, and acquire all the properties, 
which are totally unique to ourselves only, is an inexplicable 
miracle. And I find it important, that we do not only accept 
our uniqueness, but also that we use it, in order to give our 
artistic statement a deeply personal and original value. If we 
want to reach and touch people, all our actions must come 
from our deeply felt integrity, conviction and honesty. Only 
then, the hearts of our spectators will open.

	
	
In the musical composition, created for this choreography, 
we have used the music of Bach, who was regarded as “old 
fashioned” by his contemporaries. But he was a strange kind 
of a genius, who has managed to tame our emotional chaos, 
and gave it a form, structure and architecture, unsurpassed 
to this very day. He gave his music a mathematical order, 
and created equations, which gave his compositions a unique 
balance and a sense of inevitability. He understood, that 
emotions in a work of art, become much stronger, when they 
are given a clear line and form. He left to us a legacy, which 
is totally convincing, soothing and reassuring.
The composer Dirk Haubrich and myself have separated the 
elements of Bach’s “Präludium nr. 24 in b” from 

“Das Wohltemperierte Klavier”. We have put Bach’s composition 
under a microscope, taken a scalpel, cut it apart, and threw 
all its elements into space. From that chaos we have created 
new links and structures - new music….
The building blocks of “Click, Pause, Silence” are "simple": 
They "only" represent Chaos, Order, Catharsis, Conviction, 
Integrity and Uncertainty.(Uncertainty and Conviction, meaning 
and representing all our burnt energy, all the spent emotions, 
and all the other things, which we leave behind when we go!) 
It is a well known fact, that people have a short memory, 
but we should nevertheless try to live (and dance) in a way, 
which will make our “footprints” difficult to forget, and that 
the people who have crossed our path, will remember us for 
some time to come, and preferably for a good reason !!!

                    Jiří Kylián - The Hague, March 23, 2008