Calder in Nancy

Ballet without dancers

Even before inventing his mobiles, Alexander Calder dreamed of a theatre in which movement would emerge from the forms themselves, carried by air, balance and rhythm. Conceived in dialogue with the Calder on Stage exhibition at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Calder in Nancy revives this vision through Socrate (1936) by Erik Satie, for which Calder devised “plastic interludes”: moving objects that, between sections, gradually take over the stage. For Work in Progress (1968), Calder imagined a “ballet without dancers”, made up of psychedelic visions, mobiles and cyclists tracing moving arabesques through space. The project also reaches into the present day with NOX#5, the opera creation laboratory of the Opéra national de Nancy-Lorraine, with two contemporary commissions: a new work by Karl Naegelen for voice and miraclophone — a whimsically named instrument designed by Thibault Perriard — alongside an installation by Félix Blume. These short creations act as preludes, signals, almost trailers, inviting the audience into Calder’s world through fragments, surprises and successive movements.

Exploring further:

Ballet mécanique (Fernand Léger, 1924): A manifesto film in which objects, fragments of bodies and repetitive movements compose a visual choreography. An obvious precursor to the idea of an ‘object ballet’, where machinery and perception replace narrative.

Einstein on the Beach (Robert Wilson / Philip Glass, 1976): An opera without a plot in the traditional sense, constructed as an architecture of durations, motifs, tableaux and gestures. To extend the experience of a performance where the stage becomes a mental, almost cosmic space, rather than a narrative theatre.

Event in partnership with Le Hall du Livre Nancy: Fri 2 Apr at 7pm

Calder on Stage exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, from 9 April to 15 November 2027