PAST CREATIONS
Late this summer Olivier made a momentous trip back to his native Belgium, where his father is suffering from Alzheimer’s and a host of physical ills. In the course of that sojourn, encounters with his estranged father’s deterioration, his stressed and exhausted mother, and an angry, alienated brother led him to ponder more deeply on the nature and different forms of love. In coming to terms with intense and painful personal emotions, Olivier had to reflect on how—when love is strained even to the breaking point—one can recover from it, reimagine and reignite it, or even fall into it again.
Set against a background of abstract neon letters that spell out “love” it’s a series of six vignettes which explore the various forms that love takes – between romantic partners (same sex and opposite sex), for family members (a mother, a brother, a father), and even for oneself. Most of the vignettes are serious but Wevers does allow his signature sense of humor to come through when Adrian Hoffman and Tori Peil work through their feelings as ex-lovers. Wevers’ use music by Chopin demonstrated once again his musical sophistication in which the music always adds an additional thrust to the forward movement.
Alice Kaderlan, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The last, 6th section of 6 love letters— all to the poet of the piano, Chopin, immediately impressed me as a mini-masterpiece; a true dance, at the moment Watson and Liane Aung entered and then reversed and changed positions. It was poetic and heartfelt — and a very good dance.
6 love letters employs a spartan and effective set of letters spelling out the word “LOVE,” with each letter at a different height. The “O,” set as a three-quarter rectangular door shape, was used just as that — one of the means of ingress and egress by the dancers. The work showcased Wevers at perhaps his most lyric.
Dean Speer, Critical Dance
6 Love Letters
Premiere
January 19, 2018
Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center
Choreography
Olivier Wevers
Music
Frédéric Chopin
Costumes
Mark Zappone
Lighting
Michael Mazzola