Le Patin Libre Returns to Brattleboro with Threshold
Next Stage Arts presents Montreal-based contemporary ice skating company Le Patin Libre, performing their work Threshold at the Nelson Withington Skating Facility on Friday, February 16 at 6:00 and 8:00 pm. Le Patin Libre performed to a sold-out audience at the rink last winter. A second show has been added this year to accommodate what is sure to be an enthusiastic response to the company’s return.
A contemporary reinvention of the show on ice, Le Patin Libre company is once again sharpening its blades for a new frozen opus. Dazzlement assured.
Le Patin Libre, whose members are all highly trained skaters, caused a sensation in 2014 with Vertical Influences, a revolutionary display of contemporary dance on ice. “We take full advantage of what makes skating a unique and legitimate art form: the glide”, explains Alexandre Hamel. “The glide allows the disconnection of the body’s displacement in space from its physical movement.” A Le Patin Libre performance is an adrenalin-laced experience. “We use that rush to fuel our choreographic poetry.” The same artistic team—skaters Pascale Jodoin, Jasmin Boivin, Taylor Dilley, Samory Ba and Alexandre Hamel, joined by dramaturge Ruth Little—brings us another gravity-defying show. “Dancers and acrobats have to walk, run, flip, leap, and so on. We, on the other hand, can zoom around without moving a muscle!”