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  • Research

    The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, sp…

    • Research Topics
    • The STMS Lab
    • Research Teams
    • Sound Systems and Signals: Audio/Acoustics, InstruMents
    • Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces
    • Perception and Sound Design
    • Sound Analysis-Synthesis
    • Sound Music Movement Interaction
    • Musical Representations
    • Analysis of Musical Practices
    • Projects
    • Sound Workshop
    • The Musical Body
    • Creative Dynamics
    • Musique/Sciences Collection
  • Creation

    IRCAM is an internationally recognized research center dedicated to creating new technologies for music. The institute offers a unique experimental environment where composers strive to enlarge their musical experience through the concepts expressed in new technologies.

    • Composers & Artists in Studio
    • "I am in blood" for Sixteen Musicians and Live Electronics
    • Lucie Antunes in studio
    • Deena Abdelwahed in the studio
    • "Transfer" for 10 Musicians and Electronics
    • L'Annonce faite à Marie
    • In Ex Machina
    • Jazz Ex Machina
    • Improvise cum machina 1/2
    • Improvise cum machina 2/2
    • Like Sound, Like Flesh
    • Silent Talks
    • Music-Fictions
    • Artistic Research Residency
    • Artistic Residencies: The Blog
    • Rendez Vous 20.21
    • Season 2022.23
    • Seasons from 1996 to present
    • ManiFeste-2022 Website
    • ManiFeste festival from 2012 to 2022
    • L’Étincelle, IRCAM’s journal of creation
  • Transmission

    In parallel to its fundamental missions of research and creation, IRCAM is committed to sharing its knowledge and know-how, its technologies with the general public. Cutting-edge research and diffusion of innovations, an international reference for education and the democratization of artistic practices are the driving forces behind the institute’s educational activities.

    • 2022.23 Training Courses
    • Max, Max for Live
    • OpenMusic
    • Modalys
    • TS2 and Partiels
    • Sound spatialization
    • From PureData to audio plugins
    • Sensors, Interfaces, and Interactive Machine Learning
    • Other training programs
    • Practical Information
    • Advanced Programs
    • Cursus Program on Composition and Computer Music
    • Supersonic Chair
    • Master ATIAM
    • Sound Design Master's Program
    • Music Doctorate
    • AIMove Master
    • School Programs
    • Studios of Creation
    • Mixed-Music
    • Artistic and Cultural Education
    • Career Discovery Visit
    • Images of a Work Collection
    • ManiFeste-2022, the Academy
  • Innovations

    At the center of societal and economic concerns combining culture and information technologies, the current research at IRCAM is seen by the international research community as a reference for interdisciplinary projects on the sciences and technologies for sound and music, constantly exposed to society’s new needs and uses.

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  • La Princesse légère (The Light Princess)
  • Composers & Artists in Studio
  • La Princesse légère (The Light Princess)
    • Biographies






La Princesse légère (The Light Princess)

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Premiere by the composer Violeta Cruz
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A Question of Levity!

La Princesse légère (The Light Princess) is exactly that: light. Light in every sense of the word. Victim of a spell cast by an evil witch, she has no gravity: not only is she weightless and float in the air, but she experiences everything with an inflexible frivolity. In this unusual fairy tale, George MacDonald, mentor and friend to Lewis Carroll, plays with the real to better address essential issues: detachment and freedom, fear of falling, and of serious relationships. Using the light jesting of childhood, the text is a gentle and cutting criticism of society, mocking all the “know-it-alls” so imbued with their knowledge….

This reflection hidden behind playfulness is precisely what seduced the atypical, explosive duo of made up of the Colombian composer Violeta Cruz and the Belgium theater figure Jos Houben, as did the scenic possibilities suggested by the tale’s vertical dramaturgy. Is laughter real when we only know how to cry?

Technologies

Theatrical, dramatic, and musical texts are closely knit here, thanks largely to the famous “sound objects” so loved by Violeta Cruz. The story itself led the creators towards sets inspired by children’s wooden blocks, filled with turnstiles, a see-saw, a slide; all the equipment with which a child tests her own gravity, has fun sliding, falling, hanging weight and time…. Equipment that—imagined especially for the occasion and equipped with sensors (the latest generation of IRCAM sensors, R-IoT) that translate movement into digital data—is included in the musical discourse via electronics through a process of interaction among music and movement, sound synthesis, segmentation of syllables, and more. All of this gives these objects an authentic musical significance, not only choreographic. The large scale of these objects makes their manipulation by the singers a broader instrumental gesture, giving rise to imagined—or unexpected—musical and theatrical situations seen by the creators during workshops held in the spring of 2016. The musical materials are transformed by the dynamic of playing with each object, which in turn, enhances the performers’ improvisations.

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Biographies

person

Violeta Cruz

Composer (b. 1986)
The Colombian composer Violet Cruz first studied music at Javeriana University in Colombia before going on to the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris. Her oeuvre includes instrumental and electroacous…

person

Jos Houben

Director
Jos Houben studied at the Ecole de théâtre et de mime Jacques Lecoq (Paris) with Philippe Gaulier, Monika Pagneux, and Pierre Byland. A founding member of Complicité, he performed and co-created A Minute Too Late, a work that shook up the theater…


Related Event

Opera
Creation

La Princesse légère

16 March to 19 March 2017
Opéra Comique
Violeta Cruz, Jos Houben with the ensemble Court-circuit
Opera
Creation

La Princesse légère

Friday 3 March 2017
Théâtre Impérial de Compiègne
by Violeta Cruz
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