Choreographer as Architect of Movement

Jens Bjerregaard (born 1966). Trained as a dancer and choreographer at the Laban Centre of Movement and Dance, London. Established in 1998 the dance ensemble Urban Elves. Since 2004, house choreographer and artistic director of Mancopy, first based in Odense as the first modern dance company outside the two mainstay cities for dance, Copenhagen and Århus. Mancopy is now based in Choreografic Center Archauz in Århus, since Jens Bjerregaard July 1st 2007 took over as Artistic Director of the well established Dance Stage in Århus formerly known as  Gran Theatre of Dance.
In the season 2005/06 Mancopy started the youth company, U-Mancopy, with 16 young dancers between 13-20 years. January 1st 2008 Mancopy and Archauz will start something similar in Århus. 

Artistic Profile
Jens Bjerregaard is known for his consistent cultivation of dance as an abstract, non-theatrical idiom.  His springboard is clearly post-modern dance – with an idiom akin to choreographers such as Merce Cunningham and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.
Jens Bjerregaard is best described as an architect of movement with a distinct sense of visual structures – often inspired by contemporary art and design. More recently, visual artists such as Alexander Calder, Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock, photographer Man Ray and Arabic calligraphy have been fertile sources of inspiration.
The form of dance may be seen as characteristically Scandinavian, because conscious form and stylish design are central. Nevertheless, the works are also subtle, often unassuming and sly.

Current Productions

Iconic/Ironic
(2008)
Five new ultra short pieces and a classic. A quartet by Jens Bjerregaard
Modern art offen comes to live by promoting the classics - the icons og put them into new connections - nye images of the world.  Iconic/Ironic moves this game into the world of dance and will be a distorted and humouristic performance.

RAUM
(2007)
A dance performance that unites architecture, dance and music in an equal standing interaction.
RAUM is about the room created by man and explores the effect of the exterior frames, which we continuously relate to. The condensed scenery of the performance with transitions, limits, obstacles and ramps defines the room and limitation for the expression of the body.
The static and the dynamics will be turned upside down and it will be as much the dynamic of the room as the body, that creates the movements.

Stringens
(2006)
With the project Stringens, Mancopy gathers four highly estimated  European choreograhers, who one by one represents an outstanding, personal choreographic universe; consistent, not making compromises and without any kind of flattering for passing vogues and trends.
The Stage is set in a simple and minimalistic style and the variety and expression of the dance will be the central issue.
The Stringens performance is close to the pure and rough performance form, that shows the inner substanse of the dance and as a matter of fact the theatres as well. The choreographers of the project are free to do what they whant, but are asked to create a product, that with little but effectfull means will bring the expression of the dance and its unique form of storytelling into focus.

Comfort Guidelines
(2006)
Inspired by Arabic calligraphy, choreographer Jens Bjerregaard stretches his choreographic language.  Snaking lines of calligraphy are translated into the dancers’ ornamental patterns of movement, a sort of dancing cursive writing, accompanied by Arabic music, both traditional and pop.  Five dancers transform themselves visually into the precise pen and delicate lines of calligraphy. 

Too Late2
(2006)
Swedish guest choreographer Cristina Caprioli has created for Mancopy’s dancers a choreographic description of an encounter between three people.  Attraction and repulsion, observation and control are the central elements in the choreography that, in ever shifting constellations, challenges the audience.  The piece is performed in a double program with Comfort Guidelines.

Nothing Florid
(2005)
A pas de deux to piano music by Kim Helweg – played live at the performance.  Playing with space, the dance takes place on a Persian carpet. Nothing Florid has clear references to the photographer Man Ray’s intense visual language.  With a razor-sharp minimalism, titillating intimacy, and the unembellished presence of the body, French dancer Eve Garnier and Jens Bjerregaard himself have created a personal, technically playful, and unsentimental pas de deux.

Mimic
(2003)
Jens Bjerregaard dances his critically-acclaimed abstract solo Mimic, based on works by three visual artists: Alexander Calder, Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock. Video projections on the floor create scenographic surfaces on which the dance takes place, re-creating the particular artistic concepts the three artists represent.

Review Extracts

"Abandoned factories are a temptation like magnetism to theatre- and dance groups... and that is understandable because the large, naked and decayed surfaces bring lots of history... most beautiful expressed in "Embody"... The delicate, supple sensitivity that has become one of Jens Bjerregaards characteristics, is in fine harmony with the music, when the dancers twists and twine around each other."
Jyllandsposten (DK), Stringens

”Rules for practitioners of the art of writing are projected on large, white banners, while the five dancers in ingenious, recurring figurative formations form living letters and abstract signs that move across the stage, as if it were a page in a giant book … simple, delicate and beautifully adorned. Dance as ornament.” 
Jyllands-Posten (DK), Comfort Guidelines

“Above floor projections of the works of three modern artists, an confluence of the senses takes place, displaying a deep inspiration on Bjerregaard’s part and, perhaps, pointing toward ‘the laws of art’ – an aesthetic common denominator in painting and dance.  For even if there is a chasm between  Mondrian’s monochrome rectangles and Pollock’s savage self-crucifixion, Bjerregaard captures them in the eye of his body and is not only able to create a synesthesia through his models but to portray them in the moment of creation.”
Politiken (DK), Mimic

2006
Guangzhou Design Week 2006 (Guangzhou, CN)

2005
Köysiteatteri (Turku/FI)

Before the establishment of Mancopy, Urban Elves performed Jens Bjerregaard’s choreography in Russia, Germany, France, Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, Lithuania and Romania.