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BIPED with Choreography by Merce Cunningham and Music by Gavin Bryars Included in Lyon Opera Ballet's New York City Center Performance

Feb. 27, 2026

Lyon Opera Ballet, one of the world's foremost contemporary dance companies, kicked off the second year of the Dance Reflections Festival by Van Cleef & Arpels at the New York City Center on February 19 with a performance of BIPED, choreographed by Merce Cunningham with music by Gavin Bryars.

BIPED, scored for violin, cello, electric guitar, double bass, electric keyboard, and pre-recorded tape, was composed in 1999. For this occasion, Bryars wrote the score apart from Cunningham’s choreography in order to ensure an incidental relationship between the music and dance. Bryars took inspiration from the staging and design, which, created by Shelly Eshkar and Paul Kaiser, consists of video motion capture to project the movements of the dancers. Bryars adds:

"In BIPED there is live dance and its digital shadow through the projected video animation (curiously, like the very first piece I saw, projected on to a front gauze) so I chose to have a form of digital replication within the music. The live instruments (electric guitar, cello, electric keyboard, acoustic double, violin and percussion) are reinforced by their electronic equivalents."


Merce Cunningham Dance Company on BIPED | Lyon Opera Ballet | New York City Center

To learn more about Gavin Bryars, visit schott-music.com.

Gavin Bryars
BIPED (1999)
for ensemble and pre-recorded tape
egtr.ekeybd-str(1.0.0.1.1)
45’

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