Bourrée Sorcière and The Fence Riders

Bourrée Sorcière, 2006

steel, 24ct gold leaf
approx. 180 x 180 x 1cm

Bourrée Sorcière, front view

Bourrée Sorcière and The Fence Riders, side view

It is the year 1952 ... Alexej Sacharoff looks back to a fulfilled artists’ life in dance, stage and costume design as well as painting. Nearly fifty years he performed and produced formidable art pieces. At that time he still continues creating more celebrated works, and after a lifetime of travelling and moving around the globe he settles down in Rome. Then he scetches another choreography onto a paper, the ‘bourée fantasque’... 

... 53 years later, I found the scetch in a book while doing research on Alexej and Clothilde Sacharoff, the famous dancers couple. They have been in the surroundings of ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ (‘The Blue Rider’) and members of ‘Neue Künstlervereinigung München’ which both have been trailblazing artists groups, developing abstract art and Expressionism. Members of those artist groups have been Wassily Kandinsky, Thomas von Hartmann, Gabriele Münter, Marianne von Werefkin and others.

As dance and dancers are deeply inspiring for my work, I loved it straight away. 

I translated the choreography into my formal language and developed 'The Fence Riders’ and their

Matrix, ‘Bourrée Sorcière’, where the score is leaf gilded on.

The Fence Riders, still in progress