Already in the final stage of the Greek festival, we were able to enjoy three dance performances where dance, body and choreography took full center stage and made us travel all over the world: from Brazil to Africa and England. These are three proposals from three completely different choreographers, but I am sure that if they knew each other they would love each other. Brazilian Alice Reboul He visited Barcelona for the second time, this time with two fundamentally different, but complementary pieces. My house is chomangaA French-African creative gives us a taste of innovation and spirituality based on research into her African roots. I Hofsh Sheikhteran Israeli choreographer based in London, returns to the festival, this time with the young troupe Shechter II, to talk to us about an England that has become increasingly distant, particularly from the perspective of younger generations.
“Zona Franca” by Alice Ripoll or the conflict between dance and dance
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such an engaging, exciting and stimulating dance performance. free zoneby the Brazilian choreographer Alice Ripoll, who was seen before moving to Greece at the Dansa Valencia Festival. She is one of the choreographers of the moment, who has already toured all over Brazil and all over Europe, but has not been seen much in our country yet.
Ripoll is a choreographer, performer and movement director born in Rio de Janeiro who unexpectedly encountered dance while studying to become a psychoanalyst. She is the director of two dance companies that emerged from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, as she explained: This interview with Andrew Gomella. One is Ricka company that combines contemporary dance and performance, presented by the same Greek an agreement (2017), a small-scale piece that raises social and political issues directly related to inequality and class barriers in Brazil. The other is Nicea company that focuses more on the hybridization of contemporary and urban dance, which was presented by free zone To MAC room flower shop.
The value of these two companies is that their members are dancers from the poor neighborhoods and that their relationship with dance and the body (from the Repoll workshops) came to them as both a necessity and an opportunity. It is this close and vital link between social reality and dance culture that Repoll was able to crystallize on stage.
free zonewhich was released just one year ago, takes small stepvery fast dance steps to the rhythm Carioca Funkborn in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, is considered the first complete Brazilian style of urban dance. The show, in particular, shows this social reality of the favelas, where dance has taken center stage, competing with the terrain of crime and drugs, and putting the country of two hundred million people on the edge of looking at social networks and urban cultures. From what I saw City of God (2002), it would be interesting to see what the film would be like today in the slums with the phenomenon of small step.
By alternating dance scenes with more theatrical scenes that contextualize them, Ripoll invites the audience to be amazed by the vitality of these artists who are, first and foremost, dancers from head to toe, regardless of their training. In my opinion, it is in this theatrical context of dance that the formal conflict in the approach of the show lies, namely that since dance is the choreographic, scenic and conceptual engine of the piece, it is often subordinate in its potential to dance and theatricality.
In other words, the alternation of dance scenes (songs) and acting scenes that give structure to the show becomes repetitive, and seems to suggest that dance and drama are as insoluble as oil and water. It is about the tension in which dance lives (or tries to live), between its ritual origin (dance) and its theatrical character (spectacle), the tension between the immanence of the here and now, and the representation of something else. And abstract.
Betty Tshumanga embodies the legendary bridge between Africa and the West.
French creator of Cameroonian father Petit Tchomanga starts from the character Mother of the moona mermaid or water goddess of the Voodoo religion, originally from the coasts of West Africa, as a pretext to delve into the relationship between Africa and the West from colonial history. DisguisesTchomanga offers the audience a journey of exploration into the depths of their ancestors, including also the mythical lineage of the eternal gods. Thus, we are confronted with a being that is at once strangely monstrous and seductive, but also frightening and afraid of being exposed to the foreign gaze and control. But as a free and courageous spirit, assuming the identity between creator and performer, the spirit of Mami Wata makes its way through the transformation and metamorphosis that Tchomanga embodies in body and soul, as we can perceive through her gaze. A gaze that never ceases to address the audience at any moment: it is fixed on the viewer like two searchlights that never go out; it is linked to the performer’s powerful presence on stage.
Once the mythical object is proposed, the creator focuses the choreography on the bounce, the small, repeated vertical jump which, without ever leaving the ground, places the performer in a vertical and immobile position at a fixed point of it and which develops the drama of the performance. The continuous repetition of the bounce, which involves the whole body, including the face, is the engine of the performer’s inner transformation; while the voice (consultations Dalila Khater) He has just given life to the mythical being embodied on the stage. A disjointed voice, at the same time, sounds arbitrary, like the voice of the ancestors and the African diaspora. In fact, both the reverberation and the voice produce a blurred image at all times. We can never see or hear the performer clearly, but only perceive the echo of the unfocused image, because deep within us, the mysterious and vague thing that is the image, is in constant transformation and transition.
Chomanga proposes to give the body and the voice the opportunity to find their ghosts and their channels of emergence, to make room for something beyond the artist herself and the audience who watches her. The unknown and the different are seductive. Proposals like yours are appreciated, not only for the innovation in choreographic and scenic research, but also for the coherence of the entire proposal: whether in terms of choreography, dramaturgy, aesthetics or concept. We hope to see her again in Catalonia soon.
Hofesh Shechter s’endinsa in English culture
After ten years, Hoviš Shechter returns to Barcelona, but this time with the young company. Shechter IIIt is a professional development program for young dancers between the ages of 18 and 25 who are selected every two years. This type of project (similar toIT Dance) as a transition into the professional world after training. Similarly, the Israeli choreographer, who has been based in London since 2002, began dancing professionally with young folk dance groups.
Shechter is known and recognized not only for his company and the structure of the projects surrounding it, but also, and above all, for his own style and language: a deconstruction of Gaga, which is presented to us as more grounded and floating at the same time, as if the dancers were a school of fish in the water. A clearly recognizable way of dancing, which has evolved over the years in his creations and which has reached the maximum unification with dancing clowns (2018).
In the show that we were able to see at the Mercat de les Flors, this language was fully present, perhaps so crystallized that it seemed in danger of becoming entrenched, like a monument to itself. However, it has not yet lost its scenic and poetic power, loaded with ritual, folkloric and contemporary elements, championed by the strong presence of some young but very talented dancers (whose names we cannot know because we are not shown on the screen. The artist’s sheet of the show) and among them I learned that there was a Catalan dancer from Riodoms: Eloi Kogal Mysterywhich stood out particularly within the group for its interpretive power.
the offer From England with loveOriginally created for NDT 1 in 2021, Shechter delves into Anglo-Saxon culture by harnessing the energy of the performers. It is intended to be “a kind of love letter” to various elements of English culture, putting on stage the mystique of Anglo-Saxon culture, especially its dominant and colonial side, and giving the choreographer’s own perspective on what is both fascinating and mysterious. It is worth noting that in addition to choreography, Shechter is also responsible for the musical composition, which in this case has taken traditional English musical references to distort them and add layers of sonic complexity and depth.
Thus, we encounter students in distinctive English garb (which reminds me of Harry Potter), in the rain, with broken teacups, in an unspecified place, sometimes real, sometimes dreamlike, where students subvert the system of conventions and good manners. Face off more punk And angry at a generation that doesn’t know where they have left to live in an increasingly isolated England.
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