Five dance pieces from the Festival Off Avignon 2023

© Katherine Longly

A bunch of haiku: Not I 

In a medium-sized courtyard at 9.15 a.m. Birds chirping, their shadows passing momentarily across the surface of the sunlit wall. Square wooden platform in the centre, L-shaped with spectators on either side; front row on the floor, back row on chairs. On the diagonal of the platform, a woman in a kimono-inspired dress sits on her knees with her back to the audience. 

A minimalist stage with various objects: a bowl of onions, a fish, a long thin board, a cast steel carpenter's press, a white cloth. During the performance, other objects are added to these: a sharp steel knife, a glass and a bottle of wine hidden in the cloth. A meditation accompanied by a vague, scratchy soundscape (atmospheric sound design: Jean-Philippe Gross) emanating from mini-speakers placed at various points on the stage throughout the show; delicate, hard, sharp, stormy, soft, smooth, straight, sinuous, seemingly serene on the surface but harbouring tensions within. 

A meditation that mobilises all the senses of the audience. I am talking about an example of performing art, so of course it appeals to the audience's sense of sight and hearing, okay, but in this show other senses are also involved; smell, taste and touch. 

A route that the performer travels on this wooden platform. There are stops along the way and little haiku-like poetic events that take place at those stops. There is no obvious narrative in the way the events at the stops are put together, or I did not make the connections and could not grasp the backbone narrative. Rather, I witnessed these small events and enjoyed the abstract states of poetic situations. I perceived the performer's movements on the platform throughout the show as a calligraphic journey that ended in a still life that appealed to all my senses.

The most choreographically decisive aspect of this journey was the meditative calm and slowness with which the performer carried out all the movements, even those involving tension, such as bending her body backwards. 

Inspired by the Japanese tea ceremony, Camille Mutel created this 50-minute minimal and poetic solo entitled Not I as the first part of her quartet entitled La Place de l'Autre. 

Not I was performed from 7 to 20 July 2023 in one of the courtyards of the University of Avignon as part of the programme of the Théâtre du Train Bleu, as a production of Compagnie Li(luo), founded by Mutel herself.

© Jerome Bourquin

The strange balance of male friendship: DOS

A dark stage on the top floor of a building at 11:05 a.m., just as the sun began to scorch the streets outside. As the audience settled in, I heard the familiar music: famous Turkish singer Barış Manço's Dere Boyu Kavaklar. 

As the lights in the auditorium went out and those in the playground came on, two men appeared on stage one after the other, one well-built, tall, thick, bald, giant-like, the other thin and fragile; they performed movements, gestures, poses in silence and independently for a long time, sometimes making sounds like machine buzzing and hydraulic hissing simultaneously with their movements. And the piece of music that began to play after a while proved that the piece played before the show was no coincidence: Cemalim by the recently deceased Erkin Koray, another famous Anatolian rock singer from the 1970s. Along with the music, the two men repeated the movements, gestures and poses they had done before, but this time as a duo, not solo; it turned out that the previous solo movements were parts of this movement, which was originally a duo. The two figures, trying to reach out to each other, trying to establish a relationship with each other, came into contact with the music. Although the slender and fragile one of the men accompanied the lyrics with his mouth while Cemalim was being played, the movements or poses the two performed at that time were not directly related to the events described in the lyrics of the song. Rather, the song seemed to provide a backdrop to the wild and strange atmosphere of the show.

Drawing on clown aesthetics and absurdist humour, not only in its movement but also in its costume design, the 40-minute DOS was a show that managed to be as impressive as it was entertaining, benefiting from the charismatic performances of two performers, choreographer-dancer Marco Delgado and acrobat carrier Valentin Pythoud.

The Delgado Fuchs dance company, founded by Marco Delgado in partnership with Nadine Fuchs, has been to Avignon in previous years as part of the Sélection Suisse en Avignon and has built up a strong following over time. 

DOS, as a production of his company, was presented at L'Atelier (Manutention) from 10 to 20 July 2023 as part of Les Hivernales - CDCN Avignon's On (y) danse aussi l'été! 2023 programme.

© Laetitia Bouloud

The pain of being squeezed into identities: THISISPAIN

At 4.05pm, when even the shadows are sweltering, in an air-conditioned hall, two chairs on one side of the stage, triangular legs angled towards the floor on the other, the word "PAIN" written on the back.

Two dancers take the stage: Hillel Kogan and Mijal Natan. The show begins with Natan's traditional flamenco dance, then Kogan takes the stage and starts talking about the most popular and clichéd things that come to mind when you think of Spain: Fiesta, Siesta, Picasso, Carmen, Barcelona. Kogan is like a conversation starter, warming up the audience before getting to the real challenge. And then he introduces the burning political history of Spain: Colonialism, Civil War, Fascism, Franco. Then he starts dancing, with new flamenco moves interspersed with modern dance and even references to Nijinski's 'Afternoon of a Faun'. Kogan ends his dance party with the image of Christ. Over the next five episodes, popular Spanish icons such as Bizet-Carmen music and Picasso-Bull are re-imagined in various forms, while the basic elements of flamenco dance such as clapping, high heels and the pleated skirts of women's dresses are deconstructed. Meanwhile, the life stories of the two dancers are briefly brought into play, and in this context, for example, the following question is asked: "Do you need a Spanish passport to dance flamenco?" The almost hour-long show ends with Kogan's mouth agape after a long scream; I am reminded of Picasso's famous painting Guernica.

All this is just a tool for the main theme the show wants to explore: What qualities make up our identities in the contemporary world? And the main argument of the show is: The absurdity of believing that being born in a country constitutes one's identity.

Hillel Kogan, a contemporary dance artist and the choreographer of this show, has created a work that joins other shows, such as Dunas by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Maria Pagés and TOROBAKA by Akram Khan and Israel Galvan, that have resulted from the collaboration of a contemporary dance choreographer with a flamenco dance artist. Kogan's work differs from the other two in that it is not choreographically more mature or production-wise more polished, but in its sincere presentation of two different dance languages, combined with wry humour, unsparing observations and the vital question of the identity of contemporary man.

Kogan, who made a big splash at last year's Festival Off Avignon with We love arabs, staged THISISSPAIN as part of La Manufacture's programme at the Château de Saint-Amand from 7 to 24 July.

© Nana Moraes

Journey to the depths of the soul: Enquanto você voava, eu criava raízes

A pitch-black stage. At the start of the performance, although I was sitting in the first row of the audience, at a distance that seemed very far away even to me, in the darkness and at the very back of the stage, the outlines of a huge circle that seemed to be floating in the air appeared through the light. Two pairs of inverted legs moved in the darkness at the centre of the circle, illuminated by the light coming from the side. Darkness, distance and inversion disorientated me. Not only during this prelude, but throughout the 55-minute performance. Each new sequence of the show will keep me disoriented and my astonishment and admiration alive.

The main element of the show, which takes place in a literally and figuratively dark atmosphere from beginning to end and uses various disciplines such as dance, mime, acrobatics, video and plastic arts, is the scenography: A huge circle made of transparent material, standing at the very back and high up, held up by wires stretched from each point. Behind the circle, two male dancers move vertically on a platform at the centre of the circle; sometimes their entire bodies are obscured by a black strip, sometimes the floor of the platform is used to create the illusion of a mirror image.

Enquanto você voava, eu criava raízes (Whilst you’re flying away, I was putting down roots) is an unusual piece of visual theatre choreographed, directed, staged, designed and performed by Brazilian artist duo Artur Luanda Riberio and Andre Curti. In this show, Riberio and Curti take us into the depths and darkness of our strange dreams, perhaps our endless nightmares, but above all into the depths and darkness of our psyche, with the help of video images projected onto the stage (Laura Fragoso and Miguel Vassy) and meditative music (Federico Puppi).

With Companhia Dos à Deux, which they founded in Paris in 1998, Riberio and Curti, who have staged all their shows so far at the Avignon Festival and have won both the appreciation of the audience and the praise of the critics, have been teaching the method they have developed on the dramaturgy of the body since 2015, organising workshops in Rio de Janeiro, where their company is based, and in many other parts of the world. 

The admiration of the audience and other artists for Riberio and Curti in Avignon was so evident that two people I met and chatted to the day before the performances (one from the press, the other an audience member who said he had seen more than 2000 performances at Avignon festivals over the years) stressed that Riberio and Curti were very original artists and strongly recommended that I see this show. I followed their advice and did not regret it.

Enquanto você voava, eu criava raízes was performed at the Patinoire at 10:05 pm as the last show of the day in the programme of La Manufacture from 7 to 24 July 2023.

© Pierre Gondard

The performer's journey into his own body memory: Pour sortir au jour

One of the late shows of the day begins at 10.30pm in a building converted from a cinema. Chairs are lined up on either side of the stage, and at the back is a table with envelopes and a computer. The performer, who walks around the stage, teasing the audience, chatting to them, taking champagne from behind the stage, opening it, pouring it into plastic glasses and offering it to those seated, invites them to come to the chairs on the stage when he sees that every new member of the audience is heading for the auditorium seats as their first choice, and if he fails, he suggests they sit in the first rows of the auditorium. When the time comes, the show begins. 

Three volunteers from the audience, or if there are no volunteers, three people chosen by the performer, take the chairs at the back of the stage. The performer asks two of them to pick an envelope from the different bundles of envelopes in his hand. One of the envelopes contains the shows that the performer has danced or choreographed before, the other contains the music of these shows. The first envelope is opened and the name of the show is read out. When the second envelope is opened, the performer gives the volunteer a choice: the music from the second envelope or the original music from the first envelope. The third volunteer's task is to tell the performer which item of clothing to take off. Once these three titles have been decided, the performer, while taking off a piece of clothing, briefly talks about the show that came out of the first envelope (when and where the show was first performed, or his memories, etc...) and performs a piece from the show, accompanied by the music that has been decided.

Each time the volunteers change, the envelopes are opened and the performer's jacket, belt, shoes, socks, shirt, etc. are taken off. This goes on for about 80 minutes; the performer gets more and more tired, more and more naked... For the last 10 minutes, the performer is naked, the whole audience is on stage, dancing together; it is as if the performer's body is being blessed, his past is being celebrated.

The performer is Olivier Dubois. The performance is called Pour sortir au jour (in English My body of coming forth by day). It was conceived by Dubois in 2018. Dubois, who staged his first choreography in 2006, but who has since danced in the works of many of the cornerstones of the contemporary dance and performance scene, from William Forstyhe to Jan Fabre, from Angelin Preljocaj to Sasha Waltz, makes a retrospective visit to his repertoire of 60 shows as a dancer and choreographer with a playful tour de force, making the audience part of this playful visit.

Pour sortir au jour, in which the memory and capacity of the dancer's body and the fragility of the dancer's soul are openly and relentlessly explored, was staged on the evenings of 7, 8, 9 and 14, 15 and 16 July 2023 as part of the programme of La Scala Provence.