2500 Ft / Student: 1900 Ft / season ticket is valid
In the frame of the Temps d’Images Festival
Duration: 55 min
Trafó presents in cooperation with French Institute
„Philippe Decouflé’s Solo was surely the most magical piece of this year’s Dance Umbrella.
It was a clever combination of old-fashioned showmanship and state-of-the-art, real-time video special effects devised in collaboration with the video artist and dancer Olivier Simola. Solo was created last year to celebrate 20 years of Decouflé’s company DCA, (founded in 1983, the same year as Keersmaeker’s Rosas and Lea Anderson’s Cholmondeleys). For those who followed his work over the years, Solo was replete with quotations and evident re-workings of a number of long term concerns. This was done not in a self-congratulatory or celebratory way, but rather seemed like an exercise in self-examination, in taking stock.”
(Ramsay Burt, Ballet-Dance)
For this solo performance, Philippe Decouflé wanted to create a piece which would use his body to generate new optical effects and a new kind of interaction between dance, image, light and music, producing a visual symphony with a single person. For Philippe Decouflé, this is an opportunity to revisit his career as a dancer and choreographer, by shattering, deforming and replicating his image in infinite manners… The performance is a leap into the shadowy waters of his memory, its distant music is strange yet familiar and the ensuing portrait is hesitant, fragile and poignant. This is a bold solo venture: daring solitude after twenty years of group work, showing his feet as well as photos of his parents and daughters, daring to imagine that the mere movement of his fingers could be as devastating as an earthquake, and daring to play with himself… For Philippe Decouflé it is an almost impossible challenge. It is a daunting task to portray both life and art from every possible angle - private and public, serious and fanciful - but only a revealing solo performance holds any real interest for Philippe Découflé. Appearing naked is of no concern for him, yet he is equally capable of conjuring away reality as he is of playing hide-and-seek with truth itself.
Artistic director and dancer: Philippe DECOUFLÉ
Music: Joachim LATARJET
Video: Olivier SIMOLA
Light: Patrice BESOMBES
Sound: Claire THIÉBAULT
Video assistant and stage: Laurent RADANOVIC
Props: Pierre-Jean VERBRAEKEN
Production director: Frank PIQUARD
Technical director: Lahlou BENAMIROUCHE
Co-production:
Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, Festival de danse de Cannes
Supporters:
DRAC Ile-de-France – Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication; Conseil Général de Seine-Saint-Denis; Ville de Saint-Denis.
