A choreographic essay on dancer's ecology within its natural biotope
Out there a zebra herd in the Serengeti plains. Here 20 professional and non-professional dancers on a dance mat. Two different ecosystems, two different habitats, one same approach.
Les animaux explores notions of environment, territory and performer. The piece does not so much aim to develop myths, body language or affects linked to the idea of animality than to evoke - not without humor - the ecology of the dancer as if its biotope was the stage. YoungSoon Cho Jaquet continues her work on sharing by inviting 8 professional and 13 non-professional dancers to join a vast choreography based on physicality. Here the body is a founding principle as vivacious and dynamic movements define space and dramaturgy. Like the spectators of a wildlife documentary film such Microcosmos the audience witnesses the amusing, ambiguous or fascinating behavior of a few interesting specimens of the black box.
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The animal opens before me a depth that attracts me and is familiar to me.
In a sense, I know this depth: it is my own.
It is also that which is farthest removed from me [...]
Something tender, secret and painful draws out the intimacy which keeps vigil in us,
extending its glimmer into that animal darkness.
George Bataille, Theory of Religion
This species, deemed to be as useless as it is persistent; resistant even, due to it’s origins of antiquity… /
Already, it has crossed and recrossed the emptinesses between heaven and…/
How wonderful to observe this species for hours on end, as it sets out on it’s challenges that are as unattainable
as they are uninteresting to common mortals. /
This species lives in hope that one day it’s body will become one with the ordinary people;
ambitious that it’s obsession with abstract spaces will become everyday space itself.
Extract from Les animaux
conception&choreography YoungSoon Cho Jaquet
performer Lorenzo de Angelis, Elodie Aubonney, Marion Duval, Nordine Hamimouch, Piera Honegger, Aurélien Patouillard, Pauline Wassermann, Mike Winter ainsi qu'une douzaine de danseurs amateurs recrutés sur le lieu d'accueil
lights Antoine Friderici
sound & music Jérémie Conne et Christian Pahud
costumes Tania d’Ambrogio
Research & dramaturgy Christophe Jaquet
recherche et communication visuelle Jonas Marguet
encadrement des amateurs Céline Zufferey
stagiaire Eléonore Heiniger
Production & booking Michael Scheuplein
coproduction Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique contemporain - Lausanne
support Affaires culturelles de l’État de Vaud, Ville de Lausanne, Pro Helvetia, Loterie Romande, Société Suisse des Auteurs, Fondation Ernst Göhner, Fondation Leenaards
