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Dance is the archeologist, or an idol in the bone.

DD Dorvillier, human future dance corps

Copyright information:Brian Rogers

The mesmerizing solo by DD Dorvillier (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1967) draws you into a dreamy state of mind. Are we seeing the same dance twice- or not? Dance is the archeologist, or an idol in the bone. subtly plays with repetition and memory. The work, with minimalist electronic compositions by Sébastien Roux, premiered in 2024 in Brittany, France.

 

Wearing jeans, white sneakers and a black T-shirt, Dorvillier plays with time and how we perceive the world, literally and figuratively digging into the layers of memory and gestures. Sounds that are created live in the first round - footsteps, breathing, cries - return as recordings in the second.

 

From the 1990s on, Dorvillier has made a name for herself in the world of dance with her innovative approach. Her works, anchored by physical practice and observation are generally identified as dance yet they are inherently multi-disciplinary in their process.  They explore and unpack affects and definitions of presence, performance, dance, and representations of the body. In this solo, the gaps between what can be seen, what can be heard, and what can be felt are part of the dance.

dates

Fri June 20 7:00 PM

Fri June 20 9:00 PM

prices

  • default € 15
  • CJP/student/scholar € 13

information

  • Language no problem

  • 50 minutes (zonder pauze)

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Dance is the archeologist of dance, digging into the dance, dancing to the bone.

 

Language and orality, and a constant flooding of internal images, haunt my current dancing. There's a need to use the body in an immediate way, and to move and sense the lightness and power of the mutual gaze of audience and performer, in this case me. There's a need to use the voice, relying on the complicity between movement and utterance. And there's a need to situate dancing in the present, to cultivate its delicate capacity to create space for listening and observing differently.

 

This new solo created and performed by choreographer DD Dorvillier is structured by four successive dance scores. Emerging from dreams and memories, the scores draw from experiences at a handful of little-known archeological sites in France during the making of Landscape Stories (a recent site-based quartet).

 

Dance is often spoken of as ephemeral, with persistent disappearance as its basic condition. But dance can also make invisible things appear. As in archeology, we suspect something there, we go digging to reveal it. A dance buried in the memory, or in a dream, appears only after dancing it again. It appears, we dance it, send it back through the memory of the beholder, and time bends.

 

The performance takes place in two parts. In the first, Dorvillier performs the series of dance scores, accompanied by Sébastien Roux's sound score. This sound score, and the sounds of Dorvillier's movements and her words (as well as the ambient sounds of the space, lights and audience) are recorded. At the onset of the second part, as Dorvillier begins the dance again, this recording is played back, and becomes the sound score for the rest of the dance.

The dancer dances, digging through the series of scores, again. The recorded sound becomes a sonic ghost, conjugating the present with the immediate past, as she moves towards the future.

  • Dance is the archeologist, or an idol in the bone.

    Brian Rogers

  • Dance is the archeologist, or an idol in the bone.

    Brian Rogers

  • Dance is the archeologist, or an idol in the bone.

    Brian Rogers

Credits

concept DD Dorvillier performance DD Dorvillier music Sébastien Roux light design Madeline Best artistic collaboration Mathieu Bouvier, Carina Premer production Laura Aknin technique (internship) Hsin-Yu Tai

This performance is made possible by