Kinkan Shonen - Graine de Cumquat

The gesture in memory, towards the other side.
There is a kind of fish which, in the earliest phase of its life, is born male. Later, its male organs degenerate and it metamorphoses into a female. This is why male and female were originally one and the same. It is said that this male and this female copulated and gave birth to an egg. It’s an odd story! So, over the course of its life, the fish experiences what it is to be male and female in succession. The origins of mankind are to be found in this fish. Long ago, fish emerged onto the land and began to live there. We know that a show has a beginning and an end. When we trace a circle with compasses, there is a starting point and a finishing point. When the circle is complete, these two points merge and a shape appears.
“Kinkan shonen (Graine de cumquat) [(Kumquat Seed)]” evokes a young boy’s dream about the origins of life and death. The child standing on the beach allows his sight to dive beneath the surface of the ocean and fuse with the fish, the primitive stage of humanity. The dried fish which dress the set serve as a vital casing for the shaven-headed and fully-powdered dancers, as they slip out of their coating in a violently-disturbing transformation.    

Introductory poem:     
extract from “Dialogue avec la gravité”, by Ushio Amagatsu (in French, Actes Sud)     
(translated by Patrick De Vos)     

“Standing still on the fringe between earth and sea
In front, spreading as far as the eye can see, below the horizon,
swarming fish
Which from the depths gaze at the water’s surface    
Their innumerable hearts are noisy
Sometimes in unison – an immense beating, sometimes randomly,
and unceasing, it starts over,
Until one determined species emerges and climbs out onto the continent,
begins to breathe, to put out hands and legs, to walk, to stand,
remnant images which superimpose one upon another,
to coalesce at the very end, there, behind you.

Before you, behind you.
Someone is looking at the back of the one who is looking at the sea.
Then someone else looks at this someone from behind…
The impression of standing at a point on some immense circle.
You believe you can close the circle by advancing,
Resolutely towards the sea.

A shadow flickers under my eyelids.
My eyes open slowly.
Everywhere before me the vast blue sky.

I had fainted.

At the point of the headland, the lighthouse, a wide sandy beach,
The warning bell.
The sun is shining with a violent light.
Daydreaming at the moment of the fall.

Darkness at the heart of my dream.

Nausea comes.
Besides, the evening had been hot, impossible to sleep,
Eyes wide open to face the dark,
As if I had asked some dreadful question.

Summer.”

Source: Maison de la Danse programming