Ecce (H)omo

Recorded at the CND 23 March 2017

Dore Hoyer (1911–1967), who was an exponent of the German expressionist trend, notably as a performer for Mary Wigman, occupies a unique place in the history of dance, at the frontier between different styles and eras. In 1962, when American abstract dance was at its height, she created Afectos humanos, a series of short works that gave body to a wide range of emotions in which Vanity, Desire, Hate, Fear and Love were conveyed by a powerful expressivity. Her work, which is impossible to categorise, has survived only in a black and white film that was shot in 1967, shortly before her death. Some fifty years later, choreographer and dancer Paula Pi came across this work and decided to explore this dance with the aim of finding out what it was able to express today. In addition to the question of the transmission of this heritage was that of the time gap separating us from Dore Hoyer and the issues and preoccupations she had in 1962. How can this gap be resgistered through the body, speech and space, with the tools and aesthetic codes of our time? Paula Pi chose to treat these human emotions not as a restoration, but rather as an enquiry through documentary, performance, concert, lecture and performance. During the to-and-fro between present and past, she varied perspectives, reconstituting a living, fragile archive in which each element is reinvestigated, scrutinised and shared. This temporary crack that has been opened up is filled by a clarity of gesture and uncertainty of meaning, by a desire to share and the vagaries of performance. 

Dance premiered on 21.03. 2017 at the CN D.