La Danseuse malade

La danseuse malade” is not an adaptation of a text by Tatsumi Hijikata, nor is it a dramatization of his texts, but rather a parallel creation which echoes the power of the Japanese writer

The sources of this duet, pairing together Boris Charmatz and Jeanne Balibar, are translations of texts by Tatsumi Hijikata, founder of Butoh, a contemporary Japanese dance form developed in the 1960s. “La danseuse malade” is not an adaptation of a text by Hijikata, nor is it a dramatization of his texts, but rather a parallel creation which echoes the power of the Japanese writer, just as “Con forts fleuve” (1999) worked with John Giorno’s texts. The presence of a truck on the stage alludes to the machines in “Régi” (2005). Now, however, the machine-vehicle constrains and confines the body. In the selected extract, the multiplication of projected images on different scales is evocative of one of the foundational elements of Butoh: its relation to the cosmos. Like Russian dolls, the macrocosm always mirrors the microcosm. The living being is located in-between: both as a miniature of the larger and a big version of the smaller universe. By using video images projected onto the surface of the vehicle, the play of images and scales becomes complex: the video image offers a synchronized and enlarged vision of the interior space of the vehicle which is itself in motion, rotating round its axis on the stage. Having observed the stage occupied with visual material, attention shifts to the confined space of the driver’s cabin, an intimate place and the site of a micro-event.

Source : Boris Charmatz

More information :

http://www.borischarmatz.org/