Le tour du monde des danses urbaines en dix villes

Recorded at the CND 25 February 2017

Dances are invented everywhere. Styles and ways of moving spread, take shape locally, relying on or generating communities, lifestyles, ways of occupying space and making oneself heard there. Communities in turmoil, linked to social inequality and violence but also to energy and the intensity of urban life. Although linguistics has attempted to make an inventory of languages and the ways in which humans communicate and socialise with each other using words, phrases and intonations, an inventory has not yet been made of gestures, rhythms and bodily movements. What distinguishes one way of dancing from another? How is the subject mobilised in its relation to a symbolic or imaginary community? What common musical sources generate these dances without a stage or theatre, where every person can be alternately performer and spectator, judge and judged? How do gestures, music and style of clothing intertwine? To answer these questions, the choreographers embarked on a subjective and non-exhaustive inventory of a few urban dances that they encountered and learnt. In the course of his presentation, which veers between documentary enquiry, lecture and performance, the performer reveals a complex cartography in which voguing, dancehall, pantsula and many other dance forms are a reminder of the history of migrations, exclusion and struggle that these bodies bear witness to.