Ô Senseï

For the first time in fifteen years and since the creation of “Stance II”, Catherine Diverrès returned to the stage to dance a solo in memory of Kazuo Ohno, master of butoh. Recorded 25 May 2012 at the CND

For the first time in fifteen years and since the creation of “Stance II”, Catherine Diverrès returned to the stage to dance a solo in memory of Kazuo Ohno, master of butoh, this “dance of the obscure body” which builds a bridge between the worlds of living and dead, who died in 2010 and was a huge influence on her career as a choreographer.With a white cloth as a set, that serves as both a backdrop and a projection screen for a spectral dance in which the body is duplicated and seems to come from another world, “O Senseï…” is a profound piece exploring the life of the dead, ghosts, the grace of movement and life, and of transformation too. Catherine Diverrès unusually chooses a fragmented form in which she changes face, character, costume, music. Burlesque and pantomime in turn, a body at prayer, a ghost body, a suffering body, a sublime body, and a body of farewell, Catherine Diverrès explores the tragedy and the sense of the ridiculous that is at the heart of all humanity. And if “sensei”, in Japanese means master, Catherine Diverrès understands it to mean “intellectual guide”, i.e. someone who raises questions and lets everyone make their own way. That which it suggests in this creation is inwardness and beauty, introspection and metamorphosis, pain and grace, the presence of oneself and of others, the living as well as the dead. Playing with white, the colour of purity, in Japan the colour of the dead, with black, the colour of mourning in the West, and to finish, deep red, the red blood of life and wounds, the red of Asian funeral processions, Catherine Diverrès looks underneath the surface, and discovers something in the same movement. “Something in her” dances, palpably.

Source: Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis

Updating: April 2012