Premiere Co-production "PULSE(S)" by Filipe Lourenço

Trained since childhood in North African traditional dance and in Arab-Andalusian music, FILIPE LOURENÇO comes back to his first choreographic love in Pulse(s) and questions his own heritage as well as the relevance of this ancestral culture.

He works with a childhood friend – choreographer Nabih Amaraoui, who followed a similar career path- as collaborator in the creation of this piece.For this first solo, he revives the souvenir of these dances (allaoui, touareg, algerian…), too often reduced to their folkloric dimension, at the heart of a dialogue open to the contemporary world. As interpreter for Christian Rizzo, he danced in D’après une histoire vraie , a piece inspired by the souvenir of a Turkish dance. It was here that Filipe Lourenço became aware of the potential of these choreographic rites. During the first solo part particularly, he experienced the force of this choreographic memory, inscribed in his body, and restored in all its spontaneity. This work from memory didn’t take the form of classical repertoire but was recorded rather as a catalogue of identically reproduced gestures. On the contrary, the idea here was to deconstruct these gestures to feel the way they could nourish the contemporary world as well as experimenting how to renew them and studying how they adapt their form to the challenges of today’s world. In fact, even if their primary function (social integration, warrior celebration, call to the divine, agricultural rites, poetic-erotic games…) is not so central here as in the past, the fact remains that these dances address the choreographic and cultural stakes which, in contrast, have lost nothing of their pertinence.the energetic Homo furens, Filipe Lourenço has allied here the physicality of his writing and the sensuality of his words, on the one hand in repetition and tension, and on the other, in relaxation and suavity. The intoxicating minimalism which he has created takes pulsation as the common thread, in this way reconnecting his own body (and therefore also that of the spectator) to the forces of the earth and sky.From a cultural point of view, Pulse(s) is symptomatic of the widening gap between traditional and modern societies. The perception of the body, especially in Arab civilisation, nourishes reflection in Filipe Lourenço, who relies on a less prohibitive interpretation of the Koran than certain interpretations adopted today. As a reminder that the holy book of Islam carries no prohibition of music and dance, Filipe Lourenço continues the tradition of transferring these moments of sharing to his choreography of the body (make-up, tattoos, hair-care, jewelry etc.). He also seeks to deconstruct the markers of gender which distinguish masculine from feminine dance, thereby depicting a more universal and asexual version of these traditions.Played live and composed by the two performers, the music finally plays its crucial role on the stage, highlighted by the frugality and sobriety of the performance (light is the only extra in the décor). Mixing percussion instruments (tbal, bendir, darbouka, karkabou), string instruments (oud, kwitra, mandoline), wind instruments (ney, nafir) and singing.In organising a dialogue between pulsations of sound and vibrations of the body, Filipe Lourenço has imagined a pulsatile piece going back to his roots, in which we hear the intoxicating beating pulse of the world itself.

Duration of the dance: 1 hour
Suitable for all audiences

CREW:

FILIPE LOURENÇO

Dancer, choreographer and musician of Portuguese / French descent, Filipe was originally trained in music and played for several years for the orchestra El Albaycin (Arab-Andalusian music). In parallel, he danced then taught North African folk dance. In 1997, he joined the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers (France), then started to collaborate with the choreographer Olivier Bodin. He has since worked with artists such as Patrick le Doaré, Catherine Diverrès, Georges Appaix, Joëlle Bouvier, Nasser Martin-Gousset, Michèle Noiret, Christian Rizzo, Boris Charmatz and Olivier Dubois. In 2016, with his troupe, he undertook his first creation, Homo Furens, then creates 2018 the solo Pulse(s).