De Franse choreograaf Olivier Dubois (1972) werkt sinds 2006 met componist-arrangeur François Caffenne succesvol samen in diverse producties als Pour tout l’or du monde (2006) the group piece Révolution (2009) Spectre for the Ballets de Monte-Carlo (2010) en L’Homme de l’Atlantique (2010). Aan deze reeks wordt Tragédie toegevoegd. Een imponerend ballet waarin op duistere techno beats 18 naturel geklede dansers een bizarre dans ontketenen. Tragédie gaat over de mensheid, een gedicht dat zich ontvouwt van een minimalistisch marcheren tot een grootste finale waarbij de dansers fysiek een topprestatie leveren. Ogenschijnlijk simpele principes met een diepe lading, zoals de Bólero. Of wel een eigentijdse versie van Le Sacre du Printemps. Oordeel zelf en raak in de ban van Tragédie.
Een choreografisch gedicht voor achttien dansers, een repetitieve, hypnotiserende uitputtingsslag die je als kijker niet onberoerd kan laten. In Tragédie zet de Franse choreograaf Olivier Dubois zijn onderzoek naar menselijkheid voort dat hij inzette met Révolution, vorig jaar een succes op het Holland Festival. Hij stond eerder op Julidans als danser en met zijn eigen werk Faune(s) (2009).
Als hét enfant terrible van de Franse eigentijdse dans schuwt Olivier Dubois (die zijn sporen verdiende bij onder anderen Jan Fabre en Sasha Waltz) geen confronterend thema of beeld. Meer dan om het ontwikkelen van een bewegingstaal is het hem te doen om het aansnijden van controversiële thema's die we te vaak uit de weg gaan: genderkwesties, seksualiteit, geweld, taboes.
In Tragédie zet hij negen mannen en negen vrouwen naakt op het podium, ontdaan van de psychologische, historische en sociologische problemen die aan beide seksen kleven, om te zien wat er gebeurt als zij zichzelf en elkaar als het ware opnieuw ontmoeten - individueel, in paren en in groepsverband. Het simpele feit dat we mens zijn maakt ons nog niet menselijk, daarin schuilt de tragedie van ons bestaan. Dubois trainde maandenlang met de dansers om hen de grenzen van hun kunnen te laten aftasten.
Tragédie
Filmed at Le Centquatre in Paris, February 4th 2013
Compagnie Olivier Dubois
A lightning rod jolting the contemporary dance scene in France, Olivier Dubois submits the nude bodies of 18 dancers to the implacable repetition of a mechanism that slowly gnaws away at their docility, pushing them toward an explosive liberation. This powerful, gut-wrenching Tragédie pulls the audience headlong into a collective catharsis.
About the Work
“Olivier Dubois has created with Tragédie his very own Sacre du printemps, or his own Boléro.”
(Libération, Paris, France)
“The basic energy of a march becomes a whoop of sheer vitality.”
(Le Monde, Paris, France)
Experience a blinding, dazzling, deafening humanity. No longer able to distinguish inpidual bodies rising to the surface from masses in movement, the piece presents a quivering, archaic momentum. With Tragédie, Olivier Dubois plunges the audience into a “sensation of the world” beyond mere choreography. Humanity is not the simple fact of being a man or a woman and therein lies the tragedy of our existence, for it is only among bodies and through the earthbound pressures of our steps and our conscious, voluntary commitment that humanity will truly emerge.
Exposed and vulnerable in their nudity, the better to incarnate anatomical variation, nine men and nine women present a truly original state of the human body, a solicitation of the human species devoid of historical, sociological or psychological troubles, one that ultimately gives way to a chorus singing the praises of the glorious body.
Walking or standing upright or face to face, they initially start with a constant to-and-fro – episode after episode of ceaseless movement – before pounding the floor and thus making of basic human steps the fundamental expression of their will.
As with Révolution, Olivier Dubois has created an obsessive and indeed hypnotic piece, movement of ebb and flow, where women and men coalesce only to break apart, the friction of their fusion creating a clash of discord. A rift opens up, revealing in this telluric tumult the precious transcendence of a human community.
“In song and dance, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community. He has forgotten how to walk and speak, and is on the way toward flying up into the air, dancing. He himself now walks about, enchanted.” The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche
About the Choreographer
“Amusing, enigmatic and astonishing are the descriptive adjectives that make one want to follow the dynamic path of this singular dancer-choreographer. Take note of his name – Olivier Dubois.” (Télérama Sortir, Paris, France)
Born in 1972, Olivier Dubois made his début as a professional dancer at age 23. Despite having the physique of a wrestler, he enjoyed a persified career as a dancer for a dozen years, including working in Las Vegas in 2003 with Céline Dion and the Cirque du Soleil, and for the choreographers Karine Saporta, Angelin Preljocaj, Jan Fabre and Sasha Waltz. All of it provided material for reflection on the status and role of the dancer, and the dancer’s relations with the choreographer, the audience and the works in the repertoire. That questioning lies at the heart of his artistic approach, and gave rise to the solo Pour tout l’or du monde in 2006. It was such a success at the Sujet à vif event in Avignon that he founded the Compagnie Olivier Dubois in 2007 to pursue his adventures in choreography. That same year he received the Prix du Syndicat de la critique for his solo piece and for his accomplishments as a professional dancer. In October 2011, this atypical dancer was named one of the 100 top dancers in the world by the magazine Dance Europe. In 2012 he was officially accredited by education authorities as a dance professor, based on his accomplishments.
In Pour tout l’or du monde, presented in Montreal in 2011 as part of Escales improbables, he is alone onstage and uses a dance pole as he questions, with a great deal of humour, the merchandising of the dancing body and the perse codes of dance. In 2008 at the Avignon Festival he took on the notion of the repertoire by adapting the mythic choreography of Vaslav Nijinski in the solo Faune(s) and then in the duo À nos faunes. That year he received the Premier Prix Jardin d’Europe at the ImpulsTanz Festival in Vienna. In 2010 he took a second plunge into the world of the Ballets Russes by responding to a commission from the Ballet de Monte-Carlo with Spectre, an update of Diaghilev’s famous Spectre de la rose. At the same time he slipped into the skin of Frank Sinatra with the dark and luminous duo L’homme de l’Atlantique.
Meanwhile Olivier Dubois had created En Sourdine and Peter Pan, the first two parts of the Bdanse project. He then choreographed La Périchole by Offenbach, directed by Bérangère Jannelle at the Opéra de Lille. His triptych on the theme of resistance began with 12 female pole dancers in Révolution. To Ravel’s Boléro arranged by his long-time colleague the composer François Caffenne, the women let their anger mount for over two hours. Part 2 was his 2011 solo Rouge, an explosive male response. The triptych closes with Tragédie, where the body serves as a cog in service to the piece. Created in 2012 for the Avignon Festival, Tragédie features both genders in resistance, the better to abolish barriers and reveal the common denominator of their humanity.
It was also in 2012 at the Musée d’art moderne in Paris that Olivier Dubois choreographed a lengthy kiss to the music of Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps in the male duo Prêt à baiser. In 2013 he used the pounding of feet on the ground that marks Tragédie again in Souls, a work for seven dancers from seven African countries that echoes his previous variations on L’Après-midi d’un faune and evokes the birth of dance.
Working with 120 amateurs, the choreographer created Envers et face à tous, a troubling reflection on the dance profession in the exhibit L’interprète dévisagé. Consisting of testimonials from some forty dancers from various backgrounds, it was presented in Paris and in Lyon.
Olivier Dubois teaches and regularly organizes workshops for dance companies and schools such as the National Opera in Vienna, the National School in Athens, the National Opera in Cairo, Troubleyn/Jan Fabre, Ballet Preljocaj, etc.
choreography: Olivier Dubois
original soundtrack by François Caffenne
The sensation of the Avignon Festival 2012, discover the trailer on youtube
Running time: 1h 30
TV format: 16:9, NTSC.
Sound: PCM stereo
Region code 0
Les Films Jack Fébus & Cod /
Compagnie Olivier Dubois production
NB: This performance shows frontal nudity
