Irony and originality are two distinctive traits of the work of the young Castafiore Company, founded in 1989 by the Brazilian choreographer Marcia Barcellos and the self-taught French composer and ornithologist Karl Biscuit. The name of the group is inspired by the heroine of a comic book and the two authors place their experience between Jacques Tati and Tex Avery. Marcia Barcellos began studying dance at a very young age. In Brazil she initially followed classical technique courses, but soon felt the need to dedicate herself to contemporary dance. After high school she accompanied a friend on a trip to Europe: once in Paris she decided to stay. She quickly managed to earn a living working as a dancer. A student of Alwin Nikolais at the CNDC in Angers, a fundamental teacher for the development of her future artistic career, Marcia Barcellos joined Quentin Roullier's Company. Here she met Alain Michon, Santinago Sempere and Dominique Rébaud, with whom she founded the Lolita group in 1981. In the following years she worked with the choreographers Philippe Decouflé and Regine Chopinot. In 1987 she collaborated for the first time with the musician Karl Biscuit in a piece entitled “Isidore D.”, written by herself together with Eric Larrondo. Already in this piece the dancers experimented with some bizarre typical of Castafiore’s later work, listening to the soundtrack of the show with walkmans. From 1981 to today, Barcellos has choreographed “Bla Bla” (’82), “Qui a Tue Lolita” (’83), “Les Indolents Délires” (’84), “Zoopsie Comedi” (’85/’86), “Mouse Art” (’87), “Les K” (’89), “Aktualismus” (’90) and “Anathématic Kaos Illimited” (’91). For Aktualismus, Barcellos and Biscuit wrote:… “Man is a pure abstraction and his revolt is a fiction... We set out to evoke the everyday life of two fat and glaucous characters, Ornito and Gravbek, who try to tear away from the chaos of total domination the changing mask of a freedom that no longer exists”. Aktualismus, whose already comical subtitle is “Oratorio Mongol”, is a funny parody of today’s world. The dancers, robot-men, who carry tape recorders on their bellies and loudspeakers on their heads, move with mechanical gestures, slaves to the stupid clichés of our time. Anathématic Kaos Illimited continues this line of research, starting from the image of a post-industrial world dominated – say the authors – by the propagation of the media and characterized by the end of ideologies. The dancers, who seem like characters from comics, are the interpreters of Biscuit’s delirious soundtrack: excerpts of dialogue taken from television series.
