Oriente Occidente dedicates this year a retrospective to Bud Blumenthal, a choreographer who revealed himself to Italy in the last edition of the Festival through the interpretation by the Ballet de Lorraine of Phantom Limbic, a piece he created for the French company in homage to the light magician Loie Fuller. This retrospective will allow a deeper understanding of this author with an organic, fluid, and hybrid style resulting from the fusion of athletic training with the study of release techniques, contact improvisation, and tai chi chuan, through three works linked by a common denominator: free inspiration from a literary or poetic text. Indeed, they reference Homer's Odyssey, Joyce's Ulysses with the solo Les Sentiers d’Ulysse and the choral piece Les Reflets d’Ulysse, while the other solo presented at the Festival, 24 Haïkus, is inspired by the eponymous short Japanese poems.
Bud Blumenthal has American origins, but his career as a dancer first, and then as an author, took place in the heart of Europe. Active in Belgium since 1988, the year he joined Frédéric Flamand's group Plan K/Charleroi Danses, Blumenthal began choreographing in 1991, creating, in collaboration with Michèle Noiret, the duet Louisiana Breakfast. The following year he composed Fishtracks, his first entirely personal piece, in which his interest in new technologies emerged, later developed with collaborators such as video artist Antonin De Bemels for Red Cliff (2002) and Les Sentiers d’Ulysse or architect Paolo Atzori for Full Play, a solo piece in which he experiments with live interactivity between dance, music, and images.
His participation in the Avignon Festival in 2000 (with the solo 24 Haïkus from 1996) and the creation of Noeud de Sable (a duo from 1997) brought Blumenthal to the attention of international critics and marked him as an author capable of combining the poetry of movement with the most innovative developments in digital technologies on stage. Les Sentiers d’Ulysse, a solo created in July 2003, represents the author's first approach to the theme, where the interior monologue and intimate reflection dominate compared to the outward projection that characterizes group work. In the solo, the protagonist, akin to Joyce's Leopold Bloom, reveals himself within the labyrinth of existence, showing himself as anything but heroic, exposing his soul. Created with his faithful video collaborator Antonin De Bemels, Les Sentiers d’Ulysse demonstrates the perfect synthesis between these two arts, with the image dancing with the performer, following him like an "active" shadow, becoming a metaphor for the subconscious, an "other" perspective, an alter-ego, and an artificial and ironic counterpoint to the human limits.
