A look at new european choreography edited by Silvia Fanti/Xing with an introduction by Jean-Marc Adolphe
Written in direct engagement with a mutable reality that resists labels, this book gives voice to five protagonists of a restless generation that has already become a cult phenomenon, conquering the European scene. As French critic Jean-Marc Adolphe highlights in his introduction, they have created an "indisciplinary art that reintroduces materials from dance, visual arts, music, and theater into a common ground, without seeking the quintessence of a total art. Instead, because the totality of the world can no longer be comprehended within the space of a single creation (if it ever could), experiences decompose and fragment, only to reassemble into various composite aggregates."
Beyond their different aesthetics, the work of choreographers Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Myriam Gourfink, Kinkaleri, and MK starts from the centrality of the body as an 'unstable place of research': Jérôme Bel's semiotic body, from the branded nudes of his "Jérôme Bel" to the written clothes of "Shirtologie" under the sign of minimal humor; Xavier Le Roy's osmotic body, an archive of unpredictable metamorphoses, a repertoire of a contemporaneity where organic and inorganic blend; Myriam Gourfink's non-linear body, where the hypnotic slowness of gesture creates new spatial and sound devices; Kinkaleri's iconic body, a crossroads of thought flows balancing between myth and anonymity; MK's obtuse body, a glamorous simulacrum dispossessed and deconstructed with visceral strangeness. These are ephemeral and radical bodies that evade the seductive traps of choreography, shattering the usual divisions between genres and disciplines. Destabilizing, subverting, traversing zones of transition and indefiniteness, practicing forms of spatial, acoustic, and corporeal estrangement, inventing new types of movement and relationships with the audience: these are the coordinates of an out-of-format art that lucidly investigates the contemporary scene.
By shifting the frontiers of creation, this book reveals new balances in the international performing arts, pointing to perspectives that go beyond the specific field of choreography and open windows to other realms (music, visual arts, behavior).
