Bud Blumenthal and Domenico Rigotti
Hosted by Domenico Rigotti, journalist and dance critic.
Bud Blumenthal is a guest at the Oriente Occidente Festival with three works inspired by literary texts, the figure of Ulysses, and the metaphor of his journey. The meeting aims to introduce the American choreographer, active in Belgium, his artistic journey, and his poetic exploration in relation to the literary sources that have inspired him.
Bud Blumenthal, an American-born choreographer, began creating his works in Belgium in 1992, where he has lived since 1988. With an eclectic background, he spent over fifteen years intensively practicing sports before exploring yoga, Tai Chi Chuan, and improvised dance techniques.
In 1986, he earned a degree in Dance, Choreography, and Movement Exercise from the University of Massachusetts. He furthered his dance training in contact improvisation and "release" techniques in New York.
Blumenthal has produced numerous performances, culminating in 2004 with Les Reflets d’Ulysse, a reworking of his earlier piece Les Sentiers d’Ulysse. This work is based on Joyce's oeuvre and the Odyssey.
Ulysses represents fate, an hero and an anti-hero, traceable in the hidden folds of reality and our existence. Les Sentiers was composed based on the idea of an inner monologue in movement, where impressions, sensations, and emotions continually intersect.
Traveling is an opening to an external and unknown world, a search for one's inner self. There are many paths and endless trails. It is a truthful work of sound, a continuous exchange between inner and outer worlds, a myriad of images from the world and the unconscious. The texture of these Sentiers is open and hybrid, mirroring Homer's hero's journey, full of deviations. It presents an open narrative where movement is composed according to a principle of retrogradation: continuously creating and unmaking the threads of a fabric.
In Les Reflets d’Ulysse, Bud Blumenthal continues his exploration of integrating dance and visual art in collaboration with video artist Antonin De Bemels. Here, the image gains the ability to move, dancing with the performer. To achieve this effect, a projection system was introduced that follows the dancer like their shadow. This active shadow role is thus fundamental: the subconscious, the alter-ego, a different perspective.
24 Haïkus consists of a sequence of choreographic poems based on the qualities of written haikus: delicacy, the tangibility of the moment, the resonance of simplicity. Each danced haiku possesses its own idea, rhythm, form of movement, and spatial freedom. With a slight shift in the choreographic structure, one haiku follows another, transforming into a new entity distinct from the previous one.
