Braises

What ore is a choreographer's career made of? Laughter, exhaustion, sweat, emotion, blows, traces? On stage we will burn the gestures of the past to see what the ashes of a dance are made of.

Michel Kelemenis's recent works stand out for a non-formal approach to how the performers are called upon. An unprecedented dynamic is revealed there; the living fills the stage. In his research, the choreographer seeks to make deeper the anchoring point of his desire to write movement into the heart of bodies, in order to free them, and through them to free human beings.

Already in these recent works, some elements of the past slip in and twist about, sometimes out of mischief, sometimes for pleasure, through thematic echo, or simply because he recognises in them what belongs to a personal syntax. BRAISES invites seven performers to seize elements gleaned from immaterial archives made of images, emotions and fragmentary memory, not to regenerate the forms, but to make them the fuel of impulses brought up to date by the bodies of today…

The hour is one of freedom, a stroll through the joy of presence with the dancers, who turn the writing into illuminations through their regenerating, offhand, baroque and playful lighting. A creative act set to music by long-time collaborator Angelos Liaros Copola, to savour the present together, against a hostile, anxiety-inducing surrounding reality, "esseulante" and warlike.

Between poetic index and anchoring in current events, BRAISES marks the fortieth season of Kelemenis&cie.

Conception, choreography, set design Michel Kelemenis

Musical creation Angelos Liaros Copola

Performers 7 dancers of Kelemenis & Cie