Press – Autarcie (….)

“A poetic observation of the body in space based on the concept of a game of tag, where each dancer has her fixed base position. Ready to do battle in a war dance. To battle is to fight and the girls literally fight to maintain their positions. Not just through the synchronised robot-like movements that liken them to mechanical dolls (automatons), but also through a game of facial mimicry. Hierarchy prevails. Energy flows and fills the space with animalistic raw power. The four girls form a steady, constant constellation that suddenly breaks down, when each in turn seeks to inhabit a common space in which they are all free to express themselves. Each has her own technique, using a minimalistic vocabulary, forming an angle from which all the positions are made visible. Sometimes they meet in mini duets where bodies become intertwined and then dissolve again, back to their base position. The whole forms a symbiosis of body movements, poetical in its straightforwardness, evoking new intricate geometric patterns paving the way for new choreographic angles. At once sublime, technically sophisticated and poetically enchanting. Here we have an abstract choreographic language influenced by contemporary dance, but filled with that sense of perpetual action peculiar to hip-hop dance.”

“Autarcie (….) captured many a heart this night. The four amazing dancers, Sonia Bel Hadj Brahim, Magali Duclos, Linda Hayford and Valentine Nagata-Ramos, deliver an astonishing performance. In a series of hauntingly beautiful robotic movements, this production quickly achieves a trance-like state, with inventive, groovy, provocative results. The choreography, metered to the nearest split-second, rich, implacable and irresistible, explores a mechanical ritual upset by a need for control and freedom, set to the exquisite music of Sébastien Lété.”

“The traditionally expressive and sometimes aggressive street dance we are used to seeing, in this case has an elegant stylization in its expression of revolt against the order, group versus individual, mechanical movement patterns against extrovert freedom and an uproar against all hierarchical decisions. Collective gestures alternating between contrasts, confrontation and symbiosis in non-symmetrical circles.”

“An empty stage: what better way to illustrate such a radical proposal? Four dancers exhibit their dance. […] carrying no other baggage, the performers surrender themselves to a kind of ritual: they construct what the choreographer calls a “model dance”, all the better to escape into a game of free digression. In the process, they confront each other, the audience—and themselves.”

“For an enthralling 50 minutes, the four dancers, varying dramatically in terms of performance arena and techniques, surrender themselves to a frenetic ritual in which collective constraint comes into conflict with the quest for control and the need to express individual freedom. The dance is played out over two areas: the front of stage where the dancers perform for an audience expecting to witness a display of precision, and in the middle to which they are drawn in search of a freer, more intimate dance.”