The first impression is instability as a driving force; bodies that slip, fall, rise, try again. This year’s performances at the 32nd Kalamata International Dance Festival do not try to hide the uncertainty of the reality we live in; they make it a stage. They create spaces where the dancers’ bodies seem to hover a little higher than the laws of physics allow, while the viewer wonders if what they are seeing is technique or a trick.
This is the framework in which the creators we are highlighting and who will present their work in July also move. Each of them approaches the conjuring and acrobatic dimension of choreography from a different angle – one through technique, another through narration, another through the very materiality of the body. Together, however, they outline a landscape in which contemporary dance incorporates magical images that allow us to “fly.”
French choreographer Yoann Bourgeois, who opens the festival on the Main Stage on July 17 with the performance “He Who Falls,” began his artistic career in the circus arts. He studied juggling and acrobatics at the CNAC – Centre National des Arts du Cirque in France, and then collaborated for four years with the famous Maguy Marin group, before founding his own artistic group.
