Cecilia Bengolea & François Chaignaud, SYLPHIDES
The Museum as Performance
O MUSEU COMO PERFORMANCE
Horário: 18:30
Image: Alain Monot
Sylphs
are unearthly beings, a figment of the imagination of human beings and psychics
caught between worlds (mainly between that of the dead and the living, but also
that of fantasy and reality, of what is possible and what is not…). As it
became a literary and choreographic craze respectively in the 18th and 19th
century, the sylph figure still appears nowadays as a key and a major riddle in
our imagination. As they question how material the body and afterlife are, as
well as our relationship with the dead and their earthly bodies, the sylphs
cast doubt on some great invariant aspects of Western thinking: dualism, linear
time, rationalism…
Halfway between funeral rite and amphidromy (birth celebration), Sylphides
looks set to be a literal reincarnation attempt. Through an approach that makes
it possible to experience suspension of the vital functions, we intend to
access a new understanding of our bodies and their potential annihilations and
rebirths.
Creation: Cecilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud.
Performers:
Antonella Sampieri, Chiara Gallerani.
Related
Cecilia Bengolea (Buenos Aires, 1979), works on a
range of media including performance, video and sculpture. Using dance as a
tool and a medium for radical empathy and emotional exchange. Bengolea develops
a broad artistry where she sees movement, dance and performance as animated
sculpture, where she herself is both object and subject in her own work.
Infused with the symbolic energies found within nature and empathic
relationships, her compositions are formed around ideas of the body - both
individually and collectively - as a medium.
Bengolea has collaborated with dancehall artists such
as Craig Black Eagle, Bombom DHQ, Damion BG, and with artists Dominique
Gonzalez Forster and Jeremy Deller. Her collaborative work with French
choreographer François Chaignaud, ‘Pâquerette’ (2005-2008) and ‘Sylphides’
(2009), have earned several awards such as the Award de la Critique de Paris in
2010 and the Young Artist Prize at the Gwangju Biennial in 2014. They have also
co-created dance pieces for their dance company as well as for the Ballet de
Lyon (2013), the Ballet de Lorraine (2014) and Pina Bausch Tanztheater
Wuppertal.