30.05 — 01.06.2024
The punk culture that emerged in the mid-1970s focused partly on aesthetics but even more so on an attitude: the possibility of undermining the functionality and productivity of the world. In opposition to hi-fi cultures that see noise as polluting the signal one wants to send, lo-fi cultures view noise as a state to be inhabited rather than a disturbance to be eliminated. This noise protects the world from being too legible. But how can a choreography embrace this state of noise? Katerina Andreou is a Greek artist whose previous creations were notable for their singular choreographic language, which completely subverts the harmony of the body and the canon of dance: the steps are disjointed and furious, with a syncopated energy that catches us off guard. With this first collective creation premiering at the festival, Andreou unveils the chaotic resistance of punk and noise as a state of mind to a world that wants to be increasingly transparent and simplified. Together with an incredibly skilled group of performers, she embraces this energy, the frank and direct gestures and steps, carrying elements of playfulness and absurdity. This carefully constructed confusion might appear as a territory in which one is not lost, but perhaps more solid and secure. Bless this mess!
Please bless this mess
Bless This Mess opens up with the last phrase of Le Vertigo, a composition of Pancrace Royer (18th century). It is one of the most “metal” moments in classical music – or more correctly baroque music – already quite fast in its tempo. We raised even more its BPM and stretched its repetition in order to make it more urgent and persisting. Its stubborn nature feels right as a territory to dive in and a point to start from…
Today I consider confusion a valuable state to get creative. Eliminating confusion and all the feelings that goes with it, like fear, hesitation, anger and disappointment doesn’t feel pertinent anymore. In order to not get paralyzed from it I had to make it useful: it became for me a tool to understand the physicality I’m interested in. Syncopation, repetition, spontaneity, literality of steps and gestures are elements of the nature of our dance which that seem like a long dive into a physicality that stays however on the surface. Dancing in that way feels like being saturated with information that the mind has no time to really process. Our dance is based on a kind of intensity and the constant noise we inhabit becomes the main signal we need to transmit.
Nothing is really important but everything becomes necessary to us.
One method to survive this saturation is relationship. Tuning and untuning with the others and with the sound or the absence of it, becomes a loose score.
The other way is to keep the word “punk” in mind. When I write punk I don’t refer to the aesthetics nor to the Punk movement as history or context. I allow myself to use the term in order to define a type of relationship to limits or even to seriousness and I stuck with it as my personal mantra throughout the process. It inspires me a kind of freedom that I look up to, always considering the subjective nature of this concept and experience. In my small scale, punk becomes only a strategy to observe my own traps and stretch a bit the limits that I built on my own while choreographing. It is a self sabotage of my rigor in order to observe moments of freedom leaking out of an artificial scenic world. Because I believe that there is no way to measure how much punk someone or something can be, it is just a way to orientate our decision making throughout the process.
Noise can be hypnotic and punk can get loud enough to keep us awake. In that sense we try to get loud through movement, silence, sound, breathing, or even by disguising ourselves; we try to become from times to times the megaphone of an instable and very busy inner world. What matters it is not what is “said” but the body and voice that it takes to be heard.
Please don’t pay attention to the signal. Pay attention to our effort to amplify what is already there, the universe that this team built throughout the process, its interdependency and its wish for autonomy. To the relationship that dance can create and the energy that can be generated when desperation shifts to absurd pleasure and pure joy of moving together. Please bless this mess.
Katerina Andreou, April 2024
Presentation: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, KVS
Conception: Katerina Andreou | Performance: Katerina Andreou, Lily Brieu Nguyen, Baptiste Cazaux, Mélissa Guex | Sound: Katerina Andreou, Cristian Sotomayor | Lights and set: Yannick Fouassier | Outside eye: Costas Kekis | Technical direction: Thomas Roulleau Gallais | Production and touring: Elodie Perrin
Production: BARK | Coproduction: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, CCN de Caen en Normandie as part of the associate artist programme, KLAP Maison pour la danse Marseille, Pavillon ADC Genève, Athens Epidaurus Festival, T2G Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Festival d’Automne à Paris, NEXT Arts Festival, Les SUBS – lieu vivant d’expériences artistiques Lyon, Maison de la Danse Lyon – Pôle européen de Création, CCN de Grenoble in the context of Accueil Studio, CCNR – Centre chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape, ICI – CCN Montpellier Occitanie (direction Christian Rizzo)
Residencies: Espace Pasolini, kunstencentrum BUDA
With the support of Direction des Affaires Culturelles Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Caisse des Dépôts, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
Bless This Mess was created in part at The Watermill Center – a laboratory for performance in april 2023
