Solo created in 2018

My body of coming forth by day

Creation & Interpretation

Olivier Dubois

Sounds and light coordination

François Caffenne

Duration of the show

90 minutes

Production

Compagnie Olivier Dubois

COPRODUCTION

Festival BreakingWalls, Le Caire • Le CENTQUATRE-PARIS

Twelve years after bringing his first choreography to the stage, Olivier Dubois delivers an intimate solo that explores the recesses of the body’s memory and its ability to tell us the (hi)story of his art.

Dubois, who was named one of the twenty-five best dancers in the world in 2011, has performed with the best in the business and presented his work on the world’s biggest stages.

For this new show, he is alone on stage. Operating any artifice or safety net, he is the consenting victim of a game reminiscent in turns of a court hearing, a peep show and a vivisection.
Following a random process cued by the public according to previously established rules, the choreographer and dancer revisits some of the sixty shows in which he has taken part since the beginning of his career. Inspired by the ancient Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead’ (of Book of Coming Forth by Day), he embarks on a journey across a sea of dance fragments in search of the artist, scrutinising the performer’s body to find out what makes a masterpiece and reading the signs of destiny from his entrails.

A star is reborn!

 

Tonight, tonight, tonight … My body of coming forth by day … My body as the Book of the Dead!
My body as a long memory and a long sorrow of art.
I hold inside of me thousands of movements, gestures, positions, intentions, feelings … litres of sweat, of bleeding, hundreds of wounds, scars, joy and pain.
But what is left of all that? What do I remember? Where can the memory of my body lead me? Which part of my story as performer can say something about the history of art? Yes, the history of performing art is composed by millions of bodily stories.
Could we even consider ourselves – I mean us performers – as artworks on account of the sheer fact that our bodies hold the flesh of performing art and for instance Dance?
And if so, how much would you value this? A full dedication to art …
Should I consider myself an artwork or even a monstrous masterpiece?
We won’t answer those questions now, but we will try together to take a new step … a step through a dissection of my body as a souvenir, as a loudspeaker of the loss of myself for art.
I propose a game, it could be seen as a trial, a peeping time, a cut inside of me. Are you ready?
So let’s start playing!