Tragédie, new edit

Ten years after its première, this choreographic poem has been rewritten by Olivier Dubois for eighteen performers. The new take propels the viewer into the “feeling of the world” with the same power. Dizzying and chaotic. On giant percussion instruments, in an incessant ebb and flow, the great cycle of life is played out, made and unmade. It is humanity seen as a palimpsest, written upon, erased and written upon once again… An unending quest!

In Tragédie, the performers manifest their belonging to the community of human beings. They pound the ground, walk about, straighten up, face one other, slide, kneel, appear, disappear, blend in so as not to capsize… and attest to our collective fate. The premier at the Avignon Festival in 2012 felt like a choreographic uppercut, and immediately became a manifesto piece, a veritable monument of contemporary dance:

“If Tragédie speaks of Humanity, then it must question today and tell of tomorrow, of the being in the world, revealing the everyone of which it is made, the history we carry and our vision of the future. A great whole free of differentiation has to be created to embrace the onlooker of today even more broadly. No longer binary but multinary! With nudity as their only costume, the individuals on stage are freed from gendered criteria and their bodies are de-sexualised. They are human beings dancing, and as such become bodies-poetic, bodies-political and body-works – surely the best way to broach the future of a Humanity. ” Olivier Dubois

“Man now expresses himself through song and dance as the member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk, how to speak and is on the brink of taking wing as he dances. Each of his gestures betokens enchantment.” Nietzsche