Robyn Orlin
In Act 1, "I am not a sub-culture, but rather a gallery of self-portraits with a history of walking in circles", Robyn Orlyn chose to draw upon my personal familial and cultural story to produce the performance. The images are real, but the stories and characters are fictional.
What do we really know about ‘Afro-Europeans' or the 'Afro-French'? What readings or studies do we have that examine them and their culture? So many questions led us to the creation of the first act filled with humour and love.
The act is built upon La Sape, an abbreviation for The Society for the Advancement of Elegant People and the character from this Congolese sartorial subculture because it's one of the main ingredients in the coupé-décalé dance style.
In Act 2, "We’re going to have a ball!", I was hoping to stage real coupé-décalé dancers using their own gestural code, clothing and linguistics… My travels and research on these social dances of Afro-descendants revealed the extraordinary political meaning behind them…
« The video images are from real life and were shot in Abidjan. Consequently, they have been abstractly recreated and serve as a comparison to the real thing with the help of the choreographic scenes. These images awaken the urban world, the hideouts, the slums, the colonial descendants... there are so many hidden messages that we are still discovering with the coupé-décalé that the video image metaphorically convokes. » notes James Carlès
What do we really know about ‘Afro-Europeans' or the 'Afro-French'? What readings or studies do we have that examine them and their culture? So many questions led us to the creation of the first act filled with humour and love.
The act is built upon La Sape, an abbreviation for The Society for the Advancement of Elegant People and the character from this Congolese sartorial subculture because it's one of the main ingredients in the coupé-décalé dance style.
In Act 2, "We’re going to have a ball!", I was hoping to stage real coupé-décalé dancers using their own gestural code, clothing and linguistics… My travels and research on these social dances of Afro-descendants revealed the extraordinary political meaning behind them…
« The video images are from real life and were shot in Abidjan. Consequently, they have been abstractly recreated and serve as a comparison to the real thing with the help of the choreographic scenes. These images awaken the urban world, the hideouts, the slums, the colonial descendants... there are so many hidden messages that we are still discovering with the coupé-décalé that the video image metaphorically convokes. » notes James Carlès
Robyn Orlin
choreography
James Carlès
choreography
Coupé-Decalé
Practical information
Dates
Co-presentation