Kawa, solo à deux
Can the artist naively consider him- or herself free of the general rules and conventions which apply to productions, assign certain functions, build the performances?
The choreographic artist invents him-or herself by controlling the hand-to-hand body work in space and time.
Kawa is a mental space, to be fought over. Kawa is a solo for someone who is rebuilding himself, as one might drink to one’s departure on a new morning.
The artist has created, advanced, impulsed, produced, showed, toured. This return to the solo form – but different, with a dual vocabulary, co-created – is bodily seeking new frontiers, new shapes. It profiles, circulates, articulates, expecting and welcoming any of the questions that may be asked, fearless.
A transgressor of identity, it defies its solitude for two.
“(…) In all the world’s mornings : I want only the smell of coffee, to get me
back on my feet, transforming me from a scrabbling animal to a reasonable being,(…)
The coffee (…) you must prepare it yourself, not be served by someone else.
Because the person who brings it to you will add his own words
and morning coffee cannot stand even one word, it is the virgin dawn (…).
So, coffee is this original silence, of the morning, circumspect, solitary, where you sit, all alone,
with this water you have chosen, lazily, cut off from the world
in a newly refound peace with others and with things.
(…) Coffee, that first cup, is the mirror of the hand, of the hand that stirs the brew,
coffee is the deciphering of the open book of the soul, the soothsayer of the secrets hidden by the day.”
Excerpt of Une mémoire pour l’oubli
Mahmoud Darwish, 1982
CONTEXT
“Today it is the creation of a solo which is important for us, for me. A special time in the process of my work as a dancer, a choreographer, as co-director of a Company.
I began with the idea of showing a dance, CHATHA, which would blend the movements of diverse bodies, channeling their own stories, from both sides of the Mediterranean; the idea of sharing movements generated by the bodies of Aïcha m’Barek and myself. I now feel ready to speak up, feeling Aicha’s eyes upon me, pushing forward and pushing back the research on our CHATHA which for many years has fed our work.
As we prepare to create a new work for the Ballet de Nancy, we feel that our work must change, go somewhere new, to the source of my own movement, the basis for a part of our vocabulary. It is time for synthesis. With all that we have experienced, now we must show what remains, what has changed.
We have chosen a title which evokes a certain kind of conviviality, but in drinking it do we remember what Men have done to extract it, the agricultural and human exploitation which contribute to this beverage? It’s the same thing with our dancing: always resisting pressure – of all kinds, political, ethnic, in France and elsewhere.”
Hafiz Dhaou
Conception & Chorégraphie : Aicha m’Barek & Hafiz Dhaou
Interprète : Hafiz Dhaou
Création musique : Eric Aldea & Ivan Chiossonne
Création lumière : Xavier Lazarini
Régie son : Christophe Zurfluh
Régie générale et lumière : Ludovic Bouaud
Administration : Evelyne Nedelec
Diffusion : Les Indépendances/Philippe Chamaux
Création 2010 – Durée : 50 minutes
Production CHATHA – aïcha m’barek & hafiz dhaou
Coproduction Bonlieu Scène Nationale d’Annecy
With support from the French Embassy, the French Institute of Cooperation of Tunis, from the CDC Avignon/ Vaucluse/ Provence Alpes Côte-d’Azur under the auspices of the Accueil Studio programme, the Espace Ness El Fenn, the Choreographic Encounters of Carthage and the Studio Lucien/Compagnie Propos for loans of studio space.
