Aina Alegre / Ola Maciejewska R-A-U-X-A / Loïe Fuller : Research

This piece, conceived as a dance, sound and lighting trio, draws from archeological and sonic research on movement. The choreographer continues her obsession with pounding, resonating and vibrating bodies interacting with the pulses of the electro-acoustic and modular music performed live. 

Alone on stage, Aina Alegre conjures up the physical and sonic memory of pounding, an old movement whose possibilities she explores extensively. The Spanish choreographer conceives R-A-U-X-A as a dialogue between dance, sound and lighting where the body vibrates into a pulse. This dialogue is revealed in her own corporeal memory, but her research also extends to other memories and practices. Pounding relates to some folk dances, tap dance, flamenco or house music as well as labor or ritual gestures. It evokes primal forms of music and communication, but it has a technical dimension as well. In this spirit, Alina Alegre builds up a deeply hybrid and nuanced dance where the body produces sound and rhythm as it interacts with the electronic score by Josep Tutusaus. R-A-U-X-A creates a series of soundscapes where movement is in a dialogue with the sound from the body and the machines.

With this piece, Alina Alegre continues work she started over fifteen years ago, which focuses on ideas around the body and issues of gesture memory and anthropology. Her choreographic language is closely linked with rhythm and music. As it turns out, her observation of pounding has been a consistent focus throughout very different pieces, including Le Jour de la Bête (2017), where performers wore metal-plated shoes to strike the dirt-covered floor and create polyrhythms. 
 

Vincent Théval

Loïe Fuller, an icon of American modern dance, is known for her “serpentine dance” in which she swirled her dress around. Since 2011, Polish choreographer and performer Ola Maciejewska has researched and passed on the work of Fuller, which led to this solo performance.

A constantly evolving piece since it premiered in 2011, Loïe Fuller: Research is the first solo piece by Ola Maciejewska. The choreographer, performer and artist revisits the motifs of the serpentine dance invented in the late 19th century by Loïe Fuller, an icon of modernism. Bordering on abstraction, the performance features changing shapes which unfold in two different exercises evocative of the relationship between sculpture and sculptor. The famous dress designed by Loïe Fuller resembles a “dance construction”, an assemblage of rods, fabric, and a body. The movement then grows out of the relationship between the human body and this object.  Ola Maciejewska creates shapes to make that connection visible as she brings her own reinterpretation of Fuller’s art and passes on her legacy.

This performance fits into a long-running research of the choreographer on the connection between dance and visual arts, which includes other pieces on serpentine dances such as the trio Bombyx Mori (2015) and a new work scheduled for the Fall of 2025. In a joyful and reflexive movement, Ola Maciejewska brings a critical interpretation to the history of dance.

Vincent Théval