(M)IMOSA
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Carnaval of Utopias
They all claim to be Mimosa Ferrara and are ready to tear apart anything to prove it: taboos, performance etiquette, political correctness, aesthetic boundaries and the frontiers between genders and artistic disciplines. In a crescendo of furiously extravagant numbers, each one pushes the buttons of identity fantasies. The only limits to this astonishing excess are those of the imagination. Who, from the decadent lady from another century to the almost extra-terrestrial hermaphrodite creature or the boisterous pop star clone, will win the battle of the madcap incarnation on parade in this phantasmagorical (M)IMOSA?
Combining their choreography with the social performance codes of voguing, the choreographers and dancers Cecilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, Trajal Harrell and Marlene Monteiro Freitas plunge into extreme combat in defence of the freedom to play with personality, gender and identity. Ravishing, exuberant, wild and crazy.
May 26, 9:00 pm
Tickets: $35
Under 30 / Over 65: $30
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Meet the artists after the performance on May 26Metro Place-des-Arts
No Boundaries, No Taboos
Cecilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, Marlene Monteiro Freitas and Trajal Harrell met while participating in the DanceWeb program at the 2008 Impulztanz festival in Vienna, where they started high discussions together. Two years later the four of them joined forces for the co-directed adventure of (M)IMOSA, first presented in New York in 2011. The piece was the result of research that Harrell had been conducting since 2001. It is the (M) (medium size) version of his multipart work Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church that the New York choreographer and dancer has arranged in five formats, from (XS) to (XL). His work explores the possible hybrids that might emerge by combining the codes of voguing (which originated in Harlem’s homosexual and transsexual milieu in the 1960s) with the postmodern dance that also came about in Greenwich Village in that era.
While all of these artists have successful individual careers, the French dancer François Chaignaud and the Argentine Cecilia Bengolea have made a strong impression with the work they have been creating together since 2005 as part of the VLOVAJOB structure. They explored, for example, the dance territory of body intimacy using dildos in Pâquerette, which together with Sylphides received the critics’ “Prix de la révélation chorégraphique” award in Paris in 2009. They also performed while suspended over an audience lying on the floor in Castor et Pollux. As for the Cape Verdean Marlene Monteiro Freitas, she is based in Lisbon. With Tânia Carvalho she founded the collective Bomba Suicida (But from me I can’t escape, Have patience, FTA, 2010), and has a half dozen choreographies to her credit.
Press Quote(s)
”In his exceptional and ongoing five-part Twenty Looks or Paris is burning at the Judson Chuch, Trajal Harrell continues his rigorous exploration of two forms: postmodern dance and voguing.”
Time Out New York
“Devised and choreographed with three unusual and vivid French performers, the piece at times rambles and fusses around, then erupts with some fabulously theatrical image. […] Ambiguities of race and gender abound.’’
Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice, February 16th, 2011
“By turns delicate, raucous, and hilarious, the performance embraces a full range of gender roles, as well as their mutations and instabilities, particularly focusing on sexualized feminine roles by both men and women. Maintaining a touching honesty within its caricatures and fakeries, the work revels in its mayhems and spins smoothly through its gentler calms.”
Patrick Mueller, Living Arts Chronicle, January 6th, 2012
“Personality, gender and identity are fluid, slippery constructs, as each performer morphs before our eyes into a new theatrical construct, applying makeup and changing clothes in the audience, scratching about distractingly in plastic bags placed on seats in a (possibly over-obvious) refusal of performance etiquette.”
Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, February 11, 2011
« Si le (M)IMOSA vous est synonyme de douceur et de délicatesse, attendez-vous plutôt à recevoir une claque émotionnelle. »
Ouest France, 17 mars 2011
« La claque de (M)IMOSA que chaque spectateur se prend inévitablement à chaque représentation [est] en passe de devenir culte. »
Ouest France, 19 mars 2011
« C’est une succession de tableaux sans lien logique, à l’excentricité jouissive et foutraque. Tout n’y est que jeu sur les frontières de la représentation, sur la possibilité de brouiller les limites entre scène et coulisses. […] C’est à une performance à l’énergie jubilatoire et décomplexée qu’on assiste, une performance où l’absence de finalisation appelle le mouvement et promet l’aléatoire. Ce n’est sans doute pas un hasard si la première donnée à New-York il y a quelques semaines a suscité un engouement si vif du public et de la presse. (M)IMOSA nous rappelle à l’excentricité comme à une folie essentielle, tout en proposant également une perspective plus réflexive. Forme vouée à continuer d’évoluer – cela semble en être le principe –, cette création est une des belles surprises d’Anticodes 2011 : une œuvre sexy et intense, délibérément non identifiable. »
Aurore Krol, Les Trois Coups, 25 mars 2011
« Leur écriture s’inscrit au plus près de l’expérience, dans une sorte de phénoménologie de l’intensité. »
Scèneweb.fr, 12 juillet 2011
Credits
PRODUCED BY Vlovajob Pru
CHOREOGRAPHY CREATED AND PERFORMED BY Cecilia Bengolea + François Chaignaud + Trajal Harrell + Marlene Monteiro Freitas
COSTUME DESIGN IN ASSOCIATION WITH La Bourette
LIGHTING DESIGN Yannick Fouassier
COPRODUCTION Le Quartz - Scène nationale de Brest + Théâtre National de Chaillot + Centre de Développement Chorégraphique (Toulouse) + La Ménagerie de Verre (Paris) + The Kitchen (New York) + Bomba Suicida (Lisbon) + FUSED - French US Exchange in Dance
WITH THE SUPPORT OF Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers
PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION WITH Place des Arts WITH THE SUPPORT OF Service de Coopération et d’Action Culturelle du Consulat Général de France à Québec
WRITTEN BY Fabienne Cabado
TRANSLATED BY Neil Kroetsch
Premiered at The Kitchen, New York, February 9, 2011
514 844 3822 / 1 866 984 3822
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED / FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES