Braindance (1999)

Premiered on August 11th 1999 at FAR-Festival, Nyon, Switzerland

PRESENTATION 

Altered bodies. Inanimate bodies. Manipulated bodies. Braindance is a journey to the centre of the body in search of time. As the body enters an altered state of the human mind it escapes time, postponing the inescapable destiny of death.

“ Three female bodies are strewn across the floor, face down. As for an exercise in the barracks, a man in training clothes comes to put a piece of blue latex under the groin of one of the bodies. It is certainly not to make it more comfortable, otherwise he would not be dragging it on the floor as if it were a cadaver. The men pull the women around on the floor to drop them further off. Then they undress them, exhibiting the flesh of their buttocks, the curve of a lumbar, a chest. It is hard, raw, frightening. 
In order to get away from this macabre sight of quarters of meat in ranks, Gilles Jobin then choreographs a body in the prism of intimacy. Cloaked in the secrecy afforded by the half-light and their nudity, the dancers swirl around on all fours. Glimpses of flesh are shown following the partner’s mood who reveals with a flashlight, sometimes an elbow, then the indentation of a rump. It is neither dance nor is it carnal relationship, but rather the staging of photography in movement, the result of flesh that has once again become splendid in the shiver of this faltering intimacy “

Lisa De Rycke

TOUR

2000
25-27 February: La Alternativa, Cuarta Pared, Madrid, Spain
25 March: Artdanse, Dijon, France
13-14 May: PX3 Festival, Pavia, Italy
19 May: Le Club des 5, Saint-Herblain, France
24-25 May : Spring Loaded, The Place Theatre, London, UK
4 June: Dance Week Festival, Zagreb, Croatia
1-2 July: Teatro SESC Anchieta, Sao Paulo, Brazil
4-5 July: Teatro SESC Santos, Santos, Brazil
8-9 July: FID – Festival Internacional de Dança, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
11-12 July: Teatro SESC Pompeià, Sao Paulo, Brazil
23-24 August: Roxy, Basel, Switzerland
15-16 September: Theatre Arsenic, Lausanne, Switzerland
17-24 October: Festival d’Automne, Théàtre de la Ville aux Abbesses, Paris, France
11 November: Four Days Festival, Prague, Czech Republic
19 November: Centro Cultural Belem, Lisbon, Portugal
23-24 November: Espace Pier Pasolini, Valenciennes, France
27-28 November: Opéra Léonard de Vinci, Rouen, France

1999
Premiere 11-12 August: FAR – Festival des Arts Vivants, Nyon, Switzerland
20-26 August: ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK
31 August – 02 September: Zuercher Theater Spektakel, Zürich, Switzerland
8-18 September: Théâtre Arsenic, Lausanne, Switzerland
6-10 October: Théâtre du Grütli, ADC, Geneva, Switzerland
13 October: Espace Moncor, Fribourg, Switzerland
3 December: Maison des Arts, Thonon-Evian, France
10-11 December: Tout Nouveau Théâtre, Bordeaux, France