About
A choreography by Sébastien Ramirez and Honji Wang for six performers.
Original music by LACRYMOBOY.
Borderline marks a turning point in Sébastien Ramirez and Honji Wang’s research and choreographic language. The dance evolves into a dialogue between technique and the art of rigging, reflecting on human relationships that now include the reality of living together in our democracies. Social boundaries are evoked by the interplay of physical forces on the stage as well as through testimonies - collected from the dancers’ friends and relatives, or from the media, and broadcasted in voice over.The rigging element, a scenic tool notorious as Deus Ex Machina in the Greek tragedy, allows us to approach weightlessness to create a timeless poetics. In the interaction with the rigger, the body becomes the object of a “weight game”, of balance and freedom. Attached to cables, the five dancers bring to light and transpose the desire of freedom inherent in all forms of dance, especially Hip Hop.
With a wealth of experience in levitation, Hip Hop discovers new ways to thwart gravity in its virtuosity of footwork.The gestures and the costumes create images that reflect Greek and Korean traditions in animality, as well as in our desires and angsts. Between the promise of freedom and the violence of keeping our bodies on the ground, is a space allowing the invention of a new gestural approach. With great fluidity, the piece displays accents of acrobatics, visual poetry and the urban universe. It extends to the ground where the gravitational borderlines shift horizontally, in a mobile scenography that continues to evolve throughout the performance.
"The contemporary dance revolution is taking place. And dancers like Sébastien Ramirez and Honji Wang are on the frontlines."
—L’Indépendant
"It isn’t enough for Borderline to just be awesome to watch. It opens itself up like hip-hop knows how to do.”
—Le Monde
Credits
Choreography
Wang Ramirez
Other Credits
Rigging Jason Oettlé Set Paul Bauer Copdutcion
Year
2013