SPRING OPENING :
Perverting and Recycling Dance History
A 3-in-1 night: Cinema + Talk + Dance around Frédéric Gies’ celebrated Queens of the Fauns (2019).
Photo: Thomas Zamolo
(...) the strength of "Queens of the fauns" is that it shows how, not just bodies and their appearance, but also choreography itself, can break with and create new structures of desires. "Queens of the fauns" is not a modernized version of Nijinsky's masterpiece, but uses it as historical material, to investigate what is physically possible today when the question of sexual conquest, more than a hundred years later, looks very different from the time of Nijinsky.
Josefine Wikström, Dagens Nyheter (Translated from Swedish) (about Queen of the Fauns at Skogen, 2019)
PROGRAMME
Queens of the fauns - Performance screening
Maison de la danse goes cinema!
For the opening of the performance programme of Maison de la Danse 2024, we treat you to a screening of the video documentation of the performance Queens of the Fauns, hosted by Frédéric Gies. They created this dance performance, much commented in the Swedish press, in 2019. The performance is a dialogue with The Afternoon of a Faun by Nijinsky, which is considered the first modern dance piece, as it broke with the tradition of ballet. It consists of a duet with dancer and choreographer Elizabeth Ward, to an original soundtrack by Fiedel, which navigates, not without humor, between quoting Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun, evoking a wood rave and making us dive into the sweaty darkness of a dancefloor. The latex costumes by Grzegorz Matlag, the minimal and industrial lighting design by Thomas Zamolo as well as the uncanny trees of the set design by the visual artist Anton Stoianov contribute to the construction of a fanciful world in which the dancers playfully pervert dance history and dismantle gender binaries through choreography itself.
Before the screening, Frédéric will give a short introduction to the project and to the historical work it is based on.
Choreography : Frédéric Gies
Dance : Frédéric Gies and Elizabeth Ward
Music : Fiedel
Lighting design : Thomas Zamolo
Costumes : Grzegorz matlag
Set design : Anton Stoianov
Video documentation : Thomas Zamolo
Coproduced by Weld, Inkonst and Skogen / with the support of Konstnärsnämnden and Kulturrådet
Fauning Dance practice - Workshop
Photo: Thomas Zamolo
Frédéric will share with you a dance practice used in Queens of the Fauns, which they call “fauning” and which borrows some iconic moves from Nijinsky’s piece, remixes them to techno beats, to the point it starts resembling voguing, faun style! This practice doesn’t require any speficic background in dance.
Level : all levels, no previous knowledge required
Music track: Fiedel and Boris. Discover it in forehand here !
Conversation with Frédéric Gies
- Discussion
Photo : Thomas Zamolo
Frédéric Gies will answer your questions about Queens of the Fauns. They will also address what has been the process of dialoguing with the original piece and what strategies they put in place for queering and perverting the original work.
Moderator : Ambre Andriamanana
PRACTICAL INFO
Language performance : none
Language presentation, workshops & talk : English
Age restriction : for all. Children accepted if accompanied by an adult. Please note : the show contains partial nudity
Note : the show contains loud music and partial nudity
Price: free
Date & Times
Friday 12 April 2024 - 19.00
Programme
18.30 : Doors open
19.00 : Screening of Queens of the fauns, with an introduction by Frédéric Gies
20.15 : Fauning dance practice
20.45 : Conversation with Frédéric Gies
21.30 : Doors close
Drop-in accepted in limit of available spots. Booking recommended.