Trapped in a space between times, a group of individuals is seeking for the purpose of their gathering. While they are obsessed with questions, this unbearable status quo will slowly reveal fragmentations of their past and future lives. Has humanity vanished? Could they be the last DNA of collective memories, left of a world with no more Tomorrow to look after? Lost in space, they will witness their metamorphosis to come.
“What would happen if the story continued?“
Why deal with a 20th century – masterpiece of dance? How to transform knowledge, experience and memories of an aesthetic event? And what remains of a postmodern classic?
By developing the production “La Suite“, choreographer Fabien Prioville will face his own past and the work with Pina Bausch for the very last time. “La Suite“ is based on a continuation of the story of Pina Bausch’s piece “Café Müller“ (1978). It throws a glance back into the past as well as into one’s own artistic future.
Fabien Prioville brings together internationally acclaimed dancers (Bayerisches Staatsballett, DV8) as well as leading figures in jazz, and puts them in a room similar to Pina Bausch’s “Café Müller“. Almost 40 years have passed since its world premiere; “La Suite“ does not look back, does not want to restage “Café Müller“. It rather continues telling the stories of its six characters, and it does so by placing them inside of an artificial concert.
In collaboration with former dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch and Japanese artists from different disciplines, Fabien Prioville develops a choreography that embraces two important aspects of his life. His experience as a dancer with Tanzhteater Wuppertal and his strong connection to Japan. SOMA Project brings together these two realities and lets them collide into an inner space. Like one body with different cells.
Apart from rehearsing together the performers also shared everyday life, each other’s home and step by step they have created one entity. SOMA Project creates a body that is in constant transformation and exposure, an area of permanent contamination. A struggle which doesn’t end. Like cells of a blood sample being infected by a virus.
For the dancer Dirk Kazmierczak he created the solo “From Here to There”.
The solo choreography from Fabien Prioville starts with a large gesture of denial. This “no” stands for the artist’s longing for redemption which we experience on the stage. He looks back on important events in his life, his work and his relationships. He is confronted with the question what remains of his life. On the one hand he feels some kind of dead wish and on the other hand he wants to continue the way he always did and to fulfilhis duties. He wants both, to withdraw from his world and to become very active, driven by his ideas.
He wants to be appreciated as an artist and as a human being to legitimate his existence also he wants to find inner piece and salvation. The artist seems to be cought in an infinitive loop of “keep on going” and “I have enough”.
Commissioned by the Goethe Institute and developed during a six weeks residency, ‘Reverse_Me’ by Fabien Prioville is a unique work created for the space with the special appearance of Louise Lecavalier and original music by T.D. Finck von Finckenstein (composer at Theater Dortmund). The challenge was to transform the premises of the Goethe Institute into an artistic performance space for four nights, using the given rooms and their content for artistic as well as acoustic purposes in order for them to become a playground for abstract creations that are part of a research process for a performance.
What kind of effects does a computer game like “Grand Theft Auto” have on its viewers and the way they observe reality? For this solo, Fabien Prioville, former dancer of Tanztheater Wuppertal and the company La La La Human Steps, was inspired by a press article describing a man who suddenly stabbed dozens of random people in Tokyo. In his choreography Fabien Prioville is searching for an abstract perspective without disregarding emotional aspects. Which consequences do images with such suggestive power have on a person’s mind?
Jailbreak Mind is the first solo project Fabien Prioville realised in co-production with the tanzhaus NRW and Trafó Budapest. It was invited to the German Dance Platform Nuremberg in 2010.
Together with video artist Naoko Tanaka, among other things known for her collaboration with Düsseldorf choreographer Morgan Nardi, as well as musician Frank Schulte who was already involved in “Jailbreak Mind“, this production deals with individual, collective and geographical frontiers. Fabien Prioville debates territorial space that surrounds every individual but is also claimed by social groups: Engulfing every body and every human being, often even slipping our perception, maybe even triggering war. The techniques of defining and defending territory are techniques of the body: Dancers Paolo Fossa and Moo Kim test their limits, balancing trespassing and abiding. The choreography plays with the French form of “we“ and – divided into two syllables – the English “no us“.
For this production Fabien Prioville was inspired by the video chatroom ‘chatroulette.com’. On this site users present their – sometimes radical – ideas during completely random encounters.
In collaboration with Pascal Merighi, also former dancer of Tanztheater Wuppertal, Fabien Prioville investigates the fascination of these encounters. On facebook he invites people to come and join the performance via skype. He wants to create unforeseeable situations and experiments with their unpredictable outcomes.
Time for Us concentrates on the experienced moment of two people meeting each other. It is a search for the significance of this moment, an exploration of places of community, the relation of the two dancers on the stage. How do we meet? Where do we come from with all our demands and needs? What connects us?
Fabien Prioville and Azusa Seyama are not only connected through their mutual work for Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal, but also through their personal relationship. Thus, “Time for us” also focuses on investigating intimacy, a radical search for closeness, the wish of being together. It is also a confrontation with one´s own history – including the biographical answer as dancers. Both were hugely influenced in their work by the great choreographer Pina Bausch. In their latest piece they also grapple with her legacy. The performance plays with these points of relation and shows two individuals and their wish to leave behind their artistic legacy without dismissing it.
In these days smartphones have turned out to be one of the most important technical devices available to the average consumer. They have become a tool for communication that can be used for much more than simply making phone calls. The development of the applications – so called apps – has got a deep impact on our daily life. The cell phone is also called the 7th mass medium and it allows people to connect with each other whenever they want.
In this project Fabien Prioville wants to investigate the use of smartphones during a dance performance. Usually people need to turn off their phones once they enter the venue. Yet, in this piece Fabien lifts the ban and invites the audience to download an app from the Android or Apple store in order to communicate with the dancers during the show.