This creation saw Philippe Decouflé work with graduates from the 13th year of the French Circus Arts School, to create a piece where the magic machines of circus team up with the choreography of the bodies.
Performed as an informal show, Denise was premiered at la Chaufferie where Compagnie DCA had set up its new home. Informal in the sense that the venue was not actually a theatre at the time, and because the rules of representation had to be reinvented. Informal also in the sense that the piece consisted in the collection of numbers very different from each other: some long, some short, featuring a mystical solo, a blues and magic flights. But who is Denise? The hidden daughter of Saint Denis, who perhaps wasn’t so holy after all ? Or maybe an exquisite corpse whose scattered limbs were huskily sewn together by a conductor choreographer.
EXPERIMENTAL PERFORMANCE (1997)
MARGUERITE
Coming after Denise and Micheline, Marguerite is the third daughter of Compagnie DCA. A bucolic name for an experimental show, combining dance, mime, acrobatics and video.
Extracts from the back catalog: jalousie, shiva pas, hélas tique, boîte noire, squelettes, l’argothique, talons aiguilles, boléro... and other choreographic poems…
Tricodex is a vegetable and mineral journey, where bodies are transformed into strange animals and imaginary plants. Microbes, insects spend vegetables...
A large house, with windows, inhabited by imaginary beings whose comings and goings occupied the stage. This is the first dimension of Petites pièces montées, a piece for dancer acrobats, defying the laws of reality and going beyond the limit of a body all too human.
The same maze of madness. The same fragments of hallucinated memories, straight out of Codex Serafinianus. The same imaginary map of an mysterious civilization. Building on Codex, Decodex brought to life strange and amusing creatures, wearing costumes extending the bodies.
Philippe Decouflé stake out an initial foothold in the French dance scene, winning first prize at the Bagnolet Dance Competition organized by the French Ministry of Culture.
In Philippe Decouflé's repertoire, Technicolor stands out somewhat in that it has a narrative line and construction: lasting one hour, the audience follows the peregrinations of four characters, constantly on stage. Four fanatics engaged in strange maneuvers with a giant hamster wheel fitted with a trampoline.
This piece saw a young Philippe Decouflé with blacked-up face, and four other dancers, take their first steps – already immaculately prepared – in the public arena.
