BUTOH Performance
"Désir
d'infini"
(Desir for infinity)
presented by Dance Company NUBA
Butoh Solo+ Violin
Creation 2010
Running time 20 minutes
Commande du Musée des Confluences de
Lyon
Choreographiy, dance : Juju Alishina
Violin : Lucien Alfonso
Costumes : Myriam Gravalon
Partenaires :
le Monastère Royal de Brou
le service d'action Culturelle de la Ville de Bourg en Bresse
Musée des Confluences de Lyon
La Compagnie NUBA a bénéficié
de la mise à disposition de studio au CND
photo: Jean-Claude Flaccomio
available for the season 2011-2012
With this new creation, Juju Alishina tends to a form
of more abstract expression, underlined by Bach's music.
Her intent is an approach of the quest for eternity, by underlining
different aspects of life such as how one's life can be lived or the
reasons why our stay on earth is so short?
In terms of technicality, Juju Alishina is with this creation even more
in search of movements in dance, working on contrasts between transitory
state and eternity.
PRESS
REVIEW
July 2010 France / web-magazine asiexpo
DESIRE FOR INFINITY (choreography by Juju Alishina)
“Such is Dance, like a blooming flower that
etiolates, it constantly revives and eternally lives." Masakatsu
Gunji
As part of the exhibition “Desires of Eternity : Rituals for the
world beyond” (presented until November 14th at the Gallo-Roman
Museum of Saint-Romain-En-Gal), Choreographer and Butoh dancer Juju Alishina
has been invited by the Musée des Confluences to hold a solo performance.
Accompanied by Violinist Lucien Alfonso, Juju Alishina had been asked
to create an original show for this particular occasion.
What can be told about Juju Alishina, who belongs to the third generation
of Butoh? Fugitive visions at first: just as it is the case for music,
dance is an ephemeral art. This has not escaped Juju Alishina. Does this
mean that the combat held by the body against time is la lost cause? Movements,
gestures may vanish as rapidly as sounds, “something” however,
remains: Dance leaves a print, awakens a form of desire. In echo to the
“Desire for Eternity” questioned by the exhibition, Juju Alishina
chose to name her creation “Desire for Infinity”. This desire
is indeed a desire for dance, which not only redesigns the body, but also
transforms the space.
Yoko Tawada: “Each line that her hands and feet drew in the air
became either beam or column. She builds circumvented houses, spiral rooms,
stairs without steps and floating bridges. A fragile and invisible serie
of rooms.” (Opium for Ovid, Verdier, 2002). In the Gallo-roman exhibition
setting of the museum, Juju Alishina has created these ghostly architectures,
she has opened unexpected doors and passages where would disappear both
imagination... and desire. Moreover, in response to the multiple representations
of death, Juju Alishina shows less concern about the dissolution of one's
identity, one's disappearance or metamorphosis (although the latter may
be found in the show), than in asserting a life force. An impulse insufflated
by Lucien Alfonso in a brilliant and very personal performing of Bach
sonatas.
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that unlike many Butoh shows, Desire
for Infinity may somewhat be characterized by a profusion of many ascending
movements. Juju Alishina invites us to a form of cycle, to a course where
the body passes through many different states before finally reconciling
with the surrounding world.
Original text written by Yann Leblanc
Photography : Jean-Claude FLACCOMIO
Lucien Alfonso (violinist)
