Christian Rizzo - l'association fragile

‘D’Après une histoire vraie’ originates from the emotion the French choreographer Christian Rizzo experienced when, during a performance in Istanbul, a group of men leapt onto the stage and performed a short folkloric dance. Almost ten years later, Rizzo uses the memory embedded in his mind for a dance performance that draws on the tradition of Mediterranean cultures. ‘D’après une histoire vraie’ was the hit of the Avignon Festival in 2013. And justifiably so! Rizzo created a new dance idiom by mixing his own contemporary dance style with the almost ‘archaic’ forces of a dance that is centuries old. Eight male dancers perform a mesmerising group dance for a full uninterrupted hour. They are accompanied by two musicians playing a composition set where tribal sounds and psychedelic rock meet. The performance is full of beauty and energy. Young gods in T-shirts, all with beard and long hair, touch each other delicately and start out on a peripheral line dance. They then move on to another, sometimes smaller group sequence. Never without thought, always involved. Downward and upward movements express the earthly and the sublime. ‘D’Après une histoire vraie’ is an ode to the pleasure of being together.