Philippe Decouflé - DCA

Twenty years ago, the dancer and choreographer Philippe Decouflé made his entrée in the French dance world. His eccentric dance, full of humour and figurative poetics immediately met with great acclaim. He once said, "I want to convey emotions in a way which are neither pathetic, nor sentimental". His passion for the virtual image and his fascination for strange machinery are constant factors of his work, while his dance is based on solid technical, almost academic foundations. His phantasmagorical imaginations tread the line between circus and movement theatre, full of visual illusions and graphical embellishments. But, where does he stand today, now that he is forty? Decouflé is, as ever, posing questions about the medium of theatre and about art in general. In his first solo, his approach is critical and melancholy, full of self-depreciating irony, toward his dance and the world in general. Decouflé is a dancer searching for novel interaction between image and movement from within his physical presence, an autobiographical solo, an honest appraisal nourished by memories of the childhood years. He is alone on stage, but not without the familiar Decouflé contraptions - sophisticated lighting and sound, visuals and technical effects. In short, a solitary dance by a hell of an artist.