'Tragédie': the scenic tsunami that has been scandalizing for ten years with 18 naked dancers

Not suitable for prudishness (neither scenic nor moral), it can be stated without hesitation that

Tragedy

, the work that Olivier Dubois (Colmar, France, 50 years old) premiered in 2012 at the Avignon festival, is today a show of worship.

It is ten years later and it was almost at the moment of the first times of him.

A true scenic tsunami, a shower of intelligence and defiance in each of its multiple interpretations, which will be seen in a renewed version (

) from December 16 to 18 at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid.

A whole waste of layers and layers of surprising appearance and meaning.

“In my head there is no intention to provoke and it bothers me if they think that I want people to feel uncomfortable.

It's just the idea of ​​reaching the limit to understand what I do.

I don't care about the audience, ”Dubois says in an interview by video call.

"Besides, it's the only way not to fail," he adds.

“If I wanted to please people and see someone get up and leave the show, then it would hurt and I would have failed.

Not thinking about the audience is also showing respect for it.”

The creator refers to the small group of people who leave the theater, generally during the first half hour of the show.

It happened when

was seen at the Teatros del Canal in 2015, within the Madrid en Danza International Festival, and in almost every one of the squares that he stepped on for years, since 2012, with sold-out tickets.

In 2014 it was also seen at the Central Theater in Seville.

As if those shadows that recede in the gloom of the stalls were also part of the choreography itself.

“People do not leave in disarray either, it may be 1%, but I understand it, it is logical and also healthy.

We talk about art and one accepts that the others want to stay or leave.

But I'm not going to trade it for them."

Another scene from 'Tragédie', by Olivier Dubois.François Stemmer

The new 'Tragedie'

What has changed in this new version of

, "the details, and everything is in the details", he clarifies, has been done to update the how and why of a discourse that, in some way (or all), continues irremediably current: that search for happiness through the tragedy of being human.

“In the first version I felt that there was a gender separation (nine male dancers and nine female dancers), and I needed to break with the binary.

Of those first 18 performers from 2012, six remain, the remaining 12 are new and are between 19 and 62 years old.

There are also new adjustments in sound, lighting…”.

Dubois says that after years of success he stopped showing

for a couple of reasons.

The first, that he no longer directed the Ballet du Nord, a group with which he took her halfway around the world with the necessary resources for a work of such magnitude.

The second, for a kind of existential and artistic breath.

“Many people asked me for the work and refused me, so much time with it… This year I felt that the silence had come to an end, but a lot has happened in this decade and I had to question it so that I can continue talking about the present and the future. tomorrow of humanity.

The choreographer Olivier Dubois, in a promotional image. Frederic Iovino

On the other hand, and at a structural level, the pattern based on repetition that presides over some of his choral works remains in the work.

Like

(2009), a piece in which 12 dancers rotate tirelessly around a

.

“A girl who went to see the show told me that I had followed all the rules of hypnosis, I had no idea.

I like repetition because, at the end of the process, both what happens and the feeling that what happens ends up disappearing”, she explains.

In

such choreographic insistence, visual and sound trance, occurs above all in the first half hour of the show (during which some spectators usually abandon themselves), when the 18 performers walk a path of 12 steps to go and 12 to return , like 12 syllables in the same verse.

“Poetry and music are very important to me, because everything is harmony, a continuous symphony.

And poetry is everywhere,” she declares.

What do you like to read?

“Herbert Huncke, Diane di Prima, Marina Tsvetàieva… the one who questions from the darkest side.

Art is there to ask questions without having to find answers, journalism already does that.

Art is the intelligence of the senses”.

Privileged dancer and 'enfant terrible'

Of all those appendages that extend over an outstanding personality, two take over the career of Olivier Dubois: that of a privileged dancer and the hackneyed

of dance in this case.

The first responds to his great ability to interpret that led him to be recognized in 2011 as one of the 25 best dancers in the world by the prestigious publication

The peculiarity: that Dubois started dancing at the age of 23.

“Whenever they ask me about this, I don't know what to answer, I had the need and it was very easy for me.

There is nothing mystical around, no grace from God or innate vocation.

If I think about it, I think I started dancing for a song, the one that closes my solo

I was looking for it for a long time, that song I used to listen to as a child, and when I found it I ended up crying”.

He mentions

by Sylvester, a great disco hit that puts the finishing touch to one of the most personal solos of his career, which he still represents today, four years after its premiere.

Another moment from 'Tragédie'.François Stemmer

And about the

well, the creator seems accustomed and amused.

“For me it is a declaration of love, an artistic

makes few concessions and when you have one in front of you it always arouses curiosity”.

Before founding his own collective in 2007, the Compagnie Olivier Dubois (COD), with which he has premiered more than 20 productions, he worked with prestigious creators such as Angeline Preljocaj, Sasha Waltz and Jan Fabre, over whom there is currently a delicate controversy for alleged abuses.

“Despite all these serious problems regarding his person, I do not deny Fabre.

He taught me things about being an artist and I had wonderful experiences, but it's not for everyone”, he declares.

And do you consider yourself a follower of his legacy?

"Not at all.

I like to think I have my own speech.

I left his company to start creating, he didn't want me to leave, so I told him: 'Yes, I'm leaving.

I'm going to do what you would have done.'

You have to kill the father, right? ”, He smiles.

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