CRA’P resident September 2016

THE WITCH DANSE PROJECT

What is the necessity of the survival of a dance object, while everyone agrees on the ephemeral nature of this art, when today, monuments and ruins of entire civilisations seem to be demolished and disappear in what seems to be a well thought of strategy.

In this project, I find myself facing a dialogue between my body (as a tool and material) and Mary Wigman’s body and thinking, that cannot be resumed to what is left as textual and visual traces from her solo “Hexentanz”, but resides also in an artistic as well as political context. This dialogue is the occasion to re-question the figure of the “witch”, this state of body that is extreme and marginal, where many contradictory tensions resides; animalistic and instinctive but also manipulating and destructive.

In this solo, I found one important element recurrent in my previous work and research: the ground. While wars go on through ages, Man born and die on it and sometimes in its name, the ground, (the soil) is here. Our rituals of preserving it and surviving on it change but its power remains the same.

Project commission and produced by Sophiensaele Theatre in Berlin.

Danya Hammoud: Studied Theatre in Lebanon and Dance in France. Was co-founder of Zoukak Theatre Company with whom she worked from 2007 till 2014. Started developing her choreographic work in 2007. Her dance performances include: Meen el Battal? 2007/ F.A.Q. with Antonio Tagliarinin in the frame of “sites of imagination” project, 2007/ S’approcher, in the frame of the “miniature” project proposed by L’officina, 2010/ Mahalli, produced by CNDC (France) and Cocoondance (Germany), 2011/ Mes mains sont plus âgées que moi, produced by the association of the CDC in France, 2014 / Quatorze tours, produced by CCN Roubaix, 2015.