May 23-24, 2014. Festival Ambivalence(s), Valence, France

“No dance, no paradise” is a dance project about and around dance. Through the use of 4 well renowned iconic choreographies of Dance History, as well as part of the performer’s own dance history, the performance proposes their re-embodiment and re-contextualization as a historical and symbolic gesture of recognition and admiration, as well as an exercise of humorist self-criticism about the dance world and its references. A choreographic collage between the tap dancing of “Singin’ in the Rain”, the disco dancing of “Saturday night fever”, the contemporary dance of “Rosas”, and the classical ballet of “The dying Swan”. All of them imprinted in one unique body that performs part of the collective memory of dance in order to unfold reflections about performativity, gender, ownership and representation in dance and in its History.

"No dance, no paradise" doesn’t pretend to be a mere multidisciplinary explosion, although it combines different languages. It does not want to become a banal celebration of the diversity in dance, although it displays different choreographic realities. "No dance, no paradise” is a theatrical collage of four iconic choreographies that are part of my references as a dancer and maker in the same way that are part of the collective imaginary. It's a structured and rehearsed orgy of what for me is very personal, but at the same time is completely universal. And it is in this dialogue between the private and the common, between my influences and your memories, between my sweat and your gaze, which I propose to place these four historical choreographies on the same level without giving any importance to the stupid separation between popular and high culture.

The exaggerated smile of Gene Kelly. The coolness of Travolta. The mathematical perfection of Keersmaeker. The virtuoso drama of Plitseskaya. The easiness to happiness from musical comedies. The impossibility to choreograph the freedom of disco. The dramaturgy of abstract movement repetition. The maximum stylization of the representation of death.

Every fragment, every gesture, every dance is not only the expression of a formal discipline or movement style. Each of them is a dance synthesis of a larger chorographical practice, which could be understood as a positioning towards life, a way to understand and interpret reality. "No dance, no paradise" is a personal selection of some of these ways, a review of the influence of those views, a tribute to my childhood as a dancer to redefine my passions as a choreographer.

Oscar Wilde said that the only duty we have with history is to rewrite it. "No dance, no paradise" is a personal rewriting of a personal history. But it is not novel or essay, rather a kind of danced comic vignettes, with no story nor drama, but with moving drawings and texts about the old dances of these four heroes which still captivate us with their ephemeral powers.

see TECHNICHAL RYDER (pdf)