Folia

Programming / Dance & Music

Folie, madness, fantasy, fancy, imagination, day of the fools, reversals, strangeness – a whole irrational and very ancient universe fits into one word : Folia. With this word, the frontiers of Euclidean geometry explode and all those who love square, tidy lives in well-compartmentalized boxes flee as far as they can: madness is not their cup of tea.

Here is for the theme: you situate?
So if you like boxes (I love boxes but I don’t know how to use that) and the famous : nothing goes beyond – this show will disturb you, so you might as well not continue for today.

Folia is a show with great means and for a large audience proposed by the choreographer Mourad Merzouki, and his company : Käfig.

Dance in Folia is essentially hip-hop.
The music …. but there must be a laughing Evil over my head! – is the baroque music of the musicians of the Hostel Dieu, in Paris.

How to dance baroque music is the question Mourad Merzouki asked himself.
In fact, I think that a part of us are bothered by baroque music.

It’s a love story that doesn’t want to admit itself and we come back to it, when it’s not through the door, it’s through the window.

So, here is Mourad Merzouki who launches out to the assault of the baroque music, to return our love to it, of us, the grumblers, the rabid ones, the impatients.

He started by putting the musicians on the stage, and not underneath as is usual when there are other arts: dancing, singing. The 2Cellos‘ guys do that beautifully – he probably took inspiration from that.
Then he played with the music and wanted to rework the compositions to also have electronic sounds. So he asked Franck-Emmanuel Comte to arrange the music to reach the contemporary sounds and mix them with the ancient sounds – successful bet.

And afterwards, as he is a choreographer, he didn’t limit himself to the dance he masters best: hip hop, but he went fishing in all the dances – a bit like the Monchichi dancers did too.

For the occasion, Wang and Ramirez focused on the love between man and woman.
Merzouki wondered what music does to us. How does it feel? Music is not “intellectual” – it gets us inside, and it provokes feelings, emotions, desires to move: but what? and why? and how do we move and what are our feelings then?

And then, the appearance of a dervish becomes obvious: yes, music and dance also and above all have a link with spirituality, with our souls and how we treat them.

And it is moreover completely astonishing to see this dervish dancing with the other dancers, who ask other questions, those of love, those of anger, those of impotence, those of joy, of friendships, and he continues, beautiful white light which speaks about our souls.

Obviously, Folia is a great show, a big machine, with a quite splendid research on the staging and the sets, the costumes, the make-up.

And I’m telling you: if you think that hip-hop is not a dance, because its name is not chic and “feels” a bit like the street, then look what these dancers have done with it: it’s to die for.

And there, you see, if you can doubt my creativity when I assure you that yes, I have lots of ideas to place you virtually on the stage – for a show like Folia the question doesn’t even arise: there are millions of places where I can place your avatar.
And I can even take advantage of that to make you dance, because after all, I’m wondering how to give you the movement in virtual reality so that it’s both beautiful and fun.

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Featured Image : Folia – Käfig Company – directed by Mourad Merzouki.