Caen Amour

In a show with a pasteboard decor - a doll's house? A paper palace? - four performers go, turn away, emerge, leave, loop... at arm's length or close to the body, they wear roles and clothes in a circular parade, conjuring up the spectres of cowboys, sailors, oriental dancers and other lascivious or fierce figures. Faithful to his project to study the links between artistic and popular practices, between academic, commercial and protest dances, Trajal Harrell sets up an unprecedented merry-go-round that makes history vibrate and stereotypes waver. The anchor point and destination of the journey: hoochie coochie. A name from another era for a practice that developed in the wake of the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, where the Syrian dancer Little Egypt moved the crowds. Since then, and for a century to come, exotic and sexually suggestive variations have multiplied in traveling circuses in the United States, where the woman on display offers a pelvic and belly dance, a dance nourished by influences that we might try to connect to the Middle East, Africa but also to the Roma peoples - Gypsies, Manouches, Tziganes... or the East Indies.