Compagnie Olivier Dubois - Tragédie

Experience a blinding, dazzling, deafening humanity. No longer able to distinguish inpidual bodies rising to the surface from masses in movement, the piece presents a quivering, archaic momentum. With Tragédie, Olivier Dubois plunges the audience into a “sensation of the world” beyond mere choreography. Humanity is not the simple fact of being a man or a woman and therein lies the tragedy of our existence, for it is only among bodies and through the earthbound pressures of our steps and our conscious, voluntary commitment that humanity will truly emerge.

Exposed and vulnerable in their nudity, the better to incarnate anatomical variation, nine men and nine women present a truly original state of the human body, a solicitation of the human species devoid of historical, sociological or psychological troubles, one that ultimately gives way to a chorus singing the praises of the glorious body.

Walking or standing upright or face to face, they initially start with a constant to-and-fro – episode after episode of ceaseless movement – before pounding the floor and thus making of basic human steps the fundamental expression of their will.

As with Révolution, Olivier Dubois has created an obsessive and indeed hypnotic piece, movement of ebb and flow, where women and men coalesce only to break apart, the friction of their fusion creating a clash of discord. A rift opens up, revealing in this telluric tumult the precious transcendence of a human community.

“In song and dance, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community. He has forgotten how to walk and speak, and is on the way toward flying up into the air, dancing. He himself now walks about, enchanted.” The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche

“Olivier Dubois has created with Tragédie his very own Sacre du printemps, or his own Boléro.” (Libération, Paris, France)

“The basic energy of a march becomes a whoop of sheer vitality.”
(Le Monde, Paris, France) 

Tickets start at $34.00