An Armchair For The Orchestra – The site of Parisian theater critics » Schönheit ist Nebensache or Beauty turns out to be accessory, by Pol Pi, at Lafayette Anticipations, as part of the Festival Echelle Humaine and the Festival d’Automne

© Latitudes Prod

ƒƒƒ article of Nicolas Thévenot

Pol Pi. From the outset a duality, a rebound from one syllable to another. And a riddle posed. Pol Pi is a choreographer of Brazilian origin and he has lived in France since 2013. If he practices today in the arts of dance, if he directs, he is also a musician. To read his biography, to see this show, we understand that he touches on everything and crosses with agility the borders erected between disciplines, dislocating categories. Schönheit ist Nebensache or Beauty turns out to be incidental is thus literally at the crossroads of dance and music, Pol Pi intermingling the five movements of Paul Hindemith’s sonata opus 35 N°1 with the five solos that make up the cycle of Afectos humanos by choreographer Dore Hoyer.

Occurring between two desks facing each other, Schönheit ist Nebensache or Beauty turns out to be incidental will unfold like a back and forth between these two shores, will travel through the music of one to join the movements of the other. The reason for such interbreeding soon becomes apparent: beyond the contemporaneity of their existence, beyond the repercussions on their life and their work of the rise of the Nazis in Germany, there is a common density, a search concurrent of primordial affects, a similar and powerful expressionism if we want to understand by this term ” the expression of a feeling rather than a sentiment “. Body writing and musical composition that go straight to the point. In this dithering which makes all the singularity of the dithering of Schönheit ist Nebensache or Beauty turns out to be incidental, the music of one can be heard in the diffracted echo of the movements of the other, the dance of Dore Hoyer unfolds in the space stretched by the strokes of the bow of Paul Hindemith’s sonata. Two mirrors stretched towards each other.

This coming and going is also the place and the time of a metamorphosis: that of Pol Pi, who appeared in austere black pajamas which will open and fold up like the wings of a butterfly preparing its moult, revealing in passing a tattoo-painting, bluish like those old mimeographs, marbling his back and chest with the fine writing of a found manuscript. Questioning the resonances between the bygone era of these two German artists and the rise of the extreme right and fascism in Brazil, questioning his interest and his obsessive passion for this musical score and this choreographic cycle, Pol Pi responds personally, fully engage. And if we have to speak of incarnation, the term seems very inappropriate to evoke the relationship of the violist-dancer to the works of Paul Hindemith and Dora Hoyer, it is that Pol Pi offers much more than his nervous and knotty body like a wood engraving: it offers a conscience. Clean and vibrant. A consciousness is electric, much more than our passing moods, it creates an arc of tension between a note and a gesture.

Pol Pi begins his show with brief biographical notes concerning the composer (Paul Hindemith) and the choreographer (Dora Hoyer), then he evokes, in the third person, this other “ Pol “. This other himself who lived his childhood under another identity. Pol Pi is transmasculine. Schönheit ist Nebensache or Beauty turns out to be incidental would also be the passage of this he inaugural to this I circumstances, at stake. Pol Pi turns out to be a bridge between eras (a wall pass like Dorothée Munyaneza with whom he shared this evening), the messenger that we expected more at the point of junction between intimate and political, the inextinguishable and irreducible sentinel as only art can be.

© Latitudes Prod

Schönheit ist Nebensache or Beauty turns out to be incidental : Dance and music of Pol Pi

Based on an original choreography by Dore Hoyer (© Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln) and original music by Paul Hindemith

Transmission of dances: Martin Nachbar

Body painting: Gwendalys Leriche

Duration: 55 minutes

September 14 and 15, 2022, at 8:30 p.m.

Lafayette Anticipations – Galeries Lafayette Foundation

9, rue du Plaster

75004 Paris

www.lafayetteanticipations.com

Tel: +33 (0)1 42 74 95 59