Arthur

Choreographer, Paco Dècina, and countertenor, Sebastien Fournier, wanted to share an artistic adventure and have chosen the extraordinary epic of King Arthur. Let us re evaluate this legend and its values, right here and now and relive its contradictory sentiments of victory, failure, success and liberty. The marriage of dance and song, of body and spirit, is at the heart of Arthur’s concerns.
An uncluttered shape where Paco Dècina’s pictorial dance movement and Sébastien Fournier’s fascinating, yet troubling voice become essential elements composing the performance. Dance, just as a very particular presence, and the song dialogue in concert during a dreamlike voyage, to the singular echoes of a crystal and to both old and modern magical sounds, going from the noise of an airplane to the resonance of a Cistercian Abbey.

Arthur is the direction, which guides us. Always changing, it keeps us between Sky and Earth. It is the oil in the lantern nourishing the flame.

This quest of the mythical hero invites us to question our own core, our own doubts. The air is transformed into vibrations, the empty becomes whole, the invisible, real. And through the magic of an encounter and the forces, the future takes root in the present.

In Arthur, dance and voice are interlaced in order to create the body of the piece. Its shape is born from the emptiness that each of these disciplines is able to offer to the others. By inspiring one another while searching for a common exhale, their breaths are mixed, allowing us to see what secretly or silently is going on in Arthur’s mind, a mortal in search of his breath. The breath is danced, sung and played, whether Arthur is striding along the space in search of a lost step, or overlapping a Baroque air to prove his surprise, or to being thrown into a gluey density of a contemporary work. He always seems to intimately resemble us. Alive, Arthur embodies the desire for discovery, for change and questioning. In order to feel authentic he is pushed through the wall of memory, which seems to confine him to a comfortable kingdom filled with ghosts, taking him towards the quest of the unknown, scary and full of Life. Paco

Why Paco Dècina, why dance? “ We are in this world in and through a body!” says Plato. How does one not consider this point of view, which traditional education absolutely does not cover throughout our lives, unless we are lucky enough to meet the right people.
Thanks to discovering the world of dance, it became possible to personify the work of the breath and spirit in a very physical reality, that of the dancer’s bodies. It is perhaps the quest of our good King Arthur, who, at the height of his glory, lost touch with his fundamental reality. He is not what he was, why? Meeting Paco and this extraordinary work on the body highlights the reasons of Camelot’s fall. The knight’s armor was rusted because it was enmeshed in certitudes, not easily affected. There is a solution but it is far from obvious. Arthur must search for the Grail if he wants to reconnect with his fundamental reality. One land one King! Thus, the knight’s long and painful pilgrimage brings them to discover that the spirit cannot live by itself; it constantly needs to be in touch with the reality of the body.
In the same way, for a voice to be touching and convincing, it must take root in a body freed from its armor, and therefore its prejudices, being itself first and in all things. This is our quest. The artists are mutually inspired, giving more of a voice to their intentions, being more present in their performance, and through studying and rehearsing, they give birth to a new genre, directing the voice and the body..

Marrieding Voice and Body
Duo embodying archetypal characters from an exciting adventure linking the world to spirituality, divine devotion questioning the meaning of fidelity, commitment, sacrifice, faith, renunciation... today's issues of contemporary values that are transforming this legend in a resolutely modern tale.

Fusion of Baroque Singing and Contemporary Dance
In this work, it is a question of combining baroque singing and dance in a project in its own right, with each discipline taking on a equivalent place. It is in an artistic challenge to integrate these two arts as a full-fledged entity in turn to resonate the purpose of the piece that this collaborative project has built.

Residence between Art and Heritage
This project is part of a logic of openness giving everyone access to this Show. In order to best integrate into the living environment of the people of the regions, it will take place in heritage sites steeped in history a veritable setting for this room, with the architecture of the place as its sole setting. The constraints of a place will become a wealth to blend in with the best possible in your places of life. From chapels to theatres, from public places to intimate places of your meetings (showrooms, venues, heritage, museums, gardens, farms, etc., more than a show, it is a human adventure for all where artistic action and representation form a global project by inviting you to experience singing and dance with the artists in residence at home, for the time of a Creation.

Artistic Actions on the territory
We know how difficult it is to share choreographic art with the and so is singing and early music. It is precisely because we pool our skills that we let's develop our range of proposals. We want to be able to intervene in conservatories music and dance schools and think together to a form of participation in Arthur. Teachers all cycles will be able to draw inspiration from Arthur's legend to address their Programs. This work with multiple artistic registers will allow the public to invest it as it pleases because several gateways are open to him: the singing, dancing, music, set design and history. Through Arthur's story, it is to the collective myth and the imagination that we so that everyone can walk around in their own dreams and stereotypes that any individual can have about dance and dance singing in spite of himself. We want to be as close as possible to the territories, to build with you accompanying projects that we can imagine together.