Paco Dècina writes, with his style so worked, so harmonious, the memories he seeks deep in memory. The public is invited to cross this path between shadow and lights , to meditate with the dancers creating beautiful images. How not to be fascinated, how not to be carried away by this art so complete proposed and suggested by Paco Dècina and his dancers!
Opened last week, Dance Emotion 98 and a good year. On Tuesday night at the Grand Theatre, the Neapolitan Paco Decina was in full view.
A regular at Dance Emoi, Paco Dècina is a true painter. With dance, he creates canvases where light, like a charcoal, draws the bodies, where movement, like the brush, enlarges the lines or on the contrary refines them.
On Tuesday evening, the Neapolitan artist planted his choreographic easel on the stage of the Grand Theatre to evoke Pompeii.
In this town of Campania buried by Mount Vesuvius in 79, he visited a few years ago with the photographer Lee Yanor. She brought back some clichés, him images of frozen bodies, heavy silences, shadows, transparencies, and a crater. Thus were born the "Five passages in the shadows or trasparenze" . On a circle of gold and embers, mud and lava, installed in the center of the plateau, the ghosts appear, melt and disappear behind a thin canvas where mysterious images are projected. On bodies transformed into a statue, silhouettes are required.
Original and strong, this choreographic Guernica is a mixture of anguish and serenity, poetry and horror, sadness and hope. If death lurks behind the veils, life manifests itself through gestures and music.
If the visual artist Dècina is really inspired, the choreographer goes around in circles. Some repetitive gestures add to this choreographic discourse. But these small details do not detract from the quality of the show.
Paco Dècina, Solo. At the Forum culturel du Blanc-Mesnil, 1-5 place de la Libération, 93150 Le Blanc-Mesnil. Infini, March 3 and 4 at 8:30 p.m. Cinq passages dans l'ombre ou Trasparenze, March 6 at 8:30 p.m. Ciro Esposito fu Vincenzo, March 8 at 8:30 p.m.
Choreographing stillness: a challenge that Paco Dècina gracefully supports. Perhaps the long attendance of pictorial works in his childhood earned him this talent of stop on image, where a Mediterranean languor emerges. It's only natural for this Neapolitan to pose two men standing side by side or a boy lying around supporting a girl in reverse. His characters float, in weightlessness. They come out of nowhere, expect nothing, just be there. It is a rarity in a world where stillness often seems incongruous. But Paco Dècina's interpreters have mastered the art of stillness. It's a big deal.
No extra, no ghost, no potted plant, they found the point of balance between presence and absence. They vibrate with a gentle intensity. Space shuddering, thickness of shadow. It takes an inner certainty to exist fully and resist the flights, falls, jumps that harass the plateau. Inactive, but in action, these static dancers could stay like this for hours without the ballet bothering; nor the viewer, caught by these particles of eternity. The gaze rests with the usual spectacular efficiency. Delight. He slides dancers to others, wise as images. In this back-and-forth, the disorder opens up vaporous sensations, an unusual mystery.
But will these collected figures move, as they should? Of course they do! With the arms first, and especially with the arms. Because Paco Dècina knows how to choreograph them wonderfully. Whether they undulete slowly like tentacles or grind space firmly, they are always beautiful, voluble, full of nuances. In the wool, they still live very hard. The air is soft for them; space, welcoming. A secret voluptuousness emanates from them. The shoulders roll with pleasure, the shoulder blades, play without ostentation.
An example, Paco Dècina's solo "Infinite" draws sumptuous interlacings. Muscled, sculptural (thanks to the choreographer's sporting past), but incredibly graceful, his arms lay down the gestures like a prayer. Indian accents envelop his score: broken wrists, hands framing the eyes or offering themselves like flowers. Paco Dècina has femininity at his fingertips to the point of embodying at times a kind of deity half man, half woman. He turns around, tenderly rubbing his thumbs against his index fingers. Imperceptible froufrou that resonates for those who want to hear it...
For his new creation, Five Passages in the Shadow or Trasparenze, Paco Dècina has teamed up with photographer Lee Yanor to create a series of paintings that harmoniously combine images, shadows, lights and bodies. Light, as free of gravity, the five performers offer a fluid and restrained dance. Beautiful this solo by Valeria Apicella. We never tire of his modest sensuality.
The Italian choreographer Paco Dècina is mounting "Five Passages in the Shadows" or Trasparenze" his new creation at the White-Mesnil Cultural Forum on October 10 and 11.
Suspended in space, photos of gazes fixed two thousand years ago on the mosaics of Pompeii observe the public. The movements of the dancers play with the images, create new ones, trace and nourish the heritage of men step by step. Paco Dècina explains: "I would like to give the viewer the feeling that sounds and music come from far away, as if they were piercing the veils of silence. From this silence the sounds would slowly emerge: the beats of our body, of our memory, of that of our ancestors. My goal is not to give rise to an emotion to all the spectators, but to be a click, to allow everyone to reflect on their own story.
The black and white photos, taken on a thin canvas, intersect with the viewer's gaze and evoke the layers of memory. They constitute both the space and the time of this creation. They are the work of Lee Yanor, an Israeli artist, whose dance is the main subject of inspiration. This is the first time she has participated in the creation of a choreography. "Between dance, the art of movement, and the photo that freezes the moment, there is a contradiction to overcome to give birth to a new expression. In this work, the images should not remain. In the mind of the viewer, they must blend in with the dancers' bodies to form one and the same memory.
For one year, Paco Dècina received creative assistance from the General Council in the form of a residency at the White-Mesnil Cultural Forum.
Until November 8, Lee Yanor presents in the same Forum an exhibition of his work in "Five Passages in the Shadows" , as well as a retrospective.