TATTOO
To explore how each of the 2 languages leaves its mark on the other through its accent: for his first encounter with dancers from the Ballet National de Marseille, Kelemenis puts the characteristic imbalances and fluidity of his movement against an academic technique accompanied by its most important symbol: the pointe.
If only one thing could be retained from this adventure with TATTOO, it would be the search for something evident, or how on emblematic ground, which is therefore immensely charged, characteristic and strong, another kind of stroke can be inscribed that doesn’t deny itself nor refuse the symbolic force of its environmental circumstances. The contemporary choreographer Kelemenis delights in considering ballet’s symbolic slipper. He analyzes its most common attributes: its balance, how it follows the line of the leg, how it symbolizes the desire for elevation… This point of intensely minimal gravity on which elongated figures are built becomes the subject he studies: the minute support for the transposition of the manifest materiality of the body in movement so dear to the choreographer, fundamentally antinomic with an academic technique in constant pursuit of elevation.
Echos
Revue du Théâtre Diane Van Der Molina
nov. 2007
The choreography of Michel Kelemenis harmonizes effectively with "Constructions métalliques" composed by the electro-acoustic composer, Christian Zanési, who transcends the sounds of the forge and workers’ voices in a composition that crescendos offering Michel Kelemenis choice material. The choreographer seizes it with intelligence to evoke the force used by the tattoo artist when tattooing the client’s body. The choreography alternates robotic movements, supple gestures and ensembles with portées and piqués : it traces the back and forth movements of the tattoo artist’s needle, judiciously put in perspective by the two dancers’ ballet slippers performing constant piqués on a white square covering the ground (symbol of the skin to be tattooed). The tightly fitting costumes designed by Philippe Combeau highlight the fluidity of the curved and precise gestures of the tattoo artist drawing arabesques and spirals, which enflame our imagination with wonder and great beauty.
La marseillaise Jean Barak
nov. 2007
What is there to say about Ms Labaronne, first name Cinthia, Agnès Lascombes, Julien Lestel, Gilles Porte and Thibault Amanieu of the Ballet National de Marseille ? The women, compasses cleverly manipulated by the men, write graceful geometries in 3 dimensions. Michel Kelemenis is known to be just as fond of them as he is of aphorisms. (…) When excellence consorts with beauty, one can only be silent.