TGI Avignon 2023

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ENGLISH​​​

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A confession of hopes, dreams, failures and sins, The Flowers of Evil attempts to extract beauty from the malignant.  One must evoke the artificial and paradoxical aspects of life.  Beauty can evolve on its own, irrespective of nature and fuelled by sin. The ideal transcends over the harsh reality where all senses are united in ecstasy.

The path of The Flowers of Evil is very similar to what is outlined in Hindu Philosophy and the dance shows the parallel nature of it.

 

Mandala – a microcosm representing divine powers at work in the universe.  The Mandala represents the nature of experience and the intricacies of both the enlightened and confused mind.  The dancers weave the web.

 

Karma is the concept of action. The dancers act to be bound to one another as one extreme ideal cannot exist without the malignant spleen.

 

Moksha is liberation.  Or is it? Yet bound together they cannot part.

 

Maya is illusion, the veil which must be lifted. The battlefield of the mind and soul / spleen and ideal continue.

 

Kala is the ultimate time where good and evil cease to exist and all paradoxes unite.

 

Samsara is the continuous flow of birth, life, death and rebirth.

It is he who flows into himself to perpetually wander through harsh states of existence which the pain of the never-ending cycle is transformed into the lush blossoms of the “flowers of evil.”

 

The show premiered in Avignon Off Festival and then was performed in Seoul at the VIA International Festival.  It was praised for its philosophical content and artistic presentation. 

 

“Never have I seen the beauty in the evil so well expressed.”  La Provence

 

“Strange encounter of Baudelairian poetry poetry with sacred dance, whether it be of Hindu or Buddhist inspiration.  The dancers take us on a Karmic crossing in search for a "Beyond"! We are invited to the initiation. The dancers perfectly master the movements of the body.  The choreography draws its inspiration from both oriental traditions as well as in the and the expression of secular gestures, such as cabaret dances and striptease.   We remain fascinated by the beauty and precision of the gestures.  The dance, music, through its rhythms, mark the meeting of the earthly and the celestial. It takes us into the regions of inner conflict where good and evil are opposed.  The dancers, both angels and devils, invite us to the ball.  It is up to us to dance.

J. Bertrand      Revue Spectacle Avignon, France