In the crescendo, the repetitive, exhaustion and pleasure, Olivier Dubois created a manifest, obsessive and hypnotic piece in 'Tragédie', 

He reproduces the experience of a blinding, dazzling – even deafening – humanity. The bodies can no longer be distinguished except by these moving masses, these archaic urges. With 'Tragédie', more than just creating a piece of choreography, Olivier Dubois propels us into a "worldly sensation". The simple fact of being a human does not constitute Humanity: such is the tragedy of our existence. It is only from bodies, from the telluric pressure born from each of our steps and from our conscious and voluntary commitments that this humanity will surge forward. Overexposed in their nudity to better embody their obvious anatomical differences, nine women and nine men present an original state of the body, a solicitation of their human gender undressed of historical, sociological or psychological troubles, ultimately creating a choir in the form of a glorious song/body. Walking, being picked up, facing something, first by incessant comings and goings – the shifts of movement – and then by pounding the floor and transforming the step into a fundamental gesture of their desire.

Just like 'Révolution', Olivier Dubois has created a manifest, obsessive, even hypnotic piece where, like the changing tides, these men and women seem to melt and disappear; the friction of their commitments creates the fracas. A rift opens and reveals within this telluric chaos the precious transcendence of a human community. “Through song and dance, humans show their belonging to a higher community: they have un-learnt how to walk and talk and, through dancing, are about to fly away into the air. Their movements speak of their enchantment.”

Credits

Création Olivier Dubois
Assistanat à la création Cyril Accorsi
Musique François Caffenne
Lumières Patrick Riou
Régie générale François Michaudel
Régie lumière Emmanuel Gary
Interprètes Benjamin Bertrand, Arnaud Boursain, Jorge More Calderon, Marie-Laure Caradec, Syvain Decloitre, Virginie Garcia, Karine Girard, Carole Gomes, Inés Hernandez, Isabelle Kürzi, Marie Leca, Sébastien Ledig, Filipe Lourenço, Thierry Micouin, Aurélie Mouilhade, Rafael Pardillo, Sébastien Perrault, Sandra Savin
Direction de production Béatrice Horn

Olivier Dubois has been shaking up the French contemporary dance  scene for more than a decade with some of the most radical choreographic  work to date.

The director of Ballet du Nord from 2014 to 2017, he was named one  of the twenty-five best dancers in the world in 2011 by Dance Europe  magazine and boasts a unique experience working between creation,  interpretation and pedagogy.

Olivier Dubois has performed for Angelin Preljocaj, Cirque du  Soleil, Jan Fabre, Dominique Boivin, Sasha Waltz and many others. In  2006, he was invited by the French Authors’ Society SACD and the  Festival d’Avignon to create a piece as part of its ‘Les Sujets à vif’  series. His work Pour tout l’or du monde (For All the Gold in the World) subsequently received the jury prize from the Professional Critics’ Association. At the 2008 Festival d’Avignon, he created Faune(s), based on the famous piece by Nijinski, and won the Prix Jardin d’Europe, the European prize for emerging choreography.

His exhibition L’interprète dévisagé (The Faceless Interpreter) at the Centre National de la Danse in Paris in 2009 was well received.

In 2010, he presented Spectre, a commission by the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, and created L’homme de l’Atlantique, a duet based on the music of Frank Sinatra, for the Lyon Dance Biennale.

In 2009, he started the trilogy Étude critique pour un trompe-l’œil (Critical Study for a Trompe L’Oeil) with the creation of Révolution (Revolution) at the Ménagerie de Verre in Paris, followed by the solo Rouge (Red) in 2011 and concluded by the provocative Tragédie (Tragedy), created at the Festival d’Avignon in 2012.

As part of Marseille 2013, European Capital of Culture, Dubois created Élégie (Elegy) for the National Ballet of Marseille. The same year he was named best choreographer at the Danza & Danza Awards for Tragédie and Élégie.

In 2015, he created two new pieces: Mon élue noire Sacre #2, a solo for Germaine Acogny, and Les Mémoires d’un seigneur, performed by a dancer from the Company and 40 male amateur dancers.

Olivier Dubois also shares his creations with amateur dancers. In 2011, Envers et face à tous (Against and Facing All) was performed by 120 dancers at Prisme d’Élancourt, followed in 2013 by Origami, which featured 1,000 lower grade and high school students from Roubaix. During the last Nuit Blanche in Paris, he staged Mille et une danses (Thousand and One Dances) with the participation of 300 amateur dancers. Dubois also collaborates with the Ballet Junior de Genève training school.

The trilogy Étude critique pour un trompe-l’œil (Critical Study for a Trompe L’Oeil) was concluded in 2016 with Auguri,  a piece for 22 dancers that premiered at the International Summer  Festival Kampnagel in Hamburg and was presented for the first time in  France at the Biennale de Lyon. In February 2017, Olivier Dubois  produced De l’origine (Of the Origin) for the Royal Swedish Ballet and 7 x Rien (7 x Nothing), his first piece for young audiences.

In spring 2018, he performed a solo titled Pour sortir au jour (Coming Forth by Day),  for which the premiere took place at the Festival de Marseille. The  following year, Olivier Dubois created a new piece for 8 dancers and one  musician, Tropismes, presented recently at  CentQuatre-Paris. The result of two years of work between Egypt and  France, its new French-Egyptian creation for 7 Egyptian performers  (music and dance), Itmahrag premiered in January 2021 at La Filature, Scène nationale de Mulhouse.

In July 2022, he re-created Tragédie, new edit (2012) with some of
the former dancers and young performers for the Marseille
Festival, then on tour across Europe.

Source and more information: https://www.olivierdubois.org/en/