Dancewalk

Dancewalk, is dance as voyage, everywhere in the world. A geographic inscription of body and dance, an activity where walking becomes dancing, where dancing is always forward-going, for several kilometers and several hours, through a city or a landscape. Dancewalk has been performed by Foofwa since 2015 in various contexts and locations, sometimes with other professional dancers, workshop participants and with local collaborating musicians. For Foofwa, dancewalking is a challenge to normative aesthetic of dancing. Because of its unusual kinesthetic, choreographic and conceptual dimensions. Movement-wise, dancewalking finds a new kinesthetic coordination combining walking and dancing; it thinks dance in a qualitative and quantitative way; it is an opening to all kinds of movements (those of dynamics and power as much as those of vulnerability and tiredness). It emanates from an extreme training (who is rehearsing for a show by dancing 100 or 200 kilometers?), but it is actualized, at the moment of the performance, by a sensitive listening of the energies and desires of the body-mind in interaction with the context and the environment. At the choreographic level, the dancewalk can be considered as a redefinition of performance in its artistic as well as athletic terms; but also as a metaphor of one’s own destiny through life (“the way of the course of our life”). In addition, it enters the dance in a geographical way: one can read for example its choreographic movements thanks to a GPS recording on a map. Conceptually, the dancewalk realizes a new choreographic relationship to duration and space, stretching them to the extreme. It considers time in terms of several, even tens, hours and thinks space in terms of distances in tens, or even hundreds, of kilometers. The dancewalk interacts with the world and reality in a permeability that is rarely possible in dance or on stage, with a “decor” constantly scrolling and changing ; hundreds (sometimes thousands) of spectators, either warned or accidental; real dialogues with things and people; an immediate relationship with the unpredictability of life. In 2017, the dancewalks became more social, more political. By interacting closely with the organizers, Foofwa carefully prepares and adapts some dancewalks to the city, its inhabitants and the context in which they take place. He collaborates with local musicians. On site, he gives dancewalk workshops to anyone curious, and invites them to join him during the performance. The festive and liberating side of the dancewalk stands out more strongly. The dividing line between performer and spectator is blurred. For the coming years, in collaboration with structures and partners around the world, Foofwa wants to create very specific or large-scale dancewalking projects.