A creator of dreamlike metamorphoses, Philippe Decouflé draws from scholarly and popular sources alike, shattering rules by injecting elements of the spectacular, burlesque and bizarre into his art. With 'Contact', he has created a musical and visual comedy, a preposterous tale of our (super-) human passions. The sixteen dancers and actors summon up art, love, knowledge, greed and the divine; question the meaning of good and evil; explore the universal dual essence by injecting Faustian romanticism with Découfle's own particular brand of fantasy and the absurd. In this call to the audience's pleasure and imagination, only freedom counts, sung out through passion, fire and madness. On stage, contrasts are superimposed and atmospheres changed, from the chiaroscuro of Faust, a German tale by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, to the flamboyance of Jérôme Robbins' West Side Story. The colours of the costumes scream out of the broken black and white lines of the Expressionist set decoration. Pre-filmed or live-feed images – kaleidoscopic, shimmering or swirling – multiply the realm of perceptions and falsify the real. Dance, singing, music, acrobatics and magic combined with the video create phantasmagoria. Added to this, Philippe Decouflé deploys his original vocabulary in a permanent dialogue between joyful collective frescoes and restrained, intimate sequences, choreographed with skilfully orchestrated geometry and danced pantomime.

Source : Maison de la Danse

Dancer, choreographer, director and art director

As a child, I dreamt of becoming a comic book artist. Drawing is usually the start of my creative process. I just throw out ideas and sketch out pictures that pass through my head. My culture is comics, musicals, nightclub dancing, and also Oskar Schlemmer, the Bauhaus choreographer. Discovering photos of characters from his Triadisches Ballett was a revelation for me. I had always wanted to work with simple geometric shapes like cubes and triangles. I liked seeing how these lines and volumes behaved with each other. Alwin Nikolaïs taught me the importance of light and costume, and the confidence you need to mix everything together. Technically, it was Merce Cunningham who taught me the most about dance. I was taking video courses he was giving in New York. It was fascinating. That’s where I learned how to solve problems of distance and geometry, and the basic principles of optics and movement. Tex Avery inspired me a lot in thinking up gestures that are almost impossible to do. I’ve always kept something of that desire to create something strange, extreme or crazy in my movements. I’m looking for a dance style that’s off-balance, always on the verge of toppling over. With influences like the Marx Brothers, for example, and in particular Groucho Marx, I’ve developed a taste for naughty risk-taking, and comic repetition of mistakes.

Source : Philippe Découflé

More information : cie-dca.com

Following his cinema studies in Aix en Provence, he partnered with the film director Thierry Graton and together they created a production structure that enabled him to associate his two passions at the Opéra de Marseille, the Festival d'Aix, the Festival d'Avignon, etc.


At the beginning of the 1990s, he met Angelin Preljocaj who initiated him to a world that he knew nothing of: contemporary dance. They worked together on around fifteen productions. Together, they were awarded the Grand Prix from the Video Dance Festival for Le Parc.


Since 2000, he is frequently called upon for musical and dance programmes that are filmed live and direct.
 

Source: University of Rennes 2
 

Artistic direction: Philippe Decouflé

Creation: 1983

Having being initiated to dance by Isaac Alvarez and the Circus Academy of Annie Fratellini, Philippe Decouflé created his Company, DCA (sometimes for Decouflé's Company for the Arts sometimes for "Défense Contre Avion") in 1983 after a first career as a dancer (Régine Chopinot, Alwin Nikolais). The company's first production, "Vague café", met an immediate and large success with both the public and the professionals. Philippe Decouflé then created several productions whose titles bore evidence of his interest for the world of comics and to its humour: with "Surprises", "Fraîcheur limite", "Soupière de luxe", "Tranche de cake", Decouflé's fame spread in France and throughout

In 1986, the success of "Codex" confirmed the blossoming of the Company and contributed to defining a more and more singular artistic identity. "Codex was" inspired from an illustrated encyclopaedia, drawn at the end of the 1970s by a young Italian, Luigi Seraphini: the fantastic animals, the imaginary plants and the living vegetables were to inspire Decouflé in the years to come.

Meanwhile, Decouflé became more and more interested in video. When DCA was first funded he directed a few dance videos –"La voix des légumes", "Jump"; a few years later, he wrote and directed a short film –"Caramba" as well as music videos' for New Order – "True Faith" - or the Fine Young Cannibals – "She Drives Me Crazy".

Source: the company DCA 's website

More information

cie-dca.com