In 1991, La Ribot created Soccoro! Gloria!, a short solo piece heralding the principles that she would continue to develop throughout her oeuvre as part of the evolving Pièces Distinguées project.

In this burlesque striptease that toys with spectators’ expectations, the “distinguished” method is established, with the juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements—clothes, music, accessories—mounted on her body to create freakish physical states, flashes of poetry and scraps of nonsense. Centered on a female figure in constant metamorphosis, combining wildness and refinement, delicacy and destructive irony, these works invent a choreographic format based on brevity, borderline humor, and economy of means.

Dislocated actions, exuberant fashion shows, precarious installations, ephemeral manifestos: all these ingredients are mixed together, tossed, subverted to form a meticulously composed jumble in which nudity is used like a weapon and the image of the body is scrutinized in all its guises. In 2001, the video installation Despliegue brought to a close the first three series: 13 Piezas distinguidas 1993, Más distinguidas and Still Distinguished. Conceived in the form of a reflexive and retrospective inventory, Despliegue highlights the modular character of these series that have been endlessly recombined to suit different contexts—galleries, museums, theaters. After the creation of the anthology version Panoramix in 2003, Distinguished Hits (1991–2001) represented a new reconfiguration: a layered work making it possible to examine each work like a separate haiku, while placing them in the framework of this vast performance patchwork.

Credits

Conception and performance

La Ribot

Production La Ribot – Geneva. With the support of the City of Geneva, the République and the Canton of Geneva, and the Pro-Helvetia-Fondation Suisse pour la Culture

Works created between 1991 and 2001

La Ribot, born in Madrid, lived and worked in London between 1997 and 2004. Today she lives and works in Geneva. Under her diva’s name, La Ribot, she has created dance pieces that have received numerous awards, and that are placed at the crossroads of contemporary dance, the performing arts, performance and video. 

Over the last ten years, La Ribot has created a demanding but humorous vocabulary, exploring the field of geometry through her famous Distinguished Series pieces. 

La Ribot’s work forms a system allowing her to conduct research and to develop and question the temporal, spatial and conceptual limits of dance, as her work rests on the confluences of the performing arts, performance and graphic arts. 

Since 2000 La Ribot has shown a strong interest in video and its basic functions. This is what led her to construct pieces filmed live from the viewpoint of the body in movement. By presenting her work in internationally renowned galleries, theatres, festivals of dance, the performing arts and performances, La Ribot uses dance in a pertinent and logical manner as a means of challenging disciplinarity.

www.laribot.com

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).