Choreographic comedy

The work “Pina Jackson in Mercemoriam” brings together the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the profane, the serious and the playful. The coincidence of death brought together three great masters of dance, in a single month in 2009: the king of pop, Michael Jackson, the queen of the Tanztheater, Pina Bausch and the emperor of the “Dance Revolution”, Merce Cunningham.

Foofwa d'Imobilité evokes them through a parodist and contemporary approach of Dante's “Divine Comedy” whilst reinventing the Dance of Death that emphasizes the vanity of social distinctions. As always, Foofwa d'Imobilité uses all means available to bring life to this shadowy world: he imitates, mimes, copies, compiles and reinvents the wrongs and the foibles of these beings just as much as their inspirational genius.

Updating: September 2011

Born Frédéric Gafner in Geneva in 1969, son of Brazilian prima ballerina and dance teacher Beatriz Consuelo and solo dancer turned theatre photographer Claude Gafner, Foofwa d’Imobilité studied at the Geneva Dance Centre and worked with the Ballet Junior (1981-1987) under his mother’s direction. He then danced professionally with the Stuttgart Ballet in Germany (1987-1990) before joining the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in New York (1991-1998).

He began working as a choreographer in 1998, creating three multimedia solos.

In 2000, he established the Neopost Foofwa Association in Geneva, with which he produced several group performances. Foofwa has worked in association with mix-media artists Alan Sondheim; artist Antoine Lengo; musicians Fast Forward, Jim O’Rourke, Christian Marclay, Elliot Sharp, Polar, Brice Catherin, Claude Jordan, Nicolas Sordet and Séni; visual artists Nicolas Rieben and Alexia Walther; video makers Pascal Magnin, Nicolas Wagnières and Pascal Dupoy; choreographers Thomas Lebrun and Corina Pia; author Mathieu Bertholet; lighting designers Liliane Tondellier, Jean-Marc Serre, Marc Gaillard, Yves Godin and Jonathan O’Hear; scientists Olaf Blanke and Vincent Barras; dance researcher Annie Suquet and journalist-critic Christina Thurner.

He has studied the relationship between dance and sport and invented the “dancerun”, a hybrid activity between dancing and running over several kilometres, either on stage with « Perform.dancerun.2 » (2003) or outside with « Kilometrix.dancerun.4 » (2003). He then studied the relationship between public and choreographic work in « The Making of Spectacles » (2008) and « Quai du Sujet » (2007); the digital body in « Media Vice Versa » (2002), « Avatar dance series », « Second Live series » (videos), and « Body Toys » (2007); the historicity of the dancing body in « Descendansce » (2000), Le Show (2001), MIMESIX (2005), Benjamin de Bouillis (2005), « Musings » (2009), Pina Jackson in « Mercemoriam » (2009) and « Histoires Condansées » (2011). Foofwa has been commissioned by the Nederlands Dans Theater II, the Bern Ballet, the Ballet Junior de Genève, the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD) and the Festival d’Avignon in 2010 for « Au Contraire » (à partir de Jean-Luc Godard). He has received the financial backing of the Geneva and the Swiss authorities every year since 2002 and received awards from the Leenaards Foundation in 1999 and the prestigious New York Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2009. He was also awarded the Prix de Lausanne in 1987, the New York Bessie Award in 1995, the Swiss Dance and Choreography Prize in 2006 and the first Swiss Prize for Dance in the “dancer” category in September 2013, among other prizes.

His most recent performances include « Uterus, pièce d’intérieur » (2014), « L’engage » (2014), and « Soi-même comme un autre » (2014).

Source: The company Neopost Foofwa s website

More information

foofwa.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.).