June 3 /Wednesday/, 7 pm
State Puppet Theatre Plovdiv
Soute à Bagages
Dame de Pic Company
Belgium
Soute à Bagages is a physical travel journal, an itinerary of the body in motion, movement transforms the geometry of the body. What language and strategies does a body invent when subjected to the turbulence of travel, sudden braking, unexpected stops, things falling, sliding, or collapsing, shockwaves, between two speeds, between two places, between two times, between oneself and the other? In search of a minimal survival, in the claustrophobia of a compartment, every gesture, every movement is a reorganization of oneself, between folding and unfolding. How to situate one’s being, anchor oneself, or drift?
Choreography: Karine Ponties
Dancer: Maxime Cozic
Music and Sound Composition: Rosalie Neal
Lighting Design and Technical Direction: Michel Delvigne
Outside perspective: Eric Domeneghetty
Production: Dame de Pic/Cie Karine Ponties
Photos © Marie-Christine Paquot
Festival participations:
• Keochang International Festival of Theatre (KIFT), Keochang, Republic of Korea
• Le Labeur – Studio Dame de Pic, Brussels, Belgium
• Cancelled – Festival Conformazioni, Palermo, Italy
• D Festival – Théâtre Marni, Brussels, Belgium
• Le Labeur – Studio Dame de Pic, Brussels, Belgium
Artistic director of Dame de Pic, choreographer, performer, Karine Ponties has created fifty dance
pieces for the company, among others Every Direction Is North (Awarded Golden Mask for the best contemporary dance performance in Russia), Holeulone (best dance performance in French-speaking Belgium) and Brutalis (SACD Prize).
Her work is characterised by a flair for the absurd, exploring intimacy and interlacing relationships.
Karine Ponties was born in France and studied at the Juan Tena and Ramon Soler dance schools in Barcelona, and Maurice Bejart’s Mudra school in Brussels.
She has worked as a performer with several companies, notably Frédéric Flamand, Michèle Noiret, Nicole Mossoux / Patrick Bonté and Pierre Droulers among others, in addition to founding Dame de Pic / Cie Karine Ponties in 1995. In 1996 the company premiered at Théâtre Le Public in Brussels, and shortly thereafter Karine Ponties was honored with the laureate of the 4th Edition of Les Pépinières européennes for young artists.
In her over 30 years of choreographing for the Company, she has created commissions for the Helsinki Theater Dance Department, Lod in Ghent, the D.C.M. Foundation in Bucharest, Montréal Danse, La Petite Fabrique in Paris, Transdance Europe 03-06 and the Moscow Ballet. She was one of seven European choreographers selected to participate in the EU-Russian contemporary dance project, Intradance (2010) with the creation of Mirliflor that was awarded the Golden Mask 2011 (National Theatre Award in Russia) for the best contemporary dance performance. The attention garnered around her work at this time later led to her collaboration with the contemporary section of the Moscow Ballet for piece “Every Direction is North”, which was awarded the 2016 Golden Mask for best contemporary dance performance.
Ponties’ award-winning collaborations with visual artist Thierry Van Hasselt (Brutalis: 2002 Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques [SACD] choreographic prize; and Holeulone: named 2007 best dance performance in French-speaking Belgium) highlight the company’s commitment to interdisciplinary exploration.
Ponties choreographies have toured nationally and internationally, notably at the Festival de la Cité (Lausanne), Tanec Praha (Prague), Julidans Theatre Bellevue (Amsterdam), Szene Festival (Salzburg), Dublin Fringe Festival, Centre Culturel Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), Neuer Tanz Festival (Freiburg), Dansstationen (Malmö), City Theater Reykjavik (Iceland), Plesni Theater (Ljubljana), Les Hivernales d’Avignon, Les Brigittines (Brussels), Agora de la danse (Montreal), O Espaço do Tempo (Portugal), Pavillon Noir – National Choreographic Center of Aix-en-Provence, One Yellow Rabbit Festival (Calgary), Théâtre des Salins – Scène Nationale (Martigues), Festival de Marseille (France), International Dance Festival of Cochabamba (Bolivia), National Theatre of Korea (Seoul), National Choreographic Center of Orléans, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Mimos Festival (Périgueux), Uzès Danse, Kaaitheater (Brussels), Dance New Amsterdam (New York), Festival de Otoño (Madrid), Dance Week Festival (Zagreb), Vooruit (Ghent), and others.
