April 7th – 9th, 2025, Centquatre-Paris, Paris
85 minutes
A 2010 Masterpiece
In Out Of Context, director Alain Platel continues his search for a language of movement connected to the unconscious, the arbitrary, the uncontrolled.
The movement material covers the entire range of dyskinesia and dystonia, in other words: spasms, convulsions, tics. These can be very small mouth movements, teeth chattering, sticking out the tongue, eyes blinking, frowning, grimacing, moving the fingers as though they are playing the piano, briefly jerking the limbs, torso, pelvis or head, jolting the abdomen or diaphragm, balance impairment, falling over and a whole repertoire of silly walks.
Small tics swiftly alternate with big swings. Restlessly and nervously. Platel has long resisted the label ‘choreographer’, but still arrives at this term in another way. ‘Chorea’ is a medical term referring to an affected nervous system, the symptoms of which are jerky movements and poor coordination.
Ultimately, Platel goes back to his past as a special needs educator working with children with motor and multiple disabilities where he discovered the beauty of the malformed, the emotional power of the misshapen.
Extracted text written by Hildegard De Vuyst, Dramaturge (January 2010)
