World Premiere in HKAF

Co-production: Hong Kong Arts Festival, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Holland Festival, Auckland Festival, Grand Theatre Groningen

French-Vietnamese choreographer Ea Sola has shaken the world with her evocative works. Drought and Rain (1995), a painfully beautiful and ritualized dance performance by elderly village women about memories of war, won critical acclaim. Her choreography reveals the humanity beyond mere beauty and movement. For Ea Sola, the body is not only physical, it is a place of history, politics and love. The White Body, a new work commissioned by the Festival in conjunction with partners in France, Holland and New Zealand, is Ea Sola’s reflection on Asia in its quest for globalisation. She turns to a seminal text of modern democracy – The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by French philosopher Étienne de la Boétie, to question the place of individual freedom in this turbulent age of modernity and consumerism. Fusing theatre, dance and live music, this brand new work will stimulate your mind and senses. World premiere. Don’t miss it!

Post-performance meet-the-artist session will be held on Feb 27

Choreographer and Director: Ea Sola

Music: Ngugen Xuan Son

Co-production: Hong Kong Arts Festival, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Holland Festival, Auckland Festival, Grand Theatre Groningen

Ea Sola - The White Body - Meet-the-Artist (Post-performance)
27 Feb 2009

An intriguing dialogue with choreographer Ea Sola on her new evocative work.

Ea Sola – Harmony Between Body, Soul and Expression
by Thomas Hahn

Ea Sola is more than “just” a choreographer. Building bridges between Vietnam and France, she is akin to a NGO in arts. Since 1995 Ea Sola has created five pieces, admitting easily that “an artist doesn’t have something important to tell every year”. Supplying a product for the arts market has never been her approach, which is why seeing one of her creations is so enriching. Each performance has depth, humanity and a sense of community – she interweaves her life story throughout each project .

Ea Sola lived in the jungle until Vietnam was hit by colonial war. Her subsequent arrival in Paris led her to perform in the streets of France’s glamorous capital, in works compared to avant-garde performances of the era. Creating underground pieces, she continued her work in Paris for six years as a struggling artist. Although she never received formal instruction and claims her independence from any kind of “school” in dance, she worked with Min Tanaka, attending his workshops and becoming a dancer in his Le Sacre du Printemps.

Ea Sola defends Vietnam’s cultural heritage against the extinction of memory brought about by globalisation. Her experiences of living through the Vietnamese war shaped her life making it impossible for her to separate art from society and politics. She investigates the frontiers of dance, but unlike the European avant-garde, her projects include the search for beauty and harmony which she finds in the people, in clear and simple geometrics and in profound consciousness of time and space around the world.

Ea Sola’s pieces speak of harmony between body, soul and expression. She feels no obligation to work with professional dancers. “The old women that were on stage in Sécheresee et pluie (the piece for which she became famous) were actually former peasants who left their farms and signed up as factory workers. Not all of them were professional performers, although I engaged them for their art of music.” Recently she began to work with young performers for a piece which explores today’s younger generations’ perception of war.

She is now presenting The White Body, a more intimate piece than her earlier works which include Sécheresse et pluie and Sécheresse et pluie vol. II (2005). There will be the same tender care for the older generation, for bodies in natural state, for arts and humanity. Ea Sola’s deep respect for individuality creates the beauty of her stage work.

One of her main concerns is the future of the individual in modern times especially in the midst of the storm of globalisation. Will we still be given time to think and feel, time to develop our personalities? “I see how even Europe begins to transform its people into robots supposed to just work and consume rather than thinking. But modernism is the possibility to exist as an individual! Etienne de La Boétie’s Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, written in the 16th century, played an important part in the creation of modernism which actually emerged with the French revolution in 1789. For about 200 years La Boétie’s short essay was censored as it was considered an attack on monarchy. True! It contains the foundations of fundamental questions we face today. Is the individual still the centre of questions about modernism? After all, 500 years is a short period in the history of civilisations. Modernism is its sense, and modernism is dying”.

She will not imitate the young rebel La Boétie in an historical reconstruction. Instead, in The White Body, prepare to meet three people whose lives are linked to the core of the piece: a teacher, a university professor and an intellectual, all in their 60s. There will be choreography, but for the first time, a stage work by Ea Sola will be based on a written text. “And I want it to be heard”, she affirms. Because it is universal, she allows us to listen to it in languages from all continents. “We are human beings by our language and capacity for reflection.” This is perhaps the most important feeling for individuals leaving an Ea Sola performance. One feels human.

Thomas Hahn (Paris) is a dance critic for leading magazines such as Ballettanz (Germany), Danser and Cassandre (France).