Contemporary Tropisms

At home or in public space, images are everywhere. They seduce the eye, blur our shared stories and orient our future. For choreographer and dancer Maria Kefirova, they are rivers of meaning that a mere gesture of tenderness can reactivate. The Beach and Other Stories is a solo piece about photographic infiltration, that it is created in full complicity with the audience.

Somewhere between a neighborhood alley and a darkroom, a storyteller short-circuits the suggestive power of images, recasting our imaginary worlds and rewriting our stories. She lets herself drift from one photograph to another, slips among the various protagonists, comments, laughs, and recounts her own story. Her gestures and words flow along a current that runs freely, activating our sightlines, our memories, the material before us: a jubilant dance inspired by fiction, a rediscovery of the graceful art of play.

pic. Kinga Michalska

Concept, choreography and performance: Maria Kefirova, Text: Maria Kefirova + Michael Martini, Dramaturgical support: Hanako Hoshimi-Caines, Advisors: Diego Gil + Sophie Corriveau + Sebastian Kann, Lighting Design: Karine Gauthier, Costumes Design: Jade Tong Cuong, Sound Design:  Nicolas Basque + Maria Kefirova, Photos: Bulgarian Visual Archive – Olivier Tulliez
Produced by Danse-Cité, FTA,Maria Kefirova,
Premiered at Festival TransAmériques, on June 2, 2023

pics: Vanessa Fortin

photo: Jade Tong-Coung

Concept and performance Diego Gil and Maria Kefirova

We invite the viewer into a process of slow looking and listening, and a deep tactile experience of gravity. We propose the audience to revitalize and regenerate the perception of their own body while perceiving the set of actions that we deploy. This somatic revitalization happens by allowing the perception to rest while opening it towards the ecology of process happening at the interstices of the body, materials and environment with which we engage.