Cindy Van Acker
The body is Cindy Van Acker's favoured tool. She has been unstintingly working with it with a concern for precision down to the very millimetre: it is state-of-the-art technology that shapes all her shows. Trained in classical dance, a dancer at the Royal Ballet of Flanders, then at the Grand Théâtre of Geneva, Cindy Van Acker acquired, in the mid-1990s, the feeling of having reached the end of knowledge. She then decided to consider her body differently. With it, she invents another language, choreographing it according to a minimalist writing. "My body is the strength of my proposal," she explains. Several pieces, in which she dances herself (Body 00: 00 in 2002) or has others dance (Fractie in 2003, Pneuma 02: 05 in 2005, Kernel in 2007), underline this formal work that explores the interactions between the body, space, time and sound. Cindy Van Acker is also motivated by encounters: with musical creation, with technology that stimulates or captures movements, but also with other stage artists like Romeo Castellucci. "His work touched me," she acknowledges, "opened me up to other perspectives. It is not just a simple influence, but the basis of a new thought process." In 2005, the Italian director invited her to the Venice Biennale whose theatre arts section he directed; in 2008, when he was the associate artist at the 62nd Festival d'Avignon, he asked her to work with him on the premiere of Inferno, presented at the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des papes.
The results of extensive experimental research, the four solos Lanx, Obvie, Obtus and Nixe are occasions to discover the work of this choreographic author, at the outermost bounds of dance, performance and visual arts. Interpreted by four distinct dancers, they will be the object of two programmes at the Festival d'Avignon, linked by a common element: the organic precision of the combination of movements that, often very close to the floor, in the mystery of horizontality, make the body begin to potently exist.
ADB, April 2010