Odorama series / Soirees nomades - Fondation Cartier
november 13, 2003
with maria donata d'urso, matthieu doze, eric martin, christian rizzo
perfume and scent designer: francis kurkdjian, quest international
coproduced by: Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain - Paris, and Mudam
with support from misa ishibashi for the costumes
and from Eden Fleuriste, Luxembourg
Christian Rizzo created this dance piece combining choreography, sculpture and fashion for the Odorama series (Soirees Nomades, Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain).
In this visual and olfactory dance piece, Rizzo had the dancers wear different ephemeral scents and designed protean costumes stuffed with different flowers for each dancer.
Their floral and physical odours blended together, transforming the dance into a piece to be seen and smelled. The bulging costumes blurred the outlines of their bodies, challenging their status.
At any given moment the combination of singular smells offered unique scents stored in "the present'', "the imagination'' and as potential "memories''.
Four dancers performed at the fondation cartier evening.
After their solos, the four bodies "disseminating'' one-tone smells attempted to come together so that "number thirteen" the scent of the evening " could emerge.
christian rizzo
"After show''
"(...) According to Rizzo, the proper setting in which to explore how the body's forms, movements and senses (olfactory in this case) are portrayed in the arts today is a space with no particular perspective (spectators could watch from any vantage point).
For the dancers, it involved constraints such as doing micro-movements to an (insectivore-like) electronic beat with their faces and bodies hidden by black tights and endowed with excrescences, or "bumps of scented flowers with which the dancers must also dispense their own odours, like urban farmers crushing a bed of flowers", says Mathieu Doze.
But there was also a high level of trust, and therefore of technique, since there was "choreographic material beforehand, and each dance is responsible for what he expresses artistically".
To sum up, there are 4 colours, 4 flowers (rose, lilac, mimosa, lily), a foursome of limited movement revealing the Number 13 fragrance in the final moment of efflorescence.
You can't help being fascinated visually (and olfactorally, since the lily smell is the strongest) by these evolving-involuting lines. These protuberances produce a fantasy of artistic mutation in the body, unequivocally positioned between culture and nature".
Sylvie Lambert, Les Inrockuptibles, 3 December 2003
other dates of this exhibition
october 19, 2004
Fondation Musee d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean / Mudam - Luxembourg - Luxembourg