Following its first French edition at Luma Arles and Lafayette Anticipations Paris in 2019, Slow Show, conceived and led by The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance Dean Dimitri Chamblas, travels for the first time to Africa. The performance takes place as part of the Dialogues de Corps Festival, running from Dec. 6-13 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
This first Burkinabe edition of Slow Show is hosted by the Centre de Développement Chorégraphique La Termitière (CDC) in Ouagadougou, which has been promoting choreographic culture and education nationally and internationally since 2005. The performers include 22 dancers from the CDC’s training program, 22 Malian refugee children from northern Burkina Faso, and women from various neighborhood associations. The locally selected participants will create their own interpretation of the piece based on their gestures, movements, and memories, slowed down to the extreme.
Chamblas originally developed Slow Show with students and faculty from CalArts Dance. Fellow CalArtian and Los Angeles-based musician Eddie Ruscha (Music BFA 91) contributed to the work’s music, a partly improvised “amorphous musical ambience” created with electronic musical instruments, sound effects, and guitars. Slow Show premiered in December 2017 at Hauser and Wirth in Los Angeles, and was later presented in February 2019 as part of the Shelter or Playground exhibition at the MAK Center of Art and Architecture at the Schindler House in Los Angeles.
In August 2019, Slow Show traveled to Luma Arles, Parc des Ateliers; an artistic space and home to arts nonprofit Luma Foundation located in Arles, France. The performance took place as both a workshop and “a way for Arlesians to meet through a physical practice, to experience different states and intensities, to build an ephemeral community and to offer to a large audience a collective performance.” By aligning with this new edition of the Slow Show, the Luma Foundation opens up a dialogue between Arles and Ouagadougou, and strengthens the foundation’s relationship with the Institute.
Event Details
Slow Show at the Dialogues de Corps Festival
Sunday, Dec. 6—Sunday Dec. 13
Centre de Développement Chorégraphique La Termitière
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso