BAM and Théâtre de la Ville (Paris, France) present
Monchichi
Company Wang Ramirez
Part of Brooklyn-Paris Exchange and Tandem Paris-New York
Intercultural identities are the bread and butter of Wang Ramirez, the polyglot performance duo comprising Korean-German dancer Honji Wang and French-Spanish dancer Sébastien Ramirez. Partners in life and performance since they met dancing in Berlin, the two communicate the complexity of human relationships through their signature dance-theater aesthetic.
On a bare stage with nothing but a single wooden tree, Monchichi grows out of the spaces between the two dancers’ hybrid cultures and the movement idioms in which they’re trained: ballet, b-boying, and martial arts. Confronting paradoxes of love and difference with trademark clarity and wit, they perform a choreography of near-missed connection.
Conception and choreography by Wang Ramirez
Dramaturgy by Vincent Rafis
Lighting design by Cyril Mulon
Set design by Ida Ravn
Costumes by Honji Wang
Music by Ilia Koutchoukov aka Everydayz/+?
Arrangements by Fabien Biron
Additional music by Carlos Gardel, Alva Noto, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
Acrobat Yoann Bourgeois and his dazzling collaborators capture the body’s ineffable moment of weightlessness while in motion in this series of vaudevillian vignettes.
Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire trades jabs with the specters of her estranged father in a makeshift boxing ring in this visceral exploration of African masculinity.
Theater company The Civilians offer a playful and profound 21st-century take on the journey to the underworld, using a script based on conversations with shamen, morticians, philosophers, and mystics.
French physical theater maverick Aurélien Bory takes Japanese dancer Kaori Ito, entangled in a dense field of 5,000 black nylon wires, as both muse and instrument.