Straight from Brussels, four characters sitting on chairs start a ritual as they clap their hands and tap their legs. This strange rhythmic choreography gradually grows in intensity until it becomes a liberating and subversive trance, challenging traditional performance conventions. Incorporating offbeat and situational humour, our “Magnificent 4” will perform in different places around the city and offer a fun and energetic masterclass after each show, initiating the audience to the movements of the piece.
Four chairs and four dancers in everyday clothes who launch their own choreographic interpretation of body percussion usually used to give rhythm to nursery rhymes and other popular body songs. In this surprising “rhythmed dance” developed by choreographer and dancer Mauro Paccagnella, the story is told solely through the percussive use of sitting bodies (in this case with hands, arms and legs) who set the pace, invent narrative movements and create digressions through idiosyncrasy.
The Magnificent 4 (Stéphane Broc, Mauro Paccagnella, Gaétan Bulourde and Ben Fury) are perfectly synchronised, coordinated down to the smallest details, like a magician’s suitcase. Their precision gradually draws the spectator into a subversive trance for a brief moment of catharsis and joy that will overtake various places around the city. This liberating trance will then be shared with the audience in a masterclass teaching the different movements of this performance that has been presented in Brussels since 2013.
There is an XXL version of the show, taken from the low-cost romantic opera choreography, Siegfried Forever, created by Wooshing Machine in 2006, has returned to the stage ten years after its creation. A series of short films based on the choreography has also been made by dancer and video artist, Stéphane Broc.
BIOGRAPHY
Wooshing Machine
Created in Brussels in 1998 around Italian dancer, performer, actor and choreographer Mauro Paccagnella, La Compagnie Wooshing Machine is a collective of various diverse artists that defines itself as a place for invention and a laboratory for performance and visual art experimentation. Borrowing from theatre, the visual arts and musical creation, its work reinvents a deliberately hybrid choreographic and movement language. Created in 2013, The Magnificent 4 brings together on stage Mauro Paccagnella (currently an artist in residence at the Centre Culturel Régional de La Louvière and an associate artist at Théâtre Les Tanneurs in Brussels), video artist Stéphane Broc (video artist, performer, and musician with the company since 2006), dancer and musician Gaétan Bulourde (rock and experimental music bass player in Paris, Berlin and Brussels) and breakdancer Ben Fury (also a dancer for choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and in Bitches brew from Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Rosas company).
DISTRIBUTION
Concept : Mauro Paccagnella
Chorégraphie : Mauro Paccagnella, Ben Fury, Stéphane Broc, Christophe Morisset
Interprétation : Mauro Paccagnella, Stéphane Broc, Gaëtan Bulourde, Harold Henning,
Production : Wooshing Machine
