An intimate and disarming self-examination

Choreographer and dancer Madeleine Fournier usually works in a duo relationship with Jonas Chéreau. Together they already were to be seen at NEXT festival 2016 with Soustitre. In Labourer the Frenchwoman is alone on stage for the first time. Such a solo is often seen as the beginning of a new creative period. But first Fournier wants to explore the essence of her thinking, of her body, of her dance. She wants to understand what exactly makes her move.

'Labourer' means plough : it is digging up the earth to open new paths.  This time Fournier considers movement as her invisible partner. She wants to make the world disappear and let her body be flooded and then get back steadily to the surface. The solo Labourer, in which both jazz, house, samba and baroque resound, brings us a tide of gestures of a dancer who has reinvented herself.

Madeleine Fournier about Labourer : I associate the title with labour or physical work. The labour contains a rhythm by the sound and the trails left by the machine during ploughing but also by the repetitive movements of the one who works the land. In English 'labor' refers to labour but also to childbirth. In French we use the term 'labourer' to refer to the work before childbirth, like the contractions before the delivery of the newborn. So the word also evokes the idea of a sexual action, in which the earth is ploughed to be able to sow again.'

The French dancer Madeleine Fournier lives in Montreuil. She studied contemporary dance in Paris and Angers. Since 2007 she has worked as a dancer for a.o. Odile Duboc, Fabrice Lambert and Sara Manente and Emmanuelle Huynh, but just as well with visual artists Frédéric Moser/Philippe Schwinger and Brois Achour. She already had a residence at BUDA together with Jonas Chéreau, with whom she conducted research and made several performances. 

Free busses:
* 25/11: Departure at 16h from Villeneuve d'Ascq (Parcours: Consul and Meshie + Unforetold + Labourer)
* 25/11: Departure at 16h30 from Valenciennes (Parcours: Consul and Meshie + Labourer)