Cities Cited

« This is not a global production with the ambition to synthesize and then summarize human diversity. It issues more from a desire to compose a choreography that is both explicit and abstract using an inventory of elements that I just happen to love and that I chose for themselves. »

Michel Kelemenis  

Cités citées is inspired by 8 sister ports of Marseille: Abidjan, Alexandria, Dakar, Genoa, Hamburg, Kobe, Piraeus and Shanghai. Dream cities scattered to the four corners of the globe, Michel Kelemenis unites them in one single trip. He resided and worked in each of these cities and brought back strange sounds and singular images that he scattered in the show. For each city, he wrote complex choreographic material that he observed in traditional dances or that was inspired by the general atmosphere of the ports. African energy, Japanese rituals or the details of Chinese gestures, for example, are all characteristics that allow the chorographer to find meaning in group-dances and to investigate infinitely larger and freer spheres. Michel Kelemenis and the 8 dancers that accompany him try to express both the multiplicity of information he received and its simultaneous existence.