Tempéraments by Edmond Russo and Shlomi Tuizer marks a new phase in the collaboration between the two choreographers.

Inherited from Hippocrates, the theory of temperaments is based on four humours: sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic. From this metaphorical reading of the body, Edmond Russo and Shlomi Tuizer have extracted a choreographic thread with multiple ramifications, a formal architecture opening out onto principles of circulation, proportions and expression of the body. Built around a group of four dancers, Tempéraments articulates a grammar of contradictory states: in turn strange individuals, figures with abstract forms, forces dominated by their impulses or members of the same living being, the interpreters pass through a variety of moods – different ways of treating movement and its possibilities of expression.

In a game of variations to the rhythm of Andrea Cera’s musical composition, the work leads us through the temperaments as though they were obscure areas of the human psyche. Each stage formalises an affect, an inhabitation of the space, from which abstract or embodied, common or fantastic tableaux leap forth. From a playful phantasmagoria we move to an abstract organisation, from light to chiaroscuro, from contemplation to raw energy, from solitude to fusion. Linking old and new, allegorical and kinetic, Tempéraments proposes a subjective mapping whose landmarks constantly change: four areas of the mind populated by voices, whispers, figures, where each interpreter unveils their irrevocable singularity, which largely exceeds all categories.   

Source: programme of the CND

The Italian, Edmond Russo, and the Israeli, Shlomi Tuizer, began their fruitful career as interpreters, in the Ballet de l'Opéra national de Lyon and the Batsheva Dance Company, respectively. Their paths crossed when they were both interpreters in France and Belgium, in the companies of Hervé Robbe and Joanne Leighton. They created short pieces separately before joining forces to set up Affari Esteri (from the Italian meaning foreign affairs) in 2004. Places of exchange and collaborations, their projects bring together artists from varying horizons and highlight the resonances between the individual and the group. They went on to produce work after work (including their latest creations: inside ##### in 2009, Lings in 2010, and the duo embrace, created in 2012), ending up with the most recent: Tempéraments. Alongside this, with creations such as Dolentem (2009) and Encircling (2011) for the interpreters of the dance school Coline in Istres, and Precious Things (2012) for the Junior Ballet of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Paris, they have furthered a choreographic approach placed at the edges of an artistic commitment and a pedagogical reflection. In 2013, they created Kammerkonzert for the Junior Ballet of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Lyon.

That same year, the professional dance school Coline entrusted them with the artistic management of the choreographic research and creation laboratory, Mother Tongue, for thirteen dancers from the Mediterranean basin. A project that was thought up by Coline and co-produced by Marseille-Provence 2013, the European Capital of Culture. Consulted for their teaching skills, Edmond Russo and Shlomi Tuizer regularly visit a large number of dance instruction and practice establishments both in France and overseas.
The company Affari Esteri is in residency at the CDC Art Danse Dijon Bourgogne.

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).