Valeska Gert, an important figure in the exhibition through her exploration of fictions of the face, is evoked by Marcela Santander Corvalán and Volmir Cordeiro in an extract from their piece, Époque, which offers a new exploration of Latifa Laâbissi’s revival of Japanese Grotesque by Gert. 

Made up of ecstasy, pleasure, subversion, lasciviousness, terror, extravagance and joy, the dances we have worked on require a prodigious ability to leap from one mood to another, to engage with the most irreverent scenarios, and to shake, dislocate and throw the body off balance. Behind every emotion is a range of imagined possibilities allowing us to bring a variety of presences, approaches and interdependent modes of sensation to the stage. Epoque (Epoch) is a study, an inventory of dances in which 20th century female artists explore the performance of contorted movements.

The title, Epoque (Epoch), evokes a certain quality more than a specific time. In this performance, different elements are explored and interpreted to reanimate an intimate and vibrant story, which has been forgotten or lost in the symbolic past of our journey as dancers. Here dance is used as a raw and direct means to revisit and revivify an archive whose insistent vitality resonates with our present. Epoch is a search for magic. The magic of an enigma, of mystery, of the power of the moment and the way its constant renewal provides the basis for our movement.

Epoque (Epoch) is made up of the following dances: The subversion of 1920, The terror of 1929, The extravagance of 1926, The mystery of 1996, The conquest of 2001, The vertigo of 1968, The domination of ? The euphoria of 1925, The belief of 1965, The resurrection of 1973, The vice of 1922, The lasciviousness of 1917, The pleasure of 1927, The dream of 1929, The ecstasy of 1920, The revolt of 1924 and The excess of 2015.

Source: programme of the CND

Born in Chile, Marcela Santander Corvalán trained at the Milan dance-theatre, then at the contemporary dance centre CNDC, in Angers.  She has also studied history at the University of Trento (Italy) and obtained a dance degree from the University Paris 8. Since 2011 she has  danced for Dominique Brun, Faustin Linyekula or else Volmir Cordeiro, while also assisting Julie Nioche and Mickael Phelippeau with their choreography. She has been developing her own personal projects since 2014, including Époque (with Volmir Cordeiro) and MASH (with Annamaria Ajmone).

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.).