Queen Blood
Ousmane Sy
New Works 2022
After Fighting Spirit, Ousmane Sy pursues his exploration of energies and feminine gestures. Paradox-Sal dancers roll out their technical virtuosity and uniqueness so as to reveal or interrogate what could be womanhood, assumed or suffered, through dance and movement. Set up from each one’s personal experience, Queen Blood proposes intimate and vibrating performance.
Credits
Choreographer: Ousmane Sy
Assistant choreographer: Odile Lacides
Repertory transmission and staging: Odile Lacides, Valentina Dragotta and Audrey Minko
Repetitor: Roos van Berkel
Music credits:
Fela Kuti - Shakara
Culoe de Song - Felidaen Kings
Thabzen Bibo FB - Famba Nawena
Culoe de Song - Webaba
Dancers : May van Leeuwen, Efua-Maria Aikins, Kofi Boanyah, Federica Lovato, Mia Malencia, Pepe Rollema, Josselin Prat
Ousmane Sy
Since his first footwork nearly thirty years ago, Ousmane Sy has worked to translate his fascination with the orchestrated movement of a soccer team into dance. His artistic world, occupying various fields, is made up of stepovers, lunges between the dance floor and the stage, and the irrepressible desire to overcome oneself through the group. One foot in the club, the other in battle: Ousmane Sy, nicknamed “Babson,” stakes his belonging to house dance between these two spaces of expression, becoming one of its major proponents in France.
With the “Battle of the Year,” won in 2001 with his crew the “Wanted Posse,” he brought the “French touch” to the forefront of the international scene by transposing androgynous gestures inspired by New York nightclubs into the heart of the contest. Extending far beyond the boundaries of the Marshall Plan, his dance practice has gradually turned to the hybrid histories and African lineages of house rhythms. The result was “Afro House Spirit,” a contemporary dance style marked by the heritage of traditional African and Caribbean dances. The driving force behind All 4 House, Ousmane Sy endeavors to harmonize, through the mise-en-scène of a multi-act performance, the individual pathways of the female dancers from the group Paradox sal, whom he has trained in house dance for years.
Paradox-sal
Created in 2012 at the initiative of the choreographer Ousmane Sy (then a member of Wanted Posse and Serial Stepperz), the group Paradox-sal is composed of female dancers with various cultural and artistic backgrounds. Ousmane Sy corrals this diverse group of dancers around a common denominator in order to help them learn the hybrid language of house dance, enriched by the vocabulary of African dances. Epitomizing the cultural and artistic diversity of the young French generation, Paradox-sal are contemporary representatives of the feminine “French touch.” Every woman dancer embodies the plurality and multiplicity of hiphop: contemporary, accessible, intergenerational. Since it was founded, the group distinguished themselves in France and abroad through their participation in a number of international events held, among others, in Brazil, Italy, the UK, and the Netherlands. They produced three public performances: Fighting Spirit, 2014; Bounce, 2015; and Queen Blood, 2019, staged notably in Paris, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Amsterdam, and London.