Hervé Koubi, a poet | Culture
In his stage as a dancer, Hervé Koubi was already a singular type; Then, once immersed in the choreographic and creative flour, he insisted on being himself, to express his explosive and sometimes very different initiatives. He is a choreographer, obviously, but he is a poet of the structure of the painting. he does not despise the influences, the blood origins of his ancestral traditions and above all, he does not camouflage his preferences and adorations, his inspirations and his aesthetic purposes. That certain stubbornness has gone well, it has made him stand out and show himself in a formidable and effusive demonstration of nerve and light, of physical singing and choral approach to work. His shows shine for the whole; sporadically gives place to the soloist fragment, in the figure of the solo, but always as a hinge to another broadside of the group, to another portentous wave that turns the stage like a kind of stormy and implacable sea.
Les nuits barbares ou les premiers matins du monde
Choreography: Hervé Koubi. Music: W. A. Mozart, Gabriel Fauré, Richard Wagner and traditional Algerian with Maxime Bodson. Lights: Lionel Buzonie; Locker room: Guillaume Gabriel and Claudine G- Delattre. Masks: Swarovski. Teatros del Canal. Madrid Festival in Dance. Until December 30.
If watching this piece titled The barbarous nights with which argenilo has triumphed in Madrid in dance, I immediately thought of the poem by Cavafis Waiting for the barbarians, at the same time I have thought of another book that is essential today: The great sea by David Abulafia, key volume to understand the place where we are and which feeds us from always, because the other great protagonist of the Koubi show is that old, mythical, daily and vital Mediterranean sea, a communicating lymph that provides the essential food beyond of the fish and that has justifiably been sung from ancestral times. It communicates with us and sister the mythological beauty and the devastating cruelty of the facts, at the same time, in an apparent contradiction between life and death, between past and future. The muscular health of the artists on stage is a mirror of moral cleanliness, of a clear language and of a simple word as a hinge towards the spectator; they breathe eagerly towards the lights, the spotlights are like a destination beyond reach, and there is a certain expressive will of rite, of ecstasy and of surrender.
The Wagnerian fragments or the Requiem of Fauré and Mozart bring a monumental gravity, an idea of a solemn mass; the rhythm is set by the desert and its echoes, its drums and ternary accents, the Libyan or Nubian echo with the graphic chawi they elevate the drive towards the air and the challenge both to gravity and to the temporary surrender between fall and recovery, between turn and hug. The exhibition is never free, it is a Dionysian plenitude, an aftertaste capable of rearranging the figures towards their own greatness in the sculptural monuments, and this is also a classical heritage.
Abulafia as a premise expresses that its Mediterranean does not speak at the bottom of politics, and wars, but of men. Hence the vitality. Hervé Koubi sings in the same direction, searches in the collective action the search for a common accord, and once tuned, thrown into the air of dance art, is a wonderful and lucid thread that enchants and absorbs, and that is the reason why Public first assents in silence and then bursts into a victorious and unanimous ovation. Koubí's formal search is deeply human and is rooted in the great adventures of conquest, going from a gestural epic to a lyric 'transhomérica' The 14 men who express themselves through extreme physical calisthenics are a promising mural. The brilliance and mastery of urban dance techniques add a disciplined sense of ensemble and group coordination. They come very precise and exact, like a glove, the two final verses of the poem of Cavafy (here in the translation of Alfonso Silván): "And now what will become of us without barbarians. / These men were a certain solution. "The audience cheered the artists standing up, clearly showed their share in an electricity as tense as the strings of Orfeo's lyre, where mystery and will rests at the same time.
Today Sunday you can see the second and last show in the green room of the Teatros del Canal.
