The dark emancipatory motion of the cancan, a dance that originated in Paris in the 1800s, is reimagined without euphoria or climax, but proposed as a deconstructed landscape that loops its pieces into exhausted reiterations without a stop or an exit. Loose memory but automated bodies, internalised voyeurism, pessimistic repetition of leg, arm and ass movements. The dancers are keeping their heads down.
Inspired by Fabritia D’Intino’s residency with CANCAN and the shared training workshop based on the work, these traces collected from the studio build upon the Cancan as an entrapping system that perpetuates sexualizing dancers’ bodies, ending in a pessimistic loop that numbs the discoursive capacity of deconstruction to develop possible alternative scenarios. Fabritia’s process introduced the question, how long does re-organizing the same alphabet satisfy one’s illusion of freedom? How does one exit the Cancan?
Here are some balloons I picked up from the studio that help me wonder just that…
By Kadri Sirel