ARCHIVES 2014 / Coup fatal

To have musicians from Kinshasa—from fields as different as traditional music, folk dance, or jazz—perform the baroque repertoire; here's an original idea, but one that should not however surprise an audience used to Alain Platel's shows. In vsprs and mercy! already, he took the sacred out of Monteverdi and Bach arias, in order to extract from them an energy at once more direct, more familiar, conducive to the experimentation of a different, culturally mixed dance. It is precisely at the end of the mercy! tour that the countertenor Serge Kakudji, with the support of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg in Brussels, had the idea of performing opera arias with musicians. A workshop was set up in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the European baroque repertoire was to meet the musical culture of the Congo. Fabrizio Cassol soon joined the project, followed by Alain Platel. Fatal Blow is first and foremost a concert, conceived through exchanges, meetings, and the crossing of cultures. It is also the expression of a joy that defies death and violence, represented by a curtain of bullet casings in the background. A joy that appears at the intersection of a revelation—like love at first sight—and fate, that Alain Platel wanted to share, like a message that would be more powerful than the usual manifestations of grief and compassion.

As a seven-year-old, Serge Kakudji joins a children's choir in Lubumbashi, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a teenager, he takes part in several artistic training courses, where he meets Faustin Linyekula, a choreographer from Kisangani. He then joins the cast of the play Dinozord, featured at the Festival d'Avignon in 2007, meeting the soprano Laura Claycomb, who becomes a guide and advisor to him, and the team of the KVS in Brussels, who have since then accompanied him. In 2008 and 2009, he performed in Alain Platel and Fabrizio Cassol's mercy!, with whom he is now reuniting for Fatal Blow.

A saxophonist by training, Fabrizio Cassol has become an expert in musical experiences spanning different cultures, connecting different artistic languages. In 1992, he founded the band Aka Moon and began a series of what he defined as study trips. What begins as chance encounters sometimes end up as full-blown collaborations, with Luck Bondy, the Ictus Ensemble, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, the tg STAN company... Along with Alain Platel, he created vsprs and mercy!, revisiting Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 and Bach's St Matthew Passion.

Rodriguez Vangama est artiste musicien, né à Kinshasa. Guitariste de grande renommée, il est fortement sollicité pour ses talents en tant que musicien, arrangeur ou producteur par des pointures comme Papa Wemba, Werrason, Jean Goubald et Monik Tenday. Il joue également dans le groupe de jazz J'Affrozz et a travaillé avec des artistes comme Pierre Vaiana et Baloji, notamment pour l'enregistrement de son album Kinshasa Succursale. Rodriguez a beaucoup tourné avec Lexxus Legal en Afrique et en Europe. Avec son groupe Les Salopards il mélange la musique populaire congolaise avec des éléments de jazz et de rock. Leur premier album, Niveau Zéro, sort en 2014.

A special needs teacher by training, Alain Platel reveals the beauty of the body, especially when it seems warped, old, damaged; in them he finds the forms of an ever-changing expression. Whether his art should be called a form of theatrical dance or a brand of theatre uniquely embodied, it focuses on humans that are always moving, testing their limits, their potentialities, and their abilities just to exist together. It is this communal pleasure that gives their energy to the Ballets C de la B, a collective that looks more like a constantly evolving family and of which Alain Patel has probably been the pillar since the creation, in 1984, of Stabat Mater, based on Alessandro Scarlatti. Baroque music, then, was already the common thread of a body of work characterised by its generosity, preoccupied by all forms of poverty and suffering, and to which it responds with joy and dignity.

Renan Benyamina, April 2014